I'm having an email discussion with a friend, started by this article. A couple of people said they agreed with nearly everything, I said I disagreed with nearly everything.
Anyway, since I'm writing anyway, might as well post it here too.
I currently call myself a pro-war small L libertarian, a
label I stole from John Lanius.
I believe we are currently in the middle of WWIV, WWIII being the Cold
War. It is a war between militant islam on one side, and the rest of
the world on the other, as that is how they've defined the battle.
I want government completely out of declaring anyone married or not.
I think of abortion as a medical procedure. It isn't a good substitute
for birth control because of side effects.
I want marijuana legal, and regulated like cigarettes. I want the
so-called War on Drugs stopped.
Environmental issues: messy. Some of the stuff coming from the left is from watermelons: "green on the outside, red on the inside." Ie, Kyoto would have done nothing for global warming; it's intent was to reign in the economies of various first world countries. On the other hand, libertarianism has some difficulties on establishing a practical way to pay for air pollution, for instance.
Gun control: how well you can control where your bullets hit the target. I believe the Second Amendment speaks to an individual right to own guns. And if you really believe it speaks towards a state army, there is a fair amount of federal legislation that is unconstitutional.
And by the way, a well armed populace is the best way to prevent genocide.
Current administration: I prefered Bush to Kerry. Bush didn't steal the election from Gore, he won it under the rules previously agreed to. Kerry was a horrible candidate who ran for president because it was thought he would steal some of the pro-war voters, while being, practically, anti-war. The only reason it was as close as is was is that the mainstream media still had some control over the debate. The reason Kerry lost is that it didn't have complete control: RatherGate and other stories would never have come out 20 years ago.
Bush has done a pretty bad to horrible job of communicating his plans, and the reasons for those plans. He and the Republican controlled Congress have been for big government, although perhaps less so than a Democrat would have been. This is a bad thing. Social Security is headed in a negative direction, although not nearly so much as the EU states. I don't like his official position on gays, although it isn't much different from Kerry's; I'll pick a country in which the main discussion is whether I can marry over a country in which the main discussion is how I should be executed. His position on stem cells is looking more and more reactionary, as is the makeup of the council he appointed to oversee such things.
And one last statement -two large, corrupt, child abusing, genocide abetting, anti-semitic dictatorships: the Catholic Church and the UN.
Owlish,
I posted a long, long time ago about how we're in the middle of World War IV. It was based upon this essay by Norman Podhoretz from last September. If you also think we're in World War IV, I think you might enjoy that article.