Good Morning!
We haven't had an honest-to-goodness Libertarian Saturday in a few weeks now....
I'm going to start this morning with a little observation. Given what most people know about Libertarians, and the press' tendency to focus on the soundbite, most Americans think the LP to be a conservative movement. Well....if you know anything about your loyal TriSec, I'm hardly a conservative.
Grover Nordquist's crack about making government so small you can drown it in a bathtub is about the only thing people know about the modern Libertarian movement, but that's not all it's about.
For me...it's the freedom. I find the concepts behind the LP to extraordinarily broad, and instead of the 'bathtub' crack, it might be better to use the Hipporcatic Oath (the one doctors use, not the Hypocratic Oath of the Republicans
)
First...do no harm.
What is true liberty? In a Libertarian society, you still wouldn't be able to yell "Fire" in a crowded theater...but if you wanted to stand on a streetcorner and flyer the neighborhood about the government's evils....you wouldn't need a permit. (You do now. Some freedom of speech.)
A lot of folks in the mainstream categorize the LP as the party of drugs and guns....but that's not true either. If you smoke marijuana in the privacy of your own home, who are you hurting? But...you wouldn't be able to smoke and drive a car or work at a job where people would be put in danger, or anything like that.
What I really find attractive about the party is it's foreign policy stance. It's close to the Founding Father's original vision...that the United States should be friendly with all nations, and just stay the heck home and worry about our own people. A tremendously smaller, defensive force for our military would also be the result.
And before anyone jumps on me about being attacked, and having the need to defend our borders....think about this. The US is in just about every country in the world, many of whom want nothing to do with us. We use a tremendous amount of resources that could be used in the native countries, and our treasury is stretched to the limit to support it all.
What benefit to Germany or the United States is there in our being at Ramstein Air Base 63 years after V-E day? If the US wasn't worryng around the globe like Mary Worth, perhaps a lot of the conflicts and death over the past half-century may have been avoided. And don't you think a standing army of 100,000 men, or an air force of 1,000 planes, or just 4 or 5 aircraft carriers would be enough to defend our borders?
Libertarianism is a very large tent. I think it does speak volumes that it attracts all kinds, from super-con Grover to li'l ol socially liberal me. Many of you know that I'm supporting Obama this year in the race (largely on the strength of the endorsement from Bill Richardson), so I think it's important for you all to know that even as a Libertarian, I find his platform attractive enough to actually switch parties this year.
Over my brief April vacation, I did walk down to city hall and change my registration from "unenrolled" (Massachusetts-speak for Independent) to "Democrat".
For me, this is what everyone says...Get Involved! if we truly want our democracy back, if we want our candidates to fight for what we truly want, they're never going to do it unless we tell them to. Democrats aren't Libertarians....but neither ar Republicans. There's room in both parties for some of that old-fashioned Liberty, but it's not going to happen unless we
make it happen.
:peace:
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