I am libertarian. I ran as a Libertarian (Notice the difference in “L’s”) for State Representative. I support libertarian causes and philosophy. So take what I am about to say as Constructive Criticism.
When I went to the Utah Libertarian Party Caucus in SLC during my Candidacy, I looked around and listened to the other people there. The event was quite interesting. Before the event there was a little get together over some food just across the street from where the meeting was to be held (at the SL County Library) and I talked with the other Candidates.
Brilliant people, and good people. Professionals in Law and Business and Healthcare fields. Yes, the Ogre sat down at a table of Doctors, Lawyers and Business Executives, and no one got strangled… because we were all on the same page there. I thought this was fantastic. If these are my fellow Libertarians (I was a Card Carrying Member) we will do very well as a party.
Well, not so much. I might be wrong, but I don’t think anyone won their race. I garnered the highest percentage of the vote for my district out of all the other candidates. Maybe it was a money issue. In my race, it sure was. I didn’t have the funds to get my message out. But for the State of Utah as a whole, the Party should have done better. Because the message, when received, resonates with people. The problem though is getting that message received. Freedom of Speech isn’t saying that people will listen to you. Back at the Caucus meeting, I saw the problem. A good solid portion of the Libertarians there were hippies and stoners who all they could talk about was Drug Legalization. Come on. This is Utah. That just doesn’t represent the good and solid side of the Libertarian equation. The Utah Libertarian Party was still recovering from that clown SuperDell, having run for Governor on the Libertarian ticket, having been arrested for pulling a gun on a guy in some road rage incident. Then the head of the Utah Libertarian Party got this great newspaper article… with a photo that made him look like an Occupy Wall Street type vagrant, and it mentioned his office… above a sex shop. Yeah, that right there probably killed the chances for more than a few Candidates. Again, this is Utah. Not Nevada or California… But Utah.
The Utah Party needs to put people up, front and center, that look like they represent Utah. Like some of the quieter people I met that day… Those professional guys. Have those guys do the Interviews and get their pictures taken. Not me… I’m not that guy. Someone with a full head of hair and an expensive suite and looks like they sell Movie Contracts or something. Or a lady, like our own version of Sarah Palin. Hot Librarian look to her, smart, with a voice that doesn’t sound like nails on a chalkboard. But we need that Charismatic person to lead the party. And lets NOT nominate Stoner as the Libertarian Candidate. If the Party in Utah wants to be taken seriously… Don’t talk about drugs. Don’t talk about Abortion. And if asked, “That’s between them and God” and move on. And in Utah, don’t support it. It’s not going to get you votes here.
On the national level, the Libertarian’s number one Front Man is a dweeb in a poorly fitting suit who has some great domestic policy ideas… but not only does he completely fail on foreign policy, but he has a history of Anti-Semitic comments that further turn people off.
Libertarians need a good Front Man. Charismatic like a rock star. “Clean and articulate” as Joe Biden said of Obama. We need someone who doesn’t just have the ideas… but has the Leadership. We need someone other than Ron Paul as the center focus of the Party.
I read some time ago that Dennis Leary was a Libertarian. He’s make a better Front Man. At least he’s entertaining and makes you listen to him.
Gary Johnson made anti-semitic comments? Gary Johnson fails on foreign policy? Last I checked GJ is the LP candidate for POTUS.
Don’t think he has charisma? You obviously haven’t seen the man speak. Rock star? More like rock climber, the dude is an actual athlete instead of a community organizer or god knows what Romney does in his free time.
Gary Johnson isnt the guy people Identify with as the Libertarian leader. Who the hell is he? I’ve not heard anything about him or from him.
You talk about Libertarians – And even Libertarians talk – They are talking Ron Paul.
I agree with Joey. It sounds like you are talking about Ron Paul, a Republican, not Gary Johnson the Libertarian candidate for President.
Though, I have to agree with you on the not nominating nut bags. The last governor’s race in Texas had a Libertarian candidate that was both a Truther and a Birther, and on immigration was more extreme than Sheriff Joe in Phoenix. I also think Libertarians need to win more local races before we stand a chance at national races.
If we can get some sane libertarians with money to run for some local races, that would be best.
The Libertarian pages I’ve been looking at – not Libertarian Party Official, mind you – all they talk about is Ron Paul.
I think part of what you are seeing is the difference between big “L” Libertarians and small “l” libertarians.
Big “L” Libertarians are also Paulians. They tend to be more toward the anarchist views and generally believe every word that falls out of the mouth of Alex Jones.
Small “l” libertarians tend to be more rational. We (I consider myself one) are generally more about personal liberty than anything else. Generally we do believe in marijuana legalization. But, that is based on the fact that criminalization is not doing any good, and its use is what we call a victimless crime. As long as everyone involved is an adult and has given their consent, we do not think it’s anyone’s business.
Oh, BTW, I’m not voting for Romney. But, I’m in Texas. Right now, if Jesus Christ came to Earth and told people in this state not to vote Republican, I would bet that the Republican nominee would still be likely to carry the state.
And that’s the problem with party-line, “lesser of two evils” voting.
Of states that actually allow carry, Texas isn’t even in the top half when it comes to gun freedom. Because so many will vote for anyone, no matter how anti-gun, as long as he has an “R” next to his name, or if his opponent is 1% more evil than he is.
See, that’s what I was getting at when I was talking about Third Parties.
They have no traction because of this. We’ve got to take states at the Ground Floor and work up. You build a house starting with the Foundation. To build up, you first have to dig down. And Libertarians have yet to do that, but they shake the trees like crazy when it comes to the big stuff and ignore the Foundation.
Never heard of Gary Johnson, I’m sure he’s awesome, but when the general public thinks of libertarians, they think of crazy uncle Ron Paul, and they think FRINGE.
Most people probably are libertarian but they don’t know it, and they haven’t heard a normal person make a normal argument in favor of it.
The legalize drugs argument? That says ‘We are potheads. We are lazy moochers. That would rather sit and giggle the day away.” You know how that argument is defeated? One news story about a stack of heads being left by the DRUG CARTELS.
The libertarian argument is the American dream. Freedom to make yourself into whatever you want as long as you don’t hurt anyone else in the process.
Banning drugs is what created the drug cartels, and makes them all their money. It’s only the “War on Drugs” that lets them take inexpensive plant products (stuff that would cost less than sugar) and turn thousands of percent profit on it.
Anyone who supports the drug war, is working for the cartels.
“It’s only the “War on Drugs” that lets them take inexpensive plant products (stuff that would cost less than sugar) and turn thousands of percent profit on it.”
Good, that’s a rational argument (though thin on specifics). We need more of that.
“Anyone who supports the drug war, is working for the cartels.”
Aaaand, bullshit.
Nailed it. Most people end up as Libertarians by process of elimination. First, Democrat because your parents and grandparents were and also the hot chick in English Lit. 101. Then, Republican because, well, you actually have a brain. Then, Libertarian because, well, the Republicans were such a disappointment.
When you get there you find every meeting populated by single issue zealots in such numbers as to completely overshadow everyone else who seeks pragmatic solutions to various problems.
You also find that you are played big time by the two dominant parties. As in voter registrations where you fill in the blank “party affiliation” with the obligatory “LIB.” only to find that the county recorder now lists you as a member of the Liberal party even though no such party has registered with said office. Really? WTF?
Play this game for ten or twelve years and get really tired of the nonsense. Then return to the Republican party with a resolve to take over that existing structure and make it work like it is supposed to. And that is why the national Libertarian party will never be anything other than an annoying footnote in American politics.
I think that sounds pretty accurate to me.
But I don’t think any of that matters here. I think “The Problem with Libertarians” as concerns this group, is that they aren’t going to vote for Romney. And 99% of them won’t. That’s true.
However, out of the large numbers of people who aren’t going to vote for Romney, the Libertarians are an extremely small percentage. Much of the disgust, moral outrage and frustration surrounding the Libertarians is misplaced. They aren’t that big of a factor. We have people cursing them and looking under their beds for them before they go to sleep at night, and it’s just wasted energy.
The LP is a debate club for militant nerds. They don’t have the fulcrum to help or hurt Romney. What will damage him more is the disenfranchised former Republicans who find him emotionally and politically repulsive.
There’s a lot more of those than there are Libertarians. Trying to shame the Libertarians into quiet non-existence in hopes that they will knuckle down and vote for Romney is tilting at windmills.
Good post and all true. Last I checked though, Rob Paul is a Republican. Although his ideas are Libetarian and so he is identified with the movement. That and he ran on that ticket years ago. He is smart enough to be Republican, because you are correct, LP is going nowhere. There will be no 3rd party splitting the vote in this election on either side. Just independants and hard liners not voting.
Ron Paul is also retiring, and someone needs to step up to take his ideas forward on the national scene. He has never run thinking he will actually be voted in. It’s been a stage to get his message out. And it’s been expremely successful. Whether you like him or not, it’s most likely the reason you became a card carrying member. It’s what the Republican Party used to believe in.
I like his common sense logic on almost all topics, even the foreign relations. I think he is misunderstood there most, and the media does a good job convincing you that he is an Isolationist.
Yeah, there’s a difference between “isolationist” and “noninterventionist.” For example, he immediately proposed, after the September 11th attacks, that Congress issue letters of Marque and Reprisal against al Queda, bin laden, et al. Don’t go to war; just treat the terrorists with the laws that were already built into the Constitution to deal with pirates and other non-State evildoers. The Constitution, for all its flaws, did have clauses set up to deal with things like terrorism, and to do so within the law, rather than carrying out illegal wars (a war without a formal declaration is, by definition, unconstitutional and illegal – that’s just the plain truth).
And he did say that, if he was Commander in Chief, and Congress declared war, he would carry out his duties to the best of his ability.
Johnson/Paul would have been the best possible Republican ticket. There’s a good argument that the reason Paul actually got press this time around, is because the MSM were terrified of Johnson, and figured they had to put one on screen if they were going to ignore the other.
Johnson’s a down-to-earth American. Climbs mountains, built his own house, could probably survive if dumped in the wilderness (I think that would be a good test for all Presidential candidates), etc.
Paul could sit back as VP and be the “elder statesman,” which is the role where he does best.
Look for Ron’s son, Rand to inherit his father’s political machine and further the Paul version of the libertarian message.
Getting libertarians to move in the same direction…which requires at LEAST the capacity to drop a political issue or two and focus on what you have in COMMON with the other Libertarians…seems to be something most libertarians are incapable of doing.
Dropping all taxes, legalizing drugs, switching back to a gold standard…everything is all or nothing. There’s no such thing as incremental forward movement of the ideas. Even Rand is more radical than most folks can handle.
The biggest obstacle, aside from the unwillingness/inability of starting with being the best damn dogcatcher ever and working up from there, is the passionate “drug warriors” (or more accurately, anti-Drug War drug warriors).
Perhaps it’s just me (I doubt it), but I believe people are most passionate about things that matter the most to them. So when I see somebody who’s passionate about drug legalization, then I see somebody who’s passionate about getting high.
And I’ve got zero interest in putting somebody who is passionate about getting high anywhere near government. I doubt very much that I’m the only one who feels that way.
Really? Why would you believe that someone can only care about something if it benefits them, personally?
Some folks have, you know, principles.
One of the main reasons he is for legalizing drugs is that it will put the cartels out of business, like ending Prohibition ended much of the mob violence.
He rails on the War on Drugs in Manifesto and the monumental waste of money fighting a losing battle. Further he predicted that the war on drugs will turn even more violent and start to spill over into American towns. Real crazy Dude, I know…
Aside from that, the majority of the restrictions on gun ownership and other critical rights like that, have been because if the “necessities” of the “war on drugs.”
The whole thing exists solely to give them an excuse to ignore the Constitution.
Guys,
I’m not the only one who sees this problem. From above:
“A good solid portion of the Libertarians there were hippies and stoners who all they could talk about was Drug Legalization. Come on. This is Utah.”
Even outside of Utah, this is a problem. While there are certainly principled libertarians who have no interest in getting high, their message is undercut by the stoners.
The Drug Question represents the fundamental weakness of the libertarian philosophy as a principle of governance, while also putting it’s strengths on display. It doesn’t deal at all well with indirect consequences. There is an array of behaviors that are destructive to the social fabric that libertarian philosophy either can not, or will not grapple with. These are behaviours that directly, or indirectly, attack the most important characteristic for social cohesion, trust. While libertarians are willing to address untrustworthy behavior in economic relationships, that’s as far as they go.
Drug use is not a problem because somebody, somewhere, may be having fun. It’s a problem because it it increases the level of irresponsibility and untrustworthiness. Whether or not the Drug War as it’s being waged is the correct approach is certainly debateable (and I come down on the highly skeptical side), the libertarian approach of saying “drug use doesn’t matter” is fundamentally naive and/or unserious. And that’s what we hear from the “principled” libertarians. Add in the voices of the stoners and hippies and voila, you’ve got a recipe for appearing fundamentally unserious about the matter of governance. Which is a pity, because there is, from my perspective as a small government, social conservative, a great deal of value in libertarian arguments.
The libertarian approach is not saying that “drug use doesn’t matter.”
That happens to be true, of course – /use/ of drugs is of no real import. 99.9% of the population uses drugs on a semi-regular basis (alcohol, tobacco, Tylenol, Advil, marijuana, or whatever), so the mere use of drugs is not of any critical social import.
Be that as it may, drug /abuse/ is definitely a problem. The libertarian approach is to say that substance abuse is a medical issue, and should be dealt with as such. Abusing any drug can have disasterous consequences (Tylenol is probably the most dangerous drug anyone who doesn’t have an unpronounceable illness is ever likely to encounter – the safety margin before overdose makes crack and heroin look safe, and the near-total lethality of Tylenol overdose cases makes it look even worse), and any society has to address things like that. Societies which have chosen to address medical problems as medical problems, rather than criminal issues, have had dramatic benefits as a result.
The “indirect consequences” of the drug war far exceed the consequences if every stoner was given free drugs for life.
Libertarians are not serious.
If they were they would show up in years that do not contain a
Presidential race. Until they are willing to field candidates every year, and for local races
my first statement will be true. That’s unfortunate.
This.
I was the state chair for the LP in Oregon for two years.
I didn’t see how a serious political organization worked until I got active in the Republican Party in Wyoming.
The foundation of any successful party are the folks at the county level. You need a county organization that is actively trying to fill all of the local positions. This requires at least an active person from every other precinct.
Then you need to do the same for ALL counties in your state. And repeat this process for every state.
You have to have a core of dedicated volunteers in each county, and they need to get a serious candidate for ALL positions that are available.
The typical LP state org has a few folks from the more populous counties, maybe a few from rural counties who talk via email, and show up at the state convention, and bunch of stoners, truthers, and outright nutjobs who have discovered that if they give lip service to the non-aggression pledge, and parrot a few lines, they can get Libertarians to give them a platform for their particular bonnet-bees.
When someone does actually show up to run for office, only rarely does the nominee actually do more than talk to newsies to do “outreach”.
This is great for pimping screeds to the media, but it will only rarely fill offices, and when it does, it is for things like dog catcher, or water board commissioner.
In many states, Libertarians do not have ballot access. The two largest parties have blatantly conspired to deny all other parties access, in the majority of America. In many places, it’s been as blatant as a third party winning access by gaining some particular percentage of the vote, and then the law being changed to increase the percentage before the next election.
So, whereas the Republicans and Democrats have automatic access, any third parties have to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars /per race/ to get enough signatures on that ballot. Kind of hard to justify spending that kind of money to get on a ballot for a local election.
I got ballot access in Oregon for two years. I didn’t whine about it, I just did the work needed.
The problem the Libertarian Party has is that it does not have enough bodies to make these tasks easy.
You can whine all you want about ballot access … the two big parties just pay major party status filing fees out of their small change fund every year, and if they need signatures, just task the county conventions to gather them.
Yes, ballot access is hard when you only have a handfull of folks to work with.
The rules are different in each state. In some, ballot access is automatic for certain named parties, and prohibitively expensive for others.
You have professional politicians there in Oregon, getting paid a pretty good salary (especially considering how little work a legislator actually has to do). It’s easy to afford such things when you have a system like that, paid for by the taxpayers.
Here in NH, we pay legislators $100/year. And we have one of the largest legislatures in the world. So, the ratio of Representatives to Constituents is very high, and is made up of actual citizens, not professional politicians. A typical State Rep candidate spends $500-3000, total, on his campaign. There’s no money to spend on playing games, and we like it that way, because it means there’s no money to be wasted on bribes, nor any “favors” owed for large donors.
Oh, and do be sure to vote down my posts for making the mistake of trying to show Libertarians this reality thing.
Oh, Kristopher. Don’t get so upset when they vote you down…you know you’re the best Kristopher you can be! I’ll vote you up to make you feel better.
Gee, thanx stomper!
From the 2 major party’s where would the LP draw the vote from? Example: 70% out of Republican Party and 30% out of the Dems? OR would it be 50/50?
I believe that Ross Perot cost George H. W. Bush the 92 election and Ralph Nader cost Al Gore the 2000 election. In order for any 3rd party to be relevant it would need to pull almost equally from the other 2 party’s.
Actually, if a minor party can pull enough votes away from /one/ of the other parties, then it can, indeed, have relevancy by forcing that particular party to win its votes.
If the GOP was smart, it would court the libertarian vote, because the libertarian vote can hurt or help the GOP quite a lot. The DNC would lose much of their base by changing enough to win over libertarians, but all the GOP would have to do, would be to actually /do/ what they /say/ when it comes to the economy, and libertarians would vote for their candidates in droves. And they would not lose much of their base, if they just walked the things they keep talking.
That’s what’s happened here in NH. In the “Live Free Or Die” State, running as a Republican but espousing libertarian ideas, is the best way to win a state-level election in any contested district. The NH Republican Party realized a while ago that aligning themselves in a far-more-libertarian direction than the national GOP was the way to win over those swing votes.
If the libertarian vote was smart, they would join the Republican Party, and take it over at the precinct level, and end up owning it.
People who actually show up and do the work are damned hard to come by. The ones who do end up owning the party lock stock and barrel.
This. This is very true. It only takes a few Libertarians to turn things around if they get out there, become Delegates, put in some effort.
Yeah, we’ve done that, here in NH. Not at the “precinct level,” though, since we really don’t have anything like that. The districts are too small due to our high level of representation, for there to be any sort of party aparatus at that level. It was taken over directly at the State level. The largest chunk of that took place, however, in response to the threat that libertarians posed to them during the last decade. Without telling, and demonstrating, that libertarians could, and would, swing the vote, there would have been no reason for them to toe the line.
In my district, we have libertarians running under both parties, this fall. So, you can choose between a libertarian with a “D” next to his name, or a libertarian with an “R” next to his name.
At this point, the NH Republican Party is more libertarian than a large chunk of the national LP.
For example, the Republican House and Senate just passed medical marijuana… the Democratic governor vetoed it. The House had enough votes to over-ride the veto. So did the Senate, until two Democrats changed their votes in order to avoid “embarassing” their buddy. But Lynch isn’t running for reelection (he’s been getting over-ridden left and right), so that will get fixed soon.
We’ve consistently had the best gun laws in the country, and just keep making them better. We removed the antiquated switchblade ban (may be the only time one has ever been repealed, according to some commentators). We’ve cut budgets in a time when others have been bragging that they managed to keep their budget from growing quite as quickly. There have been SEIU riots, and the legislature stood firm and chopped their pay and benefits. The reductions in taxes and regulations have caused businesses to pack up their operations in other states and move here. We’ve passed laws to forbid agencies within NH from participating in the implementation of Obamacare (can’t stop the Feds, but if they want to set up their insurance exchanges and such, they’ll have to do it all, themselves, rather than requiring the State to supply the work).
Maybe distance has clouded things, but I can’t recall hearing what’s been achieved in Oregon, lately…
Oregon is not my problem anymore.
I moved to Wyoming once the socialist retards completely took over my old home state.
Voting themselves into the highest income tax rate in the nation at that time ( it was .3% higher then California’s top rate ) was the last straw for me.
arg. “than”, not “then”.
The question still applies. If your method is the “right” one, then clearly you have some results to show for it? I mean, it would be reasonable to expect some sort of objective evidence to back up your claims, right?
What has actually been achieved, in the real world, bu this method you support?
Because I’ve heard folks talking about this method of yours for decades, and all I’ve seen in most places is this country sliding down into the muck…
So, please enlighten me as to where your method has been used to actualy achieve positive results.
Ah … you want me to post some kind of result?
How about getting people actually elected? Something big L Libertarians can’t get done? Do you want a say in who gets nominated? Then I suggest actually participating, instead of doing endless outreach for a third party that never wins, and not getting people elected.
I’ll put the shoe on your foot, instead: Show us something the Libertarian Party has actually done.
Anything, please.
I’m not an LP member. As I’ve said before, I can’t stand those fools.
But I’m not really interested in hearing about how you got “someone” elected. Obama is “someone,” and if you helped get him elected, I’d hope you would not brag about it.
I want to know about you getting folks elected who actually changed things, in a positive way. You say that you’ve invested energy and gotten involved. What has been the return on that investment? You’ve invested, particular politicians have gotten elected, and they’ve done certain things while in office… what things have they done, for which you can be proud that you helped get them into office? What has your investment actually achieved in the real world?
In my admittedly limited experience, most libertarians seem happier complaining about not getting everything they want, and smugly dismissing it as everyone else being too stupid or too “statist” to “get” them, than they are putting in the time and effort required to effectuate any change.
The country didn’t get this screwed up overnight. But because too many people are happier being political hipsters than they are actually doing work, it’s never going to get unscrewed.
And as for 9/11…Congress hadn’t issued a letter of marquee or reprisal in a very long time. The time to start prattling on about reintroducing an archaic method of applying power is NOT the day after the country has suffered the worst attack on its soil since the 19th century, with thousands of Americans dead. When you do stuff like that, you sound like a dipshit. Ron Paul, good man though he may be, frequently sounds like a dipshit.
Besides, Article One, Section Eight of the Constitution says “Congress shall have power to declare War”. After 9/11 Congress authorized the President to carry out a military response. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that Congress has to head the bill with the phrase “declaration of war” or it’s illegitimate.
Afghanistsn wasnt an “illegal war” in any sense. Neither, for that matter, was Iraq. Ill
Er…uh…
No blood for oil!
The army MUST stop dropping f-18s on innocent CHILDREN!
We must prosecute Blackwater for spraying crowds of peacful people with deadly assault clips!
Terrorizing Muslims with humvee tanks will never be just!
Sorry, no, the Constitution does not permit the Congress to delegate the declaration of war. The Congress can (and must) delegate the details of how to the war is prosecuted to the Commander in Chief, but is not granted any authority to delegate the declaration, itself.
A declaration of war must state, in specific detail, against whom war is being declared. What they passed, as a bill stating that the President could attack whomever he felt like attacking. “Whomever you decide was responsible” is not a specific entity. That’s how things had been done in Britain, and was one of the things that Americans wanted to avoid, so that’s why the Constitution was written to require that Congress make the determination as to who was to be the specific target of a war, and then hand the authority to the President to carry it out (since a war run by committee would be a disaster).
Even by its own choice, no Branch is permitted to violate the separation of powers. They are intended to keep the Branches equal, so the government stays balanced as a Republic.
And, if I can think of any one trait that I would desire in an Executive, it would be the ability to think calmly and rationally under pressure, rather than responding emotionally just because some terrorist dipshit killed some folks. Terrorists are scum, and do not deserve to be able to make the mightiest country on this planet ignore its principles. Destroying America is their goal, and the past decade has been an unmitigated victory for them, as the government has destroyed the principles on which America was founded. Do you imagine that a travesty lime Obamacare could have passed through the Supreme Court, a dozen years ago? Clinton tried, and could never get the votes in Congress to even try it, let alone have any chance that it would not have been immediately declared Unconstitutional by the Court. Now, things have become so depraved that the Court just smiles and nods and says, “yes, Massah” to that idiot in the Oval Office.
The constitution is all well and good, but if you don’t want to drop nuclear weapons all over the middle east, then you’re a homosexual democrat communist libertarian, and that’s a fact.
If non-state enemies waging unconventional warfare makes you think of anything other than carpet bombing and mushroom clouds, then you are doomed to spend eternity in hell being pecked to pieces by angry eagle heads.
The ONLY way to fight terrorist cells is to jumble up everyone’s MOS, attach dissimilar units to each other without a chance to train togehter, and orchestrate a conventional invasion requiring huge permanent bases swollen with PX plusses and TacoBells.
The one thing terrorists fear the most is a slow noisy patrol of overheated reservists that they can snipe at or lead into a bottleneck that they’ve prepped with Iranian made directional mines.
If marching relabeled HEMMET mechanics around like moving gallery targets doesn’t force a massive muj surrender, then you need to build more basses while damning the pinkos for refusing to nuke everyone.
That’s how PATRIOTS do it, son.
If you don’t get it then you need to move to France with the rest of your metrosexual limp-wristing buddies.
Things like human intelligence and clandestine operations are for prissy whiners.
Here is article 1, section 8 of the US Constitution in its entirety.
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;
To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;
To establish Post Offices and Post Roads;
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;
To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations;
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To provide and maintain a Navy;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings; And
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
——-
Please link to the part of the Constitution that says it has to list “specific detail”. If its not in there, what are you basing your assertion on?
Congress is continually involved in all military affairs. They provide funding and basing. Both houses have military oversight committees. They don’t. rry out these functions particularly well, but they do carry them out.
Again, Congress passed a resolution authorizing military action. Military action was carried out. The wars may not have been executed particularly well, and you obviously don’t like them, but frankly, I’m not sure where you think the illegality comes from.
An example of an illegal use of military force, from a strictly constitutional standpoint, would be Libya last year. President Obama conducted that operation with no authorization from Congress whatsoever. Congress, of course, did nothing to stop him.
Self-professed libertarians have this bad habit of insisting that any policy they don’t like or is otherwise ill-advised is automatically unconstitutional. That isn’t necessarily the case.
Again, if somewhere in the Constitution it gets more specific than that on how wars ought to be conducted, I’ll admit my error.
My only problem with the whole mess was Bush not going far enough.
A formal declaration of war against Afghanistan, and the two nations that supplied most of the terrorists … Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, followed by nuclear bombardment 48 hours later, would have ended this war in a week, and made crap like Gitmo, waterboarding, four trillion dollars in war debt, and the “Patriot” Act unnecessary.
That’s pretty awesome.
But…I think there is a small chance that turning the Sauds into expanding plasma MIGHT have some kind of effect on the trade price of crude. And if you think about oil futures…naw…forget it. Nuking them all wouldn’t really cause any problems.
So fucking what?
The proper response to an act of war is immediate and overwhelming retaliation. If there are some bad results from this, that is too damned bad.
Another Libertarian fail. I suppose you also think that the nuking of two cities in Japan was unjustified? We had a half million purple hearts made for Operation Downfall. The DoD finally ran out of those in 1992.
The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki hardly qualify as “overwhelming retaliation.”
Those were extraordinarily low-yield weapons, and did far less damage than a /number/ of conventional bombing raids.
And yeah, I have to agree with stomper that crippling our own economy and having Americans starving to death in the streets would be a pretty ridiculous trade-off for some revenge fantasy.
The correct response would have been to put a bounty of $100M – $1B on the head of each individual responsible (including a number of the Saudi royals, as you noted). Then, with every mercenary and amateur bounty hunter on the planet after them, each of them could spend whatever minimal amount of time they left looking under every rock and behind every door and suspecting everyone they knew of being the one who would turn them in for the reward. In that scenario, I’d actually hope that a number of them made it a few years – years of constant terror would be far better than a bright flash followed by a painless death.
Kristopher, don’t let it frustrate you that some people don’t want to nuke the middle east. There are SO many people who wouldn’t want that to happen that it’ll just raise your blood pressure to process it.
Just remind yourself that people who want to deploy nuclear weapons against major population centers are very clever and have excellent critical thinking skills, while those who don’t are horrible homosexual democrat communist libertarians. So their opinions really shouldn’t concern you anyway, because they’re pathetic traitorous vermin who just can’t think things through in a rational fashion. Really, you should pity them for lacking the ability to identify and value wisdom when they hear it. It’s like they have a tragic disability.
Also I don’t think one can judge the aversion to the use of Nuclear weapons as a “Libertarian fail”. I
P.S.
I voted you up again Kristopher, because my therapist said I should make a new friend every month and you’re this month’s friend! 🙂
XOXOXOX,
Stomper17
That’s a good one. Let’s see…how many cities are in those countries? How many bombs would we have to drop? What about all the folks living in smaller towns or in the country? What about countries allied with them? What about the world economy? What about countries that kinda like the US but then see us going crazy with nukes? What would their reaction be? What about….oh, wait. I see. This argument is so stupid that to list all the reasons against would be even more ridiculous. I’ll just say, that most people living in those countries are just normal people trying to get on with their lives. I’ve been over there, just fyi.
“Please link to the part of the Constitution that says it has to list “specific detail”. If its not in there, what are you basing your assertion on?”
The, you know, /definition/ of what a “declaration of war” is. What it was when the Constitution was written, what it’s consistently been over the years since then.
Words have meanings. Since that term meant a particular thing when the Constitution was authored, then that’s what it means in the Constitution. Since it’s continued to mean the same thing over the years, there was clealy no confusion.
Attempting to re-write it to fit your preferences… that’s like the anti-gun idiots who insist that the Second Amendment refers to the National Guard, or that it only applies to single-shot hunting rifles. No, “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” was understood, at the time it was written, to mean that ordinary people could own arms (military weapons), and that’s still what it means.
They can call a declaration of war a “War Powers Resolution” or a “Pink Birthday Cake,” or all it matters. The important part is the content, not the name. And, in order for that Pink Birthday Cake to qualify as a lawful declaration of war, it must meet the standards by which the term was defined when the Constitution was written. The Constitution isn’t a “living document,” except through the amendment process. Lacking a formal Amendment to change the meaning of the term, a declaration of war that does not list a particular target is no more lawful than Federal gun bans are.
Ah. So you’re interpreting the Constitution, not going off of what it specifically says. That’s exactly what the Supreme Court did when they voted Obamacare to be Constitutional, you know.
Ron Paul voted for our initial military intervention in Afghanistan, you know. I guess he’s just another pro-war, constitution shredding statist.
As for the nuclear option, here’s Ron Paul’s own words on National Defense:
In an October 11, 2007 interview with The Washington Post, Paul said, “There’s nobody in this world that could possibly attack us today… we could defend this country with a few good submarines. If anybody dared touch us we could wipe any country off of the face of the earth within hours. And here we are, so intimidated and so insecure and we’re acting like such bullies that we have to attack third-world nations that have no military and have no weapons.”
It seems to me that the man is quite the fan of using the threat of nuclear war to prevent attack. Seems to me that limiting your military options to “do nothing” and “start a nuclear war” is kind of putting yourself in a box, but the quote does not have any context and Ron Paul is prone to knee-jerk one liners.
Nukes? Stop thinking like a bunch of REMF’s.
If you really wanna stop the Muslims, you don’t drop bombs on them. The more dead, the more headlines. Instead, fill a dozen C-17’s with the output of a few good ‘ol American pig farms and drop that all over Mecca. Then tell them that every time there is a terrorist incident, Mecca gets slimed again.
That would probably result in a greater increase in terrorism than a nuclear attack.
The correct reaction to terrism is the same as the correct reaction to the murderers who attack teaters and the like: treat them like worthless scum.
Don’t give them headlines, and complex revenge plans. That’s what they want. Treat them like commomn criminals. Put bounties on their heads, and leave it at that.
Put up the victims’ names, though. Make it clear that the murderers will be disposed-of like the dirt they are, but the victims will be remembered forever.