The Druidic Candidate: Can California deal with a Druid for governor?

All beliefs are the "truth" to the believer. Beliefs are not changeable by informed attack. It is unfortunate that people feel they must help the believer to see thier truth. It accomplishes nothing but a lot of useless debate. Believe what you think true and let be.

And I'll say it again, the Christian faith proved its claims with the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

You want to argue about the number of angels who can dance on the head of a pin or if the animals on the ark were just the domesticated ones or not, knock yourself out. Just don't think you're impressing any of us with such fanciful nonsense from your own near-sighted imagination.

Proved it to who?

Those with eyes that can see and minds that can behold.

when a Christian states, "The Christian religion has proved its claims..."

...by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. An important omission on your part.

Thomas doubted. But when his eyes saw and mind beheld the risen Lord, he spoke the Truth: "My Lord and my God!"

The Druids? Didn't they build Stonehenge?

Not sure, but it was a whole lot better than the first two attempts: Straw-henge and Stick-henge.

"Proved it to who?"

Those with eyes that can see and minds that can behold.

The loonies then? They see a lot of neat stuff.

One good naked assertion deserves another:

There is absolutely nothing that the Bible affirms that is even remotely mythical. What the Bible affirms is 100% true.

Dan
Why I Am (Still) a Christian

I don't think I need to read much more. I read both some of Ray Bradford's articles in 2000 and Harry Browne's response, after the 2000 campaign. (I'm on his his LibertyWire email service.)

When I read some of Ray Bradford's articles, I admired Ray Bradford for digging out important issues WITHIN THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY. When I read Harry Browne's response, I was surprised that he claimed that Bradford misrepresented some key points.

But once again, this is internal to the Libertarian Party. It simply shows that people high up in the Libertarian Party...as people high up in ANY party...want power, and cut corners to get it.

Unfortunately, by their very definition political parties seek to try to shape as well as seduce their prospective constituencies. If a political party would be a serious party it could not be otherwise. And when their efforts include - justly so, it says here - skewering such corruption among the larger and more well established (entrenched?) parties, it bodes extremely ill if and when such corruption not only exists but is waved away as cavalierly as Mr. Browne seems to have done. Especially in light of the very real point that Mr. Browne's two candidacies showed falling, rather than ascending, vote and registration numbers.

I say again: The party which so proudly proclaims itself the Party of Principle has no damn business sanctioning or abetting that kind of corruption. And you may rest very well assured that the Major Parties' sycophancies thrive only too well upon pouncing on any and every such indicator no matter how much more profoundly those indicators exist within their own parties.

I mean, the Damnocrats had their Clinton. The Republican'ts had their Nixon. Even so, they'll pounce on any smaller party whom they know to be zapping their inabilities to beat back encroaching Statism at the moment they smell a smaller party candidate who gives off even a small whiff of Clintonesque or Nixonian corruption. Always have. Always will. And it is awfully difficult to persuade Major Party sycophants to think twice about their parties' hubris, inertia, whatever you want to isolate as the cause of their abetting Statism, when your own party - which has railed often and rightly enough against political corruption - has only too recently had a candidate who is himself guilty of political corruption.

A FAR more important issue, to me, is what the Presidential candidates from the various parties would have done, if elected. There is simply NO doubt in my mind that Harry Browne would have fought bitterly for a SMALL federal government. He SAID he would veto every bill that came across his desk that wasn't within the bounds of the Constitution--which is basically EVERY bill that would come to him--and I believe him.

By no means do I expect a saint in the White House. But we don't quite need one; there is always an allowance for honest human error. Given that, I find it still very difficult to accept that a man who could not be trusted to play within the clearly enough drawn bounds of a comparatively small set of rules, or who may have converted a party's national committee and apparatus into his personal piggy bank, could yet be trusted to behave as he promises to behave in major elected office. We've seen it only too readily among the Major Party candidates (I did mention Clinton and Nixon above), indeed that was a significant enough part of what it was that drove us away from the Major Parties. An honest mistake is one thing but an apparently systematic pattern of corruption is something else entirely.

I want a SMALL federal government. Harry Browne was WITHOUT QUESTION the candidate who would have fought hardest for a small federal government. That's why, in my opinion, he was without question the best candidate in 2000.

I want a small federal government - and the smaller the better. I voted for Mr. Browne myself; indeed, as I noted above, I spent a goodly amount of time around here (and elsewhere) arguing the libertarian position viz that election, and getting anything from mildly needled to venomously slandered for my trouble.

But I was entirely unaware, as I cast my vote for Mr. Browne, of the matters I enunciated above (I did not learn about them until about two or three months following the election). Had I been aware of them, I would probably not have voted for him.

Then for whom, one might ask fairly enough, would I have voted? My answer: Considering the available remaining choices, none of whom were to my taste, I would likely have cast a vote on behalf of some titan of old whom I knew to believe in freedom, in individual rights and sovereignty, and in properly construed government as opposed to the improperly consecrated State, and on the grounds once enunciated by Albert Jay Nock: that if we can't have a live man who amounts to anything, by all means let us have a first class corpse.

I could sooner have lived with that vote than with the votes otherwise available to me. And I would have slept the sleep of the just man who knew his hand was nowhere near to sharing the responsibility for the election and coronation of the mountebank (I would remind any eavesdroppers that no one is responsible for any man or woman's election except his or her own ability to persuade the right amount of voters to cast accordingly; and, those who actually cast the votes for said man or woman), whichever one it might have been, who just so happened to win the plurality.

believe in- the Easter Bunny, perhaps?

Not around here (suburban Philadelphia). The malls are advertising the arrival of the "spring" bunny.

The Druids? Didn't they build Stonehenge?

No, that was aliens.

Sure.

First, kindly supply evidence for your existence.

Please make sure that the evidence supplied is not self-referential, or exclusively from alleged sensory phenomena.

Dan

Please make sure that the evidence supplied is not self-referential, or exclusively from the bible.

Why? Eye-witness testimony is insufficient in your court?

Or is it that you must reject the Bible to hold on to your disbelief?

If you're going to dodge, at least put some effort into it.

Gee, you mean that you managed to read all of the proof on Dan's link so quickly?

Oh, well if you're going to ignore the evidence, at least pause long enough to make it appear that you've put some effort into it.

Then let's keep it simple: Do you deny the Resurrection of Jesus Christ? Yes or no?

That was the sole topic that you made light of before so let's just focus on that, OK?