His dad was kind of a nutbar as is the son. It's odd how the GOP and DFL have switched places since the 70's. It used to be the DFL were the ones with the crazy but sincere candidates with and ideological vision that ignored reality. Now the GOP seems to have coopted that stance. The DFL still has a few, like the anti gun proc choice crowd, but they're few and far between since this is actually counter to the official DFL plank. DFL pland is pro gun pro choice and has been for years, ever since edwards made his cross of gold speech.
No you don't. There are quite a few of them and they are generally horrible places to live. I think what you want is "a country as nic3 to live in as the US but with..." The problem with that is they are mutually exclusive. If you remove the checks that keep powerful citizens from exercising that power over the less powerful you get rule by those individuals, and consequently a society that is horrible to live in for everyone BUT those few. the technical term is "Plutocracy". A free swociety must have checks and balances to make sure it stays that way and not collapse into a non free one.
I think you may be thinking of different groups. wesboro baptist was famous for protesting funerals of gay soldiers with signs like"god hates fags" Wesboro baptist is on the list with skinheads and neo-nazis as groups without a single redeeming quality. I agree most "Peace" groups are totally out of touch. The problem with utopian theory is it has to ignore the more inconvientent aspects of reality to make itself seem consistent. "peace" groups do this by assuming the purpose and condition of war. Libertarian groups do this by assuming the consequence of action and ignoring examples that refute their logic. It's all the same effect.
Me too, evidently 
government can (though often does not) prevent one person from taking the freedom of another. the simplest example is the prohibition against slavery, which can be a subtle thing. One of my ancestors was a slaver. In Michigan. What he did was something called chattel slavery which is now illegal. He would hire workers fresh off the boat in new York, and transport them to lumber camps in the forests of Michigan far from any town. He paid them to work, but everything they bought had to be bought from him, at inflated prices, and they were soon in debt. This is known as a slop chest. Also now illegal. Unless the worker wanted to walk 60 miles or more he could not leave, and he could not get ahead enough to pay his debts and be transported. Slavery. This system was legal in China until very recently, but is still widely practiced. It is one reason, though not the only one, why you hear about Chinese slave labor. As a general rule, ideally (and ideals are a hard thing to attain) US law as a body is deigned to keep people from infringing on each others rights. The reason smoking is not allowed in bars and restaurants today is because of a bunch of waitresses that got lung cancer from second hand smoke in the late 70's or early 80's. I was a kid then and remember the news. The law weighed the right of waitresses to not get cancer by going to work against the rights of people to smoke in bars. They found for the waitreses because horrible death trumps smoking in the rain. Pretty straight forward. One can go into whether or not the waitresses ACTUALLY got lung cancer via that method, and what the aims of the litigators really were, but as far as the law goes, that is the reasoning. You can have equal rights, or unlimited rights, but both is hard to do at the same time. As to "laws are opinions with guns" Yes, sometimes. Usually they are very popular opinions, or they wouldn't be laws. The legal system is supposed tgo provide a safeguard against obviously stupid stuff by sticking an impartial opinion in the middle of the process. The GOP/tea party push for against "activist" judges is designed to remove that. The right actually wants inactivist judges who treat the law like a flow chart. It makes it much easier for a clever and well funded entity to get around law and do horrible things legally by relying on technicality.
He is not a raving lunatic, the current landscape is that if a Dietary Supplement claims to be effective at healing an illness then it is considered to be making pharmaceutical claims and they get in big trouble. Their are a number of Dietary Supplements that are very effective for certain conditions, but there is no way to advertise them. On that one he's dead on.
Here is the problem, botanicals can't be patented, so there is no big money in it for Pharma. Consequently the millions of dollars necessary to approve a new drug aren't their. But many are very effective backed up by a number of smaller studies.
