Perhaps a 'Parliament' style government is a better direction to go.  That would end that blue state-red state crap.

Anyway, since I was a Bernie guy, I'm encouraged by the fact that progressives had a hand in forming the D-tribe platform.  What I find objectionable is the influence of the far-right fascist movement influencing the R-Tribe platform.

I understand Brady's point about the need for more than two voices in the political process.  For now, maybe the best way to go would be to influence one of the two tribes from within.  You would have to choose a tribe that most closely relates to your perspective and vision and work from the inside of that tribe to influence their decision-making.

True.
But, I think that about 90% of governance isn't really about liberty so much as it is about public health, infrastructure, competing economic interests, budgets, assistance to the poor, and other things in which collaboration is a virtue, and extremism is a vice.
IMO

Last edited by Goose (8/20/2016 7:56 am)

Tarnation wrote:

This could spin into a very interesting and lively discussion on the nature of liberty and its interrelated permutations with regard to politics, self expression, and economics.   John Stuart Mill's book "On Liberty" is a great starting point for political freedom, Claude-Frédéric Bastiat's "The Law" a fine starting point for considering economic freedom.

Viewing these works through Rosevelt's "Four Freedoms", one finds that liberty is very complicated and that what one person considers freedom another may consider oppression.
 

Those two works by Mill and Bastiat you shared on liberty and freedom are excellent and should be read by everyone.  Thanks for sharing!

"Liberty" is a very complicated concept, particularly when viewed through the "four freedoms" lens.

Take "freedom from want", for example.  To give the poorest in our midst that freedom, it is necessary to provide their basic needs somehow.   If private charity is unable to do so, then public funding (taxation) is the only option, but that involves what Bastiat calls "legal plunder".   When the rate of taxation reaches a threshold (always subjective) then some of those subject to taxation will decry the "want" that said taxes are creating for them.