It is not too much of a simplification to note that America is divided into two groups of persons: those who believe in their bones that what goes on in Washington is largely a serious quest by serious people to tackle serious problems seriously, and those who understand that what goes on in Washington is largely theater scripted so that the actors and actresses appear at first glance to be ‘public servants’ but in fact care for nothing nearly as much as maximizing their power and satisfying their megalomania.

Alas, the first group greatly outnumbers the second. This fact that means that those of us in the second group are forced to attend and watch – and participate in the large audience role required in – this absurd drama.

(via)

Obama is the messiah, he cometh with truth.

He taxeth the wealthy and giveth me new programs.

He taketh not my paltry earnings, but giveth me the money earneth by others.

He endeth the war and retreateth from victory.

He speaketh with mine enemies, both great and minor.

He asketh them to forbear and desist.

He taketh the profits of oil companies and keepeth it for the government.

He lowereth the price of gasoline by making it more difficult to drilleth for oil.

He opposeth fracturing the atom to generate electricity, but demandeth that my car be powered by electrons.

He transcendeth race by declaiming his whitheth mother and grandethparents who raiseth him after his blacketh father skeedaddleth back to Africa.

He associateth with radicals and crooks, both blacketh and whiteth, ignoring their color and loveth only their influence and money.

He promiseth anything in the name of vote seeking.

He lieth through his teeth.

While you are obsessed with over-intellectualized issues like eminent domain abuse and over-regulation of small businesses, these guys are dealing with things that the average American can relate to, straight from the gut. Like a man’s God-given right to fight a duel, and then eat the loser. Now that’s libertarianism!

Yes, it’s a funny. But when you look at the (*cough*) high-quality people who are often the face of Libertarianism and the LP to others, it sadly hits close to home.

(from a comment at this thread)

And another comment from that same thread:

Jack:

If you want to change the LP, then become active in it, go to the party meetings, get your friends/relatives/co-workers and other people you consider sane to join, etc.

I have been active. Candidate 3 times, an the state convention, some other stuff.

By discretion I mean tossing out the wackos when they expose themselves, and without weasle words like, ‘we abhore their desire to fight duels and eat people, though we do support their right to voluntarily contract to do so”.

Please.

While I think libertarianism as a political philosophy fits best with both the good and bad aspects of human nature, I also think, as with every other philosophy, when you take it to the extreme it ceases make any sense.

Nut jobs advocating duels, incest and canibalism need to be publically ejcted from any local LP they belong to, and their affiliation loudly rejected should they claim it.

I am wondering if a new party is needed. Libertarian leaning, but with rational application to real human nature, not to some sort of idealized cyber-logical version of human nature.

Just as socialism treats people as mechanistic insects that can be used and disposed of at need, (especially when taken to it’s logical extremes of communism and fascism), libertarianism treats people as programmable boolean logic gates, that will automatically behave in certain ways when the correct initial environment is set up.

Both are irrational at the fringes. One by treating people as insects and machines, the other by treating them as computers.

The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country, the Washington Post is read by the people who think they run the county, the New York Times is read by the people who think they should run the country and the Boston Globe is read by the people who used to run the country!

Though I’d say that way overstates the importance of the readers of the Globe. And speaking of the Globe, is there any paper in the country with such an inflated sense of self-importance?

I think this is a good example of stare decisis for stare decisis‘s case and the bad things it can lead to. All it takes is one not-so-great opinion some time ago (and if “public use” in 1787 meant “whatever the government determines to be public use”, why insert the phrase into the document in the first place?). Then you have another one upholding and expanding it. Rinse, lather, repeat, and eventually you become unmoored. I think it’s a great example of the types of danger Volokh has pointed out about the slippery slope. And of the dangers of not being originalist enough.