General Politics Discussion [ARCHIVED] • Page 388

Hey, Gary, if it's any consolation, the New York Times doesn't know much more than you.

Correction: September 8, 2016
An earlier version of this article misidentified the de facto capital of the Islamic State. It is Raqqa, in northern Syria, not Aleppo.

Correction: September 8, 2016
An earlier version of the above correction misidentified the Syrian capital as Aleppo. It is Damascus.

lmfao. im dead. its not like Damascus is one of the oldest, most significant cities in the world or anything

 

Lol. This is the greatest year in American history.

 

I might be completely wrong, but I just assumed that Johnson's and Stein's relative popularity is a reflection of R's and D's degree of disapproval of their own parties' respective candidates.

 

I knew the capital of Syria before it was cool.

The reason I knew it is because in grade school I once did a report entitled "My trip to Islam", thinking that Islam was a place. It is not. I realized my mistake on the way to school and so the report title had the word Syria emblazoned over the word Islam using those scented markers. My teacher figured it out though and so I had to re-write the report.

Surprisingly I can still dress myself in the morning.

 

I think libertarians are basically lapsed Republicans while the Green Party have no love for either party from what I've seen

 

I've always understood libertarians as being an offshoot of classical liberalism. I don't think libertarians have a whole lot in common with the modern gop.

 

lol

This cycle is such a shit show. The media literally seems to be trying to undercut the gross incompetence of the field.

 

Low taxes, fiscally conservative....those are principles embraced by a lot of R's? Libertarians are more socially liberal than R's, which, I think, is what's leading more socially progressive R's to abandon the party for Johnson.

 

Just entered a drawing to win a seat at the presidential debate at my school.

All I want is for Trump to say "bigly." I will be happy so long as that happens.

 

That might be the only place where they, at least appear to align. We all know that the GOP is anything but fiscally conservative, as much as they like to play lip service to the idea.

Libertarians can also be very anti-war, anti-intervention, and anti-prohibition with varying degrees of extremism. Libertarianism can be very appealing to atheists and unattractive to evangelicals. They were critical of the military might of local police forces before it was cool, and they were among the first supporters of LGBTQ rights.

 

Behind the scenes, NBC execs concede Matt Lauer forum performance was "disaster"

 

Being for "low taxes" is much less narrow than those two words alone imply.

The libertarians in America are basically Republicans on steroids when it comes to economics matters: they want to deregulate finance, democratize the federal reserve (both of which would greatly destabilize the economy), remove labor laws and minimum wages that built the middle class and reduced poverty for working people, privatize social security, further privatize healthcare, defund basically all social services, banish income taxes in favor of sales taxes (which is economically ludicrous as it incentivizes rich people keeping their money out of circulation), remove restrictions on predatory lending, remove restrictions on freedom of contract (i.e. allow monopolies), remove environmental restrictions, degrade public health regulations, strengthen patent laws.

But, hey, at least they are unenthusiastically supportive of gay rights and reproductive rights (usually in an averting "leave it to the states" federalist bullshit way) and hang their hat on legalizing marijuana: an issue that is, in my opinion, pretty fucking minor without regard for stupidly harsh punishments.

 

The point is that there is some overlap that makes the party appealing to a certain type of Republican, especially in this election.

It's lip service by the GOP, but it's an ideal that Republican voters respond to.

Interestingly enough, anti-interventionism is now a thing that the GOP is giving lip service to while talking out both sides of their mouth.

 

That's because Obama (and Hillary) did it. It's further proof that those two, but especially Obama, could literally do anything and the Republicans would be against it.

Then again, hearing them attack interventionist ideas while at the same time bashing Obama for "leading from behind" is hilarious.

 

I think you are conflating all of the most extreme ideas of the libertarian philosophy and trying to project them onto the broad base of libertarian supporters, many of whom are more moderate than given credit for, at least in my experience.

Like everything else, there are definite blind spots in libertarian ideology and faults found with libertarian candidates. I don't know what kind of moral purity you are looking for in a government, but I wouldn't bet on it ever materializing.

 

Doesn't that sort of work both ways though? Not trying to argue, just curious. Aren't you just as much of a partisan as you are claiming those on the right are?

Is there a potential GOP candidate for president that you would vote for over Hillary? Can you name 3 positions in the GOP platform that you agree with? Can you name 3 areas in which any GOP candidate would be preferable to a Clinton White House, doesn't have to be Trump, just anyone?

 

David agrees with the part of the platform that declares pornography a national health emergency.

 

This is a bit different than what I'm talking about. If a Republican candidate was running on raising more taxes than Clinton, increasing social welfare program spending more than Clinton, being less interventionalist than Clinton, investing more in education and less in defense than Clinton, etc...then hell yeah I would vote for them.

In other words, Obama and the Dems have stolen a ton of ideas from the Republicans over the last 8 years, and as soon as the Dems stole them, they became "socialism" and whatever else. That's not to say the Dems are as far right as the current iteration of the GOP, but rather the GOP used to have some sane ideas and be more moderate. A perfect example of this is cap and trade.

 

If your wrist hurt as much as mine does, you'd agree with it too.

Masturbation joke! *high five* No? No? Too much? Okay.

 

I was trying to draw parallels that you were firmly on "your side" so to speak, maybe doing a poor job of it.

There has to be something in the Republican platform that you can look at and say "Yeah, the Dems are wrong on this issue, the GOP's position is much smarter on this issue than the Dems."

As far as the stealing of ideas. You aren't wrong. Party politics are dynamic, ideas don't stay in one place, they aren't "stolen", they just move around. A lot of the moderate conservatives of ye old days aren't there anymore. Some of the most popular people in the 2016 GOP field (Cruz, Rubio, Trump, Carson) just came into prominence during the Obama years. Point is, the Republican party changed, it isn't the same party that was there when Bush was in office.

Now I am just talking about ideas here, not actions. When we look at actions, or at least when I look at actions, the actions of both parties look pretty similar.

 

I've never heard that part of the platform but I will take your word for it haha.

 

GOP platform declares pornography 'public health crisis' - CNNPolitics.com

 

Ohhhh, I thought you meant he agrees with that part of the Democratic platform! Like saying "David is such a Democrat that he even agrees with the part of the platform that declared pornography a national health emergency"

Sorry, my bad.

 

If I wanted to diss him, I'd say, "David is such a democrat, he's for the Iraq war in the morning, against it in the afternoon and sending more troops in at night."