Well, well, well. Looks like you're still on the side that thinks Limbaugh is a stupid donut-eater :)

Except for your stance on the tax rate, that is. From my (albeit, limited) understanding of the political side to taxes, libertarians believe in a flat tax. I know because somehow I got on the mailing list of the People for Fair Taxes, and it was a libertarian group. I understand what you mean about closing up loopholes, but in my mind, the two worst violations have to do with the wealthy, but not completely directly:

1. Corporate taxation is a joke, mostly because big companies give like mad to Republicans (although not always). To make matters worse, many companies--not just of the energy/service & supply section (and Halliburton is not an oil company, btw, but service & supply)--do all sorts of stuff overseas to avoid U.S. taxes. Smart business move, though questionably unethical behavior. (Also, lots of businesses incorporate in Delaware because of its weird tax laws.)

2. The estate (or death) tax. I know it sounds illogical to a lot of people, but just watch the new MTV show Rich Girls, and you'll start to agree with me.

As far as I can tell, wealthy individual in this country are paying fair amounts. And honestly, I can see where the Republicans are coming from on the fiscal/financial issues. They just want to keep their money--some of them probably earned it during the pursuit of the American dream (Ken Lay, I am not looking at you). But you have to ask yourself, what's another 1% to these people? Could it do good in the public school system, for Medicare, for highway improvements? I would be a libertarian (or a Republican!) if I believed all rich people were being as charitable as they possibly could, thus making it possible to end social programming. If that were the case, I'd say go ahead and privatize. The thing is, many of America's wealthy are incredibly generous but probably just as many are not. They're the reason we need taxes.

The end.

Chris,

I've debated this sort of thing with myself quite a bit. I came to the conclusion that life doesn't have to be so black and white as we necessarily make it. We can agree with some things that Republicans say, some things that Democrats say, and that is okay. You don't necessarily have to side with one or the other all the time.

It is a little bit jarring at first, to come to this conclusion. And agreeing with Republicans can be a scary thing at first. But then I think that you come to the conclusion that it just means you are a deep person, and there is nothing wrong with that.

I'm going to keep away from politics here, and just point out that I think *I* could do a better job sticking that Honda Element on a rocky outcropping than whatever monkeys Honda employed to do the job.

Thank you, and have a nice day.

I'm with Nathan in that it's not a matter of choosing between just two options. There's the matter of being socially left or right, economically left or right, and the matter of being inclined towards more libertarian stances or more authoritarian stances. You can always try taking this test (http://www.politicalcompass.org/), though I won't vouch for it's accuracy. But at least it treats politics as more than a line between left and right. Me, I tend to score in the left-libertarian range, making me more like Ghandi and the Green Party than say Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative Party.

As for your wacky views :-P, your stance on banning drugs, economic sanctions, and DUIs is authoritarian, but your stance on sex laws and the flat tax is libertarian. There still doesn't seem to be a political party which would ban cigarettes. The Republicans are in theory opposed to more legislation, whereas the Democrats are generally more tolerant of such things but more likely to tax them. It does seem however (and this could be my bias), that cigarettes are banned from public places in more liberal, progressive areas (banned in New York but not in Missouri).
The flat tax is conservative. Getting rid of consensual sex laws is liberal. Anything opposing big business is unfortunately neither party, though more likely the Democrats than the Republicans. And that tax against the SUVs would put you somewhere in the Green Party range, I think.
So I guess my conclusion is that you don't fall neatly into any category, so you should either become your own candidate or look at each candidate individually, rather than blindly voting with a certain party. We should all do that anyway.

This is why the party organization makes voting so difficult. Just when you think you know a party and identify with its platform, you find out they fall on the wrong side of some issue about which you discover you care a great deal.

The evil and ugly Element was born of necessity, once Honda bestowed all their beauty and goodness on the CR-V. I think if I had an Element, I'd also banish it to a tall and far-off mountain.