Collegiate Times

The problem is people see being a conservative these days as being stupid. I can tell you one thing damn liberals, I am more educated about the facts and that is why I am conservative. We need to cut the Federal Government in half, we need to cut welfare in half, we need to cut everything in half except the Military. More rights need to be given to the State and Local governments. Rick Perry may be right.

There need to be a lot of changes in politics. First, ALL corrupt politicians need to go - Dem and Rep. Second, they all need to move back toward the middle. This election made Dems feel that their polarization was good and they've taken a HARD turn left. Third, the GOP must die and be reborn; without the religion. Religious types use emotional arguments for things like abortion, then turn around and yell at people for emotional arguments on gun control. If we're going to be pragmatic, as we should, then everything requires use of facts. Finally, the people need to make education a priority. Many advocate passing a test before getting voting rights because so many voted ignorantly at the polls - on both sides. Turn off the CNN's and find real source of info. THEN America will prevail.

"Many advocate passing a test before getting voting rights..." Question #1: What did the voting rights act of 1965 outlaw?

Lol, isn't this the exact advice that I gave in my own letter? Just wait for the ridicule from the neocons, Scott. They'll be coming just waiting to tell you that the founders embraced religion as part of the government, that separation of church and state doesn't exist, and because conservatism means keeping with tradition, it means that the Republicans should not reject the Religious Right. Good column for the most part, but keep in mind that there's a difference between a Ron Paul Republican, and a Libertarian. Ron Paul is a hypocrite for many reasons, but the most important ones are that he feels the need to keep gays from marrying, and ban abortion. He's also a creationist. Just keep that in mind.

Lol, isn't this the exact advice that I gave in my own letter? Just wait for the ridicule from the neocons, Scott. They'll be coming just waiting to tell you that the founders embraced religion as part of the government, that separation of church and state doesn't exist, and because conservatism means keeping with tradition, it means that the Republicans should not reject the Religious Right. Good column for the most part, but keep in mind that there's a difference between a Ron Paul Republican, and a Libertarian. Ron Paul is a hypocrite for many reasons, but the most important ones are that he feels the need to keep gays from marrying, and ban abortion. He's also a creationist. Just keep that in mind.

To Al, cutting the federal in gov't in half is a great idea and long overdue. Our military and its budget is way too big and needs to be reduced by at least 75%. We have troops in 128 countries, not needed. Ron Paul is not a hypicrite. He advocates less federal power and more state power, as instructed by the constitution. He believes in creationism, but he's not forcing that on anyone, I don't believe it but I still support him. He also believe abortion and gay marriage should be a state issue, not a federal issue which gives the people more power.

J Seabe, you seem to confuse the Neocons with the moral majority when they are different schools of thought. The Neocons are chiefly concerned with foreign policy, specifically being pro-interventionist. When you say Neocon, think Paul Wolfowitz, Bill Kristol, Project for a New American Century, Foreign Policy Initiative, etc. The Religious Right is concerned with social issues, think Jerry Fallwell, Pat Robertson, Focus on the Family, etc. I tend to agree with many of the Neocon positions while being adamantly opposed to the Religious Right.

Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting the results to change. The Republican party will never change. It's goal is power as is that of the Democratic Party. The only solution is to stop voting for the Republicrats and vote for the only party with a clear track record of doing what it's platform says it supports, the Libertarian party. Of course the RD's will never surrender willingly and currently make it very hard for any competition to run against them. The cure is two fold. We must continue to reduce the obstacles to getting on the ballot and we must replace our first-past-the-post, winner-takes-all electoral system with one which allows voters to rank their choices and see their first place choice transferred to someone else if that candidate becomes statistically eliminated from winning. Such a system, usually called instant-runoff-voting in this country. Allows voters to vote their conscience without fear that it will cause the election to be thrown to the devil. That is, it eliminates the old spoiler argument completely. For more information on IRV and other electoral reform ideas please go to www.fairvote.com

June, when it comes the the Presidential election, a direct popular vote would be bad for the Republican party. Under the electoral college system, a voter in Wyoming has almost 4 times the influence as a voter in California (go democracy!). As a Democrat, I would be more than happy to have a direct popular vote as well as be a strong supporter of any schism in the GOP.

Eric, I'm not confusing their positions whatsoever. It's not my problem that the neocons have effectively and officially adopted the RR ever since Ronald Reagan began the schism of the GOP. Barry Goldwater vehemently opposed adopting the Religious Right into the Republican sphere, and considering the Religious Right pretty much believes that the wars we're currently fighting are religious in nature and that we need to save the heathen Muslims from hellfire, they naturally adopt Neoconservative positions themselves. There's no confusing the two, they overlap quite often, and they're all a bunch of war criminal apologists. Speaking of Neoconservatism, anyone read the OLC memos yet? It's nice to know that the Christians support torture.

Brad, you're absolutely correct! The government in no way has any authority to tell the church how to define marriage. However, let me ask you, when's the last time churches gave out marriage certificates, or gave benefits and tax breaks to married couples in their congregations? They can define marriage between a banana and a dildo for all I care, but as far as their input into how the state defines it is concerned, they have no authority; legally or morally.

Seabe, this is true. But the example your provide often has nothing to do with the real issue; re-read my post. I was correct in saying that churches have influences in these matters; i did not say direct legal influence. Religion affects the populace and politicians who make up the government. No one has moral authority over the government which is why morality is important to remain in society with the people and those making decisions. This appears to be the fundamental error in your misinterpretation - the founding fathers wanted people to make legal decisions with respect to the law and morality.

This country was not founded on religious principles, no matter how much you'd like it to be the case. However, just for the sake of argument, I'll concede that they "were." Now, frankly, I don't give a damn if they were or not. They were also founded by a bunch of rich white slave owners that didn't think black people or white women were allowed to vote and partake in the democratic process. Supporting your own morals is one thing, denying the rights of others through your twisted visage of morals is quite another. The people do not have the right to strip rights away from people just because it's "democratic." People made the same argument with marriage between whites and non-whites; religious, and that the "courts" had no authority to go against the people. Sorry, but that's called a "mob majority," and you're quite the sick person to subscribe to it. Thank God the Baby Boomers are on their way out; gay marriage won't even be an issue in 10 years.

It is not stripping rights away. Refer back to your post, you correctly describe marriage as defined by the state as providing benefits and tax breaks - not rights. Your right is to live with who you wish, but the government providing tax breaks is not a right. Your posting shows your ignorance; this country was founded on religious principles, ever heard of 'God given rights' or what about 'One nation under God'?

Uh, no, marriage also allows you to leave things to your spouse, and things like hospital visits. It goes well beyond tax breaks, and even still, access to tax breaks through marriage because a stable household is good to raise children in should be accessible to gay people as well. Why was Loving vs. Virginia in disagreement with you? Ideas of the social contract were anticipated in the fourth and fifth centuries BC by the sophists Glaucon and Lycophron, according to Plato and Aristotle, and by Epicurus, who banished divine activity from a universe explained by natural forces and taught that justice is an agreement among people neither to harm nor be harmed. The idea that all human beings are equal by nature also comes from the Greek sophists and was planted by the Roman jurist Ulpian in Roman law: "quod ad ius natural attinet, omnes hominess aequales sunt" -- according to the law of nature, all human beings are equal. "One nation under God" came about in the 1950's, and "In God We Trust" came about in the 1860's.

Anyone can write a will, its not just for married couples. I do agree with hospital visits; if a person consents then no one should stop an individual from visiting, but there are civil unions that addresses this issue. As for tax breaks, those are still up to the government because it is not a right. It is not a right to receive lower taxes or reductions in taxes, if so tell that to people who make over 250K. Besides adoption already has tax break incentives. Gay couples can still raise children with tax breaks. By providing the dates of the quotes you only helped my argument by giving a time line for the existence of religion's influence in our government, starting with the quote you failed to mention and so on - I thank you for making my argument easier.

Here's a simple strategy for the Republicans to regain power: Adopt 90% of the Democratic platform and use fearmongering as the other 10%...and then find somebody smart that is willing to call themselves a Republican. Uh oh, I just discovered the the achilles heel of the strategy. nevermind.

Seabe: firstly, thank you. However, Dr. Paul's 2008 platform actually stated that gay marriage should be left to the individual states, not banned altogether. Also, Paul's personal belief in creationism shouldn't discredit his other opinions nor does it imply that he believes only creationism should be taught in public schools.

Seabe, please first explain why the government ought to have anything to do with marriage in the first place. If the overarching point is about contract law and tax benefits, then the argument about marriage is irrelevant in the first place because homosexuals are already entitled to enter into contracts with each other, and amending the tax law is more or less trivial. Next, please explain why the government ought to be concerned with where my stuff goes when I die - and if your answer is 'taxes are the government's purview,' please explain where in the Constitution the federal government is explicitly permitted to directly tax its citizens outside of the income tax (which only exists because of an amendment in the first place - direct taxation of Americans was EXPLICITLY prohibited by the Constitution). If you really think our generation is the paragon of moral enlightenment, you might should consider that each generation previous to ours also thought itself to be similarly enlightened.

While we accept as a given now that slavery is a wholly immoral and deplorable practice, we need to remember that we can't hold previous eras accountable to the standards we employ today - the founding of the country happened during a contentious time in world history where the concept of slavery was only beginning to be seen as a moral travesty. Your children, and their children, will similarly see our generation in its own moral light and will no doubt look at many of our own actions as morally deplorable.

On an unrelated note, you toss about the term 'neoconservative' as a pejorative, presumably meant to capture in it an air of simple-mindedness and bigotry you seem to believe espoused by the entire Conservative movement in the country. What's more, you seem to take Conservatism as a direct affront to your own personal beliefs; as though any sane and educated person would understand that you are right. It's a fairly weak position from which to argue because your points are so tainted with vehement anger they lack substantial coherence. If your goal is to simply insult as many people as possible, you probably aren't accomplishing that goal. If you are looking for real dialogue, though, and I encourage you to do so, you may want to consider turning down the anger and turning up the intellectual reasoning. Incidentally, when you copy someone else's words into a document, it's the scholarly thing to do to cite your source. The last half of your last post appeared in several different blogs when I Googled it - and given the voice you use in most of your posts, I have trouble believing that you were actually the one who penned that rather concise and incomplete history of Greek and Roman philosophy.

Scott, no, sorry, Ron Paul loves states' rights over the actual rights of the citizens. He has voted in favor of a national Constitutional Amendment to define marriage as between a man and a woman, legally authorizing the treatment of gays as second class citizens. So much for his states' rights argument; if he really believed that, he would have voted against the amendment. Second, every racist and bigot I know of claims "states' rights" if it means that they have the ability to effectively discriminate against a large bloc of people. Sorry, but I cannot allow states' rights to trump civil rights that all people deserve. And his denial of evolution says a lot more about his policy; namely, he isn't willing to accept evidence if it is contrary to his positions. That's why he's dangerous, and that's why he's a hypocrite faux-Libertarian.

Just to make a point here, of ALL the politicians in existence, Ron Paul is still the most philosophically consistent out there. You can pick points up however you want, but there is sufficient evidence to don him one of the closest to 'perfect' in these terms. So I really don't think you have much of an argument for hypocrisy on him.... unless you have a better example of a consistent politician?

Kyle, really, maybe you should address the articles' points first, and then we can talk later. I mean, you seem rather obsessed with addressing me, rather than the argument here that was previously made by me a few weeks ago. Yep, citing sources would be important if I didn't have a 250 word limit on a comments section on a college newspaper's website.

The discussion has steered itself in this direction and, given that you yourself opened the door to the discussion of neoconservatism, constitutional law, and principles of democratic-republican style government (not the policial parties, but the type of government we have), it really seems like a fair argument to continue. Personally, I don't care for political party affiliation. I believe in the Constitution as it was crafted by its framers, and I believe that that Constitution pretty explicitly prohibits just about everything that our government does these days. I believe the debate over homosexual marriage to be legally inconsequential but philosophically monumental, in that I'm all for 'extending privileges to homosexual couples' and, in doing so, giving such contractual unions a contractual designation such as 'civil unions.' Apply that term to legal contracts, and apply the term marriage to the religious institution from whence it came.

I believe that neither major political party offers a viable solution which is Constitutionally acceptable to most of the problems we currently face, and I also believe that this will never change so long as the American public remains ignorant of its history and culture. I'll be happy when people start realizing that professional politicians are, with few exceptions, a pack of liars and thieves more concerned with the amount of power they wield over the nation than with the rules under which they are charged to govern. I'd contend that both parties are hopelessly lost in a never-ending upward spiral of greed and power-hungriness, and that the recovery of the nation is wholly contingent upon ridding ourselves of politics as profession.

To be clear, though, I really wasn't targeting my comments at you (save for the last one of my first set) except for that you were the one who began the discussion on those points in the first place. Since you seemed like the most interested party, it made sense to address the comments directed at your arguments to you to indicate that it was your turn to make a counter argument. So please, make a counter argument and let's continue the discussion.

Even if a libertarian does everything right, they'll most likely lose 2012 because people will fall back on what they know. If they have any show, they must: 1. Decide if you are the Republican Party or the Libertarian Party and own it - remember you're going up against Pepsi. It might be easier to rebrand Coca-cola as the "New" Coke, than it would be to sell Dr. Pepper to Coca-cola and Pepsi diehards. 2. Find a young candidate. You can't be old, talking about the Constitution, and think you have a shot against Obama. 3. Put some color in your image and that doesn't mean tokenism! Michael Steele is not intelligent. Need proof, look back at the episode of Politically Incorrect were he's basically made fun of because he's so clueless. Race has been and will be a factor in every race, especially against Obama. You must be inclusive and you must bring your message to people of color, rather than expect them to come to you. 4. INCREMENTALISM, INCREMENTALISM, INCREMENTALISM. While Dr. Ron Paul may be able to rally the libertarian base like Limbaugh to the RR in '12, your candidate needs to present a transparent plan of what they will tackle once in office. Revolutions are radical, libertarians are radical, so that message will completely destroy you when you're up against Obama will own both "change" and "more of the same" and people will fall back on what they know.

5. "Electability" is perceived after the issues that matter are defined and the candidates drive those issues. If abortion, gay marriage, or any issue playing to the religious crowd is dominant, libertarians are irrelevant. Own the Republican Party. Your candidate(s) shouldn't be defending why the Republican Party is libertarian, you should be shunning the religious candidates and calling them irrelevant. You'll still lose, but that's my advice. To the people who say it's too early to know if 2008 was the beginning of a new political era, (wake up) Keynesian economics is dead. The Republican Business Elite made us their whore for the last few decades and the level of inequality that resulted has left us too bruised to win elections on "trickle-down" bs. So, while it might still might live on in current economic textbooks and minds - it is now the minority, get over it.

J Seabe, your treatment of Paul's record on gay marriage is disingenuous. He voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment in 2004 because he believes that the federal government should have no say in marriage. Consistent with this view, he voted in favor of the Defense of Marriage Act, which stated that states should not be compelled to recognize same-sex unions, not that these unions ought to be illegal. Then the Marriage Protection Act sought to keep the federal government's nose out of state business, which is most likely in reaction to the Supreme Court assuming responsibility over state rights in deciding Roe v. Wade.

Ron Paul isn't electable. He is too loony, too much like Ross Perot. Besides, no one in Washington DC likes him. If Paul ever becomes President, DC will become the new Detroit. Tech would suffer too, many research grants are sponsored by the federal government (I'm here on a DOE grant). If the Republicans want any chance to win next time around, they need to get behind the intellectuals in the GOP: Gingrich, Romney, George Will, David Frum, etc. The Dems would love nothing more than to have the GOP continued to be led by Rush, Steele, Palin, Jindal, and Huckabee. Palin - Jindal 2012!

Paul may not be electable, but he is not looney. The problem is that we have allowed the government to get its hands into everything, to the point where removing government involvement will be difficult. Consider the government like a knife, and groups to which the government gives funding are like stabbing victims. If you remove the knife, you'll bleed more quickly, but leaving it in doesn't mean everything is ok; it's not supposed to be there in the first place. If the government would have never begun giving research grants in the first place, nobody would have become reliant on their continuance. As it stands, the government has so many people relying on it for money that it will never be easy to reduce its size or spending.

Anyone that thinks abolishing the Federal Reserve is a good idea is indeed looney.

Anyone who things that Ron Paul is not a looney is indeed looney.

William, just because the Federal Reserve is run by the government doesn't mean it is infallible. Please tell me why Paul's advocacy for gradually eliminating the Fed is looney. Just because the Fed is chaired by a civil servant doesn't mean it acts in your best interest.

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