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Libertarian Candidate Michael Badnarik Interview
Lowtekium writes "On November 2nd many young adult Americans will go to the polls to vote for their next President, but very few of them know of the Libertarian Presidential Candidate, Michael Badnarik. JIVE Magazine had the chance to interview Mr. Badnarik. He gives his thoughts on various topics that affect young adults such educational aid and funding for college students, video game violence, and even music and entertainment censorship."
Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats will bring back the draft. In fact, that bill was killed weeks ago. The Republicans from the Prez on down have said there will be no draft, and even though the Democrats sponsored the draft bill in the House, they weren't really serious about it - it was just used as a scare tactic / wedge issue.
So either Badnarick is either ignorant, or just thinks young people are so stupid that you can just scare them into voting for you. MTV does the same thing with Rock the Vote. Check it out - as we've seen before, neither party is bringing back the draft but MTV still hosts this page.
Perhaps if Badnarick starts treating the "Dot Net" age group like the intelligent, informed people that we are instead of all the MTV-esque scare-mongering, maybe we might vote for him.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
FTA
Earlier today, Libertarians attempted to serve these same papers at the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the CPD - but were stopped from approaching the CPD office by security guards.
Though I understand that it's suppose to be civil disobeadence, I'm not sure how they can Legeally be stoped from serving papers. I guess the idea is that they were trying to do it during the debate itself for the most coverage, but what am I missing here?
"We just expect you to handle all the consequences of your decision. So everything Libertarians espouse is basically individual rights and personal responsibility."
But that is the whole sticking point.
The conceptions of what one should be a responsible for or have the right to do is are so varied that to simply say that that is what you espouse is meaningless.
As Badnarik asks, "Why would you let the government tell you what to do?" This is not a reasonable argument against other parties: Libertarians still tell you what to do. They say you have to respect what Badnarik calls "divine rights." No one would agree with Badnarik's exact intepretation of "divine rights" and many would not agree with anything significantly close to it.
It seems anarchists outdue the libertarians with regards to personal liberty: they say the government shouldn't tell you what to do at all. Libertarians say that the government should tell you to do some things. Marxist-Leninists says that the government should tell you to do other things. Libertarians have just picked one of many positions of the government telling you what to do. And they don't offer any definitive reasons that trump any other political parties' reasons for choosing their particular ideological position. They're saying: "everyone must have these rights simply because it's natural/divine." I don't see any evidence whatsoever that their conceptions of rights and responsibilities are natural. You can say they're "nice" or "moral", but to claim their natural is to claim that the universe is bound to your ideals. Perhaps it is, but I don't see the evidence.
Does anyone more familiar with Libertarian thought have more evidence? I'm glad to dicuss this and think about it moreso.
Read the interview, he calls college grants for low-income student "goverment-sponsored theft".
Without this "goverment-sponsored theft", I wouldn't be making $70K right now and contributing $20K per year to Uncle Sam... I might even be on welfare...
Yes, well, there are many different kinds of market failure, all of which libertarians' only response is to shake their fists and say "Impossible!"
There is another candidate I have in mind who thinks that if the facts don't fit the theory, then the facts must be wrong. I don't plan on voting for him, either.
You're trolling, but this is actually a good criticism of a first-past-the-post voting system (the kind we currently have).
How many times does a politician have to lie to you before you stop believing anything they say?
;) Sometime in the next year, something will happen that "justifies" a draft. I have a hunch its that President Kerry will be assasinated by "terrorists" (read CIA/illuminati/insert your favorite here)
Of course they're going to say there will be no draft (how would they get elected otherwise), but as you admit yourself, it MIGHT be necessary in the future. There is CURRENTLY a sort of "backdoor" draft going on (RETIRED RESERVISTS being called into active duty), and if we continue the so-called War on Terror, there WILL be a need for more warm bodies.
I will make a bold prediction
That is absolute codswallop. Big Government is what got us into and kept us in the Great Depression, and War is what got us out.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Makes sense to me. Women are equal these days (something I agree with, btw), so they ought to be equal in responsibility as well.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Seem to teach a history biased in favor of big government.
I thought it was mandatory civil service for all Americans regardless of if we were at war. This doesn't necessarily mean joining the army. The official title of the bill was:
"To provide for the common defense by requiring that all young persons in the United States, including women, perform a period of military service or a period of civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security, and for other purposes."
Frankly this is the only halfway decent reason for voting for either of these two I have heard.
But think about it...The best solution is to force gridlock so that all those we elected are the most powerless to do anything? That is what we consider best for the USA, to put people in power for the purpose of blocking those others we have put into power?
Is that not he saddest thing ever, that THIS is what we aspire to? If it were not real it would be too funny and outlandish to pass as fiction.
I refuse to participate in that game, and will vote for who comes closest to me in my opinions and beliefs. If my doing so means the "wrong" candidate ends up in the whitehouse, so be it. When both are wrong at least I can walk away from this mess without feeling dirty.
Finkployd
I was discussing politics with some friends the other day, and the LP came up. One of them said, "Oh those guys are really out there. They want to get rid of driver's licenses". I love what the LP stands for, but this one was new to me. So I sat there thinking about whether or not this could be true.
To my surprise, I was totally unable to come up with an argument for keeping the DMV around. Its stated goal, of ensuring that only qualified people drive, is clearly total bullshit. They don't require any testing beyond vision after your 16th birthday, and lack of a driver's license isn't capable of keeping someone with hands, feet, and a key from driving anyway. On top of which, nobody likes the DMV (wasn't there a song by Primus along those lines?) and they're an expensive agency for a state to run. And on the flip side, a driver's license is a de facto ID card. It requires you to keep the government informed of where you live at all times, and makes it really easy for traffic cops to turn ticketing into a money racket.
Dyolf Knip
That's all well and good, and I can see the point behind it. But then there is the tragedy of the commons. For example, if there is a river that runs through my property, I don't have the right to dam it up and deny people downstream the use of that river, because that river is a common, shared resource.
You're missing the distinction - if I dam a river that is partly on my property and partly on your property, I've used my property such that I've damaged your property. In other words, I've deprived you of use of something that you have a legitimate claim to.
However, even if you have a right to use of the river when it runs through your property, that still doesn't give you the right to come over and make use of the portion of the river that resides on my property. If someone owns as piece of beach-front property, it's still private property. You don't have a right to use it simply because it's adjacent to a commons.
Similarly, any wealth I acquire didn't come from a commons, it came from an exchange of my labors with other individuals and organizations for money. My labor, unlike a river, is not a commons. I didn't acquire my wealth by depriving you of it. You won't be any richer if I go broke. Therefore, acquisition of wealth is not analgious to use of a river.
Look at copyright: Copyright is (supposed to) expire, because there is no such thing as an idea in a vacuum. The idea came from the combined experiences and environment provided by society. Giving up exclusive control of a creation after a certain amount of time is how we pay back society.
No, giving up exclusive control is how we pay back "society" for granting us a temporary monopoly on that work, which was given to us in exchange for making that work public in the first place.
I'll point out that the root of word "patent" is "to make public". Before there were patents, inventions were protected by keeping their workings a trade secret. That is why nobody knows how to reproduce a Stradivarius violin. The idea of a patent was to grant a limited monopoly on an invention in return for making the process of it's creation public. If patent had been available to Stradivarius, we would know the process he used to make violins.
The problem with Libertarianism is that it assumes we all exist in a vacuum. "It's my money, and society has no right to it unless I give it." If that's your philosophy, then you have no rights to the benefit of society. Note that I said society, not government.
That's fine with me, because I have no dealings with "society" as an aggregate in the first place. I have dealings with my employer, who gives me money in exchange for my labor. I have dealings with my grocer, he gives me food in exchange for money. I have dealings with my friends, they give me their companionship in exchange for my own. But dealings with the majority of the 280 million people who live in this country? Nope. I deal with very, very few of them.
Any benefit I derive from society, is derived through mutual exchange with specific individuals who compose it.
And that's all "society" is: an aggregate of mutual relationships between individuals. It isn't a discrete entity like a football team.
If New City fell off of the face of the earth, I doubt the Amish would even notice. Nor would most New Yorkers notice if the Amish fell of the face of the earth. They have few points of contact.
The concept of "society" when considering a political entity, such as the United States, is largely meaningless. Most of us have little to do with the population as a whole.