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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsI want to outlaw weed, internet gambling and birth control... cause I'm so libertarian!
The modern "libertarian" Republican Party is, as you'd expect from a Bizarro-planet operation like the GOP, perhaps the least libertarian Republican party we've seen yet.
Aside from being outright anarchists on guns, taxes on high incomes and regulation of S&P 500 scale corporations, they are one intrusive bunch of rights-grabbing cranks.
Billionaire Sheldon Adelson bankrolls Republican primary candidates. He owns a Vegas casino. (The Venetian, IIRC. If making travel plans, avoid it. It's beautiful, but so is heaven and you won't get there staying at the Venetian.) He is a rabid RW militarist Israel fanatic, hates unions, and most of all hates internet gambling. Grrrr. It is IMMORAL. Casino gambling in Las Vegas is the only kind of good gambling.
So, in exchange for payments of Money the Republican Party is wedded to utter opposition to gambling... whoops, sorry... to online gambling not run by a Las Vegas casino.
Remember online poker? You know why that disappeared? Because back when Bill Frist was Senate leader he stuck in a ban on internet poker at the last minute, on the last bill before recess... and if you wanted the government of the USofA funded then by golly, it would be a USA without online gambling.
Sneaked into a bill that everyone had no choice but to vote for. Can you say, "Quid Pro MFing Pro"?
I can see an argument for or against online gambling. I cannot, however, see an argument against all gambling other than that controlled by Sheldon fucking Adelson. (And if I am spelling his name wrong... fuck 'im)
And, of course, reefer. Got to be against reefer because hippies like it, and hippies hate Jesus... despite looking a good bit like Jesus.
Republicans are very libertarian these days, which means being against reefer.
And birth control, of course.
The thing is, if you were trying to nail down the biggest no-brainer issues, from a libertarian perspective, they would probably be weed, gambling and freaking birth control.
Oh... and abortion.
Scuba
(53,475 posts)And he gets to decide which of your habits are vices.
mercuryblues
(14,532 posts)if you want to be employed by someone like addledson, (I like my spelling better) you can leave your expectation of having an organ transplant paid for by insurance at the door.
tk2kewl
(18,133 posts)an Ayn Rand utopia for the 1% and Dickensian hell for everyone else. You don't expect the big shots to bother with all this abortion and birth control crap. If you can afford it fine, if not it's illegal or not government funded.
JoeyT
(6,785 posts)I doubt they'd perpwalk a billionaire if they caught him with a mack truck full of coke, much less a bag of weed. So they're cool with it being illegal, because it straight up does not hurt them. It does make investments in for profit prison companies very profitable, though.
Edited to add: That doesn't help the rank and file gibbertarians, but they're largely idiots anyway. A politician could promise to lower taxes and to personally execute three fourths of the population chosen at random and they'd still vote for him.
Tsiyu
(18,186 posts)They hate us for our freedom
They want freedom for the privileged, of course.