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You won't get the US centric perspective that you get from the economist.

I am an American and only 2 American print magazines come as close as The Economist does to my pov. Those are Reason magazine and Liberty magazine.

Falcon Wolf

http://www.libertyunbound.com/archive/2004_11/brad ford-spending.html

which says in part...

So it was just a matter of putting the numbers into a spreadsheet and doing relatively simple calculations to determine annual government spending per capita, and to see whether it grew more slowly during the Reagan years than before or since.

The data verified my earlier claim: spending grew a little faster during the Reagan years than during the Carter and Ford years that preceded his terms in office, and at a much faster rate than during the Bush I and Clinton years that followed.

It goes on to say that pre 1970, republicans were fiscal conservatives and "The fact that Republican presidents have been bigger spenders than Democratic presidents during the past 34 years startles many people."

There are other sources that make similar points.

The republicans (conservatives) also oversaw the grown of an enormous and pervasively intrusive surveillance system. It's always for a good cause (fight communism, fight drugs, fight terrorism). But the result are huge, secret government agencies that spy on our own people with multi-billion dollar budgets.

Compared to today's "liberals" and "conservatives" our founding fathers would likely be considered to be libertarians. I'm registered as a Republican because I believe in true conservatism (small government, limited powers and no interference in private lives, etc) but in the last few years that seems to not be the Republican platform any more.

Yeap, the definitions of conservative and liberal have changed a lot. Thomas Jefferson for instance as a Democrat Republican was a liberal, which in his day meant liberty and small government. Of course you could only have liberty if you had small government, the more government the more liberty is restricted. Supposedly conservative, especially "Reagan Conservative" meant small government, but really Reagan enlarged government. I don't know where it is now but I had an article I read in the printed edition of "Liberty magazine" a few years ago that showed how government was expanded. As for today's liberals they seem more like socialist.

Oh, and congratulations to the parent poster for being an actual conservative, rather than the current leading brand of NeoCon. You're a rarity these days. I never thought I'd see the day when Reagan looked like a better alternative to the current primate occupying the Oval.

If you mean by conservative and Reagan as a smaller and limited government then there's two problems. First it wasn't conservatives who stood for small and limited government, in the 1700s it was liberals (classical liberals for some) that wanted this. Three big examples of this Liberalism are Thomas Jefferson, Adam Smith or Adam Smith (Institute) , and Thomas Paine (Network) , or TomPaine.common Sense .

Secondly Reagan didn't reduce the overall size of government, under him government bloomed. I don't recall most of it but "Liberty" magazine had an article in one issue with the numbers in dollars on how big some parts of government got and it wasn't just the military that did. The parts I recall are the "War on Drugs" and education but there were others as well.

"In a time when both the Republican & Democratic parties effectively have the same stance on many issues... when both candidates are so poorly received by the public that the most often heard reason to vote one way or the other is, 'I *really* hate the other guy'... why is it still so difficult for third parties to field a candidate that wins over the voting public in a huge way?"

or

"Wouldn't it make sense for the LP to take a generally moderate-conservative stance, drop most of their 'farther out' ideas (at least for now), and stand firm on a couple of the more palatable ones (i.e The War, Civil Rights)?"

And if you haven't RTFA that the GP linked to, you should. I mean really - how hard is it to be less sketchy than Bush or Kerry?

mitch

dislaimer: I really, really want to vote LP this year. I'm on the fence about whether I should. I may end up doing so just to cast my vote for legitimizing third-party choice.

"As a Libertarian candidate, I frequently face the "wasted vote" syndrome. People tell me that I'm a good candidate. They believe in what I stand for, but they can't bring themselves to vote for me because they don't want to waste their vote. If you were in prison, and you had a 50% chance of lethal injection, a 45% chance of going to the electric chair, and only a 5% chance of escape, are you likely to vote for lethal injection because that is your most likely outcome? Your survival depends on voting for escape even if that's only a 5% chance. If you continue to vote for the Democrats or the Republicans, you are committing political suicide. The only chance we have of saving our constitutional republic is to vote Libertarian, even if that's only a 5% probability of getting into office. We have to demonstrate that we are not satisfied with the status quo. Voting for the lesser of two evils and your candidate wins and you still get evil."

Mr. Badnarik, it has been reported that you believe that the federal government has no authority to collect income taxes, that felons should be forced to serve the first month of their sentences in bed, causing muscle atrophy, and that a Libertarian Party administration should blow up the United Nations building in New York. Does this report accurately represent your views? If so, do you feel that your views are representative of Libertarian Party members or, more broadly, of libertarians in America?

Why should I vote for you when there are other candidates who, whatever their other flaws, don't seem to think that annoying people in exchange for money is just fine?

(Watchers: see the archives of Liberty magazine.)

Badnarik believes that the federal income tax has no legal authority and that people are justified in refusing to file a tax return until such time as the IRS provides them with an explanation of its authority to collect the tax. He hadn't filed income tax returns for several years. He moved from California to Texas because of Texas' more liberal gun laws, but he refused to obtain a Texas driver's license because the state requires drivers to provide their fingerprints and Social Security numbers. He has been ticketed several times for driving without a license; sometimes he has gotten off for various technical legal reasons, but on three occasions he has been convicted and paid a fine. He also refused to use postal ZIP codes, seeing them as "federal territories."

...He proposed that convicted felons serve the first month of their sentence in bed so that their muscles would atrophy and they'd be less trouble for prison guards and to blow up the U.N. building on the eighth day of his administration, after giving the building's occupants a chance to evacuate.

Badnarik believes that the federal income tax has no legal authority and that people are justified in refusing to file a tax return until such time as the IRS provides them with an explanation of its authority to collect the tax. He hadn't filed income tax returns for several years. He moved from California to Texas because of Texas' more liberal gun laws, but he refused to obtain a Texas driver's license because the state requires drivers to provide their fingerprints and Social Security numbers. He has been ticketed several times for driving without a license; sometimes he has gotten off for various technical legal reasons, but on three occasions he has been convicted and paid a fine. He also refused to use postal ZIP codes, seeing them as "federal territories."

He has written a book on the Constitution for students in his one-day, $50 seminar on the Constitution, but it is available elsewhere, including on Amazon.com. It features an introduction by Congressman Ron Paul and Badnarik's theory about taxes. His campaign website included a potpourri of right-wing constitutional positions, as well as some very unorthodox views on various issues. He proposed that convicted felons serve the first month of their sentence in bed so that their muscles would atrophy and they'd be less trouble for prison guards and to blow up the U.N. building on the eighth day of his administration, after giving the building's occupants a chance to evacuate. In one especially picturesque proposal, he wrote:

I would announce a special one-week session of Congress where all 535 members would be required to sit through a special version of my Constitution class. Once I was convinced that every member of Congress understood my interpretation of their very limited powers, I would insist that they restate their oath of office while being videotaped.

One assumes, although one cannot prove, that none of this is an exercise in irony. At any rate, these opinions were removed from the website shortly after he won the nomination, and they didn't come up when he visited state party conventions. Nor did his refusal to file tax returns, thereby risking federal indictment and felony arrest. While many of his closest supporters were aware of these issues, they were unknown to most LP members.