From: Joshua Freeman (theroadfromserfdom@hotmail.com)
Date: Sun Nov 05 2000 - 06:03:48 MST
>>
>
>>I'm not a Libertarian (mainly because I don't think the conditions are
>>right for such a philosophy to be practical), but can respect those who
>>are.
>
>This goes into something I've been thinking about recently. I voted
>Libertarian in the one presidential election I was old enough to vote in,
>and I intend to do so in this one. At the same time, I know that if a
>Libertarian were president tommorow things would fall apart quickly. I
>agree
>that the conditions are not right for it to be practical. By "conditions" I
>mean one thing, the attitudes of most of the people who live in this
>country. People want their welfare and social security and they'd riot if
>they didn't get it. There are also not enough people intelligent enough to
>manage all the new industries that would come up as a result of government
>de-regulation. Who knows how to manage a private freeway or privatized FDA
>properly? I don't think anybody does, and I think that without them there
>would be a lot of car wrecks and food poisoning.
>The solution, and reason I'll still vote for them, is that any political
>philosophy must go hand-in-hand with democracy. All of what I've said above
>would be false if a Libertarian actually got elected president in an
>election, because it would mean a sizeable percentage of the population had
>voted for him. If a sizeable percentage of the population are voting
>Libertarian, it means they probably are smart enough to manage their own
>lives and to run successful businesses that would provide the services
>government no longer would be.
>Voting for them contributes to the small percentage of the vote they will
>recieve. It draws attention to them, which will attract more people to
>laissez-faire type thinking, and hopefully to the belief and practice of
>being responsible for themselves.
>
>---------------------------------------------------
>Zeb Haradon (zebharadon@hotmail.com)
That's a good analysis, but I must disagree with your statement that "any
political philosophy must go hand-in-hand with democracy." I'm not exactly
sure of your meaning, but that statement's certainly not correct. One way to
a new form of government is a degree of dissatisfaction with government that
forces it to be disbanded. Another was is a non-violent revolution. I
believe the philosophy of Trotskyism explicitly will not involve itself with
democracy. Anarchism has nothing to do with democracy, unless you believe
Noam Chomsky.
Joshua Freeman
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