Bob Barr Is All That Stands Between Us And Darkest Night
I hope Bob Barr gets the Libertarian Party presidential nomination this month. I hope he steals the right-wing wacko vote from under John McCain's nose. I hope he clears the way for a Democratic victory in November, and an end to the war.
But then, I'm kind of an idiot when it comes to hope. I keep buying shirts at Old Navy, even though they shrink into weird shapes and the buttons crumble like aspirin. Why? Hope.
And I'm also a realist. We can't pin our national hopes on Bob Barr. He probably can't even close the deal with the Libertarians.
Why not? Are you saying a party built on fear of government can't embrace a candidate who's spent his public life in a prosecutor's office, Congress and the CIA?
You'd think that would be a problem, but no. Sometimes a Party has to bend. Look at the Republicans. They're settling for John McCain, even though he's not a racist.
Is it a hypocrisy thing? Because Bob Barr wrote the Defense of Marriage Act and he's been married three times?
Don't think of it as serial adultery. Think of it as defending marriage on multiple fronts.
Is it because he was a House manager of the Clinton impeachment, but he lied under oath about adultery during one of his own divorces?
It's not fair to say he lied. He used tortured legalisms to avoid telling the truth. And he didn't commit his immoral disgusting sex acts in the Oval Office of the People's House, either. He did them somewhere honorable, like a Days Inn.
I know -- it's about him being pro-life, but Larry Flynt turning up that canceled check for the abortion.
Libertarians aren't interested in the politics of personal destruction. And checking is a necessary evil. For now.
Then why can't he be the Libertarian nominee?
Because he's not a real libertarian. He's too vain to act that stupid. He'd like to -- because he's a bad person -- but he can't. You can tell, when you hear him trying to talk Libertarian on the campaign trail. He can't internalize the contradictions. The voices are in his head, but his heart isn't in it.
Give me a for instance.
Last month, Barr was speaking to the College Republicans at the College of New Jersey...
Sounds like a blast.
Can I talk?
Sorry.
He was explaining the Second Amendment to them, and how it meant the Framers wanted the maximum number of concealed weapons on college campuses at all times.
And the lowest number of women and black people.
Zero, I think. But that wasn't the only way America achieved maximum perfection in 1791. The perfect thing Bob wanted to talk about was the right to bear arms. It's absolute.
You can't regulate guns at all? Grenade launchers? Armor-piercing bullets? Chain guns? The atomic cannon?
If you're a Libertarian, every regulation is a slippery slope to Tyranny Town. Barr said:
"If we allow ourselves to be drawn into arguing just about guns and ammunition, it's very easy to lose that argument."
Because it's crazy.
That's what makes it a Libertarian position. If the government starts telling citizens they can't shoot each other with sawed-off shotguns, pretty soon it'll be telling them they can't shoot each other at all.
But you need a license to drive a car. If we can't restrict guns, at least we can license them, right?
Nope. According to The College of New Jersey student newspaper:
"Barr argued that while one needs a license to drive a car, there is no inherent (Constitutional) right to own a car."
Maybe because in 1791 there weren't any cars.
I didn't come here to defend Original Intent.
But that's not Original Intent. That's just nuts.
Oh, you're going to be sooo unhappy with the Roberts Court.
Okay, my head hurts. But I still don't see how any of this proves Bob Barr isn't a real libertarian.
Think about it. Bob Barr said we can regulate cars because they aren't in the Constitution, but we can't regulate guns, because they are. And if we start regulating guns in schools, the British will come back, in disguise as the kids at Virginia Tech, and Seung-Hui Cho will have to kill them one at a time, by hand, instead of all at once. Also, the upside -- freedom -- is more important than the downside -- dead children in piles.
I get it. But what did he say wrong? How isn't that a libertarian position?
Because he admitted the state can license cars.
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Mike Gravel wants to legalize all drugs and make pot available in liquor stores. Can you people imagine what Compton or the South Side of Chicago would look like if the folks in those neighborhoods could no longer sell crack? I'm baffled as to why people weren't getting behind him. On top of that, Mike Gravel is RIGHT about EVERYTHING! The thing that pisses me off about all the Libertarians that had such a boner for Ron Paul is the fact that even if he became President, there's no way in hades that he would be able to deliver all this "smaller government" crap that's never going to happen. Gravel on the other hand has a plan to implement his policies-establishing a national ballot initiative, so "the people" can vote to pass or reject laws on a federal level. We need a candidate that's willing to tell Americans to grow up and I think Gravel is the man for the job.
Yeah, that ballot initiative thing works so well for California that while housing prices have shot through the roof, their schools are becoming third world quality (property taxes to finance schools).
Oooo, nice burn.
So they should leave it up to a few hundred wealthy individuals that can so easily be influenced by even wealthier individuals(not to mention corporations)to fix the problem? If our legislators can't get the job done, we should at least be able to propose and vote on laws ourselves. If the schools are so shitty in california, why don't the PEOPLE WHO LIVE THERE get off their asses and do something about it? I'm guessing probably because most of them either lazy, are unaware of the problem , or just plain don't give a shit. All I'm saying is that it'd be nice if regular citizens could have their say and a vote on shit that affects them. If we had a national ballot initiative, do you think we'd still be in Iraq or paying $4 a gallon for gas?
Ballot initiatives are horrible.
I may be running to the right of my typical progressive ideology, but lately I've been on an individual liberty kick. Let them have their ridiculous semi-automatic assault rifles. Assault with a deadly weapon is a felony offense. Blaming guns is like blaming terrorism. They are tactics used by people with a desire to kill. The desire to kill is the problem, not the tactics used. Legislating the tactics will only cause prospective murderers to either break one additional law or select an alternative tactic.
In Switzerland, all adult male citizens are issued a semi-automatic handgun by the government and are required by law to keep it in their home. Despite this universal conscription policy, the United States owns twice as many guns per capita as Switzerland. I guess some Americans like to have a whole lot of guns. We have four times the gun homicides per capita as Switzerland. So not only do we have twice as many guns, but we also kill twice as many people per gun. Maybe there's some truth to the argument that if everybody was required to own a gun, there would be fewer gun homicides.
Don't you understand that Allah only works through homocidal maniacs? Most gods avoid using anyone who is remotely sane. Only the people who feel the need to end as many lives as possible are usable by deities.
Peaceniks are useless. What sort of point can you make using peaceniks?
What I don't understand is why any god needs humans to make his or her will known? Wiping out all the first borns of Egypt, now that si something I can understand as being a godly act. I do have problems with the marking of Hebrew households. Why does a god or an angel not know the difference? Is there a difference? I'm confused.
There's also the fact that if we start picking and choosing which parts of the Bill of Rights to uphold (i.e. not respecting the Second Amendment), it just makes it that much easier for authoritarians to undermine the rest of the document, such as the rights to free speech, freedom of religion, protection against unreasonable search and seizure, etc.
Would you be willing to give up gun regulations if you were able to get government out of the bedroom and to stop violating civil liberties? If people like gun owners, drug users, lesbians and gays, and sex workers got together, that's what we could achieve. All these people basically just want to do their thing in peace, without being discriminated against. If they would unite, they could tell the morality police to leave them alone and get a life, and have the political clout to make it stick. But members of each group have to be tolerant enough to respect the rights of the others.
I hope he gets in. If he does, he will win the "wacko" vote in Georgia (where he is from and where Libertarian King Boortz resides) and Obama will take the state!
Neal Boortz wasn't much of a Libertarian when he completely bought in to the neocon's propoganda - the ultimate big goverment agenda. He became very aggressive attacking Arabs and critics of the war.
I SUPPORT YOUR RIGHT TO ARM BEARS...
Based on the ones I know, they could probably use a few AKs to defend themselves....
Bob Bar has always been and will always be a far right wing radical repub. Like Gingrich and the rest of them, he practices, the "listen to what I say, not what I do" theory of politics. He's a hypocrit like the majority of them.
Yay, I'm no longer banned from comments!
"right-wing wacko vote"...split between two guys with at least 5 marriages, 1 abortion, and God knows how many affairs.
Beautiful.
A most peculiarly written ad hominem ....
Ad hominem? As in he didn't deal with the message? Like about gun control?
That Ad hominem?
There is no such thing as a problem that the government cannot solve. Take a look at Iraq.
Iraq wasn't a problem until bush illegally and pre-emptively invaded the place. Go warmongers. Peace
Iraq's problem is that they have no viable competent government not that they have too much. The US problem with Iraq is that 1. We have the incompetent persident Georgie running it. 2. That we invaded a soverign country with no real excuse, other than Georgie wanted to. which takes you back to incompetent president.
Government has its uses, there are certain things only government can do. The idiots on the libertarian side can't see that.
Chris: help, please.
I'm in no-man's land. I call myself a non-dogmatic Libertarian with a heart. I'll explain, then I'd like someone to tell me which pigeonhole I should crawl into. :) Talk about asking for it. ).
But, I'm serious.
Take all the Libertarian stuff and add to it the following qualifiers:
--having a social safety net is a good investment (it must be rehabilitative)
--controlling guns makes sense so long as military troops are forbidden to operate on US soil (except if we're invaded by Canada or something--they're been "carping" about salmon, lately) Real hunters have no use for automatic weapons. If you want to own a Rambo special, you can in a certified gun club where the gun cannot leave the premises.
--free markets need regulation (aimed at preventing crime)
--people may be created equal, but are not created with equal talents and opportunity; that needs to be part of all social equations.
--we should abandon all pretensions of empire, downsize the military to a true defensive role
--if we had not tried to secure oil via empire, we'd be energy independent because of free market response
You get the idea. Maybe I'm just a Jacob Javits Republican.
Help. What am I?
Oh, and I like Obama.
Wow! There must be at least two of us.
SOMEONE BADLY IN NEED...
Of a label. My advice to you is: eschew labels. (Gesundheit!)
"What am I?"
A Democrat. Welcome to our big, messy house.
You're a moderate Libertarian. In better times for the Republican party (before the Neo-cons took over) you could have been a Republican.
You can call it the 'common sense' platform.
He can't be a libertarian because: he didn't buy his computer at the flea market, all the doors on his car are the same color, he doesn't self-medicate with colloidal silver, he hasn't figured out how to work sand bags into feng shui, you'll never see him on the roof at night signalling with a flashlight, he doesn't have 40 gallons of formaldehyde in his garage, his eyeglasses don't have yellow lenses, his watch doesn't have a velcro cover over on it, he doesn't buy canned water... He's a fake.
And...his campaign headquarters isn't a combination mobile home-school bus-shipping container that he refers to as "the compound".
:)!!! lol! ..work sand bags into feng shui. That's rich, really good. I see an insomniac Woody Allen character pacing his two a.m. bedroom floor grunting decorator sand bags around the room.
Now that is funny. You just described one of my neighbors and most of the Craigslist rant and rave posters around here.
Shudder.
Two posts in one week? And after such a long dry April, too. Chris Kelly, you rock. And not like they rock on American Idol, either. The good kind of rock.
I'm a registered Libertarian, and I hope Bob Barr will not be the LP nominee. Imagine if Mike Gravel was the LP nominee. Gravel is for ending the War on Drugs, getting rid of the Patriot Act, and a noninterventionist foreign policy. How many Democrat votes would Gravel take from Hillary and Obama?
Mine, at least. Go Gravel!
Just enough to ensure a McCain victory, undoubtedly.
Whats wrong with ending the war on drugs? It has been an abomination that has seen the "cure" be worse than the "disease" - at least in terms of body count amongst the black market dealers and any unlucky bystanders who happened to get in their way. All this still knowing my teenaged kid can get any drug he wants with phone call.
I don't think you are really a libertarian.
I don't think you understand what I'm saying.
I think that individuals should have the right to use drugs, whether for medical or recreational purposes. I am for repealing all drug laws and the abolition of the D.E.A.
I was just flipping this silly dream (for Chris Kelly) of a Bob Barr LP nominee into a nightmare (for Chris Kelly) Mike Gravel LP nominee that would take Democrat votes.
I wouldn't vote for him, but I like his platform.
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