I was going to respond to Erik's comment on my last blathering, but it quickly became too large for a comment, and needed to be a whole post.
Interesting, so where do you go to read up on politics for the various candidates? Is there a /. just for political issues (the politics discussed on /. aren't enough for a person trying to learn about the issues that differ between candidates).
The short answer is, lots of places. The long answer follows, and turns into a bit more of an exposition of my political beliefs and thoughts.
Well, there are several issues that I consider more important than most others, or that I consider a tell on a poltician. If a politician wants to disarm the populace (take away guns) or some portion of the populace(Those whose guns are too cheap -- "Saturday Night Specials" (I'll leave off the full saying, we can discuss that another time) or too expensive -- "Assault Weapons" (check the archives of this site before you believe what any politician says the ban covers)), I probably won't support him. That's not to say that I am a single issue voter, merely that the gun issue is a good polarizing lens to look through. Someone who doesn't trust his constituents to be armed probably shouldn't have constituents.
Economic issues are a similar matter. I believe that government can do no good. Government only makes things worse when it messed with the economy, or anything else, really.
I started out following the CATO Institute on a lot of things -- they're big on both social and economic freedom.
After a while, I started to go more towards the Mises Institute, they're even bigger for economic freedom and minarchist state(if any state). The Mises Institute is very closely related to Lew Rockwell.com (Lew is the President of Mises), and I tend to enjoy a lot of the LRC articles and views, although many of the authors tend to be more of the Paleo-conservative bent than all out Libertarian.
To me, though, that's okay. A step in the Paleo-Conservative direction would be a step in the Libertarian direction, for several steps at least. At some point, they might diverge, but for a good long time, they're the same direction. For a better idea of what Paleo-Conservatives stand for, check out Wikipedia's article. An important thing to remember is that the Democrats of today are not really liberals. They are Progressives(so are the Greens, if not outright Socialists). Libertarians will often refer to themselves as 'Classical Liberals'. That's what a liberal was up until Teddy Roosevelt swiped the name for his unsuccessful bid for the presidency with the Progressive Party.
If you want to see where you stand, Political Compass is a great place, and a bit more in-depth than the Libertarian Party's similar quiz. It should be noted though, that these quizzes do tend to push you to pick answers you think will get you the response you want.
For me, the change from dis-interested in politics to interested came when I started to get into gun rights issues. The swing towards the Libertarian end started when I realized that the Republicans don't really support gun rights, and no longer are economically conservative, and the Democrats are outright against gun rights, and no more economically conservative than the Republicans. (not all of them are, but as a party the majority are. Kerry is among the top 5 anti-gun votes in the Senate.)
I'm also very interested in social freedoms, which the Democrats are better for at the moment, but not great on(for instance, the Johns are no so sure on the Patriot Act now, but they did vote for it.) Since the Republicans are sliding more away from social freedoms, and then Dems will run scared from them if they think it suits them, I can't support either of them in that respect. I have a better way. The government just shouldn't be involved in those social issues. Screw it. Why is it any of the government's business if two men or two women want to be married? Why should be government even care what a marriage is? Why did I have to ask the government for permission to marry my wife? Realize that 40 years ago, and a few states away, they wouldn't have given it. It's absolutely insane that the government, and by extension, the people, should be able to have any say in these
kind of relationships a person can have, and who they can have them with.
When I started this blathering (the original is even in a directory called blatherings), I was just going to talk about political sites a little. Well, that didn't happen -- but I'll say a little bit more before I finish it. The ACLU is a great place to look for some things; take it with a grain of salt. They're all for 9 of the first 10 amendments. Again, not that the gun issue is or should be the only one that matters, just that it tells a lot.
I've come to believe that you can't have social freedom without economic freedom, and it gets to be quite a long story that I'll have to address another time, so I'll just finish this up by pointing anyone who hasn't seen it yet at this: Introduction to the Philosophy of Liberty.
I should also add one further thing -- when I talk about economics, I should really note that I follow Austrian Economics, and feel that Keynesian Economics were throughly disproven by the stagflation of the '70s.
Unfortunately, the politicians of, well, the world, got themselves out of hot water by dipping their feet into the Austrian pool, but are now running back to the Keynesian pool, because it suits their thirst for power better. For more information on how things changed, especially in the early to mid '90s, read The Commanding Heights -- it's really an excellent book. The series of it that was on PBS is great, too, I believe you can stream it all from their website.
Mises.org explains the Austrian school much better than I could. You'll also find that Mises has a few disagreements with one of the heros of the book, Milton Friedmann, well-founded, I might add(chiefly on government control of money -- ie, central banking/Federal Reserve).
Hmmm...not sure if your aware (or maybe you like it this way) but your rss feed cuts your post after about 100 characters.
Wow, that's a lot to go on, thanks Chris!
Also, I agree with what you said about needing economic freedom in order to obtain social freedom to a certain degree but I think it will be difficult to gain total freedom socially and economically from our government. It's definitely something that won't happen overnight, I think a good solution is to progressively make compromise after compromise that works out more in the favor of the people than the government. Unfortunately I don't see that happening much in the issues I have looked at up to this point.
Glad you liked it.
The thing is (I'll go a little Randian here,) to compromise with Evil is to support Evil.
Granted, if you want to be a part of society, and work in a sanctioned job (ie, legally -- for dollars instead of gold or cars or oil, booze, whatever -- and pay taxes on what you've worked for) you pretty much have to accept the government's control over that.
Part of the problem is that today, we have two big poltical parties, and a whole array of smaller parties and their candidates, but only one, or maybe two (Libertarian and Constitution) actually want to decrease the size of government.
Reagan campaigned on decreasing the size and scope of government, but didn't really do so once he was in office.
Actually, I think Clinton campaigned on something similar.
Up until the news started breaking right after the first debate that there were record numbers of registered voters, I was really kind of hoping to see a record low turnout this year. The Kerry campaign has really done a good job of re-igniting the anti-Bush attitudes that have been there since ... maybe early 2002.
The reason I want to see a low turnout, is that the last several elections have seen around 50% of the eligible population voting. That's been followed by about 49% of them voting for each candidate.
Which, of course, means that under 25% of the eligible voters liked the candidate (or disliked his opponent) enough to come out and vote.
At some point, the government starts to lose legitimacy. It can't do as much. Maybe it even starts getting pared back a bit. Or, it just becomes irrelevent. People start paying for things in cash. People start paying employees in cash, and just openly ignoring income tax laws. A whole new economy forms, without government involvement.
The government starts looking to raise taxes to keep it's incomes up. That makes more people drop out of the 'official' economy. Eventually they start cutting back on services, maybe even start selling off some things(bases in Germany?)
Not to say that this is the only way for things to go, or the right way, or even an improvement. Just some interesting thoughts on what the transition to a post-government country (or maybe I should say confederacy/union) could look like.
Final thought for the moment:
Every tax increase or new tax is the government implicitly saying that it knows better what to do with what you've worked to earn than you do.
I'm at work and have to make this short. I agree with a lot of your points, but on gun rights, are you advocating no limits on guns? I'm all for owning whatever guns you want, but there have to be limits. There are limits on everything else in society, ie. drivers exams, speed limits, dog tags, what temp. the hot coffee can be, etc., but suddenly when it comes to guns (which I own several) every idiot deserves one. I think that unless you can prove you're not an idiot, you don't deserve one. Back when the constitution was written, you had to be smart enough to nearly make your own weapon, let alone maintain it and use it to put food on the table. If you shot at the neighbors, they could shoot back. Now there are no limits and guns are exponentially more dangerous and idiot proof. I have no hard time with making people take tests to get a gun, or have a waiting period. If you prove that you can operate one safely, go buy a snub nose .38 or a HK93, whatever you want, but you got to earn it. I don't think Kerry has voted for anything much more restrictive than that. Any one who says they can't wait 5 days to buy a gun waited too long, here's some tissues.
Thanks for the site, I look forward to checking out the links to economic data. I really agree with you that Democrats aren't liberal. and consevatives are no longer economically conservative. If it weren't for Bush, I wouldn't vote for Kerry. Now Nader makes me regret voting for him in the past.
To be honest, I'm not entirely ready to say that there should be *no* limits, although I may be ready to say that the federal government should not have the power to put those limits in place.
I tend to defray on the idea to the old 'an armed society is a polite society'. As to questions of things like a waiting period, my view is that what other rights are you willing to wait for? Wait a few days before you can speak out on an election? Of course not. Only quarter soldiers for a few days? Of course not.
As I may have said before somewhere in my ramblings, I am actually fairly new to the libertarian philosophy as a whole (note the small 'l', not necessarily meaning the LP). I may have some of this wrong, but the basic idea is the view of Negative Rights, rather than Positive Rights.
For instance, Negative Rights means you don't have the rigth to hit me -- your right to swing your fist stops at my nose. Negative Rights means that the congress does not have the right to regulate speech. I really wish the Right to Keep and Bear Arms was written as a Negative Right in the Constitution (ie, Congress shall make no law infringing the ownership or use of arms.)
Positive Rights means things like "I have the right to healthcare!" It's a nice thought, but try to exercise that (in the reductio-ad-absurdum case) without interfering with someone's (probably a physician's) rights. It doesn't work.
Back to what you were adressing: When it comes to tests, I can't believe that something like that (government testing of people for firearms knowledge/safe handling) could last more than a year or two before it was abused beyond belief. Look at what happened with the 'May Issue' system of Concealed Pistol Licenses (here in Michigan) -- being in Wayne County, I still will have a hard time getting one, simply because Wayne County is quite anti-gun. A few years ago, I wouldn't be able to, because they just wouldn't issue one to me. Someone who carries a lot of money can protect themselves. A working stiff like me can't.
Anyway, though, I'll probably get another nice big rant going when I get home...
Oh, and as for Kerry's voting record, yea, I'll get into that when I get home, as well. I'll just start with a real simple one -- with the lawsuit pre-emption bill (s.1805) before the Senate in early March, he voted to attach Senator Keneddy's amendment to ban "armor piercing" ammunition to the bill. The amendment didn't pass, and neither did the underlying bill, but the amendment would have banned .30-30, .30-06, .308, and .223.
I suppose we'd still have 7mm, 8mm, and shot to hunt with, right? But .30-30? Give me a break.
What really does Kerry in for me, is more that he doesn't seem to know what the laws he voted for did.
Okay, I'd like to come back and address the gun control issues a bit more. I believe that in the previous comment I've addressed why I dislike Kerry -- even without touching his views on gun control, he doesn't seem to know what the law he voted for did. Must not have read so far as the second section (short name) of it -- or he lied about it.
I'll leave off the other licensing issues for the moment, and just address the gun rights field. I'd say that the government needs to show that someone is an idiot before they get to say that said person can't be armed.
I'd further say that licensing, or registration will lead to confiscation. It's happened in places like New Zealand, Canada, Great Britain, California, or even Chicago. It should be noted that when the California law talks about assault weapons, what they really mean is ugly black semi-automatic rifles.
Registration leads to confiscation. Licensing leads to choosing who is eligible, on whatever basis the petty beurocrats choose. Witness Wayne County, where in 1999, they just wouldn't have issued me a concealed pistol license(not that I tried, wasn't really interested at that time), and someone who was really cynical might think that they wouldn't give someone like me a license because I hadn't contributed to the sheriff's re-election campaign.
As to waiting periods, do they really help? Prevent crime? What do they actually do? I'd like the gun-control side of the debate to answer those questions.
To be fair, I've gotten to be quite radical in my support of gun rights, and have drawn most of my sources from similar pro-gun websites. If you start doing a lot of reading on gun control/gun rights issues, you do quickly realize that while the gun control side has a few arguements and points, a good deal of what they suggest is based on made-up statistics, emotional arguements("Won't somebody please think of the children!?!"), and similar arguements. For a very fair and well-reasoned(and especially well-cited) collection of articles on gun rights, I recommend Gun Cite. It's really an excellent site.
Having never bought purchased a gun I don't know much about the process and the laws but I'm curious where the line should be drawn then when it comes to gun control?
I like the point that the government should have to show that a person is an "idiot" before denying them a gun. I don't know if that's what the waiting period is for but if it is, then yes, I believe that does prevent at least repeated crimes by providing time to do a criminal background check. I know there are privacy issues here and I have my own views on how they should be handled, later perhaps.
Okay, so I'm also at work and have been trying to type more for over an hour now with no success. I'll have to read/write more later.
All of this should be taken to only include Michigan. Other states are different.
To buy a long gun, you pick the one you want, fill out a BATFE form, answering a whole array of questions, and not abbreviating anything (not even state.) After this, the clerk or FFL holder calls up the NICS check system, which reports ALLOW, DENY, or DELAY. In the case of a DELAY, the FBI has 3 days to let the FFL know up or down, after which it turns into an ALLOW.
For a pistol sale, us non-CPL holders go to our local police department and ask for a permit to purchase a handgun. They call and do a check on us, in addition to a bunch of other stuff that takes 15 - 20 minutes (such as a test that is so easy it makes the driver's test look like an SAT.) After that, you have a purchase permit, that you take to the shop, and pick out the pistol you want. The shop fills out some things on the form, and you fill out the same form as you would for a long gun (4473), but there is no call to NICS (the police have taken care of that.) After the sale is completed, you have a time to take the pistol to the police for a "safety check". It's really registration, you can tell that by the number of police officers performing said check who don't know how to open the action.
For more info on this, check out Packing.org or Michigan Colition for Responsible Gun Ownership. Both are great resources.
I'll maybe go into the gun control debates and such a bit later on -- my views on how things should be. In 1950, a 12 year old could ride his bike to the hardware store and buy a .22 rifle. He could do this because he was trusted to use it responsibly. What changed? What can be done to make a 12 year old responsible to go buy his own gun at a hardware store again?