[Foss-cafe] QOTW: Third Parties

[Fred Smith]

On Sat, 2004-10-30 at 00:23 -0500, Timothy R.Butler wrote:
> Ralph Nader, seems reasonable in some ways, and does in fact have some 
> reasonable views, but he is mostly someone further Left than Kerry.

That doesn't take very much;
http://www.digitalronin.f2s.com/politicalcompass/uselection.php

Kerry is the most right-wing democrat (he cannot be considered "liberal"
by any definition of the word) that entered the democratic primaries
earlier this year, and, sadly, was the one that was deemed most
"electable." 

Personally, if I could see anyone take his place, it'd be Dennis
Kucinich.  All throughout the democratic primaries, whenever one of the
candidates tried to say something good about themselves that separated
them from the other candidates, they'd have to note that Kucinich
voted/felt the same way.  "With the exception of Mr. Kucinich, I was the
only one here that ..." Unfortunately, no one in the media took Kucinich
very seriously, and he didn't make it very far into the primaries.

If this wasn't such an unsettlingly close election, and if he were on
the ballot in New York, I'd be voting for Ralph Nader. 

What truly scares me is the number of people, some of them well educated
(but most of them not), that are standing behind our current president.
Leaving aside his atrocious imperialist foreign policy, his bankrupt
economic policies, and his fascist law enforcement plans, the man is
doing everything in his power to legislate his backward religion into
the laws of a country that, last I checked, allowed freedom of religion
and required separation of church and state. He has every right to
practice his religion in the privacy of his own home, but the second he
began trying to force his screwball "values" onto everyone else, he
should have been impeached. The thought of this president, without the
restraints of having to win another election, is truly a frightening
proposition.

John Kerry scares me almost as much.  While he has maintained throughout
the past few months that he won't be forcing his personal religious
views (almost as backward as Bush's views) into law, he still supports
legislation like the Patriot act, he still supports imposing limits on
the civil rights of citizens based on what they choose to do in the
privacy of their own homes, and he still supports empire building and
preemptive war. Regardless of this fact, I've resigned myself to the
fact that I'm going to be shot on Nov. 2nd.  The question is, do I take
the bullet in the head, or in the leg? I'm going for the leg. Maybe
someday I'll live in a country where I won't be forced to choose the
lesser of two evils.

-- 
Fred Smith <fps at dividedsky.net>
Divided Sky Internet