Semantic games here. Delving into the true nitty-gritty of political politics makes me wish there was a clear-cut language for expressing ideas.

In programming, binary trees have a very specific definition. You wouldn't confuse a binary tree for a linked list even though they're similar.

In politics, it seems possible to say things like this, and get people to go along with it. He makes the following assertions (as they sound to me):

1. Acting on individual freedom > acting on collective good
2. "Small" government supports individual freedom
3. Government "size" is based on how much money (tax) it costs
4. Government "size" is based on how much control it has over you
5. Corporate action is individual freedom
6. Democrats act for the collective good, but it costs money to do that
7. Republicans act for the good of a few, with the express intent of increasing the control of government over people
8. Democrats and Republicans are therefore both the same
9. This is why FDR was bad for creating the Food and Drug Administration (?)

He also says "history has proven statism leads to disaster", which is a bit silly -- at best you can say history proves the elimination of free markets within a state ruins a state's ability to compete in a global free market. If you read history with a somewhat less opinionated view, you might notice that there are plenty of cases where the evil "government programs" did good throughout the world, including right here in the U.S. of A, particularly those alphabet soup programs FDR created.

There's no guarantee any human plan will lead to success, and while there are certainly cases where individual programs have failed to achieve the desired effect, there's insufficient evidence to declare that statism is so fundamentally flawed that it cannot possibly work. It's not the answer to everything, but it can work sometimes.

The way I see it, even if I treat #1-#5 as givens, just listening to his statements of #6 and #7 should immediately call into question whether what's being done by each party is really morally equivalent, simply due to the difference in intention, if nothing else.

Personally, I consider #1, #2, and #5 to be unproven assertions in need of serious scrutiny. To me, "collective good" is always the goal. The great thing about America (and this free market thing we pretend to have invented), is that it turns out you can do a lot of collective good by increasing individual freedom from where it was in the middle-ages.

Nowadays, people seem to believe the only kind of individual freedom that matters is the freedom from taxes. Nevermind the freedom to go to whatever doctor they want, never mind the freedom to buy food be sure it's safe, never mind the freedom to go to any college you can get accepted to (without being saddled with massive debt).

Other countries consider us backwards for the way we limit our citizen's freedom in that way. I'm not sure why making me free to fend for myself is so great, when it's not like my salary (even if I paid no tax) makes up the difference in the "market" cost for not having those freedoms.

To equate that with the Republicans, who want to limit civil rights along with civil services? Madness, sheer and utter madness.

I'd almost think such an argument was designed to encourage a vote for a 3rd party (or in this case, a sub-party). But no, Ron Paul would never, ever use propaganda, would he?

I think if you froze a conservative from 1960 and unfroze them right now, and then briefed them on the positions of McCain and Barr, they would tell you that Barr is the conservative among them. I think if you're truly a conservative, you _should_ vote for Barr or even Paul.

Paul missed his chance this cycle, though. But at least he raised important points during the debates and hopefully that will prompt Republicans to start looking around for truly conservative candidates.

If foreigners are equating us as backwards and putting the blame on Republicans, well it's easy to see why. Even after the disaster that was Bush's first term, we managed to reelect him. We tend to act unilaterally, and dismiss dissenters with childish namecalling or stupid campaigns to rename french fries to feredom fries, or boycotting countries that we don't agree with - and those activists tend to also be Republicans.

Republicans make us appear startlingly arrogant.

We're gonna have to start paying more taxes now that we've allowed our resources to be raped as they have. It will be interesting to see how politicians deal with this. The alternative seems to be that the majority of us simply go bankrupt.

"history proves the elimination of free markets within a state ruins a state's ability to compete in a global free market."

Moronic.

True False or Meaningless, what "free market"???-Globalism is a unilateral clusterfuck for the common man-and an elaborate ruse, designed to eventually subjugate every nation of the world-muddro is correct, because the bankrupting and assimilation of nations is what the game is-you dipshitz who are keeping the faith, had better start developing off-the-grid alternatives to this illusion of a global economy, instead of worrying what your vote will do to "change" anything-....perhaps barter, perhaps take some agri-lessons, and keep seed stores, and find an alternative to the larger cities....haven't heard Obama the implant say a goddamn thing regarding NAFTA, the NAU, the Amero, but it's coming kids, fast and strong-all that we need is a so-called "Natl. emergency".....then this voice crying in this wilderness, will be in the wilderness....deathcow, please keep me a pallet, on your floor....

GB senior's head, along with his putrid wife, over the mantle in the oval office fireside chat room.....a worthy addition, to the wall of past shame.

^ I don't believe the benefits of globalization are good for regular Americans.

I do think there's utility in free markets, they just should be used as a tool to serve humanity's needs, rather than bending humanity's needs to the market.

Obama's got some moderate views on globalization, which roughly translates into "we should go slowly and carefully".

That's as good as you're going to get when the VRWC of the country scream "communist! marxist!" at something like Obama's position.

Kucinich was the only candidate I know of who promised to repeal NAFTA.

Moving this video to blankfist's personal queue. It failed to receive enough votes to get sifted up to the front page within 2 days.

Guys.....his....his name is Terbolizzard.