I suspect we’d agree a lot more than we’d disagree :)
FWIW I think most libertarian talking points are crap (especially lately).
I think the whole ‘take some piece of something and blame it for whatever’s wrong’ attitude is sophomoric to the point of being childishly immature. Libertarians do a lot of that publicly, and it’s stupid and narrow-minded. Thus, housecats.
I’d summarize my political position as ‘I think the married gay couple should be able to defend themselves, their marijuana farm, and their adopted children with AR-15 rifles, knowing that if they get hurt and have to go to the hospital, single payer health care will mean they don’t go bankrupt’. I take my positions on their merits, not out of revenge against some apparent problem caused by some group.
I oppose political parties for the same reason George Washington warned us about them in his farewell speech- that they encourage voting based on party loyalty rather than the common good. And that’s in addition to the complaints about the two-party system I’ve already laid out.
I think if we eliminated primaries and let anyone with signatures get on the ballot, that by itself would sufficiently reduce the influence of parties. They could stop being kingmakers and start being more of a broader support structure for ideologically similar (not identical) candidates.
We definitely need more functional parties though. We need minimum of 2, probably better with 4 or 5, and right now between GOP and DNC together we have about 0.8 of one. :(
I suspect we’d agree a lot more than we’d disagree :)
FWIW I think most libertarian talking points are crap (especially lately).
I think the whole ‘take some piece of something and blame it for whatever’s wrong’ attitude is sophomoric to the point of being childishly immature. Libertarians do a lot of that publicly, and it’s stupid and narrow-minded. Thus, housecats.
I’d summarize my political position as ‘I think the married gay couple should be able to defend themselves, their marijuana farm, and their adopted children with AR-15 rifles, knowing that if they get hurt and have to go to the hospital, single payer health care will mean they don’t go bankrupt’. I take my positions on their merits, not out of revenge against some apparent problem caused by some group.
I oppose political parties for the same reason George Washington warned us about them in his farewell speech- that they encourage voting based on party loyalty rather than the common good. And that’s in addition to the complaints about the two-party system I’ve already laid out.
I think if we eliminated primaries and let anyone with signatures get on the ballot, that by itself would sufficiently reduce the influence of parties. They could stop being kingmakers and start being more of a broader support structure for ideologically similar (not identical) candidates.
We definitely need more functional parties though. We need minimum of 2, probably better with 4 or 5, and right now between GOP and DNC together we have about 0.8 of one. :(