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So these are (some) of my views in a nutshell, if you know a better party I could claim association with, I would be happy to take a look.

As fas as your voter registration, it varies by state. There are two reasons to register with a party: to have a more active or official role as a campaigner, candidate, election judge or whatnot; and to be eligible to vote in that party's primaries (this part varies by state).

As for a small government voting strategy, what I like to do is to vote against all the tax and bond referendums (no exceptions, a bond is just a tax not yet due), maybe vote for a politician if they earned my respect, maybe vote for unelected challengers (never for the incumbant unless they have earned it). I don't think party-line voting makes much sense unless it is a party that is out of office. Votes for the LP (libertarian party - of which I am not a member, my camp is Objectivism/Ayn Rand - sigh - yes on of those people) or other 3rd parties let them know you are unhappy with the two major choices.

As for your mention of tax funded health care, schooling, and I'll add retirement: I believe there should be K-12 type public schools, and colleges should be largely privatized as it is today (I have a few ideas that I believe would fix the education system but that is another discussion). Health care and retirement could be privatized if people were not already spending so much of their money in taxes.

Tax-payer funded schools are a definite, no-questions-asked libertarian no no. Among the moral objections (coercive taxes), there are also the practical considerations of curriculum decisions. There continue to be lawsuits not just over evolution but anything that might be sex-ed or gay-themed. The thing is, parents want control but by handing over half their money to the government, very few parents have that control (private schools). Public schools and low taxes are very very very unlikely to coexist again. More issues.

I also believe in National ID, and harsher punishment for things that are crimes. I believe prisoners should be required to work 40 hours a week to counter the taxpayers expenses of supporting them. Prisoners able but unwilling to work the 40 hours/week can be kept in 6' cubed bird cages in the prison basement and be fed bread and water.

Another major libertarian issue is opposition to the war on drugs. A very large portion of prisoners are in jail for drug and drug-related crimes or stealing/murdering to pay for or sell drugs (or prostitution or gambling or other things the goverment prefers to monopolize for itself). These prisoners may cost - ballpark - $25,000 per year in housing alone. Court costs add to this. Every person you put in jail may be two or three more people that have to work to pay the guards, jail builders, judges, lawyers, and whatnots. Your idea of working the prisoners - although commendable and suitable in some instances - is more akin to slave labor when the crimes are not murder, rape, assault or thievery (including fraud etc.). Besides a national id really will not help catch these people just as the patriot acts were not about the NYC attacks. If you want to go tougher on crime - more prisoners and housed longer - expect to pay more taxes. The unions and China won't let them do real meaningful work (unions will object and China will outperform unskilled labor). Many prisoners end up doing telemarketing. That substracts value from the economy, it does not add it.

Also, another fundamental tennat of capitalism (the Adam Smith variety not modern corps) is the ineffectiveness of slave labor. I can't see lower taxes and more prisoners together. We imprison more people than Red Communist China and they have several times our population. Incredible, huh?

So I support the greater personal freedoms of the Democratic party, and the greater economic freedom of the Republican party.

Ho hum. The Demo

just don't teach it in school.

Of course not! We need to get back to separation of school and state, the way the nation's founders (all diests and thus abhorrent to the fundamentalist mindset) intended.

It is also the first step towards trying to teach it as if it wasn't actually religion when it is. Freedom doesn't give you any right to mislead.

Freedom means I can say whatever I want to say, and you can take it or leave it.

As for teaching children in the classroom, children are clearly not free if they are forced to be somewhere.

I couldn't disagree more.

Roads: Go look up "turnpike", or better yet read _How Capitalism Saved America_ by Thomas DiLorenzo. It's well written and entertaining, and he has an entire chapter on roads. Prior to governments taking over the private roads, they were indeed being built and being built well. What they were not doing was paying enough in bribes and kickbacks.

Medical: Again, the government and its agency the AMA have done their best to keep medical science as slow as possible. The FDA ensures that only the largest of corporations can produce legal drugs, and limitations on medical schools combined with restrictions on what may be taught prevent there from being enough doctors and physicians to allow for actual competition.

Police: What, prey tell, are the hundreds if not thousands of private security firms in the US alone doing, if not providing police? The fact of the existence of those many private security firms demonstrates that the government funded police do NOT serve well enough.

National Defense: What about attacking Somalia has anything to do with "defense"? Were the military actually providing defense you might have some case for your assertion, but the fact that an entirely new cabinet level department for national defense was set up within the last three years demonstrates that either the military cannot do the job, or that is not their job.

If this or any country were actually attacked, there would be no need for forced "defense" because people do not need to be coerced to defend their homes. But then, the power granted to the Fed.gov is to coordinate the various militia, not maintain a standing army. If you can agree to put the "national defense" back to that level and see if it indeed better than could be done privately, I'll go along with it whole heartedly.

Civil Rights: The greatest violator of "civil" rights is the government in the first place. Governments at all levels have used their power to deny individuals their "rights", so what about getting government out of the way would be less effective?

Or do you think the ACLU, NRA and Martin Luther King were government agents/agencies?

And as far as "public" education goes, getting government entirely out of education could not possibly be worse than what they have done to it. Just compare the litteracy rates prior to coercive "public" schooling and now. It's easy, there are lots of books on the subject, or you could just bop over to http://www.sepschool.org/

To put it politely, I have never seen any actual evidence that there is any government function that cannot be provided better and/or cheaper by private interests. Unless you are being very specific that you are only comparing "for profit compan[ies]" and therefore do not include churches, the ACLU, and the other myriad non-profit organizations that do these things.

I'll be very glad to read what evidence you have for your 6 assertions. I can recommend _The Voluntary City_ from the University of Michigan Press as a starting point for mine.

Bob-

Yes - Home school. Run, Forrest, Run away from the public school system! Keep in mind that most of what the school district will tell you is false. I have been there. As soon as you realize that they can't really control your life, you have the power to make your own decisions. Depending on the state you live in, there are different ways of going about it. There are many alternatives for schooling. A quick search at google for 'home school' and your state will result in some good information. I also recommend checking the 'Alliance for theSeperation of School and State' site.

In the early days of public schools in America, each school was closely supervised by a relatively small number of parents with mostly compatible philosophy. Think Oklahoma! or Anne of Green Gables. This arrangement worked well. Public school today is a gigantic institution where parents are unwelcome nuisances. The huge NEA union is concerned about maintaining their cash flow and social engineering rather than education as most of us understand it.

Some who agree with me on the problem, think that the Public Schools can be fixed. I think they are too far gone.

The foisting of one version of right and wrong on children is one of the best reasons for a complete separation of school and state.

Bob-

Having a computer does not teach math. It does not teach reading (pretty pictures), it does not teach writing. All it does is teach how to use that computer.

Test scores are dropping. Highschool graduates cannot parse a sentense. They cannot do arithmatic, they cannot write or spell. They cannot read latin, or do 90% of what a highschool graduate did a hundred years ago.

Nothing about having a computer educates, it just distracts.

Millionaires will rescue victims of government schools by Vin Suprynowicz is just one of his excellent diatribes on the complete failure of the American federal and state government educational disaster, what might be the largest single welfare industry on the planet.

Vin's Las Vegas Review-Journal archive has this years output, which will be updated in the next week or two to include another education expose' well worth the wait.

To put it bluntly, this purchase is not a mistake. It is a deliberate action to spend as much money on "education" as possible, and get the least effective return, guranteeing more money next year for more administrative and support staff to "do something" about the failing students.

The Alliance for the Separation of School and State has a lot more on the massive abuse of students and wealth that is going on, and only grows greater every day.

Bob-

One of my best friends was an Atheist in the same boat. (I was and am a Christian.) We went around proving to people that their world view was logically inconsistent - and they had better become an Atheist or a Christian. Nobody listened. I have since learned that discovering someone's world view is not that easy.

Another friend was stabbed to death in Washington DC by a homeless man while serving him food as a volunteer.

The girls preferred natty dressers and jocks. This continued into my 20s. By then, the natty dressers and jocks had ditched (as in divorcing or simply using and discarding) these same girls, and faithful, responsible men with steady jobs started to look really good. So at age 29, the tables were turned. Too bad Dr. Laura hadn't written her "Ten Stupid Things" books yet.

There is an even bigger emphasis on mindless conformity in today's schools. A large part of the problem is the fact that the government runs them. The biggest government school lobby, the NEA, sees indoctrination, not learning, as the primary goal of education.

I have a solution to offer:

Should we end government education?

• Yes
• No

Does the American education system teach Americans anything other than how to boost their already overactive self-esteems?

If you're curious about how this happened, you can check into the Separation of School and State Alliance or read NY State Teacher of the Year John Taylor Gatto's new book The Underground History of American Education .

Mixing state involvement with education will have some perverse effects. In some cases, you may think those effects are worth it, in others you may not.

The issue is complicated, but for those interested in the argument that government-controlled, compulsory, tax-funded schooling is inherently wrong rather than only a matter of bad execution, you might be interested in the Alliance for the Separation of School and State, who take their cue from the phrase "separation of church and state" and in a sense for the same reasons.

Efforts like WAVE America expose the danger of trusting a bureaucracy to "care" for children in other than a cursory, bean-counting way. "Care" as euphemism, that is.

[Note: I am not endorsing -- nor do I agree with, so far as I know -- any or all religious beliefs of the founders of this organization. =) ]

timothy

Question 1: www.netday96.com

Question 2: No, not that I wouldn't like to.

Question 3: Yes.

Question 4: www.netday96.com

On your inferred question about liability issues such as politicians/bureacrats targeting you because of internet issues:

It is the responsibility of the governing board (and the school staff) of the school or school district to 'protect' students from harm, although I've seen a few disclaimer forms around that sound like schools disclaim any monetary claim to safety (physical or otherwise) on behalf of students.

Contact Netday96 and get with helping those children out (if they are in public school you better bet they need help, it is government school after all).

The whole issue would more of a moot point if only government government got out of the education business. The government school system purpetuates nothing so well as mediocrity and bloated bureacracy.

P.S. Did I mention you should look up www.netday96.com?

See

http://www.sepschool.org/faq.html, the Separation of School and State FAQ.

If you peruse misc.education.home-school.misc on Usenet, you will find that increasing numbers are finding how rewarding this approach can be, for themselves and their children.

I would urge you also to read "Let's Blackmail the Young into Doing Good" at http://www.infomagic.com/liberty/vs99 0414.htm for a somewhat related rant. Relevant quote:

"...it's nice when young people learn how good it can feel to help others, out of the goodness of our hearts. But the lessons learned by slave laborers -- shirking, sabotage, resentment, and escape -- are quite different."