[massadvj]

that there is very little difference between the parties, except a difference in pandering rhetoric

Very true, and not just on the issue of environmentalism.

Bush, for example, turns out to be the most fiscally liberal president since Johnson, and yet people who call themselves "conservatives" love him while those who call themselves "liberals" hate him.

Had Gore been elected, he would never had succeeded in implementing an agenda as progressive as GWB's over the past 4 years.

[PsyOp]

Bush, for example, turns out to be the most fiscally liberal president since Johnson, and yet people who call themselves "conservatives" love him while those who call themselves "liberals" hate him.

Spending X or Y amount does not make one liberal or conservative. What the dollars are spent on does. Welfare vs. defense for example.

The President who spends twice as much on defense as the one who spends on welfare is the conservative. Why? Because that's what the constitution says it should be spent on, when neccesary.

Most of the money Bush has spent has been on national security. That makes him a conservative in my book, as opposed to Clinton, who saved money by allowing our national defense to languish and failed in his constitutional duty to provide for the common defense.

[thegreatbeast]

Chrichton is more right than wrong on the "dime's worth of difference" view of the two major parties. Noam Chomsky(!) believes that each party is used to enact the other's agenda. And that could be true- certainly W has done things that we'd never have let Clinton get away with. (Just papering everything with tax monies after 911 comes to mind while doing nothing substantial about securing our borders.) Remember, Taxation is a form of Slavery. If we weren't taxed out the eyeballs more parents could stay home watching and teaching the kids which would pay off in so many other ways. Rush used to play a reading of Chrichton by Charlton Heston from Jurassic Park(SP?). It was a beautiful piece about the irrepressibility of Life & Nature and the true insignificance of Man when arrayed against such forces. In that book, Chrichton also gives a neat introduction to Chaos Theory.