CIPHER_one Posted July 19, 2004 Share Posted July 19, 2004 What are everyone's thoughts on this party? Pros? Cons? I've heard some convincing arguments. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the_gooch Posted July 19, 2004 Share Posted July 19, 2004 http://www.ifes.md/i/p/cartoons/independent.gif'> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kr430n5_666 Posted July 19, 2004 Share Posted July 19, 2004 http://www.kak.ru/images/archive/15/national/VOD05.jpg'> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest KING BLING Posted July 19, 2004 Share Posted July 19, 2004 Its a lot like corporate anarchy, I understand the logic to it but its not applicable to our world... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T=E=A=S=E Posted July 19, 2004 Share Posted July 19, 2004 bunch of pussies if you ask me... :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rubbish heap Posted July 19, 2004 Share Posted July 19, 2004 fuck it, they're a step above republicans and fascist mother fuckers! but if theres any third party i'd be supporting it'd be greens because i'm a liberal fuck face from portland. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
High Priest Posted July 19, 2004 Share Posted July 19, 2004 Originally posted by rubbish heap but if theres any third party i'd be supporting it'd be greens because i'm a liberal fuck face from portland. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rental Posted July 19, 2004 Share Posted July 19, 2004 if there were a party with the name 'womens liberation organization', i would vote for it just because of their name. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CIPHER_one Posted July 19, 2004 Author Share Posted July 19, 2004 Browner, Mental, Seeking??? any thoughts? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nekro Posted July 19, 2004 Share Posted July 19, 2004 I like the IDEA of the libertarian party. I like the idea of being free from government except whenever necessary, but in practice it's not so rosy. Dramatically reduced government means no public schools, no government subsidized health care, no social safety net, and no oversight of coroporations. What we'd end up with is a few extremely rich, well armed drug lords and corporate monopolists controlling the government. The vast majority of the population would be sent into poverty. Libertarianism is like communism: nice on paper, but when people get involved it gets fucked up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KaBar2 Posted July 19, 2004 Share Posted July 19, 2004 Libertarians Think of all the political positions as being placed on a big circle (the Political Wheel), with the authoritarian Statists listed up at the top (Communists on the Left, Fascists on the right) and libertaian, "No-Statists" listed towads the bottom. The respective degrees of left- and right-wing parties are dispersed between these two extremes. Back when I was an anarchist, we used to party with the Libertarians. We both basically had similar ideas about freedom, but arrived at relatively close respective political positions from opposite ends of the political spectrum. Most anarchists start from the Left (anarchism is a branch of Socialism) and go farther Left to arrive at a position of anarchism. Libertarians start on the right (many of the ones I knew were Young Republican activists in the '60s) and go farther Right, to arrive at a position just the other side of the line from the anarchists. If either side continues to become more radical (anarchists "more left" and Libertarians "more right") they actually change sides. I knew a number of anarchists who were former Socialists and former left-wing extremists (Trotskyists, Maoists, etc.). I knew a number of Libertarian Party members who were former Goldwater Republicans and members of the Young Republicans. Their ideas had just continued to progress until they became ardent opponents of their former comrades. The Libertarian Party wants "government" to get out of everyone's lives. They want little or no taxes, little or no government services, and as small a military as possible. They want the military to be all-volunteer (NO draft, at all, ever) and the population to be able to arm themselves with whatever weapons suit them. They want every service presently performed by government with tax dollars coerced out of the citizenry by force to be privatized, and performed by private companies. They are opposed to government-run anything except Courts and the Self-Defense Forces, which would be manned essentially by mercenary soldiers, more-or-less like private rent-a-cops, only soldiers instead. Police forces, prisons, etc. would all be privately owned and contracted to the government. No National Parks--they would be privatized, and fee-based. No subsidized housing, no welfare, no Food Stamps, no government owned transportation. Also--no drug laws, at all. No laws governing sexual matters, except to outlaw exploitation of children and vulnerable people incapable of consenting or defending themselves against exploitation. Government would not even be in the marriage business at all. Bars and saloons would be able to sell whatever they pleased to anyone old enough to pay for it, and their hours would be as long or as short as they pleased. Everyone would be free to engage in sex, any way they want, with whomever agreed to do so, completely without the government interfering at all. No "labor laws" preventing people from working. No immigration laws. No income taxes--only taxes based on sales, land, or importation/exportation of goods. (A lot of Libertarians are "Flat Taxers"--one fixed tax for everyone, no exemptions). The law would only exist to prevent someone from harming other people physically or from taking their property. Anybody, anywhere, would be able to start their own business without licenses, permits, fees, or any other impediment to commerce. No labor laws means no "forced bargaining" at the government's behest. They envision a world free of government interference, and where everybody is free to succeeed, or fail, based on their own efforts or lack thereof. Is it realistic? Well, maybe not. But their emphasis is on "free to do whatever you please, as long as you do not harm anybody else, and you can afford it," is a great deal different than "Mamma-knows-best." We are so used to the government telling us what we can do and not do, it seems normal. Imagine a world where everyone is totally responsible for himself. Want to work hard and be rich? Great. Want to shoot heroin all day and lay in the gutter? Also great. It's YOUR responsibility to take care of yourself. That's the Libertarian Party, in a nutshell. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nekro Posted July 19, 2004 Share Posted July 19, 2004 "free to do whatever you please, as long as you do not harm anybody else, and you can afford it," That's basically the constitution in a nutshell, nothing revolutionary about that except the economic focus. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rinse Posted July 19, 2004 Share Posted July 19, 2004 Re: Libertarians Originally posted by KaBar2 Think of all the political positions as being placed on a big circle (the Political Wheel), with the authoritarian Statists listed up at the top (Communists on the Left, Fascists on the right) and libertaian, "No-Statists" listed towads the bottom. The respective degrees of left- and right-wing parties are dispersed between these two extremes. Back when I was an anarchist, we used to party with the Libertarians. We both basically had similar ideas about freedom, but arrived at relatively close respective political positions from opposite ends of the political spectrum. Most anarchists start from the Left (anarchism is a branch of Socialism) and go farther Left to arrive at a position of anarchism. Libertarians start on the right (many of the ones I knew were Young Republican activists in the '60s) and go farther Right, to arrive at a position just the other side of the line from the anarchists. If either side continues to become more radical (anarchists "more left" and Libertarians "more right") they actually change sides. I knew a number of anarchists who were former Socialists and former left-wing extremists (Trotskyists, Maoists, etc.). I knew a number of Libertarian Party members who were former Goldwater Republicans and members of the Young Republicans. Their ideas had just continued to progress until they became ardent opponents of their former comrades. The Libertarian Party wants "government" to get out of everyone's lives. They want little or no taxes, little or no government services, and as small a military as possible. They want the military to be all-volunteer (NO draft, at all, ever) and the population to be able to arm themselves with whatever weapons suit them. They want every service presently performed by government with tax dollars coerced out of the citizenry by force to be privatized, and performed by private companies. They are opposed to government-run anything except Courts and the Self-Defense Forces, which would be manned essentially by mercenary soldiers, more-or-less like private rent-a-cops, only soldiers instead. Police forces, prisons, etc. would all be privately owned and contracted to the government. No National Parks--they would be privatized, and fee-based. No subsidized housing, no welfare, no Food Stamps, no government owned transportation. Also--no drug laws, at all. No laws governing sexual matters, except to outlaw exploitation of children and vulnerable people incapable of consenting or defending themselves against exploitation. Government would not even be in the marriage business at all. Bars and saloons would be able to sell whatever they pleased to anyone old enough to pay for it, and their hours would be as long or as short as they pleased. Everyone would be free to engage in sex, any way they want, with whomever agreed to do so, completely without the government interfering at all. No "labor laws" preventing people from working. No immigration laws. No income taxes--only taxes based on sales, land, or importation/exportation of goods. (A lot of Libertarians are "Flat Taxers"--one fixed tax for everyone, no exemptions). The law would only exist to prevent someone from harming other people physically or from taking their property. Anybody, anywhere, would be able to start their own business without licenses, permits, fees, or any other impediment to commerce. No labor laws means no "forced bargaining" at the government's behest. They envision a world free of government interference, and where everybody is free to succeeed, or fail, based on their own efforts or lack thereof. Is it realistic? Well, maybe not. But their emphasis is on "free to do whatever you please, as long as you do not harm anybody else, and you can afford it," is a great deal different than "Mamma-knows-best." We are so used to the government telling us what we can do and not do, it seems normal. Imagine a world where everyone is totally responsible for himself. Want to work hard and be rich? Great. Want to shoot heroin all day and lay in the gutter? Also great. It's YOUR responsibility to take care of yourself. That's the Libertarian Party, in a nutshell. this is insane... i never really understood their politics. sounds like a few countries in central africa could loosely fit under the blanket of liberatarianism if only by default. sorta like how, out of neccesity, the government of sierra leone hired a mercenary army from the private sector to squash a revolutionary group threatening to sieze power. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cracked Ass Posted July 19, 2004 Share Posted July 19, 2004 My nutshell take is that I love the idea of less government and more freedom, but in such a society corporations would absolutely take over, instead of only sort of taking over like they do today. I guess some vigilante militias would be easier to form, to put corporations in their place, but I rather suspect the corporations would have bigger and better private "security" forces of their own. If I could throw a switch and make the libertarian world a reality, I probably would. Life would be pretty interesting in short order. I might wind up part of a band of anti-corporate guerrillas holed up in the Appalachians or something. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KaBar2 Posted July 20, 2004 Share Posted July 20, 2004 I'm not very well versed in Libertarian political philosophy. We used to (drunkenly) argue with the Libertarians at parties, and there was sort of a cross-pollenation thing going on with the inter-group dating. The big argument was about what we called "the Water-Hole Theory." The Libertarians say, "This guy was crawling across the desert, dying of thirst, when he comes upon a water hole. He drinks his fill, sets up camp, and declares the water hole to be "his." When the next guy comes along, he charges him $100 for a drink. But he advances him credit to do so." The anarchist says, "This guy was crawling across the desert, dying of thirst, and he comes upon a water hole. He drinks his fill, sets up camp, then declares the water hole to be "the property of the working class." When the next guy comes along, he makes him join the union before he allows him to drink." This, supposedly, is the difference between anarchists and Libertarians. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CIPHER_one Posted July 20, 2004 Author Share Posted July 20, 2004 What's the party that lets anyone that's thirsty take a swig for free? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GeraloRivera Posted July 20, 2004 Share Posted July 20, 2004 Re: Re: Libertarians Originally posted by rinse this is insane... i never really understood their politics. sounds like a few countries in central africa could loosely fit under the blanket of liberatarianism if only by default. sorta like how, out of neccesity, the government of sierra leone hired a mercenary army from the private sector to squash a revolutionary group threatening to sieze power. Yea the hired executive outcomes, which is doing work in iraq now if im not mistaken. There is some sort of tie between them and a haliburton subsidary which focuses on soldiers for hire. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KASTsystem Posted July 20, 2004 Share Posted July 20, 2004 Political Compass The Libertarian party falls in the lower right quadrant of the political compass. www.politicalcompass.org Personally, I'm not really down with it, but it's better than being for big government regardless of whether your economics are left or right. As for me on the political compass, I'm pretty far in the lower-left quadrant: Economic Left/Right: -7.75 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.38 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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