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//Your overtly simplistic and, I might add , erroneous description of the GOP, is naive and sounds quite like some class warfare rant from a Dem.\\

That sounds to me as though you either did not read -- or did not comprehend -- everything I wrote. There are enough conflicting concepts and underlying principles outlined in that statement to fill volumes if all the implications were fleshed out.

Any 1,000-word statement that attempts to synthesize the fundamental differences among the three different political philosophies is bound to sound "simplistic." Sorry, but I haven't the time to write a tome, and even if I did, this would hardly be the place to present it.

It should have been obvious from what I said that I, personally, find NONE of the established political parties to be on the right track.

I'm a registered Republican, because that is the most viable and realistic way we can hope to defeat the sheer idiocy of the Democratic party platform. However, in my view the Republican party does not go anywhere near far ENOUGH towards a truly Conservative agenda, and I resent that the true philosophy of Republicanism has been obscured and partially side-tracked by the Religious Right, who in their own way would be every bit as tyrannical as the Democrat/Socialists if they ever manage to gain untempered ascendancy.

I am a senior citizen, and have, therefore, enough perspective to see that today's Republican party has caved in to the Democrats to such an extent that they are actually are LESS conservative than the Democratic party of Truman and Jack Kennedy. The corollary there is that most of today's Democrats are out-and-out SOCIALISTS. EVERYONE has moved farther and farther to the Left these last forty years.

I have never joined the Libertarian party. I HAVE read a good deal of their literature, which generally sounds pretty good. I have ALSO observed their nominating Conventions on C-Span and have to admit that I was not favorably impressed. Sadly, they tend to come across as a bunch of kooks. And yes, they so sound suspiciously more like ANARCHISTS than serious students of political philosophy.

On the other hand I am a GREAT admirer of the CATO Institute from everything I have seen of THEM on C-Span. CATO, I believe, identifies itself as a Libertarian "Think Tank." THEIR brand of Libertarianism, which, as I understand it, calls for total intellectual, freedom to explore the potential of ALL ideas and theories -- just as our Declaration of Independence and Constitution urge us to do.

Freedom is a very precious -- and FRIGHTENING -- thing. Most people don't handle it very well. You need to be an ADULT in order to benefit from the blessings of true freedom. Unfortunately, there are not many adults around these days. Undoubtedly, that is why so many are fatally attracted to the false security offered by Nanny Statism.

And yes, they so sound suspiciously more like ANARCHISTS than serious students of political philosophy.

I am inclined to agree. Most of the moderates I know have gone back to the Republican Liberty Caucus, leaving the most anarcistic in the Libertarian Party. I have personally been cussed out at convention for suggesing to moderate the party platform. Browne's comments after 911 were about the last straw for me.

I'm not a " senior citizen " yet; however, I've been around a long, long, LONG time myself and am most assuredly an adult. That's why I can say that Truman wasn't Conservative, compared to the average Dem of today. JFK was " Conservative " only in two way. He was an anti-Communist and he lowered taxes. Otherwise, he was hapless, helpless, and more a moronic daddy's boy, than the Dems idea of President Bush the younger .

Freedom is NOT " frightening " at all; not to me, at any rate. I'm a pluperfect poster girl for what Libertarians claim to be, but aren't and couldn't exist in a world that was.

The CATO INSTITUTE, whose papers I have read for decades, is often okay; sometimes not.