Astounding: A Post in Libertarian Republican that I can actually recommend reading....

....although, sorry to say, Eric, you didn't write it.

I'm referring to Kevin Tracy's Libertarian Bob Barr will have an enormous impact on the Republican Party for years to come, even if he loses the race for the Presidency. {FYI, Kevin, got to cut down those titles].

This post is intriguing in that it parallels a Jeremy Lott argument about which I posted back in early June. There Lott argued that Ralph Nader's 2000 success in crippling Al Gore's campaign essentially forced the Democratic Party to spend the next eight years moving closer to his beliefs.

Tracy is essentially saying the same thing about the Barr candidacy: assuming that McCain loses and Barr is attributed with at least some major share of his defeat, the GOP is going to have to move in the direction of trying to win back the Libertarian wing it has shit on in favor of the social conservatives for the past decade or so.

This, in itself, is interesting, but the true value of Tracy's post may lie in a single sentence:

Well, believe it or not, most of the world doesn’t live under a “two-party system.”

By world Tracy means democratic nations, and his prime example is India:

In India, for example, there are countless political parties divided along political, ethnic, regional, and ideological lines.

As a result of the complex multi-party system, it is absolutely impossible for any single political party to take control of the government. So in order to accomplish anything, political parties have to come together, compromise, negotiate, and find a solid solution to whatever problem they are trying to solve.

At the same time, Indian politics still very much resemble ours. That’s because the largest political parties have organized “coalitions.”

This raises an interesting question: if Tracy is right, and in the aftermath of a McCain loss the GOP comes calling on Libertarians, wouldn't the most innovative response be: OK, you want us? Fine, but this time we're retaining our own party structure as a coalition partner.

What would happen if the Libertarian Party said to the GOP: we'll caucus with you in Congress, but the price is that you have to agree that in the following ten House districts you won't support a Republican against our Libertarian candidate.

Well, we all know what would happen. Still, it would be nice to see Karl Rove with an aneurism, don't you think?

Comment Rescue (?) and child-related gun violence in Delaware

In my post about the idiotic over-reaction to a New Jersey 10-year-old posing with his new squirrel rifle , Dana Garrett left me this response: One waits, apparently in vain, for you to post the annual rates of children who either shoot themselves or someone else with a gun. But then you Libertarians are notoriously ambivalent to and silent about data and facts and would rather talk abstract principles and fear monger (like the government will confiscate your guns). It doesn't require any degree of subtlety to see why you are data and fact adverse. The facts indicate we have a crisis with gun violence and accidents in the USA, and Libertarians offer nothing credible to address it. Lives, even the lives of children, get sacrificed to the fetishism of liberty. That's intellectual cowardice. OK, Dana, let's talk facts. According to the Children's Defense Fund , which is itself only querying the CDCP data base, fewer than 10 children/teens were killed per year in Delaw

The Obligatory Libertarian Tax Day Post

The most disturbing factoid that I learned on Tax Day was that the average American must now spend a full twenty-four hours filling out tax forms. That's three work days. Or, think of it this way: if you had to put in two hours per night after dinner to finish your taxes, that's two weeks (with Sundays off). I saw a talking head economics professor on some Philly TV channel pontificating about how Americans procrastinate. He was laughing. The IRS guy they interviewed actually said, "Tick, tick, tick." You have to wonder if Governor Ruth Ann Minner and her cohorts put in twenty-four hours pondering whether or not to give Kraft Foods $708,000 of our State taxes while demanding that school districts return $8-10 million each?

New Warfare: I started my posts with a discussion.....

.....on Unrestricted warfare . The US Air force Institute for National Security Studies have developed a reasonable systems approach to deter non-state violent actors who they label as NSVA's. It is an exceptionally important report if we want to deter violent extremism and other potential violent actors that could threaten this nation and its security. It is THE report our political officials should be listening to to shape policy so that we do not become excessive in using force against those who do not agree with policy and dispute it with reason and normal non-violent civil disobedience. This report, should be carefully read by everyone really concerned with protecting civil liberties while deterring violent terrorism and I recommend if you are a professional you send your recommendations via e-mail at the link above so that either 1.) additional safeguards to civil liberties are included, or 2.) additional viable strategies can be used. Finally, one can only hope that politici

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