With Libertarianism and justice for all

[vovat]

For more radio fun, I listened to Michael Badnarik, the Libertarian Presidential candidate, being interviewed on NPR. I thought he came across as fairly rude and not too bright. (Brighter than Bush, I suppose, but then so are most potted plants.) Really, he struck me as being pretty similar to the Family Radio fundamentalist types, only instead of "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus," it was "private property, private property, private property." Yes, there are areas in which I think the government has too much control. The thing is, though, who doesn't? I'm sure if you asked Democrats, Republicans, and even Socialists, most of them are not going to say, "Yes, I want the government interfering in every aspect of my life!" There's certainly some disagreement among the different political parties in terms of exactly when the government SHOULD be allowed to interfere, but not wanting a lot of interference isn't an idea on which the Libertarians have a monopoly. Libertarianism, as least as explained by Badnarik (who might not represent the views of all people who consider themselves to be libertarians), seems to be based on easy answers and buzzwords. For instance, he said that criminals are people who don't respect private property. Also, Columbine was apparently caused by Ritalin (something with which the host of the program actually took issue), and a lack of restrictions on gun ownership would result in less crime. In addition, Badnarik used the word "steal" so often, you'd think he was a representative of the RIAA. It's a word that gets a reaction, even when used in a fashion that might not be entirely appropriate. So, yeah, even if I thought Badnarik had a chance of winning, I wouldn't vote for him.

Comments

[revme.livejournal.com]

Well, I think what it is is that Libertarianism is a Economically Right-Wing philosophy, but Socially-Left-Wing. So I think that's why it tends to get grouped in that lump -- just because it seems that the more economic issues get more play in the media (i.e. corporate consolidation/impropriety; environmentalism; jobs/layoffs), so when that's mostly of what you hear about, since stuff like, say, drug legalization usually doesn't really come up in the news all that much, except when, like, NORML does a rally or there's a Medical Marijuana initative or something. (And, oddly enough, censorship issues NEVER come up in the media, which has always struck me as weird since, y'know, the free press is sorta the media's bread and butter...)

A while ago, there were a bunch of articles about "South Park Republicans". And how all these young kids were This Weird Brand Of Republican Mostly Seeming To Have The Same Sensibility As South Park, and I'm thinking to myself "Oh yeah, those? They're LIBERTARIANS, IDIOTS." Since, well, it seems pretty clear to me that Trey and Matt are Libertarians, at least Closer To That than most anything else. So... yeah. I dunno. I just thought it was amusingly stupid.