Libertarianism on the Rise?

I essentially abandoned the Republican Party in favor of the libertarians back in the late 1990s, as I had become so disgusted with their relentless move leftward fiscally that I just couldn't take it anymore. I cast my presidential vote for Harry Browne in the 2000 election, and have never once regretted having done so. The obscene spending spree the Republicans later embarked on in the first half of this decade served to only reinforce the belief that my decision to abandon the party was the correct one.

I have long believed that the majority of Americans are basically libertarians at heart, it is just one or two pet issues that hang them up, thus preventing them from making the full leap. I have only one real disagreement with the libertarians, and that is with those who are such staunch, no-matter-what isolationists, which I believe is a totally unworkable concept in this day and age.

Isolationism may have worked out okay once upon a time, but consider the kind of world we might now be residing in had the isolationists held sway in the late 1930s.

Yeah, same here.

Anyhow, Cato@Liberty has taken a look at a Gallup poll released this past Monday, and points out the number of libertarians is at its highest point in a decade:

The word “libertarian” isn’t well known, so pollsters don’t find many people claiming to be libertarian. And usually they don’t ask. But a large portion of Americans hold generally libertarian views — views that might be described as fiscally conservative and socially liberal, or as Gov. William Weld told the 1992 Republican National Convention, “I want the government out of your pocketbook and out of your bedroom.” They don’t fit the red-blue paradigm, and they have their doubts about both conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats. They’re potentially a swing vote in elections. Background on the libertarian vote here.

You will find the entire article here.

The Democrats are an utter lost cause, as far as I am concerned, and like most of my libertarian-minded fellow travelers, and probably many Americans who perhaps aren't, I have little confidence in the Republicans. I seriously question the GOP's will to not just merely stop Obama and his hideous, relentless transformation of America, but to actually reverse it, should they be elected in sufficient numbers to do so.

They are, after all, the only political party that has any chance to stop Obama, as I believe a break-away third party now would be completely nonviable in the near-term, and would most likely ensure Obama will have enough congressional support to bring his "plan" to its logical conclusion. That outcome would not be conducive to freedom and liberty in this country.

However, the fiscal transgressions they committed while in control of congress under George W. Bush are just too fresh in my mind for me to trust them to any real degree right now. They controlled congress for 12 years, six of which were under a "Republican" president, and yet they failed to reverse any of the fiscally-irresponsible policies that had been previously put into place.

Why should I now believe they will reverse any of the serious damage Obama is currently wantonly wreaking on our country, particularly given that party's "leadership" is, as I write this, supporting free-spending RINOs like Dede Scozzafava?

Fool me once, shame on you... as they say.

I may change my mind between now and the election next November, but unless true fiscal conservatism once again rises to the fore within the Republican Party, I will continue to hold them at arms length, and will continue voting for libertarians in my state and local elections.

C-SPAN Caller Rips Media Coverage of Town Halls

You go, girl!

When Conservatives Attack: RINO Republican Congress-Critter Gets Booed at Town Hall Gathering For Dissing Glenn Beck

Nice to see that the RINO's are getting an earful, too:



Inglis and other gutless RINO's like him are the people the republicans must get rid of in 2010. Democrat-light can no-longer be tolerated if our nation is to survive in anything resembling its current form.

Noel Sheppard over at NewsBusters.org has more on this here.

I have to admit I have been somewhat depressed over the fate of my country since last November. I am at least beginning to see an inkling of a faint hope that this, the greatest nation in recorded history, may yet survive this latest, and by far most potent, assault by the freedom-hating left this fair land has yet seen.

Sarah Palin Calls It Quits

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

It is much too soon to tell what this all means for the future, as Gov. Palin was rather vague about her plans.

Personally, I hope she will stick around at some level, as she most certainly was a breath of fresh air for a stodgy old party, like hasn't seen since the days of Ronald Reagan.

Time will tell, but I hope we haven't seen the last of her.

Congratulations to the House Republicans!

It appears that the Republican Party members residing in the House of Representatives have found what once appeared to be lost forever-their spines. Amazingly, they fought off what must have been some very heavy pressure from the Obama people, the media, and probably some folks back home, and unanimously voted against the passage of HR1, the most expensive, pork-laden, nonsensical vote-buying spending bill to ever be introduced anywhere. Ever.

While they clearly lacked the necessary number of votes to prevent the passage of this hideous monstrosity, I believe they at least were able to send the message to the White House that Obama's heretofore seemingly magical tiptoe-through-the-tulips was destined to be a short trip. Let us hope he didn't stub his toe.

Now the bill moves over to the Senate to try its luck there. Hopefully the Senate Republicans have taken notice of what their House colleagues did yesterday, and unanimously vote against this nonsense as well.

I urge you to begin emailing and calling your respective senators now, and not waiting until next week. We need to put their feet to the fire, and hold it there until they squirm.

We were able to kill Scamnesty, and we can kill Porkzilla, too.

Economic "Stimulus" My Arse

Our new POTUS is working hard to get his people in place so that they can start ramming (his?) $825 billion (for now) economic "stimulus" plan down our throats (or upward into another, much tighter bodily opening) as quickly as possible. The Democrat big-wigs are pressing hard for a mid-February signing ceremony, and are telling anyone who will listen that the federal government must spend this money if our economy is to be saved.

Hmm, where have we heard that before?

Several days ago, House minority leader John Boehner circulated an email with some eye-opening, if not actually eye-popping, details about this latest government scheme to separate us Americans from our hard-earned money.

Oh yes, the balance due on this "bailout" will be coming right out of our pockets, as there is actually no such thing as government money. I am not altogether sure the 65 million Americans who were conned into voting for Mr. Obama are aware of this fact.

Anyway, here is what the social democrats are proposing (emphasis mine):

A Dozen Fun Facts About the House Democrats' Massive Spending Bill

1. The House Democrats' bill will cost each and every household $6,700 additional debt, paid for by our children and grandchildren.

2. The total cost of this one piece of legislation is almost as much as the annual discretionary budget for the entire federal government.

3. President-elect Obama has said that his proposed stimulus legislation will create or save three million jobs. This means that this legislation will spend about $275,000 per job. The average household income in the U.S. is $50,000 a year.

4. The House Democrats' bill provides enough spending - $825 billion - to give every man, woman, and child in America $2,700.

5. $825 billion is enough to give every person living in poverty in the U.S. $22,000.

6. $825 billion is enough to give every person in Ohio $72,000.

7. Although the House Democrats' proposal has been billed as a transportation and infrastructure investment package, in actuality only $30 billion of the bill - or three percent - is for road and highway spending. A recent study from the Congressional Budget Office said that only 25 percent of infrastructure dollars can be spent in the first year, making the one year total less than $7 billion for infrastructure.

8. Much of the funding within the House Democrats' proposal will go to programs that already have large, unexpended balances. For example, the bill provides $1 billion for Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), which already have $16 billion on hand. And, this year, Congress has plans to rescind $9 billion in highway funding that the states have not yet used.

9. In 1993, the unemployment rate was virtually the same as the rate today (around seven percent). Yet, then-President Clinton's proposed stimulus legislation ONLY contained $16 billion in spending.

10. Here are just a few of the programs and projects that have been included in the House Democrats' proposal:

• $650 million for digital TV coupons.
• $6 billion for colleges/universities - many which have billion dollar endowments.
• $166 billion in direct aid to states - many of which have failed to budget wisely.
• $50 million in funding for the National Endowment of the Arts.
• $44 million for repairs to U.S. Department of Agriculture headquarters.
• $200 million for the National Mall, including grass planting.
• $400 million for "National Treasures."

11. Almost one-third of the so called tax relief in the House Democrats' bill is spending in disguise, meaning that true tax relief makes up only 24 percent of the total package - not the 40 percent that President-elect Obama had requested.

12. $825 billion is just the beginning - many Capitol Hill Democrats want to spend even more taxpayer dollars on their "stimulus" plan.

-End

My personal "favorite" was item No. 3. Only government could come up with a way to spend $275,000 to "create" or save just one job.

This isn't an economic stimulus anything. It is a pork-fat dripping payoff for the constituents of the social democrats.

Little wonder they are in such an all-fired hurry to get this lunacy passed and signed into law, because the longer it sits around collecting dust, the greater the chances are that people might actually read the thing and start asking questions that I do not think the supporters of this world-class rip-off are going to want to answer.

Who knows? One or two of them may be actually be out of that group of 65 million Americans who voted for "change."

Yep, change is about all we will have left once this insanity blows through.

Sadder still is that many of our representatives in Washington who were once fiscal conservatives and should know better, are gleefully lining up to support a plan that I am convinced will do nothing but reward a particular political party's supporters. Furthermore it will leave us with a still-ailing economy, a much emptier treasury, a far higher budget deficit and overall national debt, and even greater threats to our freedoms and liberties when it becomes apparent, even to an Obama voter, that this plan has only managed to stimulate Chris Matthew's leg.

Then what?

Welcome to Dave's Notepad!

After thinking about it for the last eight years or so, and some encouragement from a few friends, I have finally decided to start my very own blog. The odd thing is that I have waited until I am in the midst of an all-consuming career change to do it. Well, timing has not exactly been my strong suit over the years, as the demands on my time are probably greater now that at any time in my life, with the exception of a period when I was working full-time and simultaneously attending college. I survived this rather difficult period mainly due to my ability to read, and that rather briskly.

I became an avid reader at a very young age. Unlike most of my peers, I loved spending time in the school library pouring over everything I could get my hands on. I was particularly fascinated with books that dealt with automobiles and airplanes, spaceflight (which was in its infancy at the time) and science fiction. While many of my friends whiled away their afternoons riding their bikes and playing in the mud, I busied myself reading. This is not to say I never got out, but rainy days never really disappointed me, as I had much reading material to lose myself in.

As I matured further, I developed an interest in history, particularly American History. The more I read about the world, the more I wanted to know why this country was so different from the others I read about. This, of course, eventually led to an interest in the military history of this nation.

Some of my earliest childhood memories were of the Vietnam War, and remember that I had to sneak off to watch the news reports of it, as my mother did not much care for me watching it. It was not until some years later that I found out that she had lost two of her childhood friends in that war.

It was about the time the war ended that I remember experiencing the sensation of fear for my country for the very first time, as just about everyone I saw on TV, as well as many people in my family, were telling me that we had lost the war in Vietnam. I was a mere child of nine years old when the US pulled out of there, yet I vividly remember sitting in front of the TV watching the last helicopters taking off from the American Embassy roof in Saigon as if it were only yesterday. Some years later, I was able to noodle out that we, in fact, had not really lost so much as we had up and quit.

As a child, I knew almost nothing about socialism other than it was bad. I remember watching the news on TV and seeing stories about people who were shot for attempting to escape their homeland. It took a few years more of study before I discovered what had made those who were forced to live under that most hideous form of government be willing to risk their lives to escape it:

Socialism is the most murderous, oppressive and cruel form of government the world has yet seen.

Those people who were shot were attempting to escape tyranny to find freedom, freedom they were denied in the country they were born in. This had a profound affect on me. The more I learned, the more I came to hate socialism, in whatever form it existed be it communism, fascism, or modern (as opposed to classical) liberalism. In all of those forms of tyranny, the rights of the individual are subordinate to the whims of the state. To me, this is 180 degrees opposite of the way things should be.

As I noted in my profile I was once a Democrat. Even though I wasn't old enough to vote, I supported Jimmy Carter in 1976. After all, he had been the governor of my home state. Jimmy was the coolest! My flirtation with disaster lasted right up until I received my very first paycheck as a sixteen year old, toiling away busing tables, and later cooking in, a large seafood restaurant. I didn't know who FICA was at the time, but I knew I did not want him taking anymore of my money. I cast my first vote ever in a national election for Ronald Reagan in 1984.

I supported the Republican Party until 1996, when I noted a shift away from their support of lower taxes and smaller government. By that time, my appreciation for individual freedom had matured to the point that the only place left for me was the Libertarian Party. I joined that party in late '96 and haven't looked back since.

I have a deep love and appreciation for this country, as imperfect as it might be. Though I have no children of my own, I do have three wonderful nieces and a terrific nephew. My fondest wish for them has always been that they have the opportunity to grow up in the same country that I did. Sadly, it appears that is not to be.

Having watched the results of the last two presidential elections, it appears that around half the people in this country have quite literally lost their love of freedom. If something does not soon change to reverse this trend, I fear it will become irreversible. Some people I know feel it is already too late. I would like to believe otherwise.

No matter where one looks today, our freedoms are slowly but surely being taken from us. Most often by government, but sometimes by people who have no role in government whatsoever.

Whether it is being told how you may or may not use your property, what you can and cannot watch on TV, how many rounds your firearm is allowed to store, what ingredients must be included or left out of your food, where you can and cannot smoke, how much money you may or may not earn, where you can and cannot send your children to school, what type of vehicle you can or cannot drive, what color you can or cannot paint your own home, what you may or may not post on your own website, what words can and cannot be uttered in public, or whatever, many of the freedoms and liberties our predecessors enjoyed are no-longer part of the societal fabric of this nation.

I consider our deteriorating situation to be unacceptable. I have always believed in the primacy of the individual over that of any government.

The bulk of my posts here will be centered around what I perceive to be a ever more rapid dwindling of the freedoms that helped make this country what it is today. Some will be deadly serious, others will have you laughing until your sides ache. Most will be somewhere in between. I think you will notice early on that I have a somewhat different world-view than most.

Believe me, I will be giving neither of the major political parties a pass here, as they both bear responsibility for working to curb our freedoms as Americans.

This site is a work in progress, and probably will remain so for the duration. I will be adding much more to it as time goes on.

It should be a very interesting ride.