Where are the Libertarians?
POSTED BY: SignyM
UPDATED: Tuesday, December 2, 2025 07:10
VIEWED: 17715
PAGE 3 of 10
Just a short personal story.
As one of the 'get involved or quit b*tchin' folk', I ran for union steward 5 years ago. Been dealing with grievances, negotiations, appeals etc ever since. Not only do I go to the meetings, I've put in hundreds of hours of my own personal time to research the things that need to be researched. And some people always, but always criticize afterward.
I'm not in it for the power. And I'm not in it for personal gain, for recognition, gratitude, or even thanks.
As soon as somebody else will step forward to do the job, I'm out of here. But nobody steps forward.
So, STEP FORWARD. REPEATEDLY if needed. Put yourself in the works and move as much as you can.
Nearly everything I know I learned by the grace of others.
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Quote:
"Do you suppose there could ever be some sort of uniting on common issues between lefties and Libertarians and conservatives?"
Not really. Because ideas come from pholosophies. The philosophies of these 3 groups are incompatible.
I disagree.
I think the left-libertarian and the right-libertarian sets could get together and make a plan to fight the pro-govt. control set from both sides. It would take planning, and agreeing to disagree on a lot of points until we got rid of the neo-con, neo-liberal set.
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Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:Quote:
"Do you suppose there could ever be some sort of uniting on common issues between lefties and Libertarians and conservatives?"
Not really. Because ideas come from pholosophies. The philosophies of these 3 groups are incompatible.
I disagree.
I think the left-libertarian and the right-libertarian sets could get together and make a plan to fight the pro-govt. control set from both sides. It would take planning, and agreeing to disagree on a lot of points until we got rid of the neo-con, neo-liberal set.
I'd sure like to think you're right. There may be more potential than ever for that now that Bush has betrayed so many of the basic principles of the 'Reagan republicans'. Not to mention liberals are quite a bit more sympathetic to the small government ideal, now that they're not driving.
But the question remains, do people really want freedom? I'm not convinced they do. At least not in large enough numbers to matter.
SergeantX
"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock
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... Just a couple of links on that Hydrogen Battery Car topic:
http://www.pureenergysystems.com/news/2004/06/10/HydrogenElectricCar/
http://www.hasslberger.com/tecno/hydrogen.html
This second link has engine designs for the [Do it yourself crowd.
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Sgt. X.
Quote:
I'd sure like to think you're right. There may be more potential than ever for that now that Bush has betrayed so many of the basic principles of the 'Reagan republicans'.
First, a couple points,
I think of myself as an 'Eisenhower' Republican. I think a lot of people do, still others look back to Teddy Roosevelt. I just have a couple problems with Reagan, more now than I did then, because of the influence that both neocons and the global socialists, and also the christian extremists had over Reagan who they handpicked to defeat Bush Sr. in '80, much the way GWB was picked by them to defeat McCain in '00. That said, Reagan would be be Mother Theresa compared to W. But I think generally most of the Republican presidents have been pretty consistant up until Reagan, and that Bush Sr. fit much more into that mold than either Reagan or W. At this point I'd like to see the whole neocon set gone from the party. They've been yacking 'do it our way' for a long time, and now we've done it their way and it sucked, and I'd like to go back to the old way.
Quote:
Not to mention liberals are quite a bit more sympathetic to the small government ideal, now that they're not driving.
I actually like to think that they've seen the light, now they've seen exactly how scary big govt. can be. I hope so. It's possible that they will revert to form when they win in '08 which if Bush continues at the rate he's going has to be a dead certainty. I was stunned and amazed they didn't win in '04.
Quote:
But the question remains, do people really want freedom? I'm not convinced they do. At least not in large enough numbers to matter.
You don't need a group that large. When you add up all the revelationists, various christian sects that worship the second coming, there are 24 million of them. 14 million are registered voters. 10 million of those voted for GWB in the 2000 GOP primary. Just about no one else did.
By contrast the Democratic presidential primary is even smaller. About 70% the size. So 10 million was 50% of the 20 million votes cast, so our of 14 million democratic votes you'd only need about 7 million. Possibly a little more because I think that the team evil model democrat is a little strong in it's hold over the party than team evil model republican, not a subjective comment, just a reflection of vote totals. 10 million or so voted for Kerry.
So 10 million, that's what it takes to get yourself a president. After you win the primary, the rest of your party will fall in line. If you're not too outlandish. Oh, hell, look at Bush, or even Kerry, okay, even if you are completely absurd, the rest of your party will fall in line.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SergeantX:
But the question remains, do people really want freedom? I'm not convinced they do. At least not in large enough numbers to matter.
SergeantX
"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock
I'm not sure they do. There is a quote attributed to Napoleon that says that only the educated classes worry about liberty, the people worry about bread.
This is my take on it.
The poor don't vote in the numbers they should, maybe out of ignorance maybe because the system makes it hard for them to vote. In any case voter turnout in poor districts is low and it tends to be where more vote irregularities take place.
The rich do vote but they are small in number so their influence is small.
Therefore most voters are middleclass. This has a number of consequences because what the middle class want more than anything is stability. They are also the ones most concerned with security and the rule of law --- the poor have little to loose, the rich don't realy on the cops for security so things like a strong police force are middle class obscessions. The middle class are also pretty conservative, that need for stability again, when people say that America is a conservative country they often miss out the fact that America has the world's largest and most affluent middle class.
So what does this mean in electoral terms? First it means for an American political party to get elected it has to appeal to the middle class, even if it claims it's ideological allegence is elsewhere. Un the UK when I was growing up the middle class was comparatively small compared to a well organised working class. That was what made the election of a Labour government based on Socialist principles possible. Mrs Thatcher changed all that, she actively grew the middle class and the number of people owning property until the only way that Labour could be elected was to move it to the right. We are now in the possition like the US of having essentially two center-right parties chasing the same middle class voters one of which claims to be left wing and the other claiming to be pro business.
The good news is that while a middle class is strong and secure a country doesn't tend to slip into obvious tyrany. Hitler was elected because the economic woes of Germany put a lot of workers and middle class voters on the dole. If that hadn't happened it would be hard to see how the Nazi's could have triumphed. Contrary to the red scare of the 1950's the US has never been at risk of an internal revolution. No middle class voter is going to vote soviet and as long as the poor can afford to eat there is little risk of a worker's revolution.
The bad news is that all the majority of the middle class want is security. Give them that and they don't care too much about liberty. That I think is the problem with the Libertarian message; people don't dislike big governmant on principle they just get pissy about paying for it. If the middle class can get the benefit of big government without the bill they'd buy into it in a heartbeat because what big governmant DOES is try to look after every tiny need a citizen has. You can't get more "secure" than that.
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Fletch,
I may be beating a dead horse, but here goes. Polls continually show that the % of people concerned about stability is small. 70%-80% of people would prefer peace and are really not that concerned about whether or not the Saddam Husseins stay in power. The estimated total cost I read somewhere, associated with our war in Iraq to date was just of $1 trillion. I'm sure that this is at least in the ball park of correct. I also read that a conflict with Iran is likely to cost three times as much, and would probably result in a million casualties, and like 10,000 plus American lives lost. Is it worth all this to the American people to see that Ahmadinejad and the theocrats lose power in Iran? I don't want to hear it, that was a rhetorical question. The thing is I will give you an iron clad guarantee that an overwhelming majority of Americans think not. Yet last election we saw two ultra-hawkish candidates square off in one big wargasm.
So why? It has nothing to do with what the people believe. The people were made to believe what the machine wanted them to believe. The machine has votes. Kerry and Bush each got about 10 million votes. Then, in the general election, their parties both got 50 million or so more votes.
In the general eleciton, most of our voters are voting for the jackass or the elephant, pretty much regardless of who is on the ticket. The only actual election is the primary. Each side has about 100 million registered voters. Both of us got swamped by someone with the unstoppable majority of 10%. I hope everyone feels as disorganized as I do right now.
In general, I think the degree of pro-peace feeling is fairly equal on both sides. The pro-prosperity feeling probably is too. Any campaign as organized as Bush and Kerry were with almost any sensible agenda ought to be able to annihilate them. Hell, any random fringe minority could probably do it, with enough organization.
There are almost as many Joss fans as there are fundementalist christian primary voters. If we made an alliance with the charmed viewers or the trekkies, we wouldn't need any help. Or course, it also takes unity of purpose.
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DT: you are mistaking security for stability. I said stability and I meant it. Let's look at that a moment. Iraq has had a slow burn with the public, Bush is only now feeling the consequences of an action he took over 2 years ago because no matter how many billions are spent overseas or how many young Americans die that has had little impact on folks at home. The stability of all those little suburban middleclass lives have not been threatened.
Now let's look at the last time his popularity was in the toilet, hurricane Katrina. That has a more immediate impact because looking after Americans caught in a domestic disaster is seen rightly or wrongly as a Federal (Big) government job and he's the boss of that. When people see all the bad things happening in New Orleans they see themselves in that situation and the government their have detailed the job of taking care of that asleep at the wheel. THEN gas prices went up everywhere else and that SUV run to drop lil Jimmy at school just became more expensive for the average soccer mom.
If there was a draft and suburban middle class kids were the majority of the casualties in Iraq we'd see a lot more reaction. If the costs of the war were being added to direct taxation and not being financed by borrowing we'd see a reaction but the truth is that Iraq doesnt touch most middle class lives. That is why it hasn't featured as a big issue.
As to polls on security. It doesn't come up because it generally isn't an issue. Had you asked the same question in DC during the beltway sniper incident of in NYC just after 9/11 you would have had a different answer. Security is only an issue if people feel directly threatened, right now they dont.
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Fletch,
I can't seem to find the post this was a response to, so I'll just ramble.
The draft logic is flawed if you mean to carry it to a pro-draft level as many liberals have done to me. The main reason the draft would make things worse is that it would enable a monster army and a giant war. This is why it would affect back home, not just because it was a draft. But I don't think the draft is ever going to feature big as a GOP platform point because it conflicts with Republican values which even Bush can't totally buck without getting kicked out of the party. The fact that they haven't done it already astounds me. I think this country has become to comfortable with the idea that who ever has the ring deserves the ring even if it happens to be Vice President Gollum.
To some extent I agree, security is an issue for those threatened. If this was re: inside of Iraq, I think that the external threats to Iraq are going to be pretty severe if we leave without decent preparation, plus the inside threats, heck, it's a mess. But maybe foreign powers will just manipulate the democracy rather than kill a bunch of people. I seriously have been expecting all along for a pull out on Aug. 30th of '06 because that's what the bible says.
You know, one man, he overcomes the will of the masses because he's guided by the will of God, and he comes to power in the most powerful nation on the millenium aka 2000, then he and his 24 yesmen push an invasion of th evalley of tigris and eurphrates, ie Iraq, and they rain down fire and brimstone with silver eagles from the heavens, iow, they bomb it into the stone age, and then the forces of the ruler being a dozen units of a dozen thousand occupy the land for 1260 days, ie. 144,000 US troops or so occupy Iraq until Aug. 30th of 2006. Then it's time for bible-mandated withdrawl.
Silly people, reading the constitution, declarations of war, Pah! This adminisration gets its legislative ideas from a higher power.
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