"We're in Denial"

[unixronin]

At least one Republican gets it.  Right up to the point where he says McCain is The Answer, anyway.

Comments

[cipherpunk.livejournal.com]

To be honest, I have much less of a knee-jerk reaction to McCain than I do to either Obama or Clinton. The country absolutely does not need another Clinton presidency, and between the two of McCain and Obama I think McCain is going to, on balance, be the candidate that sucks less for my personal liberty.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

yeah, I have to admit to not trusting Obama further than I can throw him by his suit lapels.

[smandal.livejournal.com]

Is this some kind of instinctual reaction? If so, what do you think is the source of it?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

It's because he seems to keep changing his story to tell his audience of the day what he thinks they want to hear. For instance, like every Democrat Presidential candidate in living memory, when before a pro-gun audience he pretends to lean towards the pro-gun side, but in front of a typical Democrat audience he panders to the gun-grabbers. And honestly, I have by this point come to assume by default that almost any Presidential candidate, but especially it seems Democrat candidates, will tell any lie they think will get them elected. (Hell, even Hillary, who never saw a gun-control law she didn't like, pretended to reminisce fondly about duck hunting as a teenager, even though she's so blatantly ignorant on the subject she talked about hunting ducks with a rifle and didn't even have any idea she was talking out her ass. At least John Kerry posed with an actual shotgun.) Campaign promises aside, I see nothing to indicate he's not just another left-wing moonbat. I fully expect his rhetoric about being the candidate for change to be borne out as "the more things change, the more they stay the same".

That said, I'm willing to be proven wrong. But I'd be very surprised, because the Democrat party seems as unable to change its spots as the leopard of the fable. The Republican party, unfortunately, showed its ability to change by abandoning its principles of fiscal responsibility and proving it could out-spend even the Democrats by letting the national debt balloon without limit.

I think the change America needs at this point isn't just a different Democrat or Republican administration. It needs an administration that is neither, and beholden to neither. At this point, I don't distrust just Obama. I don't trust ANY of them, because ALL of them seem to regard the Constitution as an inconvenient, embarrassing relic to be circumvented by any means possible. They are all driven by only two things: Power and money.

[smandal.livejournal.com]

For the sake of argument, let's assume Obama is well-intentioned. Then, I think his mindset is that of a technocrat: he takes political pluralism as a moral ideal, and sees democracy as the process to work this stuff out. So, he thinks both guns rights advocates and gun control advocates have a legitimate case, and it should be worked out on the merits and decided by ultimately by the voters.

The Goldwater-esque Republicans, by contrast, had stronger moral convictions and policy principles. The neocons are no different than the Democratic technocrats, but instead of being merely naive they are downright evil.

Thoughts?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I don't rule out the possibility he may think that way. In which case one must ask, does he think that, say, the rights of peaceable assembly and free speech should be decided by the voters too? We've already seen what much of the Democrat base thinks of free speech - "You have the right to free speech, as long as you don't say anything that might possibly offend someone, somewhere, if they heard you say it and cared." Or how about unlawful search and seizure? Should the voters decide that? After all, if you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide, right?

And then there's that Tenth Amendment ... the one that says the Federal Government has only the powers enumerated for it, and all else is reserved to the States or to the People. The majority Democrat voter mindset seems to be that government should do everything, including wiping our noses and asses for us, because we might hurt ourselves doing those for ourselves.

Pardon my cynicism, but I tend to judge the Democrat party by its recent actions, just like I do the Republican party. Remember, it was Clinton who introduced "designated free speech zones". (Though if Obama wins and can turn the party around, more power to him. The gripping hand is, I'll believe it when I see it.)

I'm pretty much with you on the neocons, though. Republicans and Democrats alike share their quota of elitists, but the neocons are, purely and simply, fascists.

[smandal.livejournal.com]

Clinton also signed the clearly-unconstitutional Communications Decency Act and started the Echelon program. We'll see about Obama.

I think one thing gives Democrats the wishy-washy feel is that while most don't recognize "natural" rights, some don't even think some rights are more fundamental than others -- namely thought, speech, and self-determination. If they want to make any sense at all they need to find a way to lose the post-modern thought blob, just like the Republicans need to dump the Jesus freaks.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

You won't get any argument from me on that. But both of them also need to get their noses out of the tax-revenue trough and stop spending taxpayer money as though it had an expiry date.

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

The Republican brand became credible after Reagan redefined them as the party of fiscal responsibility and less government. King George has transformed them again into the party that best feeds their supporters from the public trough. That new definition will likely be fatal to this election cycle.

The problem that leaves is that there is no one running for president that I can truly support. I am left to try to find the candidate that will do the least harm. (At this point, I think of harm in terms of my rapidly diminishing civil liberties and financial opportunity.) I suspect that McCain is the least problematic.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

The problem that leaves is that there is no one running for president that I can truly support. I am left to try to find the candidate that will do the least harm.

And that is the true core of the problem.