"Art" - a One Word Oxymoron

Huh? I'm a registered Libertarian. I voted for Bob Barr, the Libertarian candidate.

In general, libertarians tend to have their roots in conservatism, so those who feel that they don't want to "waste their vote" are more likely to vote for Republican candidates. The few studies that have been undertaken suggest that Libertarian Party candidates "steal votes" from Republicans, just as Green Party candidates steal them from Democrats. Ralph Nader is widely blamed for throwing the very close 2000 election to Bush.

This is apparently one of the many things you don't understand about the United States. You're like Sam. You live somewhere else but you think you understand my country by reading a few internet boards. Or maybe, like her, you spent a couple of years here sequestered in an academic environment, so you swagger around saying, "Hey, I lived in the USA so I know all about it!" You don't have a clue about America.

 

Well that explains the attitude. You were brainwashed to believe that violence is sometimes the best way to resolve a dispute. Or more likely, you were raised that way so joining the army looked like a cool way to live out your violent fantasies. "Might makes right."

We have bad-mouthed every President who's been in office since the party was founded in 1972. Of all the presidents in history, the one who is routinely excoriated by the libertarian community and press is FDR, the arch-Democrat. It was he who changed America into the welfare state/nanny state/police state that it is today. About the only decent thing he did was end Prohibition, but the only reason was so he could resume taxing alcoholic beverages--a huge boost to the federal budget at a time when the income tax was nowhere near its current confiscatory level.

You're really out of touch with contemporary politics if you think the Libertarians are aligned with the Democrats. Most Libertarians are disillusioned Republicans. I'm one of about twelve in the whole country whose roots are on the left. I understand what liberals want to do and I even respect it, I just wish they'd figure out that it will never be accomplished by a government grown so big that, like any gigantic organism, it devotes most of its attention to its own internal metabolism, rarely notices external stimuli, and when it deigns to respond to them it's too late, too slow, and just plain wrong.

On the rare occasions when Libertarians perceive a substantive difference between a Republocrat candidate and a Demoblican candidate, and don't want to "waste their vote" on our party's candidate, they invariably vote for the Republican. Libertarians "steal votes" from Republican candidates, that's how Montana ended up with a Democratic senator in the 2010 election. This is the same way the Green Party steals Democratic votes, which is how Ralph Nader threw the 2000 election to Bush.

Nobody wants to increase the number of illegal aliens. We all want to give peaceful, productive people a chance to become Americans. That's how this country became great. Americans have gotten soft and lazy, and their children are even worse. The only way you can get anything done in this country is to hire an Indian, a Chinese, a Mexican, a Russian, a Ghanaian, an Ethiopian, etc...

My grandfather, a staunch Republican, sold heroin and cocaine in his pharmacy. He never had problems with customers abusing his drugs because if he saw signs of it he simply cut them off--or worse yet, ratted them out to their wife or their mother the next time she came in. You fans of the Nanny State (their slogan is "health, safety, fitness and sobriety at any cost!") just don't understand that when you push a popular product onto the black market, whatever evils you see in it will become a thousand times worse. My parents lived through Prohibition and saw Chicago turned into a war zone. Now we have the new Prohibition, and I guess you guys probably think it's all right because we've turned Mexico into a war zone and you all hate Mexicans anyway so you don't mind seeing their families gunned down.

We love America. It's the bloated government, who now tells us what we can eat and where we can smoke, that we don't much care for. They're not responsive to anyone except corporate leaders and both the current president and his predecessor are certified retards who have no idea how a civilization runs. This isn't an American government, it more closely resembles the Nazis or the Communists. The last decent president we had was Eisenhower; the guy who warned us about the coming takeover by the "military-industrial complex." Which, BTW, did indeed happen.

We have no friends. Americans today don't value what little liberty they have left, so they don't mind giving it up to the Food Police, the Helmet Police, and the leering gropers in the Homeland Gestapo who have taken over our airports.

 

* * * * NOTE FROM THE MODERATORS (I SPEAK FOR ALL OF US) * * * *

Will everyone henceforth please stop proofreading each other's posts? If you can't find anything to criticize except typography, then you haven't really got much to say.

I make a living as an editor and writer, so I could spend my entire day line-editing this entire website. If I can muster the self-control to resist that urge, surely the rest of you can do the same.

Nonetheless, on your behalf, I will make one comment:

Why the heck are so many of you so dadgum lazy that you refuse to use the SHIFT key??? It makes your stuff hard to read. Please take a moment to examine your keyboard. Just to the right of the slash/question mark key there is a really gigantic key labeled SHIFT. If you hold it down while you're typing, your letters will magically come out in CAPITALS. Try it! It's just amazing!

I know these computer thingies are really complicated, so maybe this will help you kids figure them out.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

 

When I said "all of us," I assumed it was clear that "us" meant the Moderator staff. I apologize if it wasn't.

A "fellow Leftist"??? I'm a libertarian. I have equal contempt for both the left and the right. Well almost equal. Leftists are often good-hearted, whereas rightists seem more likely to be selfish curmudgeons, but most of the people on both sides don't understand reality. (Neither do my fellow libertarians, for that matter.)

Besides, in general leftists are more articulate and do indeed have more to say, even if it is often just as stoopid as what their opponents say.

I drive my own six year-old SUV, but since I live in the Washington region I generally ride the subway, except to work, which is up near Baltimore.

3500, although here my "second primary residence," as the IRS oxymoronically calls it, is a basement studio in a townhouse.

I've been to Europe once, in 1973. I haven't traveled anywhere in ten years, except home to see my wife in California.

If you're asking if we're prosperous, that changes from year to year because I'm a contractor, but this year we're doing okay. Since we don't have any children we often scratch our heads and wonder why we care so much about the world that the rest of you are leaving to your great-grandchildren (raising the debt ceiling? killing each other over which religion is the most peaceful? exterminating entire species right and left? making people "go to work" everyday, accounting for 1/4 of our petroleum usage, when they all have computers and telephones at home?), but we can't help it.