Economic freedom is from right (+) to left (-), individual freedom from bottom (+) to top (-).

I would not call the PATRIOT act pro individual freedom, but I would call the right to carry a gun personal freedom, and I would call the right to possess cannabis sativa also a personal freedom.

But it gets more shady if you take smoking a cigarette. Is this a right? Are you allowed to enter a building while smoking? When not? Who decides? Local law? The owner of the building? The employees?

There are overlappings in the anarchism sub-categories. What you describe is for example anarcho-capitalism or anarcho-syndicalism which is indeed near libertarianism.

Now, if you take Hitler or Stalin, they are both authoritarian, and they both were in control of the economy as well. Hitler bought a lot of corporations and made them state owned. Stalin did the same. So they aren't that much different on economic scale.

Now, if you take what happened recently: buying a bank is also not a 'libertarian' thing to do.

If you look through the Republican party you'll see several sub-categories of political movements. For example, Ron Paul is as close as a libertarian pur sang as I've ever seen in the USA, and I don't see anything like him in the Democrat camp.

http://www.politicalcompass.org is also a nice site which explains this a bit.

I found an article written by a fellow who has five years to live. He says some very strong things I can already see some of you disagreeing with, but I thought I'd put the link to his article here because he wrote about what I wrote in my original post. I love his point that what we fail to do is decide how to spend our safety dollar based on actual number of people affected.

Here's the link : http://www.skirsch.com/wm/TheRealEnemy.htm

And here is another link to an article published by the NY Times in January 07 contrasting the cost of the Iraq war to what we could be doing with the money instead. Part of the problem here is that when we get into the trillion dollar level, we lose perspective on how huge that is and what we could do with it.

Here's the NY Times link: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/17/bu...leonhardt.html


Neil

This is such a cute picture.

"Papa says it won't hurt us"


Harper's Weekly, April 16,1904

I find that ad disturbing.

Disturbing? Really? I don't see how a toddler in bed with a (presumably loaded) revolver could be disturbing in any way. It's cute! And ABSOLUTELY SAFE!

Now I find YOU disturbing.

incredible. where did you find it?

i'll show it around in the office... and i cant see why it should be disturbing. it only shows what pro-gun-people keep repeating: guns are safe and people have guns only to defend themselves. perfect for children.

(now that i think of it: no child should ever leave home without a gun.)

" Originally Posted by geneven

As is the case with many ideologues (see this thread we are in), the Bush administration was living in a dream world. I think they actually believed: [...]


Sorry, I can't believe that. A single person might be as blind to the facts, but with all the intelligence and warnings I don't believe anybody claiming afterwards that they didn't know better."

You can not believe whatever you want. As I recall, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times believed something similar, and I wouldn't call him an idiot.

You probably knew that there were no wmds before the war, and you probably knew that the US wouldn't invade with enough troops, and you probably knew that the insurgency would be allowed to start when it could have been prevented, and you probably knew that adequate preparation for the more difficult war than was expected hadn't been made, and you probably knew about a bunch of conspiracies that I never heard of even now.

Look at the history of the Bush administration and tell me that they methodically worked in the best interest of their greedy friends. If they had, why is there a crisis now? Haven't a lot of the Bush friends lost a lot of money? I wish that Bush and his friends had been greedy in an enlightened way -- they and the country would be a lot richer and better off today.

There is only one reasonable explanation for what happened to the Bush administration -- incompetence.

Also, with respect to "warnings" beforehand. There are always warnings beforehand for everything, including warnings that never come true. The trick is to pick the few accurate warnings from among the much more numerous false warnings.

http://www.oldamericancentury.org/pnac.htm

No, no, nothing to worry about here. I'm Perfectly Safe; accidental discharge is impossible.