Where am I politically?

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Onyx, I absolutely never expect any given political party to match my views by more than about eighty percent. The crux, then, is to decide how well, or even whether, I could live with the other twenty percent.

This is why Radar and I differ in our approaches to libertarianism and the Libertarian Party. I accept the eighty percent, he doesn't believe a Libertarian Party member could or should agree less than one hundred percent, and overdoes the rejectionism.

[Tangent to topic] And post #61 is some good work from tw. Seems a bit more from an atheistic philosopher than a religious one, but good nonetheless.

[Radar]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Onyx, I absolutely never expect any given political party to match my views by more than about eighty percent. The crux, then, is to decide how well, or even whether, I could live with the other twenty percent.

This is why Radar and I differ in our approaches to libertarianism and the Libertarian Party. I accept the eighty percent, he doesn't believe a Libertarian Party member could or should agree less than one hundred percent, and overdoes the rejectionism.

[Tangent to topic] And post #61 is some good work from tw. Seems a bit more from an atheistic philosopher than a religious one, but good nonetheless.

Once again, you prove not only your ignorance of libertarianism, but your overbearing attitude, and dishonesty about me.

I don't think one has to agree with the LP 100%. Libertarian was a philosophy for longer than a thousand years before it was a political party.

Libertarianism as a philosophy is based on 2 very simple principles. If you disagree with either of these universal truths, you aren't a libertarian.

1) Self-ownership: We own ourselves and the fruits of our labor (money, property, etc.) and no other person or group of people is entitled to them or has any legitimate authority over them.

2) The Non-Aggression Principle: No person, or group of people has the right to initiate force for political gain or social engineering. The only acceptable use of force is in YOUR OWN defense. For instance starting a war against another country that poses no threat to yours and has not attacked yours, or using the military to attack nations that treat their people in a way that isn't the same as yours.... like Iraq is a perfect example of using unwarranted, unjustified, and unprovoked aggression.

In addition to being a libertarian I am also a Constitutionalist. I believe that the role and scope of the government should be limited to only what is specifically enumerated in the Constitution and the federal government has absolutely zero authority to do anything that is not enumerated.

Any part of the government not mentioned in the Constitution is illegal and immoral. The Constitution was created to limit the role, scope, and powers of the U.S. Government and never to limit the rights of the people.

This is why the 16th and 18th amendment were never legitimate.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Indeed? -- then dammit, Paul, why do you keep acting that way, or in a way that might too easily be understood to signify that?

1) I say "Yes."

2) In the current bloodshed, our foes, selfmade, self-declared, spent fourteen years repeatedly and persistently initiating the violence with us. No violation of libertarian principle is thereby incurred when we do something about this. They're picking on us, who are at least more libertarian than they, and we're called upon to defend our existence, fortunes, and wellbeing. We'll not manage that by withdrawing behind our borders, Paul. We can manage it by defeating them in their backyards.

That and constructive, successful foreign policy, particularly in dealing with conspicuously nonlibertarian states, has a nasty way of kicking the doctrinaire purist to the ditch and doing violence in general to a doctrinaire approach. I quite visibly recognize this; I have trouble seeing that pragmatism in you. Don't be in such a goddamn hurry for us to lose -- if we lose, we can't do libertarianism and spread it around generally like we want it, can we?

On a second glance, the rest of your post lays out why you went into political activity of the Libertarian persuasion. Okay. My motivations for giving Libertarianism a try are clearly rather different from yours.

I counsel you against any urge to purge, as another poster once put it. Do not enfeeble your party and its base merely because some of them make you itch.

[Griff]

Your interventionist foreign policy got us in the mess we are now in. You continue to ignore the back story. We've intervened heavily and stupidly in the mid-east since WWII. The conflict did not begin with the Marine barracks bombing. Right now the pragmatic move would be to come home but that doesn't fit with your apparent agenda crushing individual liberty in favor of unlimited state power.