Gore's
recent blog post made me admit that even though I detest and loathe
Michael Moore and hope for his imminent demise, it's not a matter of
party vs party. The truth is, there is no party that represents my
views. While I have historically voted Republican, the truth is that
the party is crippled by its overall devotion to religion over reason
and puritanism over sense. Unfortunately, the Democrats are even worse,
being caught up in some shared naive and utterly unrealistic utopian
fantasy where the evils of the world can be banished if we simply take
away everyone's ability to make choices for themselves (not to mention
their money) and then get together to think happy thoughts. Each side
has their idiot chatterboxes and I don't listen to any of them. Not
James Carville, not Al Franken, not Rush Limbaugh, not Michael Moore,
not Bill O'Reilly, not Ann Coulter.
The Libertarian Party, one of the larger "third parties" in American
politics, has its own flaws. Honestly, its basic tenets resonate with
my own. However, the party and its members often call for policy
changes to which I simply cannot agree. Abolish the FDA? End EPA
enforcement and let people settle everything in civil courts? Oh, right
because civil litigation isn't enough of a runaway train, let's hitch a
couple trailers full of napalm to the end. Radioactive napalm. With...
uh... angry weasels in it. Or something.
Except for my various gun magazines, I subscribe to two political
periodicals: National
Review and Reason.
They are right-wing and (small "l") libertarian respectively. Neither
is a mouth piece for a political party, as NR is not afraid to criticize
Bush's actions that don't fit with its editors' beliefs (i.e. steel
tariffs, soaring budget, and others). Somewhere between the two
magazines and the two parties you can find me, agreeing with much, but
not all, of what each side is saying. A man without a party but with
some hard decisions to make. Surely I can't be the only one?
