I’m calling out my fellow Libertarians, because we have to have a better response to mass murder than some intellectual cant.
One of the constant themes of my campaign is that banning stuff simply does not work. No matter how we feel about the issue, there is no magic wand we can wave to make it just go away.
But letting this devolve into a simple gun control vs. not gun control argument simply will not do anymore. I am totally opposed to gun control because it will not work. But we Libertarians must counter with a solution that DOES work.
In a recent podcast interview, I talked about how ‘live and let live’ is no longer sufficient for a Libertarian, because the violence in this world has reached such a level where it affects everyone. ‘Live and let live’ will no longer protect you and yours. Violence has come to find you.
To reject gun control as a solution, you are necessarily saying gun violence is a cultural problem, not a political one. As someone who wants to be a U.S. Senator, I say the one thing the federal govt can do is to stop setting a bad example.
At every level of society, from the President who claims and exercises the power to kill anyone he wants to anywhere in the world, to neighbors arguing over parking spaces, we have made deadly violence our first option to solve our problems. This has to stop, at every level.
It has to start with the federal govt. We must stop all our wars immediately. Every war. Our drone warfare, our meddling in the affairs of other nations, our arms sales to anyone and everyone, our support of other countries’ wars, our war on drugs, our war on women, our culture wars, our war on our own people. All of it. Every literal and figurative war you can think of. Stop it. Right now.
I simply cannot listen to President Obama moralizing about gun violence when only two days later he bombs Doctors Without Borders. To paraphrase him, we must reject all voices that tell us violence is a solution to our problems.
Reject all politicians who propose violent solutions. Challenge all media, pundits, coworkers, friends, family, neighbors or anybody when they suggest killing anyone is a good idea.
If you want to solve the problem of gun violence, it starts with you. Get the murder out of your heart and encourage others to do the same.
I’m aware what I’ve offered here is not a complete solution. But it’s a start.
My friends who works as a gopher at Fox News asked if this guy will end the War on Christmas. She said she will totally vote, donate and volunteer for him if he can end the War on Christmas. She lives in New York right now but still votes absentee from Fayetteville, NC. Ending the War on Christmas is her #1 political priority right now.
I agree with Caryn that there is no “war on women”.
“The war on women” is just some stupid phrase people use because they disagree with the natural evolution of half the population.
There is no “war on women” (in the US… I don’t profess to know what is going on in other countries, particularly ones with a highly different culture) – these identity politics are a huge part of the issue. As a woman, that man does not speak for me. There is no war on me, and I don’t need a white knight.
Moltzian Minion
October 23, 2015 at 2:48 pm “….Oh, and by the way, Sean Haugh’s preventing the LP from running a U.S. Senate candidate in SD in 2008 means that a Republican ran unopposed, and therefore the LP lost a golden opportunity to win ballot access via a vote percentage that almost certainly would have been the highest ever recorded, due to Democrat protest votes against the GOP.)”
You’ve got a few details wrong here. What happened was that a crew of non-libertarian mercenaries were hired in early 2008 in South Dakota to gather signatures for a full party ballot access petition. The full party ballot access petition was in March. The mercenary crew was in South Dakota working on some ballot initiatives. The mercenary crew failed to get enough valid signatures on the full party status petition for the Libertarian Party in South Dakota by the March deadline. If the full party status petition had been successful in South Dakota in 2008, it would have allowed the LP to run a slate of candidates for the 2008 election with the Libertarian Party label next to their name, and for the 2010 election as well (the full party status petition in South Dakota is good for two elections).
Since the Libertarian Party failed on the full party status petition in South Dakota in 2008, the party had to do a separate petition to get its presidential ticket on the ballot as independents. The deadline for that petition was something like August 1st. The petition to get the LP Presidential ticket on the ballot as independents was successful, but this petition is only good for one election, and it only got the LP ticket for the presidential race on the ballot as independents, so they did not have the Libertarian Party label next to their names.
If the party would have been successful with the full party status petition in South Dakota in 2008, it would have also meant that the party would have been able to run a slate of candidates in 2010 with the Libertarian Party label next to the names of those candidates. It turned out that in 2010, the Democratic Party of South Dakota did not field a candidate for US Senate, so if the Libertarian Party had fulfilled the party status ballot access petition successfully in 2008, the Libertarian Party would have still had ballot access in 2010, and it could have run a candidate for US Senate, and that candidate could have been in a two way race against the Republican candidate, but instead, the Republican candidate ran unopposed.
South Dakota does have a vote test for ballot retention, but I am pretty sure that it only applies to Governor or President, and that they have to get at least 5% of the vote for one of those offices to retain ballot status. I don’t know if a Libertarian Party candidate for Governor of South Dakota would have been able to meet the 5% vote retention test or not, but since the Libertarian Party did not have ballot access in South Dakota in 2010, they were not able to run a candidate for Governor.
I am pretty sure that the vote retention test in South Dakota does not apply to US Senate candidates, but even so, if the Libertarian Party of South Dakota have been able to field a candidate for US Senate in 2010 in a head-to-head race against a Republican (since no Democrat ran for US Senate that year, and neither did anyone else), the Libertarian Party candidate for US Senate would have received more publicity than most Libertarian candidates for US Senate get, and that candidate would have received a higher percent of the vote than Libertarian Party candidates for US Senate typically get.
Bottom line, screwing up on the full party status petition in South Dakota in 2008 caused a lot of missed opportunities, and caused the party to have less success in South Dakota than it would have had otherwise.
…Or, “Emperor” Sean Haugh will send his private army to force you to stop!
Oh, wait, he doesn’t have a private army. When he was given even a tiny amount of power over others, as LP “political director,” he horribly abused that power. The result of him becoming drunk with power was for the LP to be forced to put its candidate on the ballot as “independent” instead of with the LP label, which also disallowed the LP from running numerous down-ticket candidates in South Dakota in 2008. (Fast forward to 2015, and Bill Redpath and Nick Sarwark just hired the guy running the top-2 to permanently outlaw minor parties and independents in South Dakota to put the LP on the ballot in South Dakota. So, the LP remains a tool of the FBI, or it remains the stupidest political party on the planet. It doesn’t matter which, the result is the same. ….Oh, and by the way, Sean Haugh’s preventing the LP from running a U.S. Senate candidate in SD in 2008 means that a Republican ran unopposed, and therefore the LP lost a golden opportunity to win ballot access via a vote percentage that almost certainly would have been the highest ever recorded, due to Democrat protest votes against the GOP.)
So, the LP is “controlled opposition” or it lacks a strategic bone in its body. We don’t know why it behaves like this, other than that Bill Redpath and Scott Kohlhaas and a select few other people are in charge of hiring, and everyone else who could impact their actions is a fucking BLITHERING IDIOT, of which Sean Haugh is “exhibit A.”
This is good. I hope Sean sends it as Letters to Editors to some publications, and just maybe, someone can publish it.