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OK, for starters, you take exception to me claiming you're motivated entirely by financial self-interest, not by political ideals, then you spend the entire rest of that (third) paragraph explaining how money is everything, and by God you'll do whatever you have to to hold onto yours. Which is it?


" liberty of contract...was upheld by our supreme court for many years, all the way up until the '30s....[Now] the government forces me out of my home, razes my house, and creates a government owned radish farm. All under the statute of emminent [sic] domain. Thats an example of your world."

The situation in your ludicrous, self-pitying example did not arise before the 1930s because the population density was so much lower then, not because people were blessed with better government. The necessity for laws varies proportionally with how close together people live. Thus, people who live in the remote desert can dig all the holes they want, and people who live in Manhattan can't dig any holes at all. People who live in a hamlet where everyone knows everyone else can hire a hole-digger off the street on a handshake basis; people who live in a city probably have to hire a union hole-digger because the big-city hole-diggers have banded together to assure acceptable wages and working conditions (the good-faith assurances conferred by personal acquaintance generally being absent) -- which I presume is their right in a Libertarian world. All this seems elementary and unavoidable to me. When there are a lot of people with conflicting needs in a small space, you have to compromise, you have to have rules that may frustrate some people. What's your alternative?

You call this outlandish, made-up story an example of the way government operates in "my [cz's] world." Well, let me give you a real example of my world: I can drive down the unspoiled coast of my home state for hundreds of miles without seeing a McMansion, a fast-food joint, an evangelical church or any other offensive structure. That's because my enlightened fellow citizens decided they'd rather have the unspoiled coast than the housing developments, and fuck the bidnissmen and developers who every day of the year file their desperate petitions and lawsuits aimed at undermining for their own profit what everyone knows 99.9% of the people in my state want, i.e., the unspoiled coast. I consider cutting these evil fuckers off at the knees to be a noble act, and it was, and is, accomplished by citizens acting through government. How could it have been accomplished otherwise? How could it have been accomplished with a government whose attitude is "you boys work it out among yourselves?" By picketing the housing developments? By boycotting Reverend Larry? Don't make me laugh. Without government to wield a big stick, the coastline of my state would look like Virginia Beach, a place for you fearless Libertarians to peddle crotchless panties and tee-shirts with tits (disclaimer: characterization of Virginia Beach based on a one-day visit in 1967) while you whine about anyone who points out that the greatest good for the greatest number is not being served. Thanks, but no thanks. I hardly consider myself a friend of bad government; I disapprove of the DEA and the CIA, and I'm pretty sure I disapprove of the FBI. But I'm four-square behind the Coastal Commission that's preventing you from opening your McDonald's or digging your hole at my local beach.


"You say life begins at birth, and...no culture in recorded history has ever thought otherwise. You obviously need a history lesson..."

So show me. Show me the human culture that unequivocally treats the unborn as people. Hint: if you don't find one in the developed world over the last fifty or a hundred years, you might as well give up, because the truth is that in primitive cultures, not only fetuses, but real live babies, are just plain killed when they are not wanted or can't be supported, and no one whines about Jesus or the sanctity of life. It's the way things are. As for your shock that I can be so dismissive about a fetus with arms and legs, here's a news flash: the laws of this country and virtually every country in the civilized world have no problem with a person visiting a doctor and having that fetus with arms and legs cut into pieces. Not a pretty picture, and no doubt education and marginalization of the likes of the Catholic church would be a better alternative, but like it or not, legal abortion is the clear preference of the mainstream, and the law of the land. It's you who are the deviant.

BTW, didn't the last retarded criminal executed by Ron Paul's bloodthirsty home state have arms and legs too? Guessing you're not gonna get as weepy over him.