Well, fine, Liberal, just fine! Go ahead, act sane all of a sudden, don’t give a moments thought to how much trouble you make for others, just go ahead!
You don’t have to check all those lists for the name Liberal: The Straight to the Wall after the Revolution list, the Jane Fonda Re-education and Aerobics Fitness Camp list, and so on…
Shit! Completely forgot to order the fatted calf…
I’ve been wondering for a while when the libertarians would start peeling away from the Republican party. The current administration really seems to be interested in serving only two constituencies: Big Business & The Fundamentalists. The fiscal conservatives and the small government advocates and the free speech advocates and the individual rights advocates have been given nothing but lip service for the last four years.
I can hear a massive cracking sound. It’s the sound of Reagan’s grand Republican coalition breaking apart. “A uniter, not a divider,” indeed. Bush can’t even unite his own party.
Congratulations, Liberal. You don’t have to agree with Kerry or even like him to realize that the continuation of the Bush administration is not in your (or many other Americans’) rational self-interest.
I’ll be spreading this speech around too. Just curious, Libertarian, how did you come across it?
I’ve missed out on these discussions so I’m not sure how it came about and how it was resolved. The “up the butt” is an urban legend of course.
She actually said “in the ass.” I’ve seen the video and even though they bleep it, you can clearly see what her mouth is saying.
I’ve always thought of Liberal as a bit whacked in the ideals department, but he does seem to stick to his principles. I didn’t imagine for a minute that he was anything but serious in his OP.
Yes, that IS a compliment, especially in today’s political environment. 
It was linked from deep within a libertarian-leaning website that I cannot now recall when I was researching something for another thread. The teaser said something like, “You’re not going to believe what came from Al Gore.”
Regarding an LP break from the RP, it should be noted that the LP has opposed Bush from the beginning, and certainly opposed the invasion of Iraq. You can search their archives for press releases from the period. But the LP, and most libertarians in general, make a rather interesting argument that you leftists might find a bit alarming, and that was alluded to by El Cid in this thread. There is the notion that people will not fight for liberty so long as they feel safe. It cites the circumstances surrounding King George III in the 1700s and other such circumstances in history. The reasoning goes basically that if leftists are in charge, even though property rights are severely abused, people will be complacent because the left will allow them token personal liberties. The people will perceive their fiscal burdens as the cost of freedom. On the other hand, if rightists are in charge, then people will face actual bodily harm, such as the imprisonment, torture, and even death that we are witnessing now if you happen to be the right shade of brown. The argument goes that the only way people will be motivated enough to rise up and take back their rights will be if government becomes so oppressive that they will no longer tolerate it. So, in a rather macarbre twist of reasoning, some libertarians encourage not only rightism, but extreme rightism in the hopes that people will basically wake the fuck up.
Communist extremists have also long used this argument - groups such as brigatte rosse claiming that by creating chaos through acts of terrorism they would force the fascists to show their true colors, thus hastening the revolution.
All sounds a little complicated to me, especially if you consider that a number of the bombings attributed to BR later turned out to have been carried out by right wing groups in the hopes of making the extreme left look bad…
As for the speech, great speech, but doesn’t quite make it on the “dog-bites-man-ometer”. Now, if say, Colin Powell were to make a similar speech, or hey, while we’re fantasizing - how about Dick Cheney. Now that would be a story !
L0L…there’s a part of me that actually wants GWB to win in the Fall for similar reasons. Another four years of screw-ups could knock the Republicans out of power for a generation! Then the rational part of my brain kicks in and I realize how foolish that sort of thinking is. You just can’t predict the behavior of the electorate that easily and if things really are going badly, its better to reverse course as soon as possible.
I’m actually sympathetic to libertarian ideals. I voted that way back in the 80’s. But I grew disillusioned back then when I realized that libertarian rhetoric was being appropriated by the Republicans to advance the interests of big business at the expense of the poor and middle class. The Republicans weren’t really interested in freedom for all, only in deregulation for their buddies.
I think an alliance between the libertarians and the Democrats actually makes more sense from the libertarian point if view. There may still be large points of disagreement, but at least you won’t have to worry about being co-opted…