As a Liberal married to an apolitical Libertarian

[Mythsaje]

I find myself embroiled in some interesting discussions at home at times.

Like last night, as we were watching the DVRed Boston Legal from last week. I'm opposed to the death penalty, in general. She isn't. My problem is that I don't think we can trust the system to determine who is, and who is not, deserving of it. (There are other factors, but that's one she can understand, at least).

When it comes right down to it, she's not nearly as Libertarian as she may have once been. I've had that much influence on her, at least. She's beginning to grasp the idea of "bubble up" economic theory rather than that of "trickle down" voodoo economics. The more people spending money, the better.

She's voting straight Dem this time around. That's a first. She asks ME what I think about Maria Cantwell. I said--"vote for her." I have my issues with Maria, but she's NOT Mike McGavick. That's enough of a recommendation for me.

She knows as well as we do that we've got to put the brakes on this train of crazies running us toward certain disaster, and that the only chance of doing that is to vote Democratic. She hates the theocratic, 'what are you doing in your bedroom' Republican nonsense. She's very SOCIALLY liberal--thankfully. Of course, if she wasn't, I would never have married her.

She's also been on board with the "the war is a mistake" thing I've been spouting from the beginning. She's not a big fan of American Imperialism. It rarely ends well.

She was also watching the most recent episode of "The Unit," last night. I was watching a episode of something else on-line, can't remember what, and I looked up to catch a segment where one of the military wives was confronting some peace protestors. I snarled something about the segment, not liking the two-dimensional model of the guy leading the protestors it represented. The guy was allegedly a college professor or something, but he didn't have a particularly good rebuttal for something the military wife said linking the War on Terror with the War in Iraq.

Ticked me off.

My wife said, "well, it is a military show. It will show some bias." But it also, according to her, shows the men speaking out about this Administration's incompetence at times. The fact that they DON'T have any military experience and don't know what they're doing.

I suppose that's something, anyway.

I DO agree with her that we shouldn't necessarily be protesting at military bases and confronting the troops. They didn't sign up for THIS. We know why many, if not most, of them signed up. To get "training" and money for education. Or to help hunt down OBL.

Blaming a Private for the actions of this administration is like blaming a receptionist because his or her employer hires mercenaries to bust unions in South and Central America.

I'm a real big one on fairness. And that's just not fair.

Like I said...this all makes for some interesting conversations.

My wife graduated high school at 15...and had a scholarship to Oxford she didn't use. She TESTS smarter than me--former MENSA member and all that. :shrug: I'm better at conceptual awareness, and intuitive leaps that coordinate apparently unrelated information into a coherent whole. She's better at the math thing...sequencing and what not...than I am.

I test at 128 on IQ tests. She tests at 150 or better. LOL. Yet, somehow, I have a greater understanding of things she can't seem to grasp. I have to admit, however, that her smarts have more day-to-day applications than my own. She doesn't, however, seem to learn faster than I do.

I can set her into a tizzy by trying to explain the whole "time is an illusion" thing...that everything is REALLY happening all at once and it's our perspective that makes it seem to move forward. I believe that our perception of time is a function of the expansion of the universe and our minds trying to grasp it in a way that we can communicate.

I can't comprehend the math behind relativity, but I can grasp the concept. I can't even do algebra. LOL. It's one of the reasons I'm not an English teacher now. For even an AA, you have to be able to do algebra. I can't. Or I couldn't when I was in college. Who knows...maybe now I could.

She gets pissed at me when I start with all the theoretical stuff. Especially the "there is no time" premise.

All of this is why I generally ascribe to the many different types of intelligence model rather than the whole IQ testing thing. I don't think IQ tests, in general, measure intelligence very well. Only specific kinds of intelligence.

Of course I'd say that, considering I'm not close to being a "genius." ;)

Even though, I'm sure, along with many people here on DU, I sometimes feel like one. Considering some of the people we're faced with as opposition. We "get" things they can't grasp. And we can only be left to wonder why.

[lostnotforgotten]

1. Have Her Watch The HBO Documentary - Hacking Democracy

And let's see if that gets her Libertarian blood boiling.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8367786376074634512&q

[Mythsaje]

2. Oh...she's aware of it.

When I told her about it this morning, and the fact that Diebold tried to get HBO to pull it, she said "good for them" for not going along with it.

She'll probably pass the kudos on to the HBO rep she knows.

[lostnotforgotten]

4. Excellent! - The More The Better!

eom

[blm]

3. I really enjoyed this post, Myth.....

Are you a writer?

[Mythsaje]

7. Absolutely...

My first and greatest passion in life.

:)

[blm]

8. well, you hooked me.....what struck me is how cleverly written it is...

informative, funny AND tender. It's the tender that always hits me. Some DUers always get me to tear up when they write tenderly.
awwwwwwww..........heh

[Mythsaje]

11. Occasionally that happens to me as well...n/t

[blm]

13. so, then you will understand if I give it a k&R.

Us softies gotta stick together. ;)))))

[Mythsaje]

16. I appreciate that...

:)

[troublemaker]

5. Identical twins raised apart share political ideology more often than

siblings raised in the same home, and far more than unrelated adopted kids raised together. And being an oldest child makes one liklier to be authoritarian.

My older sister is very bright but is a RW religous nut. I can't say I'm a better person than her because I'm not, except in the one area of how we would arrange a society.

There are many mysteries to how we come to be who we are. Most of us don't reason ourselves into 100% of our positions... it's seems to be a combination of reason, experience and in-born temperment.

[Mythsaje]

6. I think my political beliefs have a LOT to do with

my natural empathy, my strong sense of fairness, and my innate stubbornness. LOL

I feel for other people, I hate to see people get the shaft, and I will NOT back down from a position I know is right.

The first two are symptomatic, at least to an extent, of my social anxiety disorder. The last comes from having to deal with my father most of my life. He likes to say that he's very proud that I ended up as "my own man..." Even though my journey there, to the point where I'm happy to be who I am, was a long and arduous one.

[troublemaker]

9. A lot of it is whether you are more upset about a guilty person going free

or an innocent person being jailed. The later makes me see red. The former makes a lot of Republicans see red.

A lot flows from that simple emotional difference. Most of us agree that both outcomes are bad, but RW types seem to have more raw emotional investment in the idea of people getting away with something. (In "prisoner's dilemma" experiments conservatives are likelier to shaft themselves to prevent an imaginary person from getting the better of them. Vendetta. War of attrition...)

[Mythsaje]

10. All a guilty person has to do to "go free"

is not get caught in the first place. Happens all the goddam time.

All an innocent person has to do to get nailed for something they didn't do is be in the wrong place at the wrong time, be a member of a targeted minority (whatever the minority), not have the money for a good defense, and/or get a crappy or overworked and exhausted public defender. Or any combination of the above.

Also, I believe, happens all the goddam time.

I'd rather a hundred guilty men go free than one innocent person be punished.

[troublemaker]

12. A core American sentiment. (I wish more "patriots" shared it!)

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

14. Who is protesting at military bases and confronting troops?

:shrug: If this is in fact being done I would think it counterproductive since the troops are only carrying out government policy.

Or are you just referring to it happening on the TV show?

[Mythsaje]

15. I was talking about the TV show, specifically

though my wife says she'd seen protesters with signs out by Fort Lewis not too long back.

I am also thinking it's counter-productive, if true.

[madmusic]

17. You lost me at "libertarian" and "death penalty"

They are not as a whole gung-ho for the death penalty. So that is a little confusing.

The Pulse: Crime and (proper) punishment

There's nothing like life and death political issues to galvanize people, and the death penalty is no exception.

This month's Pulse questions -- should the LP take a position on the death penalty, and what should that position be? -- generated the third-highest number of responses ever. And the answers demonstrated why the party has traditionally declined to take a stand on this issue: Libertarians weighed in vehemently for and against the death penalty and vehemently for and against taking a position on it.

The unscientific results: 41% said the party should take an "official" position (whether yes or no), while 18% said the LP should remain neutral. Another 41% did not answer the question, or gave ambiguous answers.

On the death penalty itself, a slim majority (51%) said the Libertarian Party should oppose it. Another 26% said Libertarians should support the death penalty, while 19% didn't state an opinion, or gave ambiguous responses. Another 4% said it should be up to the victims or their families to decide.


more: http://www.lp.org/lpn/9904-pulse.html

I used to be a card-carrying Libertarian, until realizing they drink the kook-aid and think it's pot. Here's an example:

Step 3. Get Tough on Real Crime

The Libertarian Party is the party of personal responsibility. We believe that anyone who harms another person should be held responsible for that action. By contrast, the Democrats and Republicans have created a system where criminals can get away with almost anything. (Yeah, right, you stupid fucks, that's why we have the largest prison population in the world."

For instance: sentences seldom mean what they say. Fewer than one out of every four violent felons serves more than four years. Libertarians would dramatically reduce the number of these early releases by eliminating their root cause - prison over-crowding. (Hey, get a clue. Judges know what the sentence would be and they know what how much time they want the defendant to do and how much time he/she would do. This argument is like saying, "The judge thinks 5 years is justice, but he sentenced him to ten knowing he will do five. That makes the judge a liar.)

Since nearly six out of every ten federal prison inmates are there for non-violent drug-related offenses, it's clear that drug prohibition is the primary source of this over-crowding. It has been estimated that every drug offender imprisoned results in the release of one violent criminal, who then commits an average of 40 robberies, 7 assaults, 110 burglaries and 25 auto thefts. Early release of violent criminals puts you and your family at risk. It must stop.

"It has been estimated..." Bleh, that's always a bad sign. It's been estimated that the Rapture is around the corner over and over again. Indeed, the Cato Institute, aka, the Libertarian wingnut propaganda machine, is in part responsible for the California Three Strikes Law. They said "career criminals" account for most of the crime and that 25-to-life will fix that. They later came out with another report that said, "Oops, sorry, it's not cutting crime."

They are still doing it: "To the extent that three-strikes laws are carefully drafted to include only serious violent felonies, the laws can be a helpful step forward. But to the extent that three-strikes laws include consensual offenses or make it impossible for judges to treat relatively less dangerous offenders differently than they do violent predators, such laws simply continue, rather than reform, the failed sentencing policies that endanger public safety." http://www.cato.org/dispatch/03-06-03d.html">link

They are still too dumb to know what law they supported. First and most important, NONE of the 3 strikes has to be "serious violent felonies." Second, there is mounting evidence that juvenile delinquent "anti-social behavior" leads to "serious violent crime" because there is are statistical correlations, or at least the data is twisted that way. What is "anti-social behavior"? You guessed it, drug use! Along with having sex, truancy and a few other notables. So rather than getting drug users out of prison, they put juvenile delinquent's in. They even helped make it so they are tried as adults!

Do they really think people are stupid enough to believe this? "But to the extent that three-strikes laws include consensual offenses or make it make it impossible for judges to treat relatively less dangerous offenders differently than they do violent predators..." First, does anyone give a fuck about "relatively less dangerous offenders"? Second, tough on crime is tough on crime. You can't weasel your way out of it just because a friend of yours got caught in the net. Putting people in jail for life isn't going to allow them to smoke pot and pointing the finger at everyone else isn't going to help them either. A police state is a police state. Period. Justice is justice. Period.

Is some crime really bad? Sure. Should some be locked up for life? Of course! But Three Strikes And You're Out sounds so cute, like a cute little puppy. How can anyone say no to a puppy?

But what gets me most about the Libertarians is they refuse to see the connection between corporatism and fascism. The fascists think that's cute.

[Mythsaje]

18. She identifies herself as a Libertarian

and she's more or less pro death penalty.

Where's the conflict?

[madmusic]

19. None, I guess.

Except I thought the implication was that libertarians were in general pro death. Now that you mention, she could be one of the smaller percentage of libertarians who support it.

Anyway, can you tell that libertarians feeding the fascist troll gets to me?

Nothing personal intended or implied, I hope.

[Mythsaje]

20. Oh, I hate it too...

Like I wrote in a previous one of my threads (probably off the Greatest Page by now, but maybe not--can't remember when I posted it) I think there's pretty much NOTHING more disgusting than these people pandering to the Republican Fucks.

Even if their obviously trash economic ideologies correspond, the social control crap played by the Republican Party should make every Libertarian want to vomit.

Any Libertarian who supports this regime is a hypocritical gasbag. Period.

[madmusic]

21. They use the libertarians for 3 things...

1) The 2nd Amendment and guns. One of the first things Pelosi should do is make it clear she doesn't want to take everyone's guns away. She should lay out a plan that makes it clear she only wants common sense when it comes to gun ownership. Then the House and the Senate should pass a bill even the president could sign. What that would be will require vigorous debate. My own personal view is that there should be some safety device to keep the gun owner's children from killing each other, and something to help prevent theft so it's not used on the street. Other than that, who cares how many guns someone as has long as they aren't bazookas and grenades and stuff.

2. They love the laissez-faire economics stance of the libertarians. That's why the media is owned by about 5 companies and they all have the same corporate interests.

3. Libertarian's "personal responsibility" really means the government, society, the community, isn't responsible at all. As an extreme example of that philosophy in actions, say a child is taken from a home because of abuse and grows up in one hell-hole foster home after another. When the child becomes a juvenile delinquent and gets 25-to-life for smoking pot - a law the libertarians helped pass - it's no one's fault but the child's. True, no one else can or should do the time, but that doesn't mean no one else was ever irresponsible by failing to intervene at some point. It's a nifty excuse to eliminate all government programs that help those in need of support. If there is a fire and only libertarians are holding the net four stories below, the jumper is going to get burned one way or another.

What they don't seem to understand is how this resolves into the loss of individual identity because everyone becomes a cog of the machine, either useful to it or not. Or as BushCo said, "You're either with us or against it."

Other than these three, Republicans think libertarians are urinals.

I don't get it.

[benEzra]

22. Guns...

The 2nd Amendment and guns. One of the first things Pelosi should do is make it clear she doesn't want to take everyone's guns away. She should lay out a plan that makes it clear she only wants common sense when it comes to gun ownership. Then the House and the Senate should pass a bill even the president could sign. What that would be will require vigorous debate. My own personal view is that there should be some safety device to keep the gun owner's children from killing each other, and something to help prevent theft so it's not used on the street. Other than that, who cares how many guns someone as has long as they aren't bazookas and grenades and stuff.

Dems and the Gun Issue - Now What?