There is a candidate – and many people are realizing why the corporate media and their corporate sponsors smear a man for his haircuts.
Bingo! the corporate media represents their corporate sponsors – not us – nor our best interests.
If corporations wanted their employees to have affordable healthcare – the corporate media would be praising Edwards’ brilliant healthcare plan.

http://johnedwards.com/about/issues

But I also think that to the public at large, doing nothing and waging wholesale war are somehow more palatable.

I believe Ron Paul has the best approach to keep our country safe: Kill the terrorists who attacked us (Osama), and re-evaluate our policies which contribute to people wanting to come to America to kill us. He acknowlegdes that we simply cannot, even if we needed to, police the world and remove every possible threat to America. He knows free trade and interdependence is a great deterrent to war, and that pre-emptive attacks against people who might one day have something which might be able to hurt us will only gain us far more enemies than we can deal with.

One of Ron Paul’s best points about Iran, though, is that the same people who are telling us Iran needs to be bombed (and maybe even nuked) are the same people who lied to us before and told us to go into Iraq…

If you want me to pay for what you want to do in the Middle East, and don’t see a problem with liberatarianism demonstrates a lack of philosphical discipline that I cannot pretend to over come in this setting. We are reduced to mere politics, and swaying the mob with tales of annecedotal imporatance, where you learned the Truth, and thus must, albeit regretfully, steal from me to pursue your scheme.

Take a step back and look at the big picture.

I call BS on that. It is the only defense that fits the libertarian model provided other countries are libertarian. Which is entirely different.

Several brands of libertarianism acknowledge the need for a government and/or a standing army. Consequentialists and minarchists easily fit into this framework, as do the Founders for that matter.

To say there is no difference between the above and mainstream conservatism is intellectual dishonesty. To say its something you disagree with is something else.

Disagreement with you based on pragmatism does not make one naive. I can’t speak for the others, but my stance on the need to do something in the middle east is one that is due to direct experience and a whole lot of learning.

Given the choice between the cause of liberty being associated with Ron Paul and it being associated with phony libertarians like Rudy Giuliani, the choice is rather obvious to me.

Doug, that’s a false choice and you know it. Nobody in their right mind is claiming Rudy Giuliani is a libertarian.

If given a choice between Ron Paul and Rudy Giuliani, I choose none of the above.

I can’t understand how a site that claims Pat Henry as their father is so mainstream, that is just lame conformity. Whether you kids like it or not, and I know you don’t which is why you pro-war folks don’t sign up to join the fight, the armed citizen, with no standing arym, is the only defense that fits the libertarian model. Otherwise, at the least, cease being cowards on the intellectual front, and state that you will trade with Lucifer, liberty for security.

“Watch it Stephen… I sense a transition here… You’re becoming a radical!”

Isn’t that a requirement for being a contributor to The Liberty Papers? :)

I’m beginning to contemplate more of a “survivalist” attitude as it relates to Islamic terrorism. Maybe its time to adopt an “every man for himself” policy? We know the government cannot or will not defend us from every threat, whether foreign or domestic. Hell, far too often the threat comes from the government itself! Truthfully, the first and last responsibility of self defense belongs to the individual. This is why the right to bear arms is so critically important and why every effort to limit the individual’s access to firearms should be resisted at every turn.

Watch it Stephen… I sense a transition here… You’re becoming a radical!

Seriously, though, I think you answered your own question. The responsibility of self defense is on the individual. The government can only give us the illusion of safety, they have neither the resources nor the competence to provide the real thing. And they demand huge swaths of liberty in order to provide that illusion.

It took me a long time to see it, but I don’t see anything the government has done as making this situation better. I personally believe that if we had executed the war in a better fashion, it might have been a net positive for our security. But in typical fashion, our government has created a situation that’s far worse than if we’d never gotten into Iraq in the first place.

Not only are they not capable of protecting us, the actions they’re taking are actually making the situation worse, and have been for the last 60 years. Don’t fall into the classic trap of assuming that the stated goals of the war will be achieved. It’s the same trap that those on the left fall into, when they think that the promised results politicians have for a social program will actually be realized.

No, Ron Paul is just in isolationist libertarian lalaland. A place many libertarians were in even post 9/11. Perhaps it was merely perception, but I always felt my interventionist viewpoint was unpopular with other libertarians.

Although interventionist and non-interventionist are antonyms, interventionist and isolationist are not. Many confuse Ron Paul’s position as isolationist when it is non-interventionist. This is a subtlety that is lost on many WOT champions. Just because RP wants to pull our troops out doesn’t mean that he is a “do nothing” isolationist. RP just wants to follow the Constitution. That means that Congress must declare war or bring our troops home. We know that will never happen so we must bring our troops home. That’s what the Constitution says.

On the other hand there are other things RP could and should do to fight the WOT. He supports the hunt for Osama and tried to get Congress to issue Letters of Marque and Reprisal against those responsible for 911. Unfortunatly Congress was more interested in passing the buck and gave the decision to goto war to the President so that they would have plausable deniability.

Unfortunatly our invasion/occupation has drawn many terrorists/insurgents into Iraq and been a great recruitment tool for the terrorist ranks. We have “mismanaged” the war and really screwed things up. We being the Republican party. Our zeal to have leverage against liberals with the WOT let us stay the course for so long a time that we no longer can fix things in a civilized manner. Now it would require us to “get mideval on there ass” which we shouldn’t and won’t do.

Why don’t you critique the other Candidates on their Pro-War stance to see if they know what the hell they are talking about?

I want one of those 4 Star Generals that rejected being Bush’s war czar to run if we are going to continue interventionism.

Either the Islamic fascist will get us or it will be a Soviet style government at home that will. In the Primary I’m going to vote for liberty rather than perceived temporary security.