I was a leftist liberal for a long time, so I feel your pain.
when i was younger i thought i was a marxist. Turns out i'm SO not. What i liked about marx was his earlier humanist writings (before he became so doctrinaire and ideologically rigid in his later writings, which stalin and lenin and others picked up on as universal and eternal truths to be implemented no matter the cost).
Turns out I was (am) a run of the mill humanist. So yea, I have to fend off the far left just as much as the far right. I see them as pretty much identical in their lunacies and commitments (esp their mutual commitments to achieving political monopoly (and to make it worse, usually the most direct route there is their extreme violence).
I even voted green party in 2000. A very close friend (30 years old, and a die hard liberal for as long as I've known him) just sent Howard Dean
i gave howard dean $500, and i was an impoverished college student at the time.
He did deserve to lose in the end tho, not because of 'the scream', but because of something that happened a few hours before the scream - coming in 3rd in iowa.
but yea i think he made a lot of sense and for a while really shook things up, which i appreciated. Of course it takes more than being able to make sense to be the leader of the free world, unfortunately. And maybe thats best. Candidates must be able to survive the process in order to survive holding the office. Its not a job for the timid, only for the very stupid or the very courageous.
I'll see if I can get him to email it to me again so I can post some excerpts. I think you'll find most of the gripes familiar.
sure i'd like to see it if you find it
Similarly, since starting to see the value of conservative/libertarian/constitutional viewpoint I still find that I'm distancing myself from a lot of "republicans" due to pandering to the fringe and/or groups that have no real place trying to make policy(pastors?). The bottom line is that they're all out of touch,
you probably know littlegreenfootballs.com? the guy there (a lifelong repub from what i understand) recently renounced repubs because of the lunacies of the last few years. A few other prominent repubs have come out renouncing the party too. Not surprised, repubs have gone so far off the rails its not even funny anymore, its alarming.
and term limits on all elected positions in the federal government would help remedy the situation.
the argument against that is that with term limits we apriori deny ourselves the possibility of getting politicians with the most experience and thus who can potentially do the most good. its a double edged sword i think.
for me, i dont see why we need term limits when we already have an electoral process. if that process is not working to keep crooks out, then we need to fix the process, not attach a further imperfect bandaid in the form of term limits.
I would LOVE to see more independents in office,
me too. I'm actually a registered independent, tho i vote dem 99% of the time, I'm not a "joiner" and will always reserve the right to criticize my own side, hence i did not register as a democrat.
I've only voted for two repubs in my life. Giuliani (before he went batso wacko after 9/11), and bloomberg (who, lets face it, is either a true indep or a rational dem, and is a repub only in name, as he freely admits). (He switched to repub registration to avoid the dem primary run off back when he was running for mayor). He's a pragmatist more than anything else, and I have immense respect for him because of that.
We need an independent president worse than we ever have.
you might call me nuts, but obama is a genuine independent. People dont realize how much he's pissed off the left wing of the dem party (which is great that he did that). He's a pragmatist at heart too, and thats what i respect about him too.
Teaparty's lunatic slogans about him not withstanding.
Not someone who wants to "work with democrats" or "work with republicans" from across the aisle.
problem is working with others will always be a requirment of the job. If you get someone who you wish "doesn't give a f_ck about the parties and demands some real work on a personal level" what you'll get is a dictator, and that brings with it a whole nother can of really ugly worms.
The world IS changing fast, and it's time we woke up from our slumber.
i certainly agree on that point. I actually give full credit to the teapartyiers (as lunatic as they are) for being out there everyday. I blame the dems and the leftists if the teapartyiers win. Beacuse the leftists are still in their slumber, and the teapartiers are merely filling the leadership void. If they dont, some other loony will. There will always be loonies in society. If they grab the reins of government, the problem is with us, our slumber is to blame, not them.
