JUMP!!!!!!!....

  A long, long time ago, like maybe when I was 7, Native Americans, (or Indians, as  they were referred to when I was 7), hunted buffalo by stampeding them over a cliff, and then killing them after they were injured in the fall, if the fall didn't kill them in the first place. It was called a "buffalo jump".

  Apparently, the hunters would wave blankets and animal skins in the air, shouting and carrying on something awful, and the buffalo would be so frightened that they would begin running towards the cliff and plummet to their ultimate deaths. I never really understood why. I suppose the buffalo might have thought the Indians had a bow and arrow, or a spear under the blanket. Even so, I think there were more buffalo than there were Indians, and it always seemed to me that the buffalo could have turned around, stood their ground, and not been any worse off, besides maintaining a little dignity along the way. I guess they thought they were somehow better off taking a header over the cliff.

  I'm running for Congress on the Libertarian ticket this fall. I'll be voting for a lot of other Libertarians on the ballot, too. A lot of Republicans I know are running around, waving their arms, claiming that we all need to vote for Republicans instead of Libertarians out of fear that some Democrats might be elected or re-elected.

  I don't share their concerns. When I examine the GOP's support of the growing federal government, and the growing deficit, along with the Patriot Act, the NDAA, corporate subsidies, foreign interventionism, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, taxes, taxes, taxes...etc., I can't really see the advantage to blindly voting for Republicans anymore than I could see the advantage of the buffalo jumping over a cliff.

  I decided a few years ago to leave the GOP and take a stand for smaller, Constitutionally limited government.

  That's the last jump I'm going to make.

 

 

   

What are those choices again?...

Usually, for the most part, I watch Republican and Democratic presidential candidate presentations as a somewhat disinterested bystander. From a libertarian standpoint, there isn't enough actual policy difference between the Republican candidates, or the Democratic candidates, or between the Republican and Democratic candidates to warrant much attention.

It's usually a case of all of the candidates offering up government solutions for government created problems. Some one may try to convince us that there is a significant difference between Obamacare and Romneycare, or between having troops in Afghanistan or Pakistan, or between giving $3 billion or $2.95 billion to Israel this year, or between trimming 1% or 2% from next years proposed budget increase.

This year, the majority of the Republican hopefuls are pitching themselves as the conservative standard bearer that should be put in power to defeat the Barack Obama, the liberal standard bearer. Republicans and Democrats seem to get caught up in the excitement, and the fall election ends up being promoted as a contest between conservatism and liberalism, when actually it ends up being a contest between the Republicans version of statism and the Democrats version of statism.

I have been paying a little bit closer attention to the GOP race this year.
Ron Paul, the libertarian leaning congressman from Texas, has added a little variety to the mix. While his opponents continue to offer up Republican versions of big government as the solution for problems we face from Democratic versions of big government, Dr. Paul steadfastly offers the libertarian solutions of smaller government, individual freedom and personal responsibility to solve those problems.

For many elections, people have believed they were choosing between liberalism and conservatism, when they were really simply choosing statism. This spring, the GOP has the chance to give voters a chance to choose between the freedom of libertarianism, or the status quo of statism when they go to the polls next fall.

If the Republicans fail to take advantage of that chance, I hope the voters who embraced freedom and limited government in the spring, will continue to embrace them in the fall.

There is a political party that has been offering that choice all along.

www.LP.org

www.LPIN.org

We aren't always what we were...

Apparently my campaign for District 54 Representative on the Libertarian ticket worked its way into the conversation at a local coffee shop the other morning. Reportedly, a man who has been a staunch Republican all his life asked another man who has been a staunch Democrat all of his life why he was supporting a Libertarian.

The second man replied, "Well, I'm not as good a Democrat as I used to be.", to which the first man replied, "Yeah, I'm not as good a Republican as I used to be, either."

That's change we can live with.

The same thing, only different...

We can convince ourselves of about anything, I suppose. I used to work with a guy that sprayed WD-40 on his elbow. He claimed it helped his arthritis. I never bought into that, but I think he had convinced himself it really worked.

We're getting ready for an election this fall, and from my conversations with a lot of Republicans, I think they have convinced themselves that they are really the party of smaller government. Some of them get downright mad if you suggest that they aren't.

Now, I hate to make anybody mad, but I do think it's interesting to compare the policy disasters of the last two administrations. The Libertarian Party put this list together a couple of months ago:

Top 10 disasters of the 2009 Obama administration (in no particular order):

1. Cash for Clunkers
2. War escalation in Afghanistan
3. Giant government health care expansion bill
4. Post office loses money hand over fist
5. Stimulus package
6. Expansion of "state secrets" doctrine
7. Big increase in unemployment
8. "Bailout" Geithner as Treasury Secretary
9. Skyrocketing federal spending
10. Huge federal deficits

Top 10 disasters of the 2001-2008 Bush administration:

1. Cash for Car Companies
2. War in Iraq
3. Giant Medicare expansion bill
4. Post office loses money hand over fist
5. Stimulus "rebate" checks
6. PATRIOT Act
7. Big increase in unemployment
8. "Bailout" Paulson as Treasury Secretary
9. Skyrocketing federal spending
10. Huge federal deficits

I'll be the first to agree it's time for something different. I just haven't been able to convince myself we'll find it in the GOP.

On the road again...

I've never been much of a traveler. I can usually find about everything I need within 10 or 12 miles of Hagerstown, and as I've mentioned before, I don't much care for driving on interstates around cities where the posted speed limit is merely a suggested minimum.

Still, occasions tend to pop up where leaving home becomes necessary. A while back, my wife Susan received the honor of being asked to officiate at the wedding of some friends of ours. The wedding was held at the Biltmore in Asheville, North Carolina last weekend, so we packed our bags and loaded the car.

In order to alleviate some of my traveling anxieties, Susan borrowed a portable Global Positioning System from one of our sons. It's a little black box that plugs into the hole in the dashboard where the cigarette lighter used to be, and tells you when you should turn, how fast your driving, and how far you are from the turn you just missed.

Since I now was going to have two voices in the car telling me where to go, and since I felt the need to identify which voice I was answering, we named the GPS "Maggie", short for it's brand name, punched in our destination and embarked on our adventure.

I knew that State Road 1 was closed in Milton, so I didn't give it much thought when Maggie directed me down US Route 27. Apparently though, Maggie wasn't as smart as she thought she was, given that 27 was also closed. It was one of several instances on the trip when she muttered something unintelligible under her electronic breath, announced that she was recalculating our route, and then instructed me to turn either right or left at my next opportunity. Occasionally things got in such a mess there was nothing to do but make a U-turn and start over.

On the news that evening the report came in that President Obama had announced that the federal deficit in 2010 would most likely be twice as large as he had predicted, and that in 10 years the official federal debt could be $23 trillion.
He didn't seem to be anymore concerned about it than George Bush was when he oversaw the doubling of the federal debt while he was in office.

Turning to the left's version of big government doesn't seem to be anymore affordable than turning to the rights's version of big government. Maybe it's time we turned back to following Constitution's version of limited government.

Right, Maggie?

Maggie?

Maggie?