Except, of course, for any sort of anti-discrimination protection.
Your landlord wants to evict you because you’re gay? Businesses in your town want to refuse to serve you because you’re a Muslim? Your boss tells you that if you want to stay employed, you’ll have to give him a weekly blowjob?
The Libertarians are cool with all that. After all, the market should solve those problems, right?
Cut taxes and balanced the budget (in the mid-90’s)!
It was easy (in the mid-90’s)!?!?
Small-l progressive?
But something about it—perhaps Bill grunting “Come onnnn!”—makes me feel like a virgin being cajoled into a threesome I may not enjoy.
Welcome to American politics! That’s pretty much the boilerplate.
delurk
Kansas and Michigan are what happens when you let Libertarians and their like-minded conservative pals get in control of government. And as this video shows they can’t be trusted with a microphone let alone a whole government, but at least they’re not flappping their nutsacks at me this time… And now that I think of it, that might actually help.
relurk
If I try to listen to their pitch as though I just arrived from Mars, it all sounds pretty good (apart from the slightly sinister delivery and Bargain Mattress Warehouse production). But then they say “Good government is easy!” and I’m like hmm NO
When someone claims they have a simple solution to something people have been wrangling over for generations, never in history has that failed to be a lie in the service of evil. If people could grasp this fact, it would be (ironically) a simple solution to the problem of right-wing shitbaggery.
Feel the Johnson!
Yeah, that took me a few reads. I think it was supposed to be “small l, progressive”, referring to “small l libertarian, not big L”, which gets referenced again later on.
What’s nice is that the Libertarians were able to put forward white, rich guys as candidates, for a change.
My memory of Weld’s time as governor was that he ran as basically a fairly moderate but conventional Republican–relatively liberal on social issues, more conservative on governance and finance. I recall that he was elected the first time partly because a lot of people really hated his opponent, the president of BU. I guess it was a smart play for the libertarians to put up these relatively mainstream politicians instead of the hardcore Ron Paul types. But then, at least with Paul, you knew what you were getting, even if some of it was kinda nuts.
This “election cycle” can’t end fast enough, really.
Finally, someone else using the Peter Griffin Method of Persuasion.
It’s funny, I was also thinking this embodied a Libertarian design philosophy I’ve seen at play a thousand times, “I don’t need to hire skilled labor, my cousin Bob can design my website for pennies on the dollar. Score!”
Supporting marriage-equality, pro-choice, withdrawing from the Middle East, preservation of personal freedoms, etc.
OMG - what monsters!
You left out “demonizing ‘government’ – that is, public services, regulatory oversight, and taxes – because it slows down the massive funneling of money from the poors to the rich.”
Monsters indeed.
I can definitely understand the draw of the Libertarian philosophy, but it’s the implementation details that keep me from ever considering them.
They love to talk about how government shouldn’t allow privileges conservatives currently get away with, but never seem to get around to saying it won’t until the hoi polloi demand to be allowed the same privileges.
I believe it was a character from Red Mars that said “A Libertarian is just an Anarchist who wants state protection from their slaves”
Demonizing or calling for reform? Because there are many, many examples of wasteful spending. Many things on the Federal level would be better served on a state level because the closer you are to the problem, the more you can adapt and cater to your specific problems. Many things that would save every one time, money, and reduce the corporate cheaters you loathe with things like reforming and streamlining the tax codes.
I realize there are libertarians saying things like “taxation is theft” etc. There are extremes to any political ideology. But a moderate libertarian policy doesn’t mean an end to social programs, or oversight like the SEC, or the FDA, or the Department of Labor, etc.
Libertarianism IS an extreme ideology.
I’m sick and tired of people who benefit from society damaging society by pretending there’s no such thing as society.
Well I guess we can just go with the status-quo since it is doing such a bang up job, amiright?
