Posted on 11/06/2002 5:34:44 AM PST by logic101.net
TIME FOR AN END TO THE CONSERVATIVE INFIGHTING MARK A SITY 11/6/02
When WI taxpayers burden skyrockets, we have Ed Thompson to thank. When Milwaukee and the surrounding area are saddled with a light rail system few want, and no one will ride, we have Ed Thompson to thank. When caps on property taxes are removed, and property taxes skyrocket, we have Ed Thompson to thank. When welfare reform is de-reformed in WI, we have Ed Thompson to thank. When public schools in WI get even worse, and the public school teachers get huge raises, we have Ed Thompson to thank. When WI residents find their rights to defend themselves against criminals who break into their homes weakened, we have Ed Thompson to thank. When companies leave WI, or decide not to set up shop here due to our repressive tax structure, we have Ed Thompson to thank. When Gov Jim "bingo" Doyle rewards his contributors, at the expense of the taxpayers (as he has a history of doing), we have Ed Thompson to thank.
Who is Ed Thompson? Ed is the brother of Tommy, our former governor; the current HHS Secretary. Ed was the Libertarian candidate for governor in WI. Ed gave the Governor's Mansion to Bingo Jim by getting 10% of the vote. Governor McCallum lost the election by only 3%. Thanks Ed.
IL can say much the same for Cal Skinner. I don't know how much of the vote Cal got, but it is likely that Jim Ryan would have won there rather than the Democrat were it not for Cal. One good thing for WI residents over IL residents; at least we can pronounce and spell Bingo Jim's name. I won't even try either for the IL Governor Elect!
Let's keep in mind that Libertarians and Republicans are generally going in the same direction. True, the Republicans don't want to go as far as Libertarians, and there are some very contrary views. However, both generally want a smaller federal government that is less intrusive. Democrats on the other hand want bigger and bigger government. They want hand outs. They want dependency. They want Socialism rather than freedom! They want gun control rather than criminal control. They want ignorant sheeple rather than an informed, educated self-dependent population. I prefer much of the Libertarian agenda to that of the Republicans, but I find the Democrat agenda totally repulsive. Libertarians often hand elections to the Democrats, by taking away conservative leaning votes. When a Libertarian candidate's message resonates with the public; Democrats win! A Democratic win doesn't help Republicans, Libertarians, or Constitutionalists! It sets back all of our causes. It is well past time for Libertarians and Republicans to get together to defeat the common enemy. We can work out our differences later; let's get rid of the common threat first! As far as my views; neither Libertarians nor Republicans go far enough; I am a Constitutionalist! Yet, I generally vote Republican; I'm a realist. When we break the stranglehold of the left, then we can fight each other; but let's fight each other on our terms, not theirs!
Now, as far as Ed Thompson goes; well I have to steal a line from one of my favorite movies (They Call Me Trinity). I'm not mad at Ed, I'm mad at his ma. She should have strangled him, or at least drown him when he was born.
MARK A SITY http://www.logic101.net/
As should everyone in the Republican Party.
redrock
"Freedom is the right to question and change the established way of doing things. It is the continuous revolution of the marketplace. It is the understanding that allows to recognize shortcomings and seek solutions. "
Ronald Reagan
Address to students at Moscow State University, May 31, 1988
A fact well understood by those men who founded this Nation.
redrock
Dude, wrap this around your head (I heard this first from a cool youngster, please forgive me for using it here):
What you've just described may be coming to a town near you as I outlined earlier--the loss of liberties (and the casual p*ssing on the BOR) may wind up costing all of us in ways yet to be seen.
As the social mortar (liberties) are removed, the structure (society) will find itself upon an unsolid foundation. And yes, the gun will be a friend indeed, it always has.
PS. I'm gonna miss Father Torque.
I'm actually going to try to have a bit of a discussion here without responding to the typical pissing match and high five routine I've observed from both of you and your "friends".
To start off, you can call libertarians dopers all you want but all that does is show that either (1) you truly don't understand jack about the philosophy or (2) you don't care about understanding, and just enjoy being inflammatory. I'll assume (1) and post the following to you.
I myself don't know one libertarian who uses drugs. Surely that doesn't at all necessarily prove my point about libertarians not being about drug use. So consider this. I know a guy at work who is a pot head. One of the Libertarian activists talked him into joining the party, and to the pothead's horror, he then received a free 1-year membership in the NRA. He immediately distanced himself from both organizations. Drugs good, guns bad. This isn't surprising. Dopers may cling to the libertarian message on consumptive choice, but most people who get high regularly shun responsibility and at some point compartmentalize the larger libertarian world view. This confusion isn't limited to the high times crowd. Again, if it appears to you that libertarianism is fixated on this issue you either haven't looked into the philosophy much, you don't understand the guiding principles with respect to their application to specific emotional issues, or you've decided to focus on something you despise and villify the philosophy as advocating all that is evil.
Again, I despise drug use of all kinds. Just because I don't seek to accomplish some surreal banning of all substances I despise through government does not make me an advocate of drug use.
Now I've probably wasted far too much time trying to give you a rational response. If you want to follow up with out-of-context childish retorts, I won't bother responding.
What Libertarians are saying, in effect is: "If I can't have my liberdopian candidate, I'll settle for the most liberal viable candidate in the race."
So following with what I said about about the "liberdopian" label, if there is any single issue for many libertarians that I know of it would have to be gun ownership - something the conservatives stopped fighting for a long, long time ago. We can debate that if you'd like but I think you'd have a hard time proving that they haven't sold out the second amendment issue. In fact, I know a bunch of libertarians here in AZ that were a week away from voting Republican until Salmon refused to go to a pro gun rally for fear of bad press in the wake of the U of A shootings. That hit their single issue button, and they voted for Hess.
Libertarians haven't a prayer of winning in their own right. Not even the most deluded among them believes the Libertarian Party is a contender.
True, but this is irrelevant. And this is not the fault of libertarianism. Third parties don't have to "win" to change other parties. If you continue heeding the Republican abusive-husband sneer ("What, are you going to leave us and find something better?") all you're doing is ensuring future abuse. So this brings me to a question I always ask of you types but have NOT YET gotten an answer. What would the Republicans have to do for you to get fed up and not vote for them? On what issues are you not willing to compromise? What is G.W. renews the Assault Weapons Ban, and gives it more teeth? What if he increased the payroll tax to "save" social security? Would you still ridicule anyone going to another party?
BTW, as a poster pointed out above, if you villify the NAACP, hispanics, jews, the AFL-CIO etc. for having a sheep mentality in voting for the Dems, why do you villify libertarians for not going along with the herd and voting conservative? If libertarians are really "liberals" (as if the term had any meaning whatsoever) why do you blame libertarians when the conservative candidate loses? If you blame the libertarians for not compromising and being babies about freedom, why don't you compromise your feelings about illegal drugs etc. for some issue that might go along with the conservative agenda?
If conservative Republicans are really the party that is protecting us from socialism and big-government "liberals" and "leftists" like Clintler, Al Gore and Daschle, why has the Federal government been expaninding incrementally since the early part of last century? How is this possible if your tactics are really working?
The Constitution party is great. Does this mean you would vote for them over a Republican and "let a liberal win"? Or would you compromise anyway, making your lauding of the Constitution party irrelevant?
clymer.
In other words the Libertarians want to have their cake and eat it, too. If there is nothing wrong or immoral with drug abuse which inherently rises to the level of societal sanctions, if it is an unenumerated right found in the penumbra of abortion or sodomy or pornography or bestiality, then why would they want to shy from the label? Personally, when I see the 'liberdopian' word it brings to mind their penchant for crusading for the mandated toleration of unneeded suffering, in contradiction to the Founder's idea of self-governance. "Banned in Boston" was not the name of a colonial melodious troope.
I wouldn't say they are shying from the label at all. Quite the contrary, I think they make it perhaps too key an issue, but that's just because drug use is not one of my pet liberties to say the least. I think the objection I'm voicing lies with the fact that you, or perhaps Curry or at least some from your crowd, are painting the libertarians as those who advocate drug use, porno, etc. when that is not at all what the philosophy stands for. I see it as a strawman that leads to nothing more the acrimony.
Morality cannot be invented de novo by every human being that is born. That is like expecting each generation to reinvent the wheel without passing on accumulated wisdom.
Moral relativists who have ethics and are not simply hedonistic are probably skating on the morals that were instilled in them as children. But each generation that gets more and more "relativistic" means that each new generation has a weaker and weaker sense of morals instilled in them by their parents, and eventually societies break down for lack of moral ground rules, NOT for enforcing them.
Is murder relative? Is rape relative? Is stealing relative? Is lying under oath relative?
We get our laws from our morals that have been passed down through society, generally by organized religions as that is what is tough enough to stand through the winds of relativism and the fads of the day.
There are real moral truths about which behaviors in people lead to the decay and disintegration of societies and they are codified in The Ten Commandments.
I happen to believe these come from God and are His warnings to us that bad things happen when you don't heed these commandments. Like a physics professor explaining that if you jump off a sixty foot cliff onto rocks that you will probably die.
The Ten Commandments does not cover drugs. But I do sincerely and earnestly and thoughtfully believe that drug use by a large enough portion of society will lead to the destruction of that society.
And so my position on drug use is an intellectual and political position, not a religious one. Although at the heart of that position is a religious belief that it is important that people lead their lives with love and consideration for others, giving and helping others, as well as finding time for personal joy.
I'm sure someone will miss him.
Third parties have an essential role in American politics in helping to introduce new ideas and stimulate innovative political policy. Look at the big issues now... social security privitization, school choice, medical marijuana among others. These are all issues that the Libertarian Party has favored (if not introduced) for many years, certainly long before they were co-opted by the major parties.
Secondly, third parties often work as a sort of check and balance for the major parties. When Gore lost 'because of those Nader voters', don't you think the Democrats did a little post-vote assessment of their ideas and their responsiveness to voters' concerns? I think that's a good thing. In the same way, if a Republican ever loses a close election because of Libertarian voters, it should cause the Republican party to assess whether it's strayed off course away from it's Constitutional principles.
The major parties can't ignore disaffected voters if they want to win close elections. And if Libertarian voters cost Republicans elections sometimes, well that's just part of the ebb and flow of politics. It will serve as a wake up call for the Republicans to get back to what it is they're supposed to be.
Are you still going to insist that you're pulling liberals to the right? From what you wrote here, it sounds like it's the other way around. Where do you think this strategy will eventually lead?
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