And WHAT is your alternative?
Among realistic, viable candidates, now. No third-parties that are completely out of the election.
What the the alternative right now, at this moment. In the real world, before November, in terms of something that can happen.
What is your alternative?
Because I'm getting tired of hearing "Blaahhh, McCain sucks" when you're not offering ANY OTHER SOLUTION.
We know he sucks. We get it. We understand. The other side sucks more.
So what do you want to do, since you keep objecting to McCain?
Well,
I could try offering other solutions, manedwolf. I know you won't accept them. Instead, you'd immediately stomp them out with your "real world" rhetoric. My "real world" is that I am so utterly disgusted with being fed more of the same 'lesser of evils' politics that I'm finally ready to go to the polls. Just how many more chances do the Democrats
and Republicans get? They've been running this country for at least a few generations and this,
this is the best they have to offer? I'm breaking out with the other inmates who want to experience liberty while we're alive. You can stay if you want to, but please stop making the 3rd party people here feel like they're traitors because they're voting for principle. Voting 3rd party does not, and never will, equate to supporting Obama.
My decisions are meant to keep my hands clean. There are more issues at stake, at least for me, than whether or not a government (which derives its just powers from the consent of the governed) wants to be so benevolent as to "grant" me the RKBA. I'm not a single-issue voter. Sorry.
Take the war for instance:
What is a guy like me supposed to do? Look at the next military son [daughter, father, mother, aunt, uncle, cousin] I see in town and tell them, "Sorry, I know this war is a big joke and all, but I'd rather stay at home and cradle my hunting rifle in my arms instead of doing what I can to stop the war in Iraq"? Or, "You might have to die in a war with Iran if McCain gets in, but, gee, I can't be disarmed or the government will try to run my life."
(This is the point where we begin to realize that even though we
currently have the right to keep and bear arms, the government is still chiseling away at our rights. I guess those guns have some kind of voodoo spell that keeps the government away, even if they're just sitting in a steel cabinet somewhere in our houses. Too exteme? Okay, even I'll agree that it is much too early for
that action. Yet, I hate to break it to you folks that the wookies - the ones we see on street corners in NH and laugh at as they are being hauled off by the police - have likely done more to stand up for our rights than those magical firearms we keep in our closets or under our beds; please
keep the chamber clear of dust).
Every one of us gets mocked because some of us use much less violent, albeit unorthodox, methods to achieve our goals and get our message out. If we allow ourselves to be constrained by the grossly un-American (and false) notion that a return to true liberty must be incremental, "civilized," and compromising, you're right, there isn't much a 3rd party can do. There isn't a damned thing any of us can do, in such a case. To top it all off: in our meek and often fruitless efforts, we're drowned out
not by the thugs in Washington, but by a unprecedentedly massive concert of simply uninformed Americans - detached from a rich history in the lessons of personal freedom - and a media network that handles censorship and propaganda so well it makes corrupt governments envious.
I could go over a huge list of issues that are important to me, or I can sum it all up in one word: Constitution. That's it. You rarely hear McCain use it. You rarely hear Obama or Hillary or [insert nearly any politician] use it. It might get mentioned in cases of sheer convenience.
The Constitution of the United States of America. It lays out what the government
can do, but even more importantly, what it
cannot. It
does NOT grant us our rights, but
guarantees them. The document itself is a worthless piece of paper so old I wouldn't depend on it to wipe my ***, but at the same time, it is, perhaps, the one thread of our nation that hasn't unraveled. It won't, so long as someone is there to stand up for it.
I'd be willing to bet that not a single front-runner in the '08 election could recite the first 5 Amendments without ****ing up. Of course, the debate moderators would never have allowed such a challenge to be posed on national T.V., they'd rather know what the government plans to do about the energy crisis (ignoring the fact that the founders never intended the federal government to decide such issues).
I want the guy in office who will let me keep my guns and stop the war. That is
my reality. It does exist, and I will stand up for it. Just try to make me feel bad about it.
Unfortunately, we gun owners don't even know what we'd do with our guns if given the chance. We might even have to stand up for something that we cannot bring ourselves to agree with. Horrific and utterly exhiliarating, I know! Until that day comes, we have a lot of learning to do.
A good way to start is to look up something the founders wrote. It can be anything by any one of them, freedom of the press, RKBA, judicial review, etc. Just read what they have to say about our country. Read what they had hoped for the nation they started, for their posterity. At least, it amazes
me how far we have strayed.
