In article <fbouag26ja@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>, zzpat <zzpatrick@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote:
> Gunny Freedom wrote:
> >
> > When is Fox going to admit that Ron Paul has a far far greater base of
> > sup****t than they want to believe?
> >
> FOX doesn't do news, it does Republican propaganda.
>
> The Party wants anyone but Ron Paul so that's what they re****t.
> Anything contrary to that is re****ted as some sort of conspiracy.
>
> Personally, I don't like the guy but he has some interesting ideas. At
> least his answers don't sound canned and focus group tested. I
> particularly like his statements about individual rights being supreme.
> In that area he's a liberal just like me.
Actually, if I'm not mistaken (and I'm not) the origins of Dr. Paul's
political philosophy of the sovereignty of individual rights finds it's
origins in the Democratic-Republican Party founded by Thomas Jefferson
and James Madison in 1792. The Democratic-Republican Party later became
referred to and later known simply as "The Republican Party." Within 30
years, this Democratic-Republican Party became heavily fractioned, and
roughly half (headed by Andrew Jackson) split off to become what
eventually arises as the Democratic Party, and the other roughly half
became absorbed into the Whigs - who began to then fade from the
political scene only to eventually re-emerge within another 30 years as
the Republican Party, or "The Party of Lincoln" to which some of the GOP
like to refer.
You will note that Dr. Paul refers to his libertarian political
philosophies as "Old Republican" and by inference he appears to be
referring to a time prior to Abraham Lincoln. Therefore I believe he is
referring to the party of Thomas Jefferson, or the Democratic-Republican
Party, which (although later splitting into both Democrats and
Whigs-->Republicans) was generally referred to at the time as "The
Republican Party."
Truth is, liberal and conservative have nothing to do with individual
sovereignty. Individual sovereignty has more to do with the contrast
between (little 'l') libertarianism and authoritarianism.
You can be a leftist libertarian or a rightist libertarian, just like
you can be a leftist authoritarian or a rightist authoritarian.
Although the test is trite (and has been accused of being rigged) there
is a common "political test" which asks you a short series of questions
and then plots your position on a plane (as opposed to a line). While I
do not deny that this test may be suspect, the depiction of political
positioning on a plane rather than a line remains valid.
Check out this link:
http://www.quiz2d.com/quiz/rtest.php?quad=RadicalLibertarian
and take the test here:
http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz.html
or here:
http://www.quiz2d.com/
to get a general idea. As I said, some people make the claim that these
tests are 'rigged' to make more people appear as libertarians than
actually should, that that may well be the case. Caveat Emptor; but the
im****tant part is not the quiz or where the quiz actually plots you on
the map -- but the map itself.
You see, if I *had* to suffer an authoritarian, I'd rather suffer an
authoritarian conservative than an authoritarian liberal; but I'll take
a libertarian of *either* stripe any day of the week. If you saw the
map to which I am referring above, then you would know what I am talking
about.
PS - my first link above "Radical Libertarian" is where *I* fall on the
map. ;-)
--
Gunny Freedom's Blog: http://libertyline.blogspot.com/
Gunny's Hangout: http://www.rwva.org/yabbse/index.php
"Liberty's Price"
Become a Rifleman: http://appleseedinfo.org/
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