Latter-day Saint Libertarianism: Part 1

After reading the title of this post, you may be asking yourself "Latter-day Saint Libertarianism? What the heck is that anyway?" Well, that's a good question and one to which I don't have a complete answer yet. But it is one of the things I would like to explore on this blog. Libertarianism is, admittedly, an imperfect philosophy of men (I know, I know, that's repetitively redundant). But the further I study libertarianism, the more I feel that it is one of, if not the best philosophies mankind has come up with. One of the major reasons I feel this way are the striking number of concepts and principles it seems to share with the restored gospel. However, I have also come up against a few libertarian positions that conflict with gospel teachings. With this in mind, I hope to show to my Latter-day Saint family and friends that libertarianism, though imperfect, is so overwhelmingly on the side of Truth that it is deserving of our support. And to my libertarian friends who do not share my faith, I hope to demonstrate where libertarianism errs by using the truths of the gospel to show a better way. I will always take the position that if and when in conflict, the Gospel is always correct and libertarianism is not. But it is in grappling with why the conflict exists and in seeking ways in which libertarianism can be made even more to reflect eternal truth that we hopefully can "reason together that [we] may understand...one another, and both [be] edified and rejoice together" (D&C 50:10-22). For those of you who are neither of the LDS faith, nor libertarian in your political philosophy, you may find this discussion particularly intriguing as you get a glimpse of two unique but very complementary perspectives that you may not have come across before or truly understood.

I plan on this being a multi-part series of posts that will explore the similarities as well as the conflicts between the Gospel and libertarianism. My next post in this series will tackle the core principle of libertarianism: Having the Freedom to Choose is virtually always preferable to any other alternative. Sounds a lot like Free Agency, eh?