Ron Paul keeps toting himself as Libertarian and has run as a Libertarian before but I have a hard time understanding how. His social issue positions are bordering on "moral majority" grounds. He believes that marriage should have nothing to do with the government, only churches, life begins at conception, etc. He even wants to eliminate the Department of Education. He thinks that healthcare providers should just give away free care to everybody who can't afford it.

I just don't think he's in touch with reality at all.

Just saw on the Today show that Michelle Bachman has officially quit the race. Phew. One less crazy to deal with.

Not true. Iowa has a very complicated system to award delegates. They won't be awarded until June 16 when they have their Iowa State Republican Convention. If by then a front runner breaks away, he may actually get all the

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...l?ref=politics

If you go to the link, ignore the very partisan first part and skip to the last part about apportioning delegates.

That would be a fairly standard libertarian view -- that marriage is a contract between two people and that the government has no business being involved in it. From the party's platform: "Government does not have the authority to define, license or restrict personal relationships." Saying churches should be involved is, I think, another way of saying that it is a person's personal values (and religious beliefs, if any), not the law, that should govern what that person does marriage-wise, and people should be free to marry in accordance with their values.

Now, calling for government restrictions on abortion, on the other hand, is very un-Libertarian.


Right. I heard this explained on NPR Tuesday -- the caucus votes are not binding on convention delegates.

I know you and I have had this discussion before, but there are a minority of Libertarians that believe that an unborn baby has rights (I would personally argue from conception, but others obviously set the milestone at viability), and denying its right to live is the ultimate Libertarian violation. I'm happily camped in this minority.

Good point. Thanks for reminding me.

FWIW, I was going by the Libertarian Party's platform, which says: "Recognizing that abortion is a sensitive issue and that people can hold good-faith views on all sides, we believe that government should be kept out of the matter, leaving the question to each person for their conscientious consideration.'

But you are quite right.

Either way, point out to me a candidate that openly personally agrees with every point of their party's platform, and I'll point out a liar. Of course, I'd have probably just as good odds picking out a liar by closing my eyes and spinning in a circle around any DC government building. ;)

I used to be a Libertarian, but a lot of the Libertarian positions just don't make sense. What happens if the government gets out of marriage? Spouses are denied the ~1500 rights that are currently granted to them? Some number of these can be arranged individually by legal contract, but the others just disappear? For example, I can make Mr. DBB my beneficiary without the government's help, but I can't give him the right to visit me in the hospital. I guess Ron Paul would say I should choose a different hospital?

I think, and I can't admit to knowing as much about Libertarianism as I should, that they think the government just doesn't need to be involved in these issues. Why should the president or your congressman care who is with you in a hospital room? It's this kind of stuff that makes me love the libertarians. It's when people start to twist it from government stays out to something that is exactly NOT that that I have a problem.

But there are a lot of issues where people say, "well, not THAT... the government needs to interfere with THAT..." and it's not a system that will work very well if you pick and choose. For example, you can't cut taxes down to literally the bare minimum but keep military bases in Germany. Doesn't work both ways. Using the military again, you have to reassess what it REALLY means to have a national defense. A true libertarian should think we defend our own borders, and our national defense does NOT mean protecting our oil. And regarding abortions, their stance (and it sounds like it is) should be, if you don't believe in them, don't have one... the government doesn't dictate. And I'd be ok with from viability as long as tax dollars didn't go toward saving any babies that should be miscarriages. And ALL drugs should be legal. What you do to yourself in your own home is your business. Not that you get to rob banks, beat your wife, burn down your neighbor's house, etc., in the process. That's infringing on someone else's freedoms. But if you can afford it and want to ruin your life, go for it.

If I could get a group of libertarians to be THAT, I'd be all in.

Okay, let me give you a different example. One of the rights of marriage granted by most (all?) states is that you can own property together so that, upon death, full ownership passes directly to the surviving spouse without having to go through probate. AFAIK, marriage is the only legal arrangement that allows this. If you eliminate the government's involvement with marriage, that right would disappear. So, the Libertarians want everything to go through the courts when someone dies? Isn't that actually advocating for more government?

I'm just saying that I think a lot of Libertarian "solutions" look simple on the surface, but then you are down the rabbit hole when you try to figure out the details.

We need to dig up John Heinz. Even dead for decades, he's a better bet than any of the wabols running now.

WHAAAAAAAAT?? This shit is bananas. I can't believe they would actually get away with this for a minute.

The ground is flying at my mom's cemetery because she's spinning about 90 MPH in her grave. Folks, this is NOT what the Republican party was created to stand for.

There's a quote going around the FB-osphere that alleges to be from Barry Goldwater warning the GOP about what could happen if the religious fringe got a hold of the party. If it's actually a quote, it was prescient.

You keep missing the "government not involved" part of Libertarianism. When someone dies, the next of kin would go claim the deceased's possessions and go about their business. The only time a 3rd party would get involved would be in a case where there was a dispute of who got what.

Admittedly, Libertarian is really not a practical form of government, because it more or less requires people to police themselves, which people obviously are incapable of doing. It doesn't mean that I don't agree with them more than any other party, though.

Any time the deceased owes money to anyone, for any reason, there is a 3rd party involved. Do you want to wager a guess at what percentage of estates have some type of outstanding debt upon death?

While I agree with several planks in the Libertarian platform (especially defense/foreign policy), most Libertarian candidates are peddling simple solutions to problems that are very complex. Libertarians claim they are interested in protecting life and property, but property law can be very complicated, and in many cases, there are reasons why it is so.

I think these are great discussion points. There is no example of libertarian government anywhere in the world so we can't know how it would work in a real world scenario. But I do think both parties would do well to take some of the ideas and try to apply them. The Dems could take some of the fiscal issues of governing at a minimum (drug laws are easy but I think there are some bureaucracies that could be eliminated without causing the sky to fall) and Reps could take some of the social ideals (get the government out of the bedroom in all its permutations, for instance) and they'd steal independents, non-believers and the wishy-washy for their own. I don't think Ron Paul can win, probably not even the primaries, but I think if he plays his cards right he could impact the way some people look at government. And that has to be good.

The debt-paying of the deceased still does not require government intercession, unless the next of kin refuse to pay. You're confusing lack of government regulations and interference with lack of law. As to next-of-kin, if government stayed out of marriages, you would have to have a will/legal document declaring your spouse as next-of-kin, otherwise it would default to your closest blood relation (most likely). So, the next-of-kin would pay the debts, and would be sued if they refused, but that goes back to the "dispute over who gets what" that I mentioned above.