Quote:
Kubedawg said:
I enjoyed reading your post. Now, do you think in the next presidential election, we can create a tri-partisan election with a Libertarian candidate and become a powerhouse just like the other 2?
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I say:
I think its possible, sure, but only if elections are again reigned in by the people. It wouldn't be beneficial to have multiple parties that operate as the major parties do today as far as election campaign funding.
What I think would effect lasting change and resolve most election problems?
1.) Require, via the FCC, all broadcasters on radio and tv in this nation, to give equal time to all canidates that make ballott access for their local, and all national elections. They are the publics airwaves, and to profit from them should not be free and without responsibility to the public to maintain non-biased election coverage to keep the public informed.
2.) Require a secure voting method with verifiable paper-trails, coupled with Instant Runooff Voting, that allows people to vote for ALL canidates in the election on the ballot as well as write-ins, in the order they would prefer to see them win, which would remove the "lesser-of-two-evils" theory of voting from existence.
3.)Limit campaign funding to ONLY drawing from a national election fund, equally, among all parties that make ballott access, as well as putting a cap on private donation amounts. Eliminate corporate, or business donations ENTIRELY. Corporations and businesses are not entities themselves, that deserve a right to influence elections, since their owners and employees all have a right to vote, and to donate personally to whom they see fit.
4.)Make a new federal law that requires all "political debate" sponsors, to include all canidates in the debates for the election they are sponsoring the debate for, unless the canidates volunteer of their own will not to show up, after being notified with equal time for response.
Those four things alone, would remove almost all electoral processes that have served to disempower the voters, and will again empower the voters by meeting the needs for informational clarity about canidates for all upcoming elections.
I also think this would provide the best system of informational awareness with respect to a free press, as well as opening the elections up to ALL parties, not just major parties that have endless amount of funding.
Quote:
Kubedawg said:
We need an innovater who can lead us to an independency from oil, and to go different routes for energy such as ethanol or HH0. We need someone smart, not gun crazy. Someone with principles and good judgement and common fucking sense.
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I say:
I agree in entirety except for the comment on guns, or being "gun crazy".
I don't know exactly what you meant by "gun crazy", but I would like to say a couple things regarding guns in general, and how they apply to the Libertarian party in general.
There is in our modern times, dispute over the meaning of the second amendment, and how it pertains to individual rights to own firearms. This dispute evolved only by mis-interpretation of the law, in precedent building cases that have been recorded and used as props to defend further encroachment upon the right to common defense, and personal defense.
The second amendment was written clearly, and its meaning was documented by many of the founders prior to adoption, as well as further defined in personal writings after adoption.
Allow me to share a couple quotes regarding our individual right to own arms, regardless of our forming a National Military, having a Military Reserves, and the modern application of the word militia regarding the context of the amendment itself.
“The peaceable part of mankind will be continually overrun by the vile and abandoned while they neglect the means of self-defence. The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms like laws discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. The balance of power is the scale of peace. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside.... Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them; . . . the weak will become prey.”
-Thomas Paine (1737-1809), in "Thoughts on Defensive War", in The Pennsylvania Magazine, July 1775
“A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained in arms, is the best most natural defense of a free country...”
-James Madison
“I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people except for a few public officials.”
-George Mason
“To disarm the people--that was the best and most effective way to enslave them.”
-George Mason, founding father who led opposition to adoption of the US Constitution before the addition of the Bill of Rights
“A free people ought [...] to be armed [...]”
-George Washington, speech of January 7, 1790, printed in the Boston Independent Chronicle, January 14, 1790
“There is nothing so likely to produce peace as to be well prepared to meet the enemy.”
-George Washington
“If every person has the right to defend - even by force - his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly.”
-Frederic Bastiat, The Law, Paris, 1850
“Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”
-George Washington, presidential farewell address
And a short chronology of individual ownership of firearms in history, thanks to author Eugene Volokh. For the documents listed in this timeline, go to:
SEO Reviewer and click on ``Sources on the Second Amendment.''....
1765: Sir William Blackstone, a powerful influence on the Framers' thinking, publishes his famous ``Commentaries on the Laws of England.'' He describes the British right to bear arms, a predecessor to the Second Amendment, as one of ``the rights of the subject'' -- in other words, an individual right.
1776: Pennsylvania enacts the first state bill of rights, which protects the right to bear arms gun-ownership right from being abridged by the state. This provision and similar ones in other early state constitutions are evidence that the right to own guns was aimed at constraining state governments rather than empowering them to form militias.
1788: New York, North Carolina and Virginia demand that Congress secure the right to bear arms, and they define ``militia'' as the citizenry at large. Rhode Island makes a similar demand in 1790.
1791: The U.S. Bill of Rights is enacted, including the Second Amendment: ``A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.'' The phrase ``the right of the people'' is also used in the First and Fourth amendments, which secure individual rights to petition the government and to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures.
1792: Passage of the federal Militia Act, which defines ``militia'' as all able-bodied white male citizens ages 18 to 45 -- not as a small National Guard-like group. Constitutional amendments passed after the Civil War eliminate the racial restriction.
1803: St. George Tucker, the first prominent American legal commentator, publishes his edition of Blackstone's Commentaries, applying them to U.S. constitutional law. He says the Second Amendment prevents the government from disarming the citizenry.
1833: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, the leading American constitutional commentator of the early 1800s, in his ``Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States,'' describes the Second Amendment right to bear arms as belonging to ``the citizens,'' and echoes Tucker's view.
1866: Congress enacts the Freedmen's Bureau Act. Part of it aims to protect the ``constitutional right to bear arms'' for black people, alongside their rights to ``personal liberty'' and to owning property.
1880: Michigan Supreme Court Justice Thomas Cooley, the leading American constitutional scholar of the 19th century, stresses in his ``General Principles of Constitutional Law'' that the right to own guns belongs to all the people, not just a small subgroup.
1934: The National Firearms Act -- the first major federal gun-control law -- is enacted. It is mostly aimed at weapons associated with organized crime, such as machine guns and sawed-off shotguns.
1939: The U.S. Supreme Court, in United States vs. Miller, says the Second Amendment protects only those arms that have ``some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia.'' But the court also stresses that ``militia'' means ``all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense.'' The court does not say that the right belongs to the states or the National Guard. It is the court's only modern Second Amendment decision. (From 1820 to 1998, the court has referred to the Second Amendment 28 times, usually tangentially. Twenty-two of the 28 opinions quote only the right-to-bear-arms clause,
without mentioning the militia language.)
The only, and surest protection of individual liberty against all odds, is the possession of, training with, and exercise of the right bear arms by the individual.
To me, this in no way defines any aspect of being "gun crazy", and if anything, would be more aptly labeled "gun sane".