I just got the most surprising email..... A friend found two Daddy Stovepipe videos on Youtube.....
....Patting Myself on the Back.
So, today's election day.
Think back, if you will, to early May. Hillary and Obama were in the middle of a brutal primary season, the term "Superdelegate" hadn't even become a household word yet, and where was I on the state of US Politics?
http://twitter.com/Greg0692/status/805273814
Booyah. On May 7th I called it that Barack would be the next President.
Granted, I blew a couple of other predictions, specifically when I picked Kathleen Sibelius as Barack's VP and missing the timing on the Joe Biden announcement by a few days.
So, I voted for Bob Barr. I'd like to give you a great one-pager on my rationale. This says it all: http://www.ntu.org/main/page.php?PageID=141. Yes, the Barack and John Shows would cost us $292 Billion and $92 Billion respectively. We simply cannot tax ourselves into prosperity. Period.
But there's one more element to this conversation (taxes and where our tax money goes) that I never see discussed..... It's an idea that I uncovered on my 8-day prayer retreat that I ended yesterday (thanks to my conversation with Stepher)..... Libertarians need to speak about issues of compassion!
See, Democrats speak nearly constantly about helping people. That's attractive because, well, helping people is a really, really, really good thing. The problem though is with the funding mechanism. Nice Democrat citizens who want to help people elect Democratic politicians to do nice, good works.... WITH THEIR NEIGHBORS' MONEY.
Good people that are clear would NEVER do this! A good Democract would never go over to their neighbor's house, steal their neighbor's car, sell that car and then use the proceeds of that sale to give to the homeless. However, that same Democrat would work exhaustedly, day-after-day, night-after-night trying to get politicians elected who will do *exactly* the same thing using our system of taxation!
Think about your next door neighbor. Perhaps you see that person getting into their car on occasion. Perhaps you talk with them when you get your mail. Maybe you even have a friendship with that person. I'll consider my neighbor Tony. He's a concientious guy with a great dog and a pick-up truck. He cares about his neighborhood and is a hard-working, self-employed man without partisan political views.
Now, think about your favorite cause. Mine are the American Cancer Society (thanks dad), Mangala Shri Bhuti (thanks Rinpoche), Kiva.org, the Mahasiddha Nyingmapa Center and the Gender Identity Center of Colorado (thanks Beth... Did you all know that there are more crimes against the transgendered than there are against, blacks, hispanics, gays, lesibians and jews COMBINED?!?!?).
Here we get to the whole meat of why not to be a Democrat.... Are you willing to put your neighbor in jail for not supporting your cause?
I must tell you, I am not in favor of forcing Tony to pay his money to Mangala Shri Bhuti at the threat of jail time.
Now, Republicans get this argument. But, they're seen as mean. Why? Because they don't talk about helping people. They just say, "we won't overburden you with taxes".
Libertarianism (aka "Capitalist Hippies", thanks Cali Lewis) believe in helping people, we just think that the Robin Hood concept is not only highly immoral, it creates incentives which make our country much, much worse off.
Next, I've received emails from friends who voted for McCain because they see oh-so-clearly that Barack's kindness comes on the backs of the unwilling (i.e., "Who is he to tell me where and how I should be charitable?!?").
So, here's what I'm doing: As always, I'm voting against all tax increases. For instance, there was a measure to aid people with disabilities on the ballot. As a Libertarian I voted against it. However, I do, desparately want these people to be helped and helped well. I have a heart, I just don't want to force my neighbors to pay their hard-earned money to my pet project. So, I'll be sending a small contribution to an organization that helps the developmentally disabled if the measure fails.
Consider this.... If people don't pay their taxes, they go to jail (yes, that's THE Wesley Snipes). Therefore, every time you vote to increase taxes in the name of a good work, you are actually advocating that people should be jailed if they don't support that cause. While I support lots and lots and lots of good causes, I don't think that there is a single cause anywhere of any kind that is so important that people should be jailed for not supporting it!
So, what is the solution to all this? The Libertarians MUST shift the conversation. When people think of compassion, they think of Democrats rather than Libertarians! This "compassion-by-force" is a contradiction in terms! The thought of forcing others to be compassionate is not compassionate in the slightest!
Any time you are considerig voting for a tax increase, please first ponder, "should my neighbor go to jail for not paying for this?".
We must divorce our thinking regarding compassion from the mechanism that pays for that compassion. While we must deplore that funding mechanism called taxation, we must equally, passionately, committedly and unwaveringly shift our focus to the encouragement of doing good works. This is, frankly, the only way that the system works, that society is attractive to anyone. In this world, one cannot dispute that we are utterly entrenched in inter-dependancy and as such we should be grateful and reciprocating to those who are less fortunate, those who start with less advantages, those who have maybe not had the same grace regarding the consequences of their bad decisions that we have had.
Ok, rant over, time to watch the election results in a few hours.....
Much love,
- Greg
PS. If you're wondering "what you are" and are willing to consider that
there are FOUR aspects to the political scale (as opposed to the
left-Democrat, right-Republican duality that we commonly are
presented), take 3 minutes and fill this out:
http://www.theadvocates.org/quizp/index.html
(I take this quiz about once a year. I've scored at its apex for ~16 years now)
All the best,
- Greg
