Well, heck, there’re so many political terms out there these days that one never can tell what is and isn’t one. I yearn for the bygone age of Whigs and Tories. (No, not really.)
But you and I seem to see eye to eye on the activism thing. The ones like MADD and SADD - they don’t throw red paint on people or blow up buildings, and they have a purpose that lots of people can get behind. (I mean, are there any Mothers FOR Drunk Driving?) They’re mainly there to educate.
I’ll say Independence first, Libertarian second. (Some of the responses here are way too serious. Look at the forum, people!)
So? It’s a very serious topic. I would have put it in GD, but it’s more in the nature of a poll than a debate.
I agree. Well, except for that last sentence… I think I’m a bit older than you and I remember the way that MADD, especially, helped to turn drunk driving from a socially acceptable thing to a crime with social costs. Both groups, now, are mostly educational. But for a while they were viewed as the lunatic fringe.
Wow - yeah, you must be. I can’t imagine an era where drunken driving would be socially acceptable.
“Let’s see - half-ton steel four-wheeled chariot of flaming-death-to-be - check. Vodka - check. Let’s roll!”
For the record, I’m 26.
Sadly, until the 80’s that’s exactly what drunk driving was: socially acceptable. Against the law, but no more of a problem for the person found doing it, than speeding, really. Sentencing for drunk driving convictions was similarly lenient. Part of the reasoning behind it seemed to be a lot of ‘there but for Og go I’ on the part of judges, prosecuters, and neighbors. When MADD started, in 1980, the idea of treating drunk drivers like real criminals was a radical departure. I remember watching as their advocacy changed the attitudes and the laws.
At the time it seemed to be glacially slow. But within 10 years they’d achieved a huge change in the social code. Wow.
For your record, I’m 36, just ten years older. 
Given the choices, it’d be a toss-up between Independence, Progressive, and Labor for me. I don’t mind big government and more taxes as long as it’s socially progressive and somewhat competently run. Anything left of the current political mainstream is fine by me.
Getting the subject of drunk driving on an episode of Quincy really helped.
I’m Libertarian all the way. I’ve usually voted Republican but neocons sicken me.
Here’s a bit of new relevant to this thread: Instant runoff voting just had its first major trial run in the U.S., the San Francisco municipal elections. There were a few glitches, but on the whole, IRV seems to have worked out just fine. From the San Francisco Chronicle, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/11/03/BAGPN9KOG41.DTL. Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-Ill.) has introduced a bill to conduct all federal elections by IRV – http://www.fairvote.org/irv/jacksonirvbill.htm. Will the idea spread?
I’d been about to point out the Cambridge, MA City council voting having been in place for years, but that’s Proportional Voting, not IRV.
So, what’s the practical effect of that? Does Cambridge have a multipartisan City Council?
I’m not sure, and thier website (here ) doesn’t list party affiliation. However, given that Cambridge is home to Hahvahd, MIT, and a few other rather outspoken institutions of higher learning, I’d not be surprised if an accurate polling of candidates in the city leads to a single party council.
It would have to be Libertarian or Indepenence. I guess it would depend on how the existing Libertarian Party reacted to the possibility of actually doing something besides campaigning. My cynical nature leads me to believe they would continue to court the fringes and shoot themselves in the foot. So I guess Independence then Libertarian.
To which of these would Ross Perot belong?
Independence, probably, but it’s a tough call. The Reform Party never had any clear ideology because it was an unstable coalition of two discontented shutout groups: paleoconservative nativist-isolationist populists like Pat Buchanan, and progressives (in the early-20th-Century Teddy Roosevelt sense, not the modern left-liberal sense) like John Anderson.
Teddy Roosevelt was cool.
Okay, was just curious.
You must mean Will Rogers!
http://www.willrogers.org/
Yup. Dunno how I got them confused.