According to Fox News - Libertarians might hurt the Republicans this time.
I personally cannot see Libertarians voting for Democrats just to teach a lesson.
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People should be free to choose what is best for themselves as long as they do not infringe on the rights of others to do the same. I created this blog to discuss issues I have with big government, liberal media,and to talk about my support for capitalism and the Iraq War.
8 comments:
You seem to be pretty cavalier about wire-tapping and holding people without trial, but I thikn most libertarians are much more worried abot those issues than they are about banning smoking in bars. I think the republicans really showed that if they're given power they'll do just as much to impinge on our freedom as the democrats would, but they'll do it with military/cia action rather than with warning labels on cd's.
Republicans definitly dropped the ball if you will on the libertarian front. They increased the size of the goverment and its power over individuals.
But if Libertarians only had two choices- I am guessing they would go with Republicans a hell of a lot more than Democrats.
Interesting note - check out the amount of votes the Libertaran canditate for Senator from Montanta got.
Its unclear what Diatribe position is on wiretapping and holding people without trial. Furthermore we should be careful with the term people because i draw distinction between citizen and non-citizen. Its clearly the case that non-citizen should not enjoy the same rights as citizens.
Ironically, I believe its mostly republicans that argue CD censorship. Usually at the behest of "family value", read Christian, political groups.
One question that my brother likes to ask is whether Democrats would take a strong stance against wiretapping and detainment had it been a democratic president responding to 9/11. Most likely not. Of course, in that case the republicans would be working the government infringement angle.
Had that set of events obtained, i would support the democratic president since I'm interested in not dying to Islamic fundamentalist interesting bring mankind back to the stone ages. Consistent with this position the fact that i would consider a Hawkish democrat in 2008. I will not consider a Doveish republican or democrat.
I also draw a distinction between citizen and non-citizen, but it still bothers me alot that the government is doing clanestine shit with my tax money and there's no disclosure or oversight (until the MSM exposes what they're doing and gets villified for it). While I see that there's a very real and important legalistic distinction between detaining citizens and detaining non-citizens, I fear that it may only be a small baby step between actually doing one and actually doing the other. Once you have soldiers and generals with training and a procedure and moral justifications for detaining people without trial, I'm worried that the nationality of the actual detainee may be only a formality. That may be needlessly paranoid but it's how I feel.
As for CD's, my impression has always been that republicans have tried to use boycotts and intimidation to prevent major stores from selling questionable content, whereas dems have favored legislation to put upwarning stickers and require ID checks for age and all that. But I haven't checked, could easily be wrong.
As for whether Dems would have reacted if a democratic president had done the wiretapping, I'm sure that in private they wouldn't hav egotten as angry, but I think that they need their political donations from the ACLU and whatnot and that would have forced them to still act outraged in order to pander to their constituancy. But I agree it probably wouldn't have been as big a deal (unless the MSM decided to go with a big 'ideals betrayed' or 'tappingGate' theme or something to boost ratings).
There is so much infrastructure built into protecting the citizens. A slippery slope would be virtually impossible. Your formality is primarily the CONSTITUTION.
There was government oversight on some, if not all, of the programs developed to cull information about terrorists. That was one of the reasons why the NYtime decision to betray the country was so despicable.
How much money do you think the ACLU donates to the democratic party?
Didn't the Supreme Court decide that the president HAD been doing unconstitutional things for, like, wuite a while before anyone noticed? That's another reason it makes me worry.
Of course there was government oversight, the government was wht was doing it. I believe you mean to say there was congressional oversight, which is fine, but I'm not sure why you trust the congress so much more than the president. After all, republicans in congress were all in favor of everyhting the executive was doing, even things the Supreme Court later found to be unconstitutional, so I'm not sure I trust republicans in the congress to defend the constitution any more than I trust repblicans in the executive.
I doubt the ACLU actually gives the dems much money, but I suspect they and similar groups bring in alot of voters. But I agre eit was a weak example; I really just meant to say that the voters the Dems are courting would probably react badly to wiretapping and holding wihtout trial even if a Democratic president did it, forcing other dems to condemn those measures to appease their constituency.
The system's reaction time is no doubt commensurate with public outcry.
There were democrats among those in congress overseeing the wiretapping conversation between citizens and non-citizens in foreign places. I trust only so far as democrats are antagonistically opposed to republicans and therefore likely to politically capitalize on egregious abuses of this program.
Competition makes everything better. Why just the other day I was eating an insipid omelet and decided to add some competition which created a flavor burst.
If I understand you correctly, I agree, but I think that only stengthens my point about the slippery slope. I agree that the outcry of many dems against things like wiretapping is more a show for the public than it is an expression of personal convictions, and that therefore change depends on public outcry. But that seems to me to say that if the public doesn't react drastically to something that impinges on our civil rights, then the dems will feel like they don't hav eto object to it either, and the entire rhetorical fight will shift away from freedom until something more egregious elicits public outcry.
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