Blog Archives

1. Republican does not mean conservative.  Those two words are not interchangeable, despite what the Republican party may want you to believe.
2. The US of A is not a democracy.  If this is a revelation to you, or you think I’m wrong, we are in deep trouble.
3. Libertarianism is closer to the ideology of the ORIGINAL Federalists (who became the anti-Federalists when the progressive-like nouveau-Federalists co-opted their name and changed it’s meaning.  Sound familiar?) who founded the country than is the ideology of the modern day Republican party.
4. Sean Hannity is not a Constitutional expert.  Everything he says should be examined as if it were uttered by someone trying to deliberately mislead you.  He probably isn’t trying to do so, but a great deal of the time he succeeds at doing so anyway.  I wish people read more books and listened to less Hannity.  I see Hannity-isms all over the internet.  I can spot them now like those fake chain emails you know if you look, will be listed on Snopes.  His latest contribution to the Republican vernacular must be “retail politics.”  I’ve seen that used all over the blogosphere as of late.  It may be an old phrase he’s resurrected, but nonetheless, it’s now a Hannity-ism, just like he phrase “Journalims is DEAD!” and “You’re A MARXIST!”

There is a fight on the right and it is between two factions:  Generic Republicans and Constitutionalists.  Generic Republicans used to get mad and defensive and cry foul if you said they didn’t support the Constitution for reasons x, y, and z, x usually dealing with the Patriot Act.  They’d huff and puff and insist that if you weren’t doing anything wrong, you had nothing to worry about.  The Constitutionalists would point out that the Patriot Act was a blatant violation of the 4th Amendment (to the Constitution) and the Generic Republicans didn’t like that very much.  They were satisfied to sacrifice a little liberty for some security.  Of course Ben Franklin would say they deserved neither.  But now when the Constitution comes up, they just laugh about it, as evidenced by Saturday night’s debate in New Hampshire.  It’s just one big joke, that old piece of outdated parchment.  And to think, these same Generic Republicans were all adamant about Obama shredding this same Constitution at Tea Parties (which I attended and helped organize back in 2009!) but now it’s just a punchline.  This may be an unfair assessment.  I don’t know that Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich ever attended a Tea Party, at least not without getting paid.

I used to be a Generic Republican turned generic conservative turned libertarian.  I thought I’d do a little series of reasons that turned me from neocon to libertarian.  It can be summed up in one word:  consistency.  There’s none on the right, and there’s none on the left.  But I’d like to expound on that.  Today’s subject is spending, specifically defense spending and why I believe everyone on that Republican debate stage is wrong to scream foul about reducing defense spending, Dr. Paul being the exception since he would cut spending across the board.

Republicans do not trust the government to spend tax dollars wisely.  And rightly so.  They (say) they want to cut spending.  Well, they used to.  No one is saying it anymore except for Dr. Paul.

Republicans want to cut spending on health care, food stamps, HUD, the DoE, the FDA, the EPA, and other letters in the bureaucratic alphabet soup.  Until you get to the DoD.  Why is it the government is notoriously unreliable, negligent, irresponsible and downright stupid with our tax dollars (and they are) when it comes to every department under the sun except for defense?  Why do we trust them to spend that money wisely?  Should we?  Have they suddenly grown a brain?  Gotten responsible?  Become less of a bureaucracy? No, of course not!  If fat can be cut elsewhere, it can be cut here too.  Cutting defense spending does not mean: you don’t support the troops, don’t support the military, hate America, hate veterans, are a communist, etc.  It just means you’re fiscally responsible across the board.   There’s absolutely no reason the DoD can’t be audited, evaluated and have it’s budget reassessed and slimmed down if possible, just like every other department in our government.

Case in point:  Remember when the US created the uber-cool zero gravity pen?  How many millions of tax dollars were spent researching and developing that marvel, I wonder?  What an accomplishment!  A pen that writes in zero gravity!  It is a must-have!  The Russians ran into the same problem when trying to write in a zero gravity situation.  They did not spend money on inventing a zero-gravity pen.  They just used a pencil.