Wouldn't it be nice if Republicans were ALWAYS like this?

...not just when they're out of power?

Will the real libertarians please stand up?

Matthew Moran, a leftist columnist at my own Wake Forest University, wrote what I consider to be a fairly thoughtful column about libertarianism in the latest edition of our school newspaper.  I'd be interested to hear the thoughts of this group on the subject.  His article includes several ideas on libertarianism, which I will try to summarize with quotes below:

It’s because of my occasional sympathies with Libertarianism that I’m writing this article, both as a warning and as a question...

...Will the real Libertarians please stand up? Is a Left-Libertarian a better representation of the philosophy, or is Libertarianism simply a more intelligent sounding form of standard conservative Republican non-argument and nonsense? I know enough Libertarians on this campus to know that they are not all that way, but there seem to be a large and growing number of Republicans who don’t want to care about poor people and simply call themselves Libertarians, without renouncing their controlling social policies or penchant for war...

...By no means am I attempting to tell the people at YAL how to run their club or what to think. Selfishly, I suppose, I enjoy when you guys decide to work with conservative groups, the ensuing debacle makes the Left look good by comparison.

But I also respect a number of you and want opponents worthy of engagement; Republicans, especially the strangeness of “Reform Republicans,” faded into white noise long ago. I wouldn’t want the same to happen to Libertarianism.

Read the entire article here.

Big Government Foreign Policy

It's easy for libertarians to get swept up in the small government, Tea Party rhetoric of the mainstream Right. But then there will always be something to remind us that many of the Tea Partiers, Republicans, and others on the right are not only fundamentally different, but also fundamentally hostile to us. Here is Rush Limbaugh calling for "massive air strikes" against Iran and "pound[ing] Iran into submission."

His only concern? "I don't know whether we have the will to do this." Yes, he laments, when it comes to foreign policy, the problem with Obama -- whose domestic policies Limbaugh finds so totalitarian -- is that he is too laissez-faire.

Republicans Love the Tuhrrorists

One of the Nobel Prize committee's reasons for awarding the Peace Prize to Barack Obama was that he made such a great departure from the foreign policy of that big bully Bush. 

In a sign of how far we have come from the dark days of the Bush administration, the DNC issued this very un-Bushian and non-bullying statement, in response to Republicans' reactions to the Nobel announcement:

The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists -- the Taliban and Hamas this morning -- in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize...Republicans cheered when America failed to land the Olympics and now they are criticizing the President of the United States for receiving the Nobel Peace prize -- an award he did not seek but that is nonetheless an honor in which every American can take great pride -- unless of course you are the Republican Party.