This year the Libertarian Party chose Gary Johnson, two-term governor of New Mexico, as their nominee. (Much, much better, IMO, than Bob Barr four years ago, whom I could not possibly vote for.) I fail to see, in Johnson's record as governor, the sorts of things you mention. I do, however, see in New Mexico a state whose finances are considerably better NOW than its neighboring states (whose governments outgrew the economy and now they're faced with a ton of unaffordable, unfunded commitments).
I do see a man who is actually committed to ending the unconstitutional, anti-civil-liberties horrors of the Drug War and the War on Terror, not for abstract hyperventilating reasons but because pragmatically, "it doesn't work." (Also, not just lip service, à la Obama, whose DoJ is worse than Bush's when it comes to respecting liberty, and who thinks it's terrific to hold weekly meetings to target who should be killed. This is the sort of stuff that, when Republicans did it, my liberal friends screamed their heads off, but now that it's a Democrat doing it, they excuse the behavior, rationalize excuses, or, most often, simply look the other way. Nice double standard.)
But hey, if you ever want to get out of your echo chamber* and look at actual principles and facts concerning libertarianism, instead of stereotypes, maybe we can talk.
- Paul, 11 days behind on reading LJ
* I note that none of your readers before me disagreed with you at all on this post. So I may be overgeneralizing, and feel free to correct me, but it sounds an example of what I notice a lot in both my social and work circles: when it comes to politics, liberals-talk-only-to-liberals, conservatives-talk-only-to-conservatives, and the talk is more about tribalism, at its heart, than it is about consistent political principles. I grant that, having just come out of an election season where "Echo Chamber" political discussions were a daily occurrence at work, plus a painful "discussion" in which a liberal friend brought up the topic, asked me what I thought about Elizabeth Warren, and subsequently chewed me out for not 100% agreeing with her (the friend), while not listening in the slightest to my actual words (e.g. she was convinced that Scott Brown voted with the Republicans 100% of the time, which is off by a mere 53%, but she didn't want to hear it) ...that I might be a little oversensitive and overgeneralizing.
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Date: 2012-11-10 03:07 pm (UTC)This year the Libertarian Party chose Gary Johnson, two-term governor of New Mexico, as their nominee. (Much, much better, IMO, than Bob Barr four years ago, whom I could not possibly vote for.) I fail to see, in Johnson's record as governor, the sorts of things you mention. I do, however, see in New Mexico a state whose finances are considerably better NOW than its neighboring states (whose governments outgrew the economy and now they're faced with a ton of unaffordable, unfunded commitments).
I do see a man who is actually committed to ending the unconstitutional, anti-civil-liberties horrors of the Drug War and the War on Terror, not for abstract hyperventilating reasons but because pragmatically, "it doesn't work." (Also, not just lip service, à la Obama, whose DoJ is worse than Bush's when it comes to respecting liberty, and who thinks it's terrific to hold weekly meetings to target who should be killed. This is the sort of stuff that, when Republicans did it, my liberal friends screamed their heads off, but now that it's a Democrat doing it, they excuse the behavior, rationalize excuses, or, most often, simply look the other way. Nice double standard.)
But hey, if you ever want to get out of your echo chamber* and look at actual principles and facts concerning libertarianism, instead of stereotypes, maybe we can talk.
- Paul, 11 days behind on reading LJ
* I note that none of your readers before me disagreed with you at all on this post. So I may be overgeneralizing, and feel free to correct me, but it sounds an example of what I notice a lot in both my social and work circles: when it comes to politics, liberals-talk-only-to-liberals, conservatives-talk-only-to-conservatives, and the talk is more about tribalism, at its heart, than it is about consistent political principles.
I grant that, having just come out of an election season where "Echo Chamber" political discussions were a daily occurrence at work, plus a painful "discussion" in which a liberal friend brought up the topic, asked me what I thought about Elizabeth Warren, and subsequently chewed me out for not 100% agreeing with her (the friend), while not listening in the slightest to my actual words (e.g. she was convinced that Scott Brown voted with the Republicans 100% of the time, which is off by a mere 53%, but she didn't want to hear it)
...that I might be a little oversensitive and overgeneralizing.