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There's also the Libertarian Party. Both fiscal conservatives and social liberals. But i'm sure most ./'ers already knew that.

Vote Constitution or Libertarian. Granted, not an overnight solution. In the meantime, exercise your 2nd Amemendment rights, get a CCW.

You should reconsider your political stance. I am also a libertarian, and I find the beliefs of 'liberals' (democrats) to be farther from libertarian beliefs than those of republicans.

While I do agree that democrats tend better than republicans when it comes to freedoms (neither party is great), that's not always the case. (Libertarians, for example, oppose gun control.)
Also, you neglect the other half of governmental policy: money. Libertarians also want the low taxes and great financial . Republicans are far better than democrats on this issue. Bush gave a tax cut. Kerry plans to instate national health care.

I'm not here to bash, but I, as a libertarian, find republicans closer to my beliefs than democrats. Maybe you ought to try this.

Oh, and BTW, I have had the exact opposite experience with people.

I assume you're implying either that the Libertarian Party is not one of the top three parties, or that it's irrelevant -- either way, it's just an off-topic bit of flamebait if I ever saw one (hints to those with moderation points). But, I'll respond to this troll because I have some time (and karma) to kill:

Yes, by any meaningful measurement in a system that is vastly dominated by two parties (e.g., number of candidates run per election, number of people in office, etc.), the Libertarian Party is the third party in the US, and the other alternative parties are much smaller. And, in Washington State, there are three political parties that have achieved "major party" status, and yes, the Libertarian Party is the 3rd.

This doesn't mean that the LP is a "big" party, but even the Democrats and (especially) the Republicans are recognizing the impact on elections caused by the LP. In heavily-read, well-respected publications written for Republicans, political pundits are pushing for a more libertarian approach for Republican candidates, to try to plug the drain of votes. That alone is a victory for libertarian ideals, and proves that even a comparatively tiny party can have a national impact, especially once it reaches the level that the LP has reached over the past few decades.

It's obvious that you have utterly no fucking idea what you're talking about. Numerous members of the NRA have spoken out against Clinton's DMCA and Bush's PATRIOT Act.

Plus... "libertarians don't care about the second amendment"? That's totally incorrect. As is "gun nuts don't care about the first amendment" and "stomp" on it all the time. Please.

There is life beyond two parties. Tell your friends, tell you neighbors, tell your family.

Simply put: Hatch and his kind are cunts.

Which is why we'd be a lot better off with the Constitutional Party. I think it combines the best of the Libertarian (before they went off their rocker during the last decade) with an unwavering dedication to the Constitution.

Compare the Constitution Party platform
Good

with the Libertarian
A little over the top

For example, what are we supposed to make of this:
"We recognize the right to political secession by political entities, private groups, or individuals."

Or this:
"We oppose any abridgment of the freedom of speech through government censorship, regulation or control of communications media, including, but not limited to, laws concerning:"

Then going on to rule out any control whatsoever of obscenity.

Mind you, either party has more intelligence in their little finger than all the Demicans and Republocrats put together.

Actually, when prominent Libertarian candidates speak, they reveal FAR more simple minded and objectionable thoughts than anything in platform.

I believe your post does not accurately reflect the state of the Libertarian Party in the US. The US Libertarian party leans more towards Jeffersonian principles than the libertarianism that you describe (which sounds more like anarchy to me). Meanwhile, the us Constitution Party is probably where the religious right belongs. They want to follow the US Constitution based on its roots in Biblical Law.

Welcome to American politics. The Right wants to make it ever more illegaler to copy music and movies, and the Left wants to make it ever more illeagaler for teenagers to buy guns and ammo and shoot up their schools.

Vote Libertarian.

-Peter

Which is why we should all vote LIBERTARIAN. They stand for what America is supposed to be, and they actually aren't afraid to say it and how it should be done.

This is NOT about card hackers, RTFA, it is about legitimate card users, like ME, who got harrassed by DirecTV and their goons becuase a smart card with a flashable chip was $80 at an "evil hacker" site, and $350 from a big retailer..

ejumacate yersef, dumass

"Plus the whole Libertarian thing seems really out there." why do you say that? I'm not trolling or being sarcastic (nor am I endorsing strict adherence to a "party"), I'm genuinely curious.

The US is pretty much built on its public school system. It gives everyone an oppertunity to make something of themselves. It certainly isn't the best, but it is there, it's free and it's required.

Anyone who argues to take that away is more scary to me than almost anyone in either major party. Libertarian education platform

DISCLAIMER : I am a Libertarian and this MAY be a rant.

I believe that the government should not have control over the media. Period.

The airwaves wouldn't fall into disarray if it ceased to be, too many companies have too big a stake in media to allow it to fail. No, Chicken Little, if Nanny Government leaves, the sky will NOT begin falling.

The Government has no right to tell me what I can and cannot view. The Government has no duty to protect children from an exposed breast during the superbowl. The parents of a child old enough to watch and understand the game of (American) football, certianly should have explained at least that much of the facts of life to said child, or they are not very good at parenting.

Since we are totally off topic anyway, which is better? this or this?

I'm a registered Libertarian and I thought that being a libertarian meant that one believes that less government is better government. That the government runs in the way the Constitution, Bill of Rights, Articles of Confederation, and the Magna Carta meant if to run. Libertarians don't believe like the government of the State of Utah, that the separation of church and state is one city block.

Other parties, such as the Libertarian Party, oppose the Patriot Act and just about everything other piece of crap legistlation in existance.

Why Gun Rights Should Be Protected

I find this very strange coming out of an essentially socialist country. I know I am very concerned about privacy and would use that as a deciding factor when doing business. But then most Libertarians are concerned about freedom and privacy.

If the government can do whatever it wishes within its own borders.

This is where we disagree (and where that slippery slope begins) -- what the gov't can do is limited by (at least) the Constitution (I assume we are taking about the USA here). Or do you think the Gov't can arbitrary decide to, for example, throw in jail (or execute) people who want to, say, trade in the currency other than the official state currency? (It is an actual example, back in the old Soviet Union in 80s one could easily get a jail sentence for keeping/using USD, and people were accused of "economic sabotage" and executed for not much more than that). Do you REALLY want to give your Gov't that "right"?

Suggesting that a government doesn't have any rights beyond military and police is ridiculous.

Yet, some not too stupid people suggest just that.

Anyway, maybe you will find some of this more relevant to the current discussion.

Paul B.

The term libertarian used to mean someone who wanted to be free from the bonds that power imposes on us. Now it means those who favor corporate power over state power. Whoopy for libertarianism.

I consider myself both a libertarian and a socialist, which is only a contradiction if you accept the prevailing framework of politics. Unfortunately most people associate libertarianism with "The Libertarian Party". I guess the term "anarchist" is good enough for me, but it's been co-opted as meaning pro-violence or pro-destruction.

Matt

Most anti-IP people on /. may think that they are libertarians...I think that The Cato Institute and The Libertarian Party will disagree with them, however. Libertarians strongly believe in intellectual property, in general (though they are usually quite reasonably against huge copyright extensions, or trivial patents).

Amendment 10 gets ignored selectively by everyone, unfortunately.

There's these guys, but they're too wacky even for me.

No, not technically. But it was his campaign supporters who founded the Libertarian Party.

hahahahahhahahahahahaha

If you want real freedom, the Democrats are just as bad.

Libertarian, now that might be a better choice.

...though since I almost never close Mozilla, it doesn't really matter. What I really like is having a group of tabs associated with the "Home" bookmark. At the moment, one click opens up: /., explodingdog, maddox, the LP's homepage, wikipedia, suprnova, where's george?, and google news. These are all the pages I view at least daily, so I like having them at my fingertips.

The law was passed in 1994, the same year as the election the Republicans won the Congress. The new Congress began in January 1995, after the law was passed.

Clairfying that fact does not mean I support the Republicans. I say a pox on both their houses.

www.lp.org

We have a real world with real problems to deal with, and these people would rather play a game and pretend in order to avoid it? Isn't this like drugs?
One the one hand we have evil, money-stealing authoritarian Democrats, on the other evil coportaist fascist Republicans. Neither party respects the constitution. Neither party will do what is right (defined by me as both constitutional and expediant). So, how about instead of worrying about dream land, we worry about what's actually outside beating down on our doors? Don't vote for Kerry or Bush. Don't vote for Nader. Vote for real candidates from parties that are true to the cause of freedom:
The Constitution Party
Libertarian Party
Vote first, revolt second. However, do not ever allow yourself to lose the right to either. We'll be needing them rarther soon.

Not likely.

He DID vote for the Patriot Act too, you know.

www.lp.org

New Hampshire -- why do you assume i'm a democrat? LP all the way.

Libertarians have the right idea on social issues but IMO unregulated business is dangerous to all. For every example of a business "doing the right thing" there are a hundred examples of "screw'em all".

Saying that socialism partly causes corporate fraud is reminds me a bit of the "Chewbacca Defense".

The problem is that the American voting system discourages people from voting for what they believe in, and forces them to vote for the lesser of two evils.

The accounting error that placed George W. Bush in office would not have been an issue had a large segment of the liberal population not decided to vote -- for once -- by their consciences. Ralph Nader won about 2.7% of the popular vote in 2000 (Buchanan, the next most popular conservative to Bush, took less than 0.5 percent of the popular vote from Bush). It isn't unreasonable to assume that almost 100% of those people who voted for Nader would have preferred Gore to Bush. If even one percent had voted strategically (for the lesser of two evils), the Florida fiasco would not have been an issue.

I'm a firm proponent of electoral reform, so that people can vote their consciences without jeopardizing their position and letting the greater of two evils seize the power. However, until that time, I hope that the American public votes insincerely so that we don't end up with a repeat of the 2000 election.

Is that how you would describe the first 137 prosperous years of USA history prior to the implementation of the income tax in 1913 before burdensome government programs began to be implemented?

For information on Libertarian principles, please see http://www.lp.org/issues/platform/sop.html

See the platform page.

I am not aligned with the party in that I favor criminalization of abortion at the state level.

Again, given that I believe that a fetus is a human being with rights, I think that it should be criminal to abort a fetus just as I think it should be criminal to shake an 18 month old to death.

-Peter

you're an idiot.

There's no proof, of course.

Neither was there proof in the recent "Tony Blair's administration cooked the books on Iraqi intelligence" BBC creative writing assignment. The fallout over the BBC's fictional journalism led to several top BBC officials resigning (one before he was canned).

The BBC, NPR in the US, NYTimes and many other forth estate entities have long given up on objective journalism, instead being acquired by leftist politicians (just as numerous political offices such as this one, this one and that one are nothing more than hired hands for wealthy elites).

Progressive/left-leaning slashdotters are going to have to open their eyes a bit on the back-stabbing of their peers in the media. It's ok when they're stabbing other victims, but when they're selling the Linux world out through their relativist journalism, it gets personal.

Opposed to intellectual property theft? Don't support the Trial Attorney Racket Protection Association of America
Disagree with patent giveways? Don't support the Country Club Empowerment Association of America
Support your own liberty!

Sorry, but there's very few things worse than being a weasel.

OK, sounds good. Here's another link I should have provided: the LP's official Issues page. This should put the Libertarian stance into perspective, addressing real issues and not just philosophy. Just to clarify, I am not a member of the LP myself, I am actually what you'd call an anarcho-capitalist. The Libertarian philosophy, however, is much closer to my own philosophy than other statist philosophies (those which believe that the initiation of force is necessary to achieve justice).

No. It means that the "REPUBLICANS ARE EVIL PIG-DOGS" comments are idiotic.

Government sucks all around.
Anyone who agrees might be interested in taking a no-bullshit, no-prejudice look at the Libertarian party. It's not for everyone, but I think more folks are Libertarian at their core than is realized. Most folks won't agree 100% with the party platform, I don't think, but that's because it's a small, concentrated party; given growth, that will change.

Libertarian party website

Sometimes I'm really upset by our divisive and angry Two Party System; it seems like nothing ever gets done. Other times I am very, very grateful that the government is not one gigantic unified son of a bitch, because then all those manipulative, controlling and totally evil tendencies would be aimed squarely at me.

Hmmm...what if it is aimed squarely at us and the interparty bickering such as this is simply to distract us from the fact that both parties pretty much taste like chicken?

Pepsi and Coke's "cola wars" campaigns did the same thing by squeezing out the small soda manufacturers and turning the soda market into what is basically a shared monopoly. If either one ever came out on top it'd be shut down but as long as there's two of them it's somehow okay and we forget about all the other flavors out there.

And just how is this non-violent candidate going to collect all that money from American taxpayers for government programs, like social security or education or medicare?

By getting rid of social security. Then selling off federal government owned property to pay for the people currently with social security.
Anyway, it didn't sound like the parent was against taxes. More like against being forced to support war through taxation.

Like George Washington once said:
"Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."

Libertarian Party
Harry Browne (check out the radio archives).

-metric

And just how is this non-violent candidate going to collect all that money from American taxpayers for government programs, like social security or education or medicare?

By getting rid of social security. Then selling off federal government owned property to pay for the people currently with social security.
Anyway, it didn't sound like the parent was against taxes. More like against being forced to support war through taxation.

Like George Washington once said:
"Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."

Libertarian Party
Harry Browne (check out the radio archives).

-metric

Correction: A liberal is someone who promotes a few liberties, and ignores the other ones that they don't like. Unless you want to find me a liberal who doesn't try to twist the meaning of the Second Amendment.

If you want the Constitution, Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence, you want the Libertarian Party

Umm... Interstate highway development WAS left to private compaines, and yet, we CAN go from coast to coast in less than 50 hours (at the speed limit, even...) Read this and then give me something that contradicts:

The best way to understand the notion of private roads is to examine America's own era of private turnpikes. In 1821, there were over 4,000 miles of private roadway in the state of New York. Between 1792 and 1840, some 230 New England turnpike companies built and operated 3,800 miles of roads. It was private enterprise that really got the "show on the road" in America.

As soon and as long as the government gets out and stays out of the internet's infrastructure, things WILL improve here in the US...

Look at the amount of tax you pay your provider (in the form of "fees" that are really just passed through from the gov't). Now multiply that times the number of users in the US and tell me where all that money goes...

Compare that to the tolls they get on gov't run turnpikes and then explain to me how either one has facilitated faster travel...

The gov't doesn't:
* Have an R&D staff to research ways to build longer lasting roads to cut maintenance costs
* Charge more for peak times during the day(like at the movie theater)
* Hire / layoff workers around peak times during the year (like at a resturant / department store)
* Do ALL construction when there is less traffic
* Implement distance based, non-intrusive tolls (i.e., track transponder tags every so many miles and eliminate the time-wasting toll booth)
* Spend ALL money collected in the name of making roads safer / better doing that

There are MANY things a private company would do to improve travel, both at the saftey and speed level that the gov't doesn't / can't...

Do you really want what happened to our roads to happen to the internet? When was the last time traffic / bandwidth increased on the roads near you?

-bs

Libertarians that I know work from one profound desire: to control their own lives. Privacy, I would think, falls under that,

Groups calling themselves "Libertarian" (with a capital L) typically claim that the government should protect its citizens from nothing but "force or fraud".

Invasions of privacy (like taking nude photos of someone through her bathroom window with a telescopic lens) is neither forceful nor fraudulent. Therefore, the ideal "Libertarian" government will do nothing to stop it.

For example, this Libertarian Party Statement says that freedom of action & speech is the 2nd most important thing (after right to life). Therefore, my right to sell nude photos of you overrides your non-right to stop me.

"The War is illegal because it was never declared."

The war is as legal as the war in 1991, because it is the same war. It was a new battle, but the same war.

The war was not declared in 1991 either.
And I think we should have declared war in 1991.
As the one armed man on the Simpson's says, "That way anything you do is nice and legal."

I also think that it was criminal for the US to liberate Kuwait, bomb Iraq back to the stone age, and not liberate Iraq from Saddam at the same time. But as Thomas Friedman said, our politicians wanted a dictator in Iraq who would rule with an Iron Fist. Even though he was officially our enemy, he fit the bill of Dictator with an Iron Fist. That's why he was left in power. The best of all worlds for US Politicians, the worst of all worlds for Iraqi civilians.

Note that the lack of a declaration of war is also a complaint in the Libertarian Party Statment about Operation Iraqi Liberation.

Anyone ever wonder why our government never bothers to formally declare war anymore?

I think you may fin what you're looking for in the Libertarian Party.

The time has definitely come for a new political party that champions individual liberty, social responsibility and sicentific progress

Maybe it's time to investigate the Libertarians . Looks like they've started out in the right direction. For a more polished view of libertarianism, check out the US party and their last presidential candidate .

Mapping the Internet weekly will allow us to see major disasters in different parts of the world. The Internet is a huge disaster censor

Wait, I thought that "the Internet regards censorship as damage and routes around it"?

On the other hand, with most Americans turning away from traditional media and on to the various portals, it would be entirely possible for certain disasters to be "censored" by the big players. But there's always someone who won't cooperate.

But Wikipedia came to the rescue. The poster is clearly talking about the Internet taking on the role of a Roman Censor, who was responsible for (among other things) enumerating the Roman people in a Census and setting tax rates. The Internet is a Disaster Censor, in that it goes out and finds problems and helps us figure out how important they are.

Right?