Word: nrc
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Conservatives, as NRC points out, have generally found this philosophy quite unattractive. True, it does justify individual liberty and laissez-faire capitalism. But it does not leave conservatives justifications for dictating "moral" behavior to society, or enforcing Christian ethics. Laws against most kinds of sex, more kinds of drugs, desecration of flags, pornography, gambling, breaking of the Sabbath, abortions, and free speech have to go. Out of their distaste for diverse, self-indulgent, and non-conformist lifestyles, conservatives have rejected the sanctity of individual rights; indeed, many conservatives have equated Rand's libertarianism to anarchism, Led by William F. Buckley...
...NRC members disagree on means for assessing and collecting damages, however. They agree that rivers and tracts of ocean should be privately owned, so that dumping wastes into them involves payment of damages to the owners. They believe that air pollution can best be controlled by showing correlations between different pollutants and the harms they cause, whereupon victims sue the polluters. Ultimately, though, their notions of the mechanisms involved differ, as well as the heaviness of the damages settlements...
...NRC maintains nonetheless that differing systems are possible in a libertarian society--individuals greatly bothered by pollution would set up ways of penalizing it heavily in their areas; less concerned individuals would handle the problem differently where they lived. Of course, individuals would have to take the burden of moving if they disliked the system operating where they lived--but, as opposed to today's statist societies, alternative systems would rest on the consent of those living within them, making a real choice of life-styles and societies possible...
...other Massachusetts co-chairman of NRC, Niel Wright '75, described NRC's position on education as congruent with many proposals brought up by liberal and radical critics. "If you combine the ideas of deferred tuition, the voucher system, and performance contracting, you get some sense of what we favor," he said...
...NRC believes that all education--from first grade up--should be divorced from state financing and control. "Public schooling, like most public services, is generally lousy," Wright said. "And people like John Holt and Ivan Illich are even getting liberals to realize that public schools have made our society too diploma-oriented. By ending the near state-monopoly on schooling and abolishing compulsory education laws, learning would have a chance to become more efficient and fulfilling...