Realcent.org

Gary Johnson is on Wilcow tonight (right now). On Glenn Beck's newschannel - the blaze.

212 on Dish Network if you have it. Or online if you're a subscriber....

wish I had time to sit down...........

Ok. I'm taping it. They're giving him the whole hour.

I got the last 35 minutes.... this was my introduction to Gov. Johnson. I honestly don't know much about the man.

He's a big proponent of the FairTax. Which is great! Cause so am I.

He spoke about immigration. Make it easy to get a work visa, speed up immigration, deportations would be a waste of money. Again these are all good ideas. Keep the criminals out (He spoke of background checks, I'm not sure how you do a background check on someone who lived in a one donkey town without running water - but I'll give the benefit of the doubt.) I mostly agree with his stand here.

Gun control. He wouldn't say he'd be against law abiding citizens owning RPG's. While I personally would love a Tank to park next to my wife's Grand Caravan, I'm not sure how I would feel about the idiot across the street having bunker busters. That said, there is an eccentric local wealthy man who owns a Mig. I love him.

I LOVED his stand on Federally Guaranteed Student Loans! He said because the schools know they will get paid whatever they ask - due to these federal loans - that tuition will continue to skyrocket. I cannot agree more.... let the free market eat!

I was surprised by his response on Gay Marriage - that the 14th amendment protects Gay Marriage. He says it would be difficult (read expensive)to remove language about marriage from all the existing laws. But that we must establish equality. I can agree with the premise, but still largely disagree that marriage is anything other than the joining of a man and a woman. I would love to see government out of the marriage business altogether, but that would be quite difficult to rewrite all the laws. Do all libertarians accept new definitions of terms like this? When in the past 6000 years has marriage meant what they say it means? From my perspective the left takes liberties with definitions of terms like Marriage. If we accept the "new" definitions we lose. There are other examples of this as well. The Fairtax would go a long way to eliminating this argument.

On Libya, he said we should "Give Obama a break." Give him the chance to find out what really happened and then make a judgement. In theory I agree with this. However, in this case, Obama and his contemporaries blamed an uprising brought on by free speech. I cannot see giving Obama a break while he's trying to rewrite history. For half a century he would have been able to get away with this because a supportive media would have spoonfed us the story until we believed it. Thank God for Rush Limbaugh, Neal Boortz, Glenn Beck, (yes) Fox News, Matt Drudge.

Anyway. The governer agrees with me on many points. There is a large portion of the GOP that agrees with much of this. The Tea Party movement is largely libertarian in nature. There are (of course) some of the more controversial things that we'd have trouble reconciling (leagalized drugs, prostitution, abortion, etc.) But I see the GOP moving more in this direction rather than running towards Marxism. Interesting perspectives. I don't see a third party necessary as much as I see a need for a great communicator of this message within the GOP. It's not Mr. Johnson. He's fine, but can't rip the GOP's heart in a new direction. Neither can Ron Paul. Somewhere there is another Thomas Jefferson.

OneBiteAtATime wrote:There are (of course) some of the more controversial things that we'd have trouble reconciling (leagalized drugs, prostitution, abortion, etc.)

These shouldn't even be arguments in national elections. I'm not pro-drugs, prostitution, abortion, etc., but I am against federal control over these issues. I'm also against federal gun control, federal school control, federal health care control, along with many others. In short, I believe in the constitution as it was originally written.

For those who believe it should be a living document which should change over time, I'd ask if the bible should change as well. If the word of God is inviolate, why aren't our God-given rights?

I'm sure we would all disagree on a number of specific points. But a return to constitutional state rights (with now greater appreciation for how special they are) would elminate a lot of strife, but for those that would insist that everyone do it "their way". With states rights I can at least ensure that I live in a state that believes more of what I believe, if that is sufficiently important to me. And at the least (if I choose to live elsewhere) I will know that I have a safety valve, and I can move elsewhere where my core specific beliefs are more appreciated, if it becomes untenable where I currently live. I don't have that now. A huge loss.

I bring up the Civil War now because that was the event that most stripped away states rights; the war itself, and the slavery behind the states rights issue that led to the war, was used to justify that path which has continued ever since. At the time of the Civil War, slavery was already on the way out - it's end was inevitable both economically as well as due to international social pressure within a matter of a few more decades at most. Instead we had a tragic unnecessary war with loss of life of hundreds of thousands, and millions of total casualities. There is fault on both sides, but the war itself was a disaster. While the slaves were nominally "freed", in part because of the way they were freed, blacks were harassed in the south for another century, and then the Feds overcorrected, and we're still dealing with the aftermath of that. Lincoln did us no favors; I'm not a fan of his - he violated the Constitution and we have paid a price for it. Now we have lost most states rights and are saddled with a multi-generational entitlement system based on guilt, and reverse discrimination where it is now established legal process to purposefully violate the rights of whites, and especially of white males (because they've added sex to this), and we're still headed down that slippery slope into other new areas of discrimination.