And, in important news, Michael Munger is still NOT a Republican

Last year's Libertarian candidate for Governor of North Carolina, Dr. Michael Munger of Duke University, had to listen to the same accusations that GOPers like to bring against Libertarians: Quit this stuff--you're electing Democrats and we're waaay better than them.

[Of course, this ignores the fact that in the 2008 election Michael actually pulled more votes from the Democratic candidate than from the Republican, but facts rarely seem to matter in this kind of discussion.]

At any rate, Dr. Munger [who admittedly once was a Republican] ends a post at Kids Prefer Cheese about conservative thought and arguments with these words:

I should point out that these plausible proposals have NOT risen to the forefront of the Republican agenda. (Yes, even these proposals are pretty tepid, and would hardly satisfy a Libertarian, but I am thinking in directional terms here: The Rs are still going fast in the wrong direction!) And so I am still most definitely not a Republican. You folks who send emails proposing that I am "really" a Republican need to realize that the Repubs are "really" full of goose dung.

Wrong direction ... full of goose dung ...

The most prominent Libertarian candidate for any office other than President makes it pretty clear: Republicans ain't Libertarians, and aren't even really coming closer.

Libertarian Republican remains an oxymoron in today's world.

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A Libertarian Martin Luther King Jr. Day post

In which we travel into interesting waters . . . (for a fairly long trip, so be prepared) Dr. King's 1968 book, Where do we go from here: chaos or community? , is profound in that it criticizes anti-poverty programs for their piecemeal approach, as John Schlosberg of the Center for a Stateless Society [C4SS] observes: King noted that the antipoverty programs of the time “proceeded from a premise that poverty is a consequence of multiple evils,” with separate programs each dedicated to individual issues such as education and housing. Though in his view “none of these remedies in itself is unsound,” they “all have a fatal disadvantage” of being “piecemeal,” with their implementation having “fluctuated at the whims of legislative bodies” or been “entangled in bureaucratic stalling.” The result is that “fragmentary and spasmodic reforms have failed to reach down to the profoundest needs of the poor.” Such single-issue approaches also have “another common failing — ...

Libertarian National Committee Deathwatch Part 1

As the LNC continues to lurch towards collapse, with the latest news of mass layoffs at HQ, I've decided to begin tracking those things leading the national party to irrelevance, even as state and local parties gain power. As news, rumors and rhetoric break out, I shall chronicle them in this ongoing series at Delaware Libertarian. Organizations approaching failure have a number of characteristics. One of the most striking is renunciation of their purpose and effort to reinvent themselves as a "me-too" provider of services in the marketplace. In this, the LNC has been on a collision course with destiny for a while now. Recently, for example, it hired Republican Party web site developer TerraEclipse to redesign the LNC web site . Terra created a web site very similar to those of the clients it brags most about -- far-right Republican conservatives like Tom McClintock and BJ Lawson. A quick look at the web site they built for the LNC is instructive. The tagline on the ...

Soda tax debate reveals fundamental progressive assertions about your lack of individual rights and the "responsiblities" of the State

I thought it would be at least amusing to use the Delawareliberal comments as sub-headings regarding each category of what is wrong with the proposed tax on sodas and juice drinks. But there are so many different little strands of each comment that it would be impossible to pull them all out. So, instead, I'm going to let you read them in more or less the order they appeared, and note the assumptions. pandora: I’m perfectly okay with taxing sodas and juice drinks. Mainly because they’re total crap, and one of the main reasons our country’s children are overweight. They are also dirt cheap. Assumptions here: (1) Because "I" am perfectly okay with a new tax it should be imposed on everybody; (2) it is the government's responsibility to keep children from being obese; (3) the cheapness of the product to be taxed justifies charging people more for it. John Manifold: Soda fattens your kids [and you and your husband], shortens their lives, costs more than water [a...

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