23 responses so far ↓

• 1 Jason // Jan 8, 2008 at 12:10 pm

  I agree with you on this one. I live in Illinois and frankly, the guy is one of the most charismatic speakers I have seen/heard in a long time. But that’s it. He’s charismatic. Forget the fact that he’s black, it has nothing to do with it, if you ask me. He’s just flat out a great politician in terms of telling the people what they want to hear. But, the question needs to be asked: what else has he done? The answer: Nothing. Nothing at all. No experience and he’s NOT ready to be president. The problem if you ask me is that he and his handlers (and the democratic party as a whole) wanted to get him on the presidential ticket before he had a chance to really screw something up (as senator, as governor of Illinois, as pope, whatever). His record is squeaky clean - but it’s also empty.

  That being said I will probably vote for him if he becomes the democratic candidate. The only republican I could see myself voting for is Rudy Guiliani, and I base that not on his 911 record (people who talk that shit are morons) but on his record of turning NYC into a pleasant place to live, work and be. Plus, he’s the only real moderate republican in the race, and that’s pretty much where I lean.

  So, if it ends up being, say, Obama vs. Huckabee or Thompson….my vote goes to empty charisma.

• 2 pax // Jan 8, 2008 at 12:40 pm

  I couldn’t vote for him, but then I couldn’t see voting for Silky Pony or the Wicked Witch either.

  On the Republican side, I couldn’t vote for Huckabee or Romney, and I’d have to hold my nose to vote for wannabe fascists McCain or Giuliani. It would be awesome if Fred Thompson won the Republican nomination, he’s the only way I’d consider voting Republican if Ron Paul ends up running on the Libertarian ticket.

• 3 Jason // Jan 9, 2008 at 11:40 am

  I admittedly dont know much about Fred Thompson, but what I have heard tells me that he is pretty much an insane ultra-conservative religious freako. One thing I know is that we dont need another one of THOSE in the white house.

  AND i can’t help but think of him on Law and Order with those ridiculous country bumpkin sayings like “you can’t make a coon hound run with a switch and a biscuit” or some crap like that.

  This election is going to suck. The more I look at it, the more it stinks of a lose-lose situation.

• 4 pax // Jan 9, 2008 at 11:53 am

  Yeah, I guess, since your qualification to consider someone an insane ultra conservative religious freako is that they are federalist on the topic of abortion, then he is that. Why you care so much about abortion and seemingly not at all about economic freedom despite being a business owner I’ll never, ever understand.

  Now Huckabee, he really is a religious freako, even though he’s not in any way shape or form a conservative.

• 5 Jason // Jan 9, 2008 at 1:39 pm

  Yeah Huckabee is ridiculous. Forget him. Personal freedoms are very big to me. That’s just the way it is. Economic freedom is important to me as well, but I just dont see any way that any president’s policies are going to change anything for my business. We dont pay taxes. We won’t pay taxes. We lose $ every year, and that’s the way it is for a corporation…you lose $, you dont pay taxes. Explain to me how any president’s policies are going to help me make $ and I will listen…but i just dont see anything changing for us.

• 6 pax // Jan 9, 2008 at 1:54 pm

  Ron Paul would abolish the IRS. You don’t think that would make a difference? You may not make corporate profits but you have income that you pay tax on. Even the other Republican candidates are at least in favor of cutting taxes.

  Do you want your healthcare controlled by the government? Every Democratic candidate is in favor of single payer healthcare, you don’t think that will affect you economically in a negative way?

  Economic freedom is the most important freedom of all, when the government begins to restrict economic freedom it quickly leads to them needing to restrict other personal freedoms. For example, if the government pays for all healthcare, how long before they ban smoking and fatty foods in order to lower costs? This is important stuff, much more important than whether some stupid bimbo can get an abortion without going out of state. I mean, I’m pro choice, but it’s not the be-all, end-all of freedom.

  Whether abortion is forced to be legal in the entire country or if it was federalized would not matter to your life one iota. You live in Illinois, if abortion was left up to state governments, it would still be legal in your state. So why would you choose politicians who will damage you financially just so you can tell people in Texas what to do? I don’t find that rational in the least.

• 7 Jason // Jan 9, 2008 at 6:19 pm

  Yes, but the point is…Ron Paul CAN’T WIN. Any more than Ross Perot could have. Or Kucinich for god’s sake. Why waste a vote on someone that can’t help? All that can do is help put someone in office that i don’t want there. And even though Ron Paul WOULD abolish the IRS…do you really think that COULD ever happen? You dont think that he’d have MASSIVE opposition, and it would NEVER get done.

  And I am certainly not in favor of libertarianism. As I have argued in this space before, it can’t work. It’s like communism. Good on paper. Great even. Impossible in reality. Why? Because 99% of society can’t be trusted to handle things on their own. Do you REALLY think that this country could survive a week without the IRS or something resembling it? For real? Taxes are necessary bro. Unfortunatley. Lowering them, OK. But what does it save the average person, a couple hundred bucks a year, a thousand? 2? Everyone makes such a huge deal about lowering taxes, but in reality, how much difference does it possibly make to the average person? And eliminating them all together is just a foolish thought.

  I am for economic freedom. I favor things like social security and medicare being eliminated for those that do not need it. (bill gates will be eligible. should he receive his 18k a year?) In a perfect world government health care would be great. But, much like libertarianism…good on paper, impossible in the USA. Why? At least partially because we’d have no healthcare workers. No American is going to go to school for 10 years and spend a quarter million dollars to make 60,000 a year being a federally employed doctor. Just not realistic, and will never happen. And if it does, it would fail in minutes.

  As for abortion, there is something we’re not connecting on. Most of these republican religious conservative wackos do not favor putting it in the hands of the individual state. They favor eliminating it all together. The same with gay marriage. You won’t have kids. But if you did, and your daughter got raped and became pregnant, would you want her forced to have the kid? I certainly wouldnt.

• 8 pax // Jan 9, 2008 at 6:33 pm

  The point of me voting for Ron Paul is not to see him become President, it’s to make a statement that this country is moving in an anti-liberty direction, and a number of us subjects are getting pretty fucking tired of it. How about the Drug War for a reason? There’s only one candidate who calls the Drug War what it is: a racist authoritarian debacle.

  As for your comments on libertarianism, by your own admission you know very little about it, so how can you so confidently pronounce what will and won’t work in the real world? Eliminating the IRS would reduce the federal budget to where it was 10 years ago, was the government insolvent then? The income tax is a small part of the federal budget, which is what you don’t realize.

  Every single democratic candidate favors socialized medicine. Every. Single. One. How can you admit what a disaster that would be and still pull the lever for one of them?

  You are 100% wrong about abortion as well, a very small part of the Republican party favors a constitutional amendment banning abortion (which of course would never get 3/4 of the states to ratify so it would never happen). The only presidential candidate with that view is Huckabee, the rest are for the overturn of Roe v. Wade and the federalization of the issue. You should stop getting your news from the mainstream media, for they are unsurprisingly vastly misinforming you about Republican policies.

• 9 Jason // Jan 10, 2008 at 1:48 pm

  I’m going to go paragraph by paragraph in your last reply.

  1) Making statements is fine. But what good does it really do? Seriously. Does Ron Paul getting 4% of the vote or some ridiculous meaningless # count for anything? Nope. Is it going to change anything? Nope. Is anyone really going to take notice? Nope. And I think we can safely say that we both have the same feelings on the drug war.

  2) Really, the only things I know about libertarianism are what you have told me. I have in my head the conversation we had in the car coming back from Aruba when I said, “so if libertarians had their way, this stoplight wouldnt be here unless some private company decided that they could make enough money on it to make it worthwhile to build it.” and you said “yes”. And to me, that’s just ridiculous. Good on paper. Unrealistic to implement. Mass society can’t be trusted. And of course I realize that the government gets $ from many other areas than the personal income tax. That’s just one of the only ways that they get money from ME. Take the indoor smoking ban that just hit Illinois last week. Yes, it’s the government getting involved in places they shouldnt be. I’ll agree. However. It’s GOOD FOR ME. I can now go to the bar and not have to worry about 2nd hand smoke. And for me, who spends a large portion of his life in clubs and bars, it’s a real issue. I can go to my weekly poker game (at a bar) and not have to SHOWER when i get home before AJ will let me into bed. The smokers are the ones that choose to smoke. Therefore, they are the ones that should be inconvenienced. Not me. Not the non-smokers. And, it has no negative effects. It’s proven that it doesnt effect business. It doesnt hurt liquor sales, customer bases, etc. Do the bars in NYC seem any less crowded to you?

  3) i am not saying that socialized medicine would be a disaster. I am speaking much more clearly than that. I am saying it would be IMPOSSIBLE. It’s a pipe dream that the democratic candidates harp on to get themselves elected. And the only reason they ALL favor it is because once one of them favor it, the others have to keep up. It will NEVER happen. NEVER. The candidates can talk that talk all they want. It’s like McCain cowtowing to the religious right…he doesn’t believe that bullshit, he’s just doing it to get himself elected.

  4) Whether i am right or wrong on the general issue of abortion…what i am saying is that SOMETIMES in this world a means to an end is a good thing. Roe Vs. Wade may be unconstitutional, it may be wrong, but at the end of the day, it keeps abortion legal, and that’s a good thing. I am sure you’ll fire back 10 examples of how means to an end is a terrible thing and how i am out of my mind, but with Roe Vs. Wade….i stand firm that it’s a somewhat bad means to a very good end.

  And finally, as far as my news sources…well…with the life i lead, i really dont have the time to go out there and seek out news from underground (and admittedly more legitimate) sources. I read news for about 12 minutes a day on my lunch and on CNN on my blackberry while moving. The rest of the time i am over my head with work, travel, running running running.

• 10 pax // Jan 10, 2008 at 2:04 pm

  The point is not to institute full on libertarianism, it’s to begin the shrinking of the federal government. Look we have about nine or ten candidates for president, and all but one have positions basically differing in how much increase of federal power they support. The Dems tend towards saying it should increase a lot, the Reps toward saying it should only increase a little or maybe stay the same. One guy says it should be lowered, and therefore he’s my guy. Don’t get distracted by what doctrinaire libertarianism would say, just look at the growth in the federal government’s size and decide whether that is a good trend.

  Judging by what you’re saying here, you’re basically a fascist in my eyes. You don’t mind the government telling everybody what to do as long as you like the result. Well someday my friend, you’re not gonna like the result, but you’ll have voted all your rights away in the name of the ends justifying the means.

  “First they came for the smokers, but I was not a smoker, so I said nothing.”

  The owner of the bar owns that property, and you have the choice not to patronize his establishment. What kind of morality allows you to decide what that bar owner is and isn’t allowed to do with his own property?

  As far as socialized medicine goes, you’re fucking dreaming if you think it can’t happen here. It’s a fact of life in Canada and across Europe, and despite what you seem to think, it’s a solid part of the Democratic platform and most Democratic voters are staunchly in favor of it. They certainly DO believe in it, and I can’t imagine why other than wishful thinking that you would deceive yourself into believing that they don’t sincerely want it. It would be a disaster, you know that and I know that, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen.

• 11 Jason // Jan 10, 2008 at 3:43 pm

  Ok, I think i am beginning to understand the difference between doctrinaire libertarianism and the reality that you are talking about and it is starting to make sense. I still dont see the point of voting for a guy that can’t possibly win. Vote for the best choice out of the people that CAN win, and that’s how you can make a difference. Frankly, it doesnt even matter if i vote, because I live in Illinois, and there’s no chance anyone but a democrat (ESPECIALLY if it’s Obama) will ever win here anyway.

  I am not a facist, dude. I am a realist. Abortion needs to be legal. It needs to be legal because there’s no reason for it not to be. Who cares what someone else does with their body. Why should it even BE an issue that states should vote on? Someone doesnt want to be pregnant, they shouldnt have to be. Gays want to get married, they should be able to. How does it effect ME what SHE or HE does? It doesn’t. And that’s my point. Government, IMO (state, local OR federal) should just not have a say in things like this. Also IMO, these are issues that we’ll be looking back on in 20 years going, man, what was WRONG with us. The problem is that anyone who says shit like this is unelectable. Look at Obama. He doesnt support gay marriage. He supports “Civil Unions”. Come the fuck on. For fucks sake…WHO CARES?

  As for the smoking thing - I dont know what to say. To me, once the doors of the bar open, it becomes a public place. The owner of the property gives up some rights the minute he hangs an “open for business” sign on his front door, and invites the general public in. And if people (the majority - this much is clear) dont want to be subjected to second hand smoke in a PUBLIC place, they shouldnt have to be. I dont know where we’re missing each other here. YOU choose to smoke, YOU are the one that should be inconvenienced. Not ME. I shouldnt have to not want to go to a bar because i am going to ruin my jacket just by walking in the door. The smoking thing is another issue that will be gone in 20-30 years. No one’s going to smoke anymore in 2030. We’ll all be laughing at the people who used to smoke. Smokes will be 15$ a pack and only sold in the ghetto.

  There are so many small issues within the gigantic issue of the medical insurance thing. I just dont think it can pass. I think the doctors and pharmaceutical companies have too much power in this country. Too many powerful lobbyists. Canada and Europe are VERY different places than the US. We take capitalism to a new level. Like I said way up top, find me someone who will spend 10 years in school and a quarter million dollars to make 60k a year. Some of my canadian friends have been telling me lately that privatization of at least some medicine in canada is looking to be a reality in the not-so-distant future as well. I’ll eat my words…but I don’t see full-on government healthcare in this country anytime in the near or distant future.

• 12 pax // Jan 10, 2008 at 4:40 pm

  If it doesn’t matter if you vote, since your vote won’t make a difference in deciding the election, then you should be voting to make a statement of your beliefs by voting for the guy who best represents you, whether he can win or not. Ron Paul is pulling 10% of the vote in Republican primaries, and a Republican candiate cannot win in the general election without that 10% of the party, therefore voting for Paul can serve to move the party in the direction I want it to go.

  I agree with you that smoking is on the way out, but if that’s true why do we need to use state powered coercion to accelerate the process? What’s the hurry, and why is government getting involved? If it truly maximizes happiness to ban smoking in the bar, why didn’t the bar owner decide on it himself? The thing is, the market can handle it, and the fact that the market didn’t provide nonsmoking bars is factual evidence that smokers prefer being allowed to smoke more than nonsmokers prefer not dealing with the smoke. Otherwise some entrepreneur would have detected a market opportunity and made money filling it. This is basic free market economics.

  As far as saying the owner’s property rights are lost as soon as he opens for business, I find that to be totalitarian in the extreme. Who has *forced* you to go to this bar? The only coercion involved is not coming from the smokers or the bar owner, this is not a public place, it is a PRIVATE establishment and should have the right to set rules as dictated by the owner. It’s not your property just because you choose to come inside, the owner can refuse to serve you and throw you out if he chooses, you are not paying his rent and therefore no one but him should have any say over what goes on inside as long as no one is being coerced against their will. You would have been free to start another poker game at a place that disallows smoking, and if enough people found this worthwhile it would succeed. Freedom of choice is the operative idea, and I’m against those on both the left and on the right who would make those choices for others without their consent. It starts with smoking, then moves to fatty foods, and today I read an article about the SWAT team raiding someone’s house because his kid fell and hit his head and the government decided that the parents weren’t competent enough to decide the kid didn’t need to go to the hospital. It’s a slippery slope, and it ends in all things not compulsory being forbidden. This is exactly why I support Ron Paul, to make a statement that some of us are tired of being controlled, that I am a CITIZEN, not a SUBJECT!

  Abortion is another issue that will be obviated by technology in the next few decades, but I think you’re looking at it in a pretty black and white way. I agree it should be legal, but I’d also agree that it’s morally very dubious. Libertarian philosophy doesn’t agree on abortion, some consider it a violation of the unborn child’s rights, some consider the child to be violating the mother’s rights if the baby is unwanted. I lean towards the latter, and my preferred form of government would have nothing to say on the matter, but if you don’t recognize that there are serious moral issues involved and that people on both sides have perfectly valid arguments for what they believe I think you’re being intellectually dishonest. Note that in the above the word “moral” should not be taken as a synonym for “religious”.

• 13 Jason // Jan 10, 2008 at 6:19 pm

  So the only choice of the non-smoker that wants to avoid second hand smoke in YOUR world is to stay out of bars. The problem is, non-smokers never had a remedy. Smoking was allowed in bars. That’s just the way it had always been. Since smoking and bars had been invented, they went together. And the reason for that is that when smoking first started, there was no evidence that it was bad for you or those around you. Everyone smoked. The laws went into place. Once we realized how bad smoking was for you, the laws needed to change. It’s ridiculous to say that if the market demanded it, a non-smoking bar would succeed. That goes back to the reason i gave before as per why doctrinaire libertarianism could never succeed - because individuals are not responsible enough, motivated enough, or smart enough to make these kinds of decisions or take these actions. Some of US are, but most of THEM are not. The VAST majority, in fact.

  Secondly, comparing smoking bans and fatty foods is a pretty ridiculous comparison if you ask me. Smoking hurts those AROUND you. Smoking is an action that you take that hurts others. If you are going to compare the smoking ban to something, compare it to…umm…randomly firing guns in the air. Eating fatty foods only hurts yourself. There’s no lack of documentation of what McDonalds and Taco Bell put in their food. Not since they opened their doors. Read it. Make your choice. And that’s why smoking should never be ILLEGAL. Because as long as you’re not breathing the smoke into the face of those around you, I have no problem with it, nor should anyone else.

  That’s my problem with the whole abortion debate. Gay marriage too. What YOU or ME thinks is morally right or wrong should NOT be factored into the decision to legalize or ban abortion. What happens inside a person’s body is up to the person. End of story. You want to cut off your foot and eat it, go ahead. You accidentally get pregnant and you’re not ready to be a mom, abort. Now - there are technicalities. We can talk all day about when the zygote becomes a fetus or when the fetus becomes a life….and I personally think that there should be restrictions on how late into a pregnancy abortion should be allowed…basically because if you’re too stupid or lazy to make your decision after three months, you made your bed, lie in it. But it shouldnt be up to the government to decide people’s morals. It should be up to the individual person. I think on some level we agree here. I don’t know.

• 14 pax // Jan 10, 2008 at 6:56 pm

  because individuals are not responsible enough, motivated enough, or smart enough to make these kinds of decisions or take these actions. Some of US are, but most of THEM are not. The VAST majority, in fact.

  See, saying things like this is why you make me think you are an authoritarian. Authoritarians always know better than other people how those people should be living their lives. You aren’t smart enough to choose for yourself, so you need to let Mommy Government do your thinking. Of course, you and I are smart enough, it’s those OTHER people that need to be protected. Won’t somebody PLEASE think of the children?

  Why does your choice to dislike smoke override a bar owner’s choice to allow smoking in HIS establishment? You don’t own the place, you don’t pay the rent, you are not forced to go inside. Why do you think you have the right to dictate what goes on?

  Your political philosophy seemingly boils down to, if I don’t like something, the government should ban it. If I do like something, it should be allowed by government. Your beliefs about when abortion is morally okay and when it isn’t should be taken as gospel, anyone disagreeing is just flat out wrong, and the government should be forcing your morality on us all.

  What you’re not recognizing is that there is NO way for us all to agree. The only FAIR way to run a society is for everyone to do as they wish, as long as they do not use force or fraud against another. All of libertarian philosophy flows directly and logically out of that single axiom, which leads to some surprising conclusions if you don’t follow the logical chain that gets you there.

  My political philosophy is based on that moral principle and I have given this a lot of thought. I used to be like you, thinking that my beliefs were right and that the government should be doing everything according to my beliefs, but I’ve since realized that that kind of democracy is nothing but the totalitarianism of six wolves and five sheep voting on what’s for dinner. The sheep surely get to have their vote, but it’s not going to turn out well for them.

• 15 Republican Debate Tonight // Jan 10, 2008 at 7:01 pm

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• 16 Jason // Jan 11, 2008 at 11:39 am

  What you are saying is that everyone should be able to do as they wish all the time. That’s called anarchy, and it leads to chaos and death. Sorry, but some people DO need to be watched out for. Some people are NOT smart enough to make important decisions for themselves. That’s why we HAVE government.

  The smoking thing is a dead issue. Whatever. It has nothing to do with my dislike of smoke. It has to do with the fact that second hand smoke fucking kills people. And there is no legitimate reason that people should be allowed to smoke in enclosed spaces where non-smokers reside, hang out, live, work, eat, drink…whatever. The only reason is that that’s the way it’s always been. The smokers choose to smoke, they should be inconvenienced (and let’s face it, stepping outside to smoke is a pretty light inconvenience).

  As for abortion, I am not saying that any of my opinions should be taken as gospel. I said that each individual person should have the right to do what they want to do, with their body, and I PERSONALLY think that there should be restrictions on how late into the pregnancy you can abort. That doesnt mean everyone else has to think that way. Your morality or my morality should not be a factor. If someone decides that they are morally against abortion, DON’T HAVE ONE. Just stay away from ME when it’s my turn to decide.

  Everyone should be able to do as they wish as long as they dont use force or fraud against each other. Let’s look at that. Another idea that’s great on paper - except for the fact that there is a significant segment of our society that, when left to do as they wish, WILL use force AND fraud against their neighbors. People cannot be trusted.

  I have no doubt in my mind that your political philosophy is well thought out. I would be shocked if it wasnt, knowing you as well as I do. However, there’s too much of an element of idealism in your philosophy for it to work for me. People NEED government. End of story, and it’s unfortunate sure. But, it’s not going to change. The IRS isnt going to be abolished. The police forces arent going to be disbanded. The government is still going to be responsible for things like stoplights, speeding tickets, taxes and smoking bans, and that’s just the way it is. Why not work with the system to make it better, rather than working against it as a voice of change that for 100% sure is never going to happen?

• 17 pax // Jan 11, 2008 at 12:12 pm

  You’re contradicting yourself now within the same post. You say “I said that each individual person should have the right to do what they want to do.. If someone decides that they are morally against abortion, DON’T HAVE ONE. Just stay away from ME when it’s my turn to decide.”

  And you say “there is no legitimate reason that people should be allowed to smoke in enclosed spaces where non-smokers reside, hang out, live, work, eat, drink…whatever.”

  So when it’s something you want to do, everyone should stay out of your business. But you want to be able to go to a place you do not own and dictate what the owner must allow or disallow.

  You can proclaim that people need government all you want, but you haven’t made a single valid argument in favor of that. People cannot be trusted? Who do you think constitutes the government? That’s right, PEOPLE! You think people cannot be trusted to run their own lives, so you propose we have other people do it for them? Who is more qualified than you to run your life? Some bureaucrat in Washington you’ve never met, or YOU?

  Saying it wouldn’t work well is not an argument, because what we have now doesn’t work very well either!

• 18 Jason // Jan 11, 2008 at 12:52 pm

  That’s why this gets difficult. The system sucks. I dont think there’s any argument from you or I on that. Unfortunately, we have to work from within the system to change it, not from some island in the middle of an ocean with 3 or 4 other people on it, and Ron Paul standing at the top of the lone coconut tree screaming about smaller government.

  I dont think I am contradicting myself. Hear me out. The smoking thing and the abortion thing are two completely seperate issues. Smoking in enclosed spaces KILLS people. It’s not far off from running down the street shooting random bullets into the sky. Most of them won’t land on anyone, but the one that does, kills an 11 year old girl in her bed. The abortion thing is a personal choice. I dont think they are related at all. One involves stepping outside to have a smoke to avoid potentially giving lung cancer to your friends. The other involves something that’s happening inside your body, and something that the person next to you wouldnt even know about if you didnt tell them.

  I am indeed more qualified to run my life than anyone. I agree with you there. But we live in a society of HUNDREDS of MILLIONS of people dude. That’s what I think you are missing. even if 2% of the people in america need the government to intervene in some area of their lives, that’s still 6 million people. And I dont know about you, but if you ask me who’s more qualified to run certain areas of his life, the government, or the dude that smoked a bunch of crack and threw his 4 kids off a bridge, the government wins every time.

  I think the issue here is that it’s not absolute. I would agree that a VAST majority of people in america could function on a day to day basis with NO government. Delete the whole thing. Pay some private company to enforce some basic rules and we’d be fine.

  EXCEPT for the fact that say, 20% of Americans (an arbitrary #, yes, but work with me here) could not function like that. 20%. That’s 60 MILLION PEOPLE. And the country would lapse into some kind of thunderdome-esque society of death, crime, and other very, very bad things. People need order.

  Why do you think religion exists? Debate the existence of God in another space. I am not getting into that. Religion exists because people need order. They need something to believe in, something to follow.

• 19 pax // Jan 11, 2008 at 1:31 pm

  I’m not supporting Ron Paul because I’m expecting him to win. I’m supporting him as a method of change within the system. If 10% of Republicans vote for Paul, he gets delegates at the convention. He already has enough that they are forced by the rules to allow him to give a speech, an hour or so of national TV time to explain his libertarian philosophy to the people. If his support is high enough, the Republicans will not be able to write off that much of their electoral base, and they will A) have to make concessions to Paul’s voters in order to get us to continue supporting their party and B) in the future the party will move in a more libertarian direction. That’s how our two party system works.

  So you assign no value to the bar owner’s rights over his own property? You keep talking about the smoker’s rights vs. the non-smoker’s rights, but you forget the guy who actually owns the establishment and casually support the violation of his property rights. You also continue to speak as though all this smoke is somehow being forced upon you, when you could simply leave the building as well. And to paraphrase you, let’s face it, avoiding an establishment where you know there will be an environment you disdain is a pretty light inconvenience.

  You’re also committing the fallacy of equating government with order. My ideology recognizes the imperfection of man, and copes with this by making no man the master of any other. You say you recognize that man is imperfect and call me an idealist, but isn’t the real idealist the man who expects MEN in government to behave unselfishly and exercise their power for the good of all? Power attracts the unscrupulous, and the only possible way to end corruption and abuse of power is to eliminate the power itself.

  We can argue all day about whether a state of no government is viable, but can we at least agree that our government is far too powerful and should be scaled back? We can worry about how far to go in that direction if and when we agree that the direction of smaller government is the correct one.

  As far as your argument about needing government to stop the guy that smoked crack from throwing his four kids off a bridge, do they really prevent that from happening? If you want to argue that the government is needed to prevent these things from happening you have to prove that it actually does do the job you say it does. I say their attempts do more harm than good.

• 20 Jason // Jan 11, 2008 at 4:08 pm

  No. I frankly don’t assign more value to the bar owner’s rights than I do to the rights of his patrons. Call that what you will. I guess I am a fascist totalitarian. Yes, I could leave. But I like drinking. And I like doing so in bars. And to think that I have two choices: Risk cancer or LEAVE…that sounds more facist to me than what I am saying. An old word for a bar is PUBLIC HOUSE - and that’s just what it is. Sorry about the bar owner. He’s not making any less money or suffering ANY because people can’t smoke in his establishment. In fact, one could argue that by protecting the health of his patrons, he is going to make MORE $ in the long term.

  I do agree that there are some aspects of government that should and could be scaled back. But I am less concerned with that and more worried about the role of religion in our government than anything else. Why is abortion an issue? Because of religion (it may not end there, but it certainly started there). Why is gay marriage an issue to ANYONE? Because the bible says it’s BAD. So many instances of religion inflitrating our government. Fuck, did you see the image of John McCain standing there with Pat Robertson all smiles? PANDERING to a guy that is obviously a lunatic, just because no republican can win without Robertson’s backing. Sad.

  I guess the bottom line for me is that there are so many problems with our country that there is no way we’re going to fix them all. So therefore we have to focus on the ones that really matter. Our fucked up economy. This ridiculous war and how we’re going to win it. Corruption in politics. The health insurance issue..Etc Etc…I could go on all day. Scaling back government to the levels you are suggesting is unrealistic. We need to focus on the NOW and get this thing on track before we talk about drastic moves like eliminating the IRS, etc.

• 21 Jason // Jan 11, 2008 at 4:08 pm

  PS: you must have a lot of readers judging by the people that have weighed in on our conversation. Haha!

• 22 pax // Jan 11, 2008 at 4:34 pm

  I guarantee you that the bar owner is most certainly making less money. People can’t buy drinks when they are outside smoking. Elementary logic will tell you that if he was making the same or more money by having a nonsmoking bar he would have done so already without the need for government coercion.

  The reason the bar owner’s rights trump the rights of his patrons is that it’s HIS BAR. He risked the money to open the place, and if it fails he is the one who will suffer, not you or his other patrons. You are sitting here telling me that you know better than he how to run his own business and you don’t see how that is presumptuous in the extreme? Why don’t you risk YOUR money, open your OWN bar, and run it any way YOU see fit? And if the government came to you and told you that you had to ALLOW smoking you couldn’t possibly have an argument against it, since you have no principles beyond the tyranny of the majority.

  The reason religion has so much involvement in our government is that we dictate so many things from the top. Religious people vote for antiabortion politicians because liberals like you ensured that local jurisdictions are not to be allowed to make up their own minds on the issue. The vote for politicians who are against teaching evolution in public schools because liberals like you have decided that the government should have a monopoly on education. The remedy is DECENTRALIZATION. Why would you care what some douchebags in bumfuck Texas want to outlaw? Let them have their creationist schools and ban abortion, who gives a crap as long as they stop dictating to us? It’s a two way street! We have freedom of movement, if you don’t like the crap town you grew up in, you can just move to a place more suitable to you.

  There’s plenty of religion on the Democratic side of the aisle too, we just call their irrational unworkable unscientific beliefs “socialism” and “environmentalism” but they are religions, make no mistake.

  I’m not talking drastic moves, just moving in the direction of smaller government, for the very reasons you list as problems. More government intervention is NOT going to help our economy or reduce corruption, quite the opposite. If you haven’t already watched it, the “Ron Paul at Google” video I posted is EXCELLENT. Keep in mind the people attending that Q&A session (standing room only and the biggest response they had for any candidate) are all Google employees with an average IQ of well above 140.

  BTW I have between 15-20 unique visitors a day, but most of them just lurk.

• 23 pax // Jan 12, 2008 at 1:36 pm

  I was thinking about what you said about anarchism.. See, the thing is that if it were instituted overnight, bam, no government, yeah it would of course never work. It would be anarchy, in the bad, chaos reigning, mass killing sense of the word.

  But when I think about real anarchism as in the lack of government, I include institutions to prevent the complete breakdown of society. Society does not equal government.

  For example, there would still be police, but they wouldn’t be paid by levying taxes, and they would be hired like insurance companies are hired, by each consumer according to the level of protection he wants and will pay for. If your immediate objection to that idea is that poor people will not receive quality police protection, then the burden of proof is upon you to show that they indeed do receive quality police protection right now.

  Anyway the point of this post isn’t to explain how an anarchic society would work, but just to say that it’s the *institutions* that matter and hold society together, not the government. They just get mixed up in contemporary discourse because we’re just used to those institutions being provided by government rather than the market, and we make the mistake of equating government with society. The fact that I don’t want my institutions provided by the government doesn’t mean that I don’t want the institutions at all.

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