BaBaStooey

Hello Freepers. You may have noticed that I don't post much here anymore. This is due to a number of reasons. One is due to the fact that my up and down employment situation in Michigan has had me bouncing between going to college, unemployment, underemployment, or a combination over the last nearly 3 years or so. It is a situation I have decided to focus on, and some things have been made expendable.

It isn't that I don't care about the political sphere, it is just that I have to prioritize things, and my time is better spent elsewhere. In regards to the political sphere, however, I do see my opinions and those who constitute a majority on this site going different ways. This is the other reason why I don't post much here anymore.

Right and Left are terms from the French Revolution, and the meaning of these terms is not understood by many today, but are ironically still applicable. Right and Left simply meant where the two sides sat in the revolutionary governmental body in France, but in reality they were essentially two peas in the same pod. The Left, also known as the Mountain, contained all the revolutionaries who were in favor of the Terror and all of the crazy stuff which ended up going down during those terrible years. They were against the monarchy but they were still statists. The Right contained those who were in favor of keeping things the way they were, but to a lesser degree than a full blown monarchy, which had been overthrown by that point. They were essentially statists as well, they just preferred a different kind of statism.

The ironic thing is that in today's world, Right and Left are both statists, they just prefer a different kind of statism. One side prefers a military industrial complex, and goes along with the handouts to the poor, and the other prefers giving handouts to the poor, and goes along with the military industrial complex. Both love corporatism, which is better known as welfare for big business.

We essentially have one party in charge of this country. This isn't how it used to be. The time has come for citizens to oppose this philosophy. This is what I have come to discover this over the last 8 years.

Back when this country was founded, we had Tories and revolutionaries. One side wanted to overthrow the system, the other wanted to keep it the way it was. Unlike France, when we overthrew the system, we didn't replace statism with another form of statism. The revolutionaries were split into two groups. Conservatives, or Federalists, who were on board with the Revolution, but didn't want things to change too much, or Liberals, who were in favor of personal liberty, an anti-central authority or anti-statist opinion. Hamilton was of the first group, Jefferson the second.

The ironic thing is that Jefferson is lauded by people today, who ironically call themselves liberals, who have more in common with Hamilton. And so-called defenders of personal liberty belong to the party of Lincoln, who brough to fruition in an executive the sort of power that Hamilton could only dream of. This flipping of the American political world is bizarre. Over time, however, the party of Lincoln has readopted a Lincoln/Hamilton-like mindset, which is more consistent, while Jefferson's party adopted this mindset beginning around Woodrow Wilson's time, turning into full blown during LBJ's time. This earlier transition moved many classical liberals (now called libertarians) into the party of Lincoln, however, the last 8 years of Bush have me as well as many others rethinking this.

I have come to discover that neither party supports liberty the way the Constitution states it, and both of them are essentially statist. This isn't how it has been in this country. Both parties used to contain mixtures of statists and libertarians, so that when one party became increasingly statist in its control of the government, the other could shift to a more libertarian view to win back control. That is why Republicans won the White House in 1968 and 1980, and won control of Congress in 1994, because they were seen as worthy opposition to something statist. It is also why Obama won in 2008, because he was seen as worthy opposition to something statist. The past year, however, has revealed his presidency to be more or less a third term for Bush, and that isn't a good thing. The trouble is, that now the Republican party is portraying itself as the "Tea" Party of limited government and liberty, but who is to say that they would follow through on that once in control? The period from 1994-2000 was decent enough, but it was an anomaly. Voting for Republicans only to have them support big government again would be for me like it was for a Code Pink-er voting for Obama to end war and then seeing the sad result of continuation in Iraq and surge in Afghanistan. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice....

This web site had the opportunity to position itself as a defender of liberty, but instead has been the George W. Bush support brigade. It has come to be a haven for neoconservatism, which is a word which really doesn't have any meaning except being another word for statism, but perhaps, statism disguised as something a champion of personal liberty can be sucked into supporting, as I was following the terrorist attacks on 9-11-2001. It isn't wrong to have been sucked into something like that, as long as one can grow in his or her political beliefs into something better down the road. This site, however, seems lost to the depths of statism, from which my feeling is it can't recover, because it doesn't want to recover. There are many here who have the same beliefs who try to fight the good fight, but it is basically a hopeless cause.

I feel the same way about the anti-Catholic rhetoric I read here. I know there are many who are Catholic here and they defend the faith. But for the most part, the squabbles here between Protestants and Catholics are essentially hopeless causes for both sides. I prefer to go other places where I don't have to see it or read it.

And so I go elsewhere, FreeRepublic, and it is time to bid you "a Dieu." I'm not going to say that it wasn't fun or worthwhile at times, but those who stand in the way of a brighter future will eventually become increasingly irrelevant. For those who wonder what I am reading instead of FR nowadays, go to the local book store and read "Obamanomics" by Tim Carney, "End the Fed" by Ron Paul, "Meltdown" by Tom Woods, and the websites Mises.org and LewRockwell.com.

And finally, a thanks from me to whoever decided to read this, especially all the way through. I hope you don't consider it time wasted.