It is sad that I appear to be nearly alone in my particular set of beliefs. My beliefs can sort of be split between differing kinds of freedom, and for some reason people generally only adhere to 0 or 1 of my categories of freedom. I feel like what I believe in is Libertarian, but I have a lot of problems with many that call themselves by that name.
First, there is social freedom, which I say means people can do what they want as long as they don’t hurt you. Most Republican, neo-con, or Christian types will vehemently deny much of that kind of freedom. The Dems tend to be ok on this issue, but in actuality, gun ownership should fall in this category, so that takes away half of this plus. Republicans haven’t repealed any real restrictions on gun ownership, though they did allow the cosmetics ban to expire. I don’t feel that is enough to earn them a half point. Dems .5, Repubs 0.
There is freedom from financial and tax tyranny. The Democrats don’t hide that they want to take your money and give it someone else. However, the Republicans are even bigger spenders, they just lie and say they are not. Republicans have managed to reduce taxes while reducing spending power more than the tax breaks helped. Dems 0, Repubs 0.
The third form of freedom is freedom of intellect. If you say “It’s only a theory” when talking about evolution, then you are an intellectual theocrat, and are against that freedom. This is basically the freedom to be correct in scientific assertions. Democrats are good on this one. Republicans actually try to lie and change what is taught in order to fit their retarded religious beliefs. That’s 0 points for Repubs and 1 point for Dems. Dems 1, Repubs 0.
Well, I am a pro-gun, low taxes, socially progressive atheist, and most of the danger of the current administration is given power through the ease of misleading the gullible and credulous Christians in the US. The faithful tend to be the pro-gun people, but they give rise to a large part of the problem by giving power to the very tyrants they say they needs their guns to fight against.
There is a presidential election this year. I need to vote. Unfortunately, there are not any good candidates. If you advocate for Ron Paul, you advocate for Theocracy, so let’s go ahead and end that train of thought now. The other possibles such as Gravel are gone, though I’m fairly sure he would be wrong on guns. The Dems are 1.5 of 3 on my freedom scale, and the Repubs are 0 of 3 on that scale, so I must vote for a Democrat. I think that I hope Obama is the winner. At least if he wins there may be some optimism flowing about. He is also significantly smarter than Bush. The best things I’ve heard so far from him are the law he got passed in Illinois that required video taping of police interrogations and a news article I saw with him supporting religious freedom.
But really, what I want to see, is a pro-gun, intellectual, social progressive that wants to lower taxes and spending. Where are they?