Ok lets get a couple things straight.
Ron Paul is a idiot I like him in congress but he'd have made a horrible President. I like a congress critter who's anti-everything I love gridlock in congress figuring the less they can get done the less damage they can do.
However the government does have a roll to play in regulating these mamoth corporations that don't give a rats ... how many people they kill in order to make a buck.
And that's where the libertarians fail they talk about freedom but they are utopians who somehow think that this mythical universe that Aynn Rand envisioned in her drug induced wet dreams could ever actually exist while ignoring the reality of what actually happened when we had that sort of weak government and lack of regulation in the past.
In the end its about power and who has it. There is only one real political divide. Authoritarian and anti-authoritarian. The Right in the United States is 100% authoritarian they want to tell you how to live, where to live, who to screw and how to do it. Don't get me wrong there are those with authoritarian tendencies on the Democratic side of the isle but they are not leftists. Leftists want to flatten power structures not dictate individual behavior.
Stalin killed all the leftist in the Soviet Union, what they ended up with was right wing authoritarianism the same top down heiracrhal power structure that the sheeple on the right love so much everywhere.
Concentrated power is always a
threat to liberty whether that power is strictly political power or economic power.
Don't misunderstand there are plenty of idiots who think they are liberal and progressive running around wanting to ban this or ban that or pass some silly law to make people safer from themselves and way to often these little fascists are welcomed into fold as if they weren't little rightiwing idiots.
Just as there are plenty of people who consider themselves conservaitve because they have bought into the clever marketing of their corporate masters that the GOP somehow gives a **** about their personal freedom even though they are constantly acting to limit said freedom.
Yes the Democrats are far from perfect and they have more than their share of pompous stealth authoritirians in their ranks (particularly in the Senate) who seek to ban everything that could be possibly seen as fun.
But look at the facts, It's the Right who's mainly looking to limit personal freedom. The GOP is the one who's always trying to ban flag burning (as if the symbol is more important than the ideal it symbolizes) it's the GOP behind all the amendments telling people who they can have sex with and who they can love. It's the right who provide most of the energy to keep the drug war going and it's the right who's always trying to spy on you and stay up in your business.
The left mainly focuses on the misbehavior of corproations and institutions. They attack the cigarette companies because those companies did knowingly market a dangerous product for decades who did hide the evidence that showed just how dangerous they were who have resisted every effort try and bring this information to light.
It's the left who pushed for regulations and laws to make companies actually tell you what the hell they are selling you to ingest it was the left who got through the laws that make a company pay you for the work you do, who got the 40 hour work week, who made sure that the places you work weren't death traps with chained doors so you'd burn the hell up should there ever be a fire.
If your not dead in jail or a slave you can thank a lefty. If you have a job with benifits you can thank a lefty if you have a car with airbags you can thank a lefty if you can eat a burger with a reasonable expectation that you aren't going to be poisoned you can thank a lefty.
And people like the writer of that editorial is no lefty he's just a totalitarian twit who's trying to fit in with the cool crowd.
Oh and on the quip about single payer healthcare being rougher on smokers than the bull**** system we have today do you really think a for profit insurer is more interest in paying for your treatment than a tax payer funded non-profit one would be? Get real. The for profit system denies care as a business model.
If you really believe in personal freedom and liberty and have functioning brain cells then you should not be siding with the Republican's or the libertarians go pick up a copy of Howard Zinn's "Peoples History of the United States" and read a little history from the view of the down trodden. Then come on over to the light side and help us run the little authoritarians out of the Democratic party cause the GOP is a lost cause.
