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The problem with having a rational debate about Libertarianism here is that it's a frequently misunderstood ideology, largely because no two Libertarians can seem to agree on the same thing (an obvious exaggeration, but there are many different flavours of Libertarianism out there) - Like Danarchy said, there certainly exist many people that call themselves Libertarian that really just have an agenda of Anarchism. The most appropriate one-word label would probably be Minarchist though, since as Myk pointed out there are Libertarians that want some form of government to keep things from getting crazy. The core idea behind Libertarianism (ignoring the economic aspects naturally) as I understand it, is 'less government makes for better lives for everyone'. The less the government intervenes in your matters, the better. Some people take that idea quite far, whereas others think moderation is key - on the other hand, Anarchists would rather that every man fends for himself which is pretty preposterous as anyone can see. On the other hand, many Anarchists point to Somalia as some kind of paradise. There are some parallels between Libertarianism and Anarchism, but Libertarianism is just a pinch more reasonable. Also, as Aliotroph said, some Libertarians want to fall back to the early days of America, the era after the signing of the declaration of independence. I think a better question than 'What is the difference between Anarchy and Libertarianism?' would be, 'Is thumping a bible worse than thumping the US Constitution?'. The answer of course, is unclear - but we should keep in mind that the Constitution was never intended to be beyond reproach or otherwise untouchable, it was intended to be interpreted by the Supreme Court as society advanced - the founding fathers had the foresight to realize that cultures would change and evolve over time.

It's interesting to me that the pedophiles would stand up for themselves in this way given that they are looked down upon almost universally. Bank has the right idea likening this to the KKK marches, they won't accomplish what they're after, in fact this will probably end up being counter-productive. And nothing of value was lost.

Instead of saying that the Libertarian party has no hope of winning an election, I could have explained why Libertarian goals are worthy of ridicule (or otherwise unattainable). It's only a hop, skip and a jump from the Anarchy that 13 year olds and poor people like to preach, which is really all one needs to say. In the end I was able to determine that this was not the place for rational or intelligent debate on such a subject and so opted to post something inflammatory and insulting to the point of absurdity to concisely communicate my thoughts about Libertarianism.

207 local positions....holy shit =O That's like 4.14 a state!! Well I take back everything I said, then. Obviously a great many people take Libertarianism seriously, I mean, otherwise how would they get just soooo many people in there? Unreal. Andre Marrou once said : "Liberals want the government to be your mommy, Conservatives want the government to be your daddy, Libertarians want it to treat you like an adult." to which an equally wise man responded : "Libertarians want to kill mommy and daddy so that they can stay up later and eat more ice cream than they can now." Anyway on topic; nobody needs a youtube embed to see that Alex Jones is completely insane.

I think you're taking what I said, and blowing it out of proportion - I said 'vote for a party that has a chance of winning'. The Libertarian party hasn't got a snowball's chance in Hell of ever winning any election, ever, unless a shitload of people just decide to randomly choose that backwards group. I mean, it's a well known opinion that most Libertarians are either addicts, child-molestors or animal abusers.

The graphics are definitely gimmicky, but that's fine if you're going for the gimmicky look. This looks like it could be entertaining though.

What the fuck is this shit? Why not vote for a party that has a chance of winning? Or maybe your plan includes convincing millions of other people to vote Libertarian as well.

I sense that you're upset with what I said. Well, I take nothing back. Some pissed-off foreigners blow up a famous new york landmark, thousands of people die, and they say that more violence will follow - what can you do? Wait til something else blows up? Dubya was right to invade Afghanistan, at that point in time the only appropriate course of action was to kick some terrorist ass. Then someone said that a certain Iraqi dictator had some mystical WMDs - assuming that he did, parts of the USA could vanish forever in the blink of an eye, once again, what is the right thing to do? Hope that he's lying, pack up and go home? Bush might not have had the brains to keep the economy from keeling over, but you have to admit that he at least had the balls to do the right thing, a quality sorely lacking in many people these days. Forgive me for seeing things from my own point of view instead of hopping on the 'hate Bush' bandwagon.

You can have good intentions and still be a dumbass.

Obama has barely done anything yet - all I've seen him do is appear on talk shows and pose for magazine covers. Anyway, sooner or later we're going to have to face the truth - as many people that voted against Obama simply because he's black (or a close approximation) voted for Obama simply because he's black (or young, I won't exclude those people from this), disregarding any qualifications or aspirations he may have had. They're both equally racist, or at least equally senseless. There has never been a president anyone has been 100% satisfied with. For example George Bush - a good man with honest intentions that accidentally fucked things up a little and we have people running around saying he's the antichrist or something, which is a position that I believe Obama stole recently. Also, Patrick probably has the correct attitude about this.

If you don't play a lot of video games, you have no right to pen this list.

Baby fuck, baby fuck, it's awwwwwright!! Umm, but really - you shouldn't be having sex with 15 year olds. There is something wrong with that. On topic : I just saw Bruno, and it was exactly what I was expecting. I was highly unimpressed with it.

I don't believe in regular posting. Oh and apparently I mistook the Doomworld forums for the PoliticsWorld forums.

At least they didn't mute the audio like other videos get. Anyway, Penn & Teller were basically just discussing how they don't video games don't turn children into killing machines, and accused people like Jack Thompson of using agenda-driven research. Try a torrent if you really need to see it. Also Maes, you are right, air pistols are a very stress-relieving form of pest control, but still, the coolness factor is minimal at best =p

Have you ever stood and stared at it, marveled at its beauty, its genius? Billions of people just living out their lives, oblivious. Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered. Where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed that we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that as a species, human beings define their reality through misery and suffering. The perfect world would be the dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from. In all honesty though, I'm looking forward to Operation Flashpoint 2, that Red Orchestra sequel, and umm, well that's about it.

Argh....there's air pistol marksmanship contests? I could never stoop so low as to use an air pistol for anything at all, ever. If big muzzle flares and loud noises aren't for you, take up .22 shooting so you can keep some amount of dignity. Speaking of which, I don't know what this talk of firearm sounds not living up to their expectation =P I don't remember the gun sounds in doom being loud enough to send a shockwave through my guts. In fact, I don't know a single game where the gun sounds have been accurately loud enough! As for prone-shooting, I avoid it when I'm out - a bench rest shot is easier, and is as effective as firing from the prone position. Not to mention lying face down in the mountains in BC is tantamount to drowning yourself in snow =P To comment on the video, I thought it was pretty amusing, save for the crying kid at the end - that wasn't cool at all. When they mentioned Jack Thompson, I was sorta surprised that they didn't attack him for sending gay porn in a court filing a while back - maybe they thought it was too easy =P Oh well, as to the point of the video, I'm not sure we can absolutely say that video games cannot be linked to real life violence. That's not to say I think we should ban violent video games - I'm just saying that I believe that there are children that are motivated by what they see in video games, particularly the GTA series. Obviously that's the kid's problem, not the game, but still. Just take a look at all the middle class white kids trying to be 'gangsta' these days, smoking pot and stealing cars. Anyway, good video, though Penn needs to stop cussing for the sake of cussing.

People get upset about silly things. You can't say 'fuck' on public television while kids could be watching - an attack on free speech. You can't own anti-tank weaponry; a clear case of the second amendment being shattered. Or maybe you can't shoot your mailman for trespassing on your private land =P Let's get real, people - you can say bad things about the president without risk of disappearing in the night, your government will support you when you're unemployed, you can raise whacked-out conspiracy theories and you can even openly preach opposition to the police force and government that protects you and nobody will toss you into a labour camp for it. Granted, some things ought to be reformed - there are some stupid rules and regulations, but people have always had the power to change that - if you don't like what your government is doing, elect a different representative. Furthermore, you'd be crazy to think the government could ever 'take' freedom from Americans, even slowly. People notice - Hell, as we're discussing this, people are being made more and more aware of what goes on higher up. Anyway, no society has ever been impotent against their own government, you can't force someone to conform. Even the Third Reich had an organized resistance undermining Hitler. Essentially what I'm trying to communicate is that as American citizens, you can afford to relax - there's no need to get irate about everything the government ever does, as there will definitely be a category 5 shitstorm if the government ever did try to strip your rights away. If worse comes to worst, there will be an uprising - there are more citizens than government fatcats, and most of the people already in government jobs do them for the good of the public - not because they want to institute a new world order. Anyway, don't take that too seriously, it's an opinion. <opinion noted and discarded>

I'm sure a lot of religious people would like to sterilize you, you baby killing Atheist =P Besides, it's not like those so religiously inclined have ever personally attacked you. As for the topic at hand, I'm willing to bet that this isn't the breakthrough everyone was waiting for, chances are good that it probably won't go anywhere productive.

Getting immediately irate about 'the little things' is not as intelligent or effective as you'd believe. Take a look at Russia - They've had more revolutions than I can count, but United States style freedom has not come to their country yet. Considering the Russian people seem to be in a constant state of political-pissed-offedness, you'd think they'd make some progress, right? Hell, Communism-style freedom hasn't even come to Russia yet (or anyone else for that matter). Anyway, I am not trying to say that turning a blind eye to corruption high up in the government is a good thing - what I was really trying to say was that Americans and westerners in general are very quick to make a under-educated assessment of what they perceive as an 'attack' on their freedom, when they haven't ever felt the taste of disenfranchisement or true political evil. Really though, I'd like to say that anyone who buys into this paranoid bullshit is probably incapable of thinking for themselves - csonicgo made a great post about this, so no need to add my comments about that. Anyway, before riling yourselves up in a panic, you should take some time to truly understand what it is that's happening, as a voting citizen of your country, it is your responsibility to make informed, educated decisions about your government. EDIT: Sorry, this was boring.

Well I'm trolling in the sense that it takes very little to upset the kinds of people that get their panties in a knot over these things. Really though, America truly is the land of the free. And if you disagree...well that's irrelevant, because like anyone else, I was adding my own opinion to the cesspit of internet politics =P

Oh shit, not your freedom! I honestly don't know what you jokers are on about - try living outside of your precious United States, I guarantee you'll appreciate the freedom you have there quite a lot more.

David Carradine, Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson and now Billy Mays? It's been a mad month, celebrities over 50 beware.