[Foss-cafe] QOTW: Third Parties

[Timothy R. Butler]

>
> 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."

	Hmm... I think the Political Compass is wrong there. Nadar and Kerry 
agree on a lot more, I suspect, than you can find common between Bush 
and Kerry (other than certain foreign policy issues and the PATRIOT 
Act). Of course, American liberalism and conservatism are both more 
conservative than much of the rest of the world's political spectrum.

> 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.

	I know a lot of people that liked congressman Kucinich. Personally, I 
thought he sounded somewhat utopian, but that's just me. I was rooting 
for Sen. Lieberman -- there's a guy that could almost have made me 
think about voting Democratic for once. Just from a geographical 
perspective, I was also rooting for hometown congressman Gephardt.

> 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.

	Well, I suspect we might as well agree to disagree right on. I've yet 
to see the President force anyone to agree with his religious values 
(much to the chagrin of some of my fellow conservatives who would like 
to see him do so). About the only thing he did was refuse to have the 
government pay for more stem cell harvesting -- which, beyond a good 
moral call (arguably) was also a good call from a libertarian view of 
government.

	Here's where I differ with the constitution party -- I don't really 
see the need to force my views on the country, I simply don't want to 
have to pay for things I disagree with (such as the embryonic stem cell 
research and SCNT cloning). That's why the Libertarian Party works so 
well for me -- they permit a whole lot of stuff I don't agree with, but 
they take the government out of the business of dealing with that stuff 
at all, thus it doesn't matter nearly as much.

> 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
> [...]
> someday I'll live in a country where I won't be forced to choose the
> lesser of two evils.

	I can't say where I see John Kerry will really help the situation any. 
Considering, as you note, he supports most of the President's policies 
that are the most controversial (or at least did at some point(s) in 
the last eighteen months), it seems like it won't gain anyone anything 
in those respects by getting him elected.

	While I don't agree with him on a lot of issues, I think someone with 
actual principles, like Ralph Nader, would do far better than Kerry. 
IMO, the candidates with principles (whether one agrees with those 
principles or not) are Bush, Nader and Badnarik.

	-Tim

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Timothy R. Butler       Universal Networks      www.uninet.info
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