response 151 of 175:

Nov 9 01:26 UTC 2000

Re #145:  That's what I keep telling the radical-right people:
they better be willing to leave people to their own conscience on
abortion, because if they aren't they'll be killing every other
goal they might have, no matter how worthy.

response 153 of 175:

Nov 9 21:31 UTC 2000

Um... I think Hagelin voters would have been more likely to vote for Bush.

response 155 of 175:

Nov 10 06:50 UTC 2000

re #153 I doubt it I know Hagelin is for labeling GMO foods and has a
pretty strong environmental platform and he's not a christian so I doubt
he would attract too many conservative Bush supporters.

response 157 of 175:

Nov 14 17:26 UTC 2000

And Browne would have made a good president?????

response 159 of 175:

Nov 15 02:15 UTC 2000

My problem with the libertarians is they don't seem to have any
understanding of the term "corporate feudalism", but seem hell bent on
erasing any barriers towards the formation of such a society.  A
corporate fiefdom would have all the same downsides as big gov't, and is
likely to have few if any of the same safeguards against abuse.

response 161 of 175:

Nov 15 06:32 UTC 2000

Would that be an example of "abuse" as in "downside", or "safeguard" as in
"prevention"?

response 163 of 175:

Nov 15 11:13 UTC 2000

So what makes you think an industrial fiefdom would tolerate armed
serfs? Or even disgruntled ones?

response 165 of 175:

Nov 15 22:07 UTC 2000

Right, so you can have guns for fun but you can't take them to work, and
if necessary work has armed machine gun nests overlooking you, "for your
protection", although it's more likely the machine gun nests would be
looking outwards and you'd be going through a metal detector on the way
in.  We already do most of this in airports, schools, courts, & prisons.
It's pretty easy to see where the technology points, and we're already
acclimating society to the results.

response 167 of 175:

Nov 15 23:18 UTC 2000

There are a number of schools of thought on that.

The first says, "look at the candidates, rate the probability of their
success in the campaign vs. their percentage of acceptable votes, and
vote for whichever one maximizes both."

The 2nd says "of the first, they'll nearly always be Republicans or
Democrats.  If you elect all of one party, they'll have a better chance
of actually implementing whatever they do.  So, decide which of the
Reublicans or Democrats best represents your beliefs, and vote a
straight ticket for that party."

The 3rd school of thought says "neither party gives a fig about
individual liberty, so the real trick is to give the politicians as
little money as possible, and to turn them over as early and often as
possible.  Therefore, term limits and limits on taxation authroity are
both good things.  When voting, vote for whichever party is out of
office, or in general try to split the vote as closely as possible."
Hence we have term limits in Michigan, and the Florida presidential
election results.

The 4th school of thought is that "true inovation never comes from
within either political party, but from without.  Therefore, forget
voting for either major party, vote for whichever outside party best
represents *your* belief, and if enough people vote that way, the major
parties will *adopt* your beliefs."  This is the tack taken by the
reform party's supporters a few years back.

The 5th school of thought is "forget parties, they never change anything
anyways.  The only true guarantee of liberty of strength, and that means
collecting guns and being armed in case the gov't tries to take our
weapons away or otherwise restrict our freedom."  The Branch-Dravidians
tried this a few years ago, although their conspicuous lack of success
does not seem to have daunted the pro-gun faction from continuing to use
this argument.

The final school of thought says "forget guns, the only real strength is
money.  Politicians may hear many people, but the only people they
listen to are the people that line pockets with money.  Therefore, the
proper way to vote is to give *both* candidates for office as much money
as possible, as long as they continue to vote the right way.  If they
stop voting the right way, finance an alternate candidate in the
primaries and donate heavily to that party."  Corporate America has used
this with considerable success, so much so that all of the previous
methods are probably moot and without merit.  Note that the reform party
is not an exception to this line of thought.

response 169 of 175:

Nov 16 02:27 UTC 2000

If you are for personal freedom, but corporate regulation, they you are not
a Libertarian or a libertarian, you are just another danged liberal.  The map
looks like this:

                    Personal Freedom  <---------->  Personal Regulation
              (pro-choice,gay rights,etc)      (pro-life,media censorship,etc)
Corporate     +--------------------------------------------------------------+
Freedom       | Libertarian                                     Conservative |
(free trade)  |                                                              |
     /|\      |                                                              |
      |       |                                                              |
     \|/      |                        Moderate                              |
Corporate     |                                                              |
Regulation    |                                                              |
(environment, |                                                              |
minimum wage) | Liberal                                        Authoritarian |
              +--------------------------------------------------------------+

This is of course a vast over simplification.  The graph should really have
as many axes as their are issues (there are gay pro-lifers out there).  And
the whole gun issue doesn't fit the map very well at all (pro-gun people are
commonest along the top edge of the chart, but scatter across the whole left
side too (your labor union/weekend hunter types)).  But it makes a good rough
definition of the terms.  The ACLU pretty much defines the left half, and
the labor unions and environmentalists pretty much define the bottom half.

response 171 of 175:

Nov 16 03:40 UTC 2000

I don't consider desire for regulation of corporations to be a "liberal"
value, although that does seem to be the way a lot of politicians use
the word.

response 173 of 175:

Nov 16 19:05 UTC 2000

You can call yourself anything you want.