Well, putting us back on the gold standard and doing away with the Fed are definitely loopy. I hear a lot of Libertarian types espousing that…that is one of the many points of divergence between my own political views and the big or small ‘L’ libertarians.
Still…I’m interested that anyone even remotely close to my own politics (even if he DOES seem like a bit of a wing nut…'course, Badnarik was a wing nut too and I voted for HIM ) in one of the big two political parties here in the US. I suppose if by some miracle he DOES manage to win in the primaries ( :dubious: ) I’ll consider voting for him.
It is almost impossible to espouse ideas far outside the accepted mainstream without sounding shrill. Frustration breeds shrillness. It also breeds honesty – since extremists know they have no shot at power, they have no need to moderate or obfuscate their message to appeal to the broadest common denominator. And it also breeds woolly-headed theoretical abstractionism, since they have no need to deal with the practicalities of putting their ideas into action in the real social world that is governed by the law of unintended consequences. In his book Discovering America: Travels in the Land of Guns, God, and Corporate Gurus, Canadian journalist James Laxer, reporting on the annual Socialist Scholars Conference in New York City, described the socialist movement in America as one of “generals with no foot soldiers” (quite unlike what it is in practically every other country). The same applies to Libertarians.
Even those that are too marginal to pose any conceivable threat?!
You or I may live to see another terrorist act perpetrated by a Timothy McVeigh militia-type group. We will not live to see one perpetrated by the Socialist Labor Party or something similar. All that died with the Weather Underground and the Symbionese Liberation Army.
Why not? According to this, since the War on Terror began the FBI’s been spying on a melange of groups including the Catholic Workers, a vegan community, and “participants at a peaceful protest of the North American Wholesale Lumber Association in Colorado Springs in June 2002”.
(I’m still scratching my head over that last one. Were they protesting for wholesale lumber or against it? And either way, how could it be connected with subversive activity?)
Collectivism doesn’t seem to mean what he thinks it means:
Whatever you think of collectivism, I’ve never heard it said to mean that everyone in a group is the same. I wonder if he thinks racism was less of a problem back in the '40s and '50s when we had more “liberty.”
And while I agree with you that knowing people in a group helps see them as individuals, there has been plenty of racism among people who knew the discriminated against class very well.
I find him a breath of fresh air compared to the other Republican candidates and I’m sincerely hoping that even if he doesn’t win the primary (which still looks unlikely) that he’ll have made enough of an impact on the establishment to bring more libertarian ideals into the GOP.
With his fundraising successes and somewhat rabid following, the mainline are finally starting to take some notice of him, so I’m hopeful.
I will admit that some of his policy ideas are a bit out there, especially his little vendetta with the Fed, but I think overall he’s far closer to what I think we need right now than any of the other candidates. And regarding feasibility of his spending cuts, interviews where he’s been asked specifically about feasibility he appears to be pretty self-aware when it comes to how much he’s going to have to work with Congress to get any of them through.
I have a huge problem with the whole “arrest them and throw them all out” and “close the borders” philosophy. Isolationism is not a political solution to enable growth.
Caveat: “Isolationism” in trade and in foreign policy is distinguishable from that kind of nativism. We could, in theory, have a rigid keep-out-immigrants policy and still have globalist free trade and lotsa military intervention abroad. (But we won’t, because that immigration policy would hurt the bottom line of too many business interests who want cheap labor.)
People don’t need to trust you before they will trade with you (we trade with the Chinese, don’t we?), and if you’re going to invade them you don’t care what they think anyway.
) in one of the big two political parties here in the US. I suppose if by some miracle he DOES manage to win in the primaries ( :dubious: ) I’ll consider voting for him.
)