| TheRealMafoo said: By the way, a little background on me. I am not white, not a Christian, and was born poor. I have a learning disability (I am very dyslexic, and it's why I use the wrong words a lot. Spelling was very hard for me, so I never took the extra effort needed to learn it properly). I now live in a 2,500 square foot home on 14 acres over looking a lake. I drive a Porsche 911 convertible, and have an incredibly loving Girlfriend. I love what I do for a living, and wake up every day excited about life. I never took a dime of government assistance growing up. I worked my way through collage, and worked 60 hours a week from the age of 23 to about 30 to work my way into where I am now. I was hired at 26K a year, never asked for a raise. I made myself as invaluable to everyone I worked with as I could, and I worked my way up to 120k a year. Now, here is what I want from my Government.... I live in a 98% white community. Extremely Christian. I date a white woman (I am of Israeli descent). Never, not once, do I feel I could lose my job, my house, my girlfriend, or my life because of who I am. This is not by accident. This is because this country has done everything right to make it this way. These freedoms people take lightly. They should not be. This is what makes this country the greatest in history. Give me a path to success and let me take the journey down it. I don't expect, or want, a country to provide me with substance off the backs of people born more fortunate. I just want an opportunity to achieve anything I desire. |
Congratulations. I am always impressed with people who overcome adversity and attain whatever it is they desire.
I honestly have no problem with libertarian principles whatsoever, but sometimes people mistakenly label a certain politician's or Congress's actions as libertarian. A libertarian is essentially for the government interfering with normal social relations as little as possible. In an economic sense, this would mean not showing favoritism to ANY group.
Democrats tend to show favoritism to the poor, while Republicans tend to show favoritism to the rich. But Republicans are often considered to be closer to libertarian principles. This is true to an extent. Deregulation is in line with libertarian principles, but passing legislation that allows a certain industry to gain an inherent advantage over the market, such as not allowing foreign prescription drug companies to import drugs due to "safety" (another way of saying that domestic prescription drug companies paid the government off once you have analyzed the facts), does not follow libertarian principles because it shows favoritism.
Republicans usually don't stick to libertarian principles even if people claim they do, they often shift the market so that it is disadvantageously in favor of larger companies, which contradicts what a libertarian stands for, government neutrality.
John McCain, for instance, says that we should allow the free market to lower insurance premiums. That wouldn't be so much of a problem if the government had not already given insurance companies a loaded deck. They can unreasonably discriminate on who they choose to insure, they can pressure hospitals/doctors into accepting what they want to pay rather than what the hospital/doctor would normally charge, and the policy holder has little to no power in challenging a decision to drop their coverage even if they have been paying premiums for twenty years. That is completely against libertarian principles. A free market would be more advantageous to a potential policy holder than it is now.
I am comfortable with a libertarian relaxing of standards on some areas of the market, but I hate it when people try to claim that helping out the "big guy" and hurting the "little guy" is in line with libertarian principles. That is simply incorrect.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
