I’m no one on Redstate, but I hope that someone that has some pull around here promotes this video.  I just found it extremely thought-provoking. Rave about the video and post it on the front page for me.

What Demint proposes here has HUGE potential.  The experience of the GOP in the 1970s, so I’m told, is one of a division between social and fiscal conservatism.  Demint argues very well that there is no such division, and that fiscal conservatism and really libertarianism (or at least limited government) is highly spiritual.  So if this is how the social conservatives feel, we have a great opportunity to see our tent not only become a big one, but a unified one.  If social conservatives can feel in their heart of hearts that reducing government, even a government that could allow them the mechanism to employ their values on others, is the right way to go, we’ll see an explosion of a spiritual libertarianism that will give us significant majorities among voters.

Think about it: most liberals who aren’t Maoist/Stalinist simply want freedoms: freedom to same-sex marry, freedom of expression without censorship, freedom to do drugs, freedom to be dirty, dirty hippies.  If social conservatives can reconcile themselves to those views within the context that minimizing government is the bigger goal, then there are few votes left to chase for the Leftists.

I happen to agree more so with this approach then before, because the government that can institute laws to dictate your views can just as easily dictate the opposite views.  The only answer is a limited government rendered powerless to dictate ANY views, and then let the folks persuade on the issues and let the states make those laws.  Drug use is bad?  Fine, permit it, then target drug users with your message.  Same sex marriage is bad?  Fine, permit it and convince gays not to marry.  Let freedom ring for all issues, for all sides, and renounce imposition of any views through federal government.  Let the states decide these questions, or the local governments, or individuals.

When you see what awful churn we’re in, and see how the Constitution in its near-divinity, the masterpiece of all governments, if followed, would have avoided these problems, you really have to have a deep and lasting amazement at our Founding Fathers.  I wish I named my kid Madison.