Any conservatives here?

Politics is not a one-dimensional spectrum

You must be an American. Our people reduce everything to one dimension. Everyone must be either on the left end of a one-dimensional spectrum, a liberal, or on the right end, a conservative, or just somewhere in the middle. Everything important in politics reduced to one line.

Liberals generally believe that governments can solve all of the world's economic problems by redistributing our money. Taxes, welfare, subsidies, scholarships, affirmative action.

Conservatives generally believe that governments can solve all of the world's moral problems by regulating our behavior. Whom we can marry, what kind of risks we can take, what substances we can put into our bodies, what we can do in our bedrooms,

Yet we actually all know that this is not a duality. There are lots of people who believe both of those things. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, all of their followers. We have various names for them: totalitarian, despotic, statist. They're people who believe that governments can solve ALL of the world's problems by regulating EVERYTHING.

There are plenty of these people in America right now. So-called "liberals" who don't believe in free speech; who took drugs when they were young and now hold responsible jobs and raise families but don't want their own children to be able to follow that path; who think that we should all wear helmets and drive real slow "for our own good". And the so-called "conservatives" who don't believe in a free market; who enact zoning and licensing laws to prevent newcomers from starting businesses; who raise the price of energy -- not to subsidize public transport as in Europe, but to support poorly run corporations; who sell weapons to foreign governments that are downright fascist to protect their business interests; who have trampled over nearly every constitutional right that we once had by engineering artificial "crises" and frightening us into believing that it's OK to give up a little freedom for some safety, then conveniently forgetting to give us our freedom back when the "crisis" is over.

We've found three corners of a square, why don't we see the fourth? People who believe that PEOPLE can solve their own problems with just a LITTLE help from the government. Who believe that no one has the right to tell consenting adults what to do as long as they do no direct harm to others; that small communities are more responsive to the needs of their constituents than gigantic municipal governments trying to micromanage the lives of millions of residents, or even more powerful national governments who believe that "one size fits all" in education, transportation, entertainment, health care, life style or risk management.

These people are called "Libertarians." We've had our own political party for thirty years. One of us is in Congress, Ron Paul of Texas, but even he had to finally re-register as a Republican to keep his seat.

We remember that welfare was enacted during the Depression, it was never meant to train four generations of families to believe that they are entitled to a free ride. We remember that the income tax was enacted to support an army that could keep the Germans from taking over the world, we were never meant to have one fourth or more of our incomes dissipated in twenty different kinds of taxes just to give millions of people government jobs "administering" each other and looking for more rights to take away. We remember that the government had to wait for the people to pass a Constitutional amendment before they could make it illegal to drink alcohol, and with that amendment repealed they have no right to shut down medical marijuana clinics or fill our children's heads with deceitful propaganda while Coke and Pepsi get rich by filling their bellies with caffeine-spiked soft drinks. We remember that the National Guard righted a wrong so evil that we wept when the first black kids were escorted into all-white schools; and that the whole point was to END racial discrimination, not to turn it upside down and resume giving preference to people because of the color of their skin, just a different color this time.

We have more choices than "liberal" or "conservative." It's a measure of how many of our choices the government has already taken away, that most of us don't even know that!

Do you believe that people should be able to say whatever they want, as long as they're not inciting a riot or defrauding others? Do you believe that what you do in your own home with your own friends and family is strictly your own business, as long as you're not hatching a scheme to hurt or defraud people? Do you believe that Egypt and Israel should pay for their own defense instead of constantly going to war against each other using American weapons? Do you believe that the risk of a bad hair day is not in the same class as a bad prescription, so people who braid Afro hairstyles don't need to be licensed like pharmacists? Do you believe that cities should not be able to confiscate private land, donate it to a sports franchise that features players with multi-million dollar incomes, and then make the stadium exempt from property tax? Do you believe that 2/3 of the money collected to help poor people should not be spent on the salaries of bureacrats so stupid that they can't tell when they're being conned by applicants who aren't really poor? Do you believe that a school system with more teachers and less administrators could teach bright, curious, articulate youngsters like the ones who post on SciForums how to spell without taking up too much of their time? Do you believe, as Bob Marley did, that "the color of a man's skin is no more important than the color of his eyes"?

You may just be a Libertarian! Welcome to the fourth corner!

 

To work around there? How can you stand living around there? It's one thing to be a one-percenter or an outsider surrounded by people who are tolerant. Your situation sounds creepy! That's one of the reasons people like us end up in big cities. There's likely to be a community of us, and even if there isn't, city people are so used to diversity that they tolerate it better.

But don't be a martyr. Unless you live in a state where the party's ballot access is at stake and they need head count, all you really need to do to be true to yourself is to vote for the Libertarian candidate in the real election. Voting in the primary is not a big deal.