National Review: Interview with Ralph Reed at CPAC 2014

Source:The New Democrat

The face of the GOP is really the religious right, the "get big government into our personal lives wing of the Republican Party." I wonder what the Conservative Libertarian wing of the GOP led by Rand Paul, Senator Mike Lee, Senator Jeff Flake, Senator Ron Johnson, Representative Justin Amash, and others think about that.  They have been working on getting big government out of our lives completely and not making the case that some big government is good.   

The Federalist: Fred Cole: Sometimes We Have to Question This Whole Freedom Thing

Source:The New Democrat

I read both sides of the political spectrum, all the way from the far left to the libertarian right to the far right, and of course the center left, where I am, as well as the center right and anything else I might not have mentioned, so please do not get dizzy from reading this.  I'm sure people who read my blogs probably do not like that and perhaps wish I only read articles on the Left and probably wish I was a hell of a lot more partisan as a Democrat as well. I do this because I like to know what people are thinking, especially those who disagree with me, but it also helps me as a blogger to see what the rest of the political world is thinking about.

I mention this for a couple of reasons.  I am very liberal and do not want government controlling people's lives, and based on that, I see plenty of articles from the far left and far right about new ideas and proposals to control people. This year alone, I read three posts about Thom Hartmann wanting to repeal the Second Amendment, an article in the far left magazine Salon about nationalizing the news media because of the success of FOX News, and an article from the far right blog The American Thinker proposing to outlaw tobacco.  I am sure alcohol is not that far away either.

In 2012 alone, there were proposals from the Mike Bloombergs of the world (former mayor of New York City) arguing in favor of outlawing junk food and soft drinks.  The notion behind these proposals is that government (or a select few and elitist individuals) knows best how Americans should live, even Americans they've never met or heard of and know nothing about. These elitists know best because they are attended school in the Northeast or West Coast or Ivy League, and anyway, Americans are basically dumb and can't make these decisions for themselves.

Left or Right big government is too much government because it is government trying to control people and protect them from themselves, whether by prohibition of alcohol, food, and tobacco on the far left or outlawing pornography, premarital sex, adultery, abortion, and homosexuality on the far right. Being human is the ability to live, and part of that is about making mistakes, because, of course, none of us is perfect.  By then learning from those mistakes, we can do better the next time and not repeat them.

Personal freedom and responsibility as well as opportunity are what my politics and ideology are based on, and that means individuals have the freedom to control their own lives.  That means that property rights extend to people's own bodies and that we have the final say in what we do in life as adults as long as what we are doing is not hurting others. We are then held personally responsible, for good or bad, for our own decisions. 

Firing Line With William F. Buckley: Ron Paul (1988)

Source:Firing Line With William F. Buckley talking to Libertarian Party presidential nominee Ron Paul, in 1988.

Source:The New Democrat

“Ron Paul and William F. Buckley discussing a Constitutional Republic and the necessary evils of government. In 1988, Ron Paul was running as a Libertarian Presidential Candidate…

From Yaluc SD

Where Ron Paul loses me is when he comes out in favor of abolishing the CIA, an organization without which we would never have won the Cold War, because of all the information it provided about the Soviet Union.

The CIA was critical to America in winning the Cold War because it could give us information about the Russians and their allies that we weren’t able to get before.

As far as the income tax goes, it is now in the United States Constitution, thanks to the constitutional amendment process, and government has the constitutional and legal right to tax people in the because of it.

The Washington Post: Andrew Cohut: Are Democrats Getting Too Liberal?

Source:The New Democrat

This is where political labels, that is, labels that only describe one's political ideology, get people into trouble when they don't understand what the labels mean and what that political ideology is about. I agree with Andrew Cohut of the Washington Post that yes, the Democratic Party has obviously become more liberal and that has been the case since the George McGovern reforms to the Democratic Party in 1972 that brought in more ethnic and racial minorities and more women as well as gays and Northerners. But has the DP become too liberal? What does Mr. Cohut mean by that?

Today the Democratic Party is very liberal on social issues, believing in a wide range of personal freedoms for individuals, and it uses the United States Constitution to make the case for ideas like marijuana legalization, equal rights for gays, privacy, free speech including hate speech, right to organize, and Freedom of Assembly.  Now even many Democrats who are in favor of the Second Amendment believe that constitutional common sense gun control should be part of that as well. And Liberal Democrats, especially younger people, do not like being told by government or anyone else how to live their own lives as well.

Today the Democratic Party is also very liberal on economic policy, because we want to see the private enterprise system work for everyone and not just people born to wealth. We are not calling for less economic freedom; we are actually calling for more economic freedom for every American, not leaving people at the bottom or bare middle to struggle without the ability to move up. Which is why we are always speaking in favor of ideas like new infrastructure investment and job training and education for low-skilled working adults, low-skilled non-workers, and laid-off workers who need to develop new skills to move to the middle class.

I just laid out for you the center of the Democratic Party.  We are called the center-left party because we are a liberal party not a social democratic party, even though we do have social democrats in the party who want to take America much further left economically and politically toward Europe, which does not favor our Constitution and would either change it or get rid it of altogether, scrap our federalist system, and move to a social democracy and perhaps even a unitary government. However, the social democrats do not run the Democratic Party today. The Liberals and Progressives, the center left, does. 

Conol Rad: How to Spot a Communist

Source:The New Democrat

The U.S. government, just a few decades ago, had an undemocratic habit of suppressing dissent by labeling any person or organization whom they perceived as disapproving official actions or policies, for whatever reason, as communist.  In the heyday of McCarthyism and cheerleading jingoism, this was an enthusiastic effort joined by both media and government, as exemplified by the video above.

Government propaganda, amplified by right wing media, about communism, tried to pick out individual people and give them the horrible label of communist, equivalent to being called a devil.  This guilt by association is very undemocratic and  typical of totalitarian republics.  So-called American conservatives often, unknowingly, advocate policies typical of totalitarian governments.

Firing Line With Willam F. Buckley: Ron Paul (1988)

Source:The New Democrat

What I respect most about Ron Paul, former U.S. Representative from Texas and presidential candidate for both the Libertarian Party and the Republican Party, is his honesty.  He's truly against big government from both an economic and a personal standpoint, like all classic libertarians or classic conservatives. In this video, he explains why he's running for president for the Libertarian Party in 1988, to grow the size of the Libertarian Party and not to actually win the election but to bring publicity and new members to the LP.

FOX Sports: 'The Sports Butterfly Effect: What if the Portland Trail Blazers Drafted Michael Jordan Instead of Sam Bowie'

Source:The New Democrat

If only this were true, and the Portland Blazers instead of the Chicago Bulls had drafted Michael Jordan in 1984; how different the NBA would've been!  The Blazers and Bulls played each other in the NBA Finals in 1992, by the way, which was a classic six-game series that the Blazers could have won with Clyde Drexler at the off-guard instead of Air Jordan and Kevin Duckworth at center and instead of Sam Bowie, the man they drafted in 1984.

We'll never know, obviously, but had the Bulls drafted Sam Bowie instead of Michael, they would have been stuck with an injury-prone center who had a bad foot in college before he got to the NBA, which everyone including the Blazers knew about. That only got worse the more he tried to play in the NBA, because the man had a stress-fracture in his foot that never healed properly after he injured it the first time in 1981 or 1982, and this was from a movie made about big Sam's career. So his foot was simply never strong enough to play basketball, at least not basketball at the professional level.

But look at the positive aspect of this story, a team with both Michael Jordan and Clyde Drexler on it. I mean, think about it, you have Mike at the off-guard and Clyde at the wing-forward because Clyde at 6'7", 220 pounds or so, was big enough to play up front. Both were great players, both were great scorers, both were very good defenders, both could handle the ball, both could shoot, both could drive, both could rebound, etc. If you had the Blazers, with Terry Porter at point guard, and then you had found a solid center, the Blazers would have been serious NBA Finals contenders for at least 10 years.

Without Mike and with Clyde Drexler, the Blazers were NBA Finals contenders for 3 years from 1990 to 1992, and then they fell back to the middle of the pack in the Western Conference in the mid-1990s. With Sam Bowie, the Bulls would not have even been a playoff team for probably another 5 years with such an big investment in their center, who was missing half of the season or more every year.  The Bulls and NBA would have been a lot different.