Is swine flu like HIV? I mean, somebody fucked a chimp and we got AIDS. Who screwed the pig?

The media is throwing around a lot of talk about the Republican party being dead in the water, now that Arlen Specter has switched posses. My thoughts?

Awesome.

I've voted Republican plenty of times, based on my support of the free market and strong defense. But laying in bed with evangelicals always gave me an itchy feeling in my scrotum, and I just didn't like it. Fact of the matter is that I'm a social liberal through and through... Legalize gay marriage (or better yet, abolish marriage as a legal institution altogether), provide for truly equal rights for all classes, get God out of our public institutions, and generally support a caring society.

There has never been a better time for the Libertarian party to get their shit together and step up to the plate. There's a power vacuum in D.C., evidenced by the vast sucking sound of the GOP flushing down the drain. There's a large number of people in the United States who believe in social liberalism in conjunction with capitalism and strict defense of our Constitutional rights, and the Libertarian party needs to get the message out that they're a mainstream group fighting for more than your right to smoke weed. (I could rant on and on about how they've fucked up by making marijuana their rallying cry, there's no way mainstream America is going to take them seriously when they choose getting stoned as their vanguard issue).

The Libertarian party needs to adopt the following issues, and fight for them vociferously:

-A Constitutional amendment prohibiting deficit spending more often than once every four years.
-Establishing reproductive rights on a legislative basis, removing the tenuous Constitutional rationale which threatens to evaporate on a judicial whim.
-Defense of true Capitalism as a functional method of social transaction.
-Reduction of entitlement programs, with capital based incentives for private institutions to support their communities.
-Broad capital based incentives for corporate and personal environmentalism, using carrots rather than sticks.
-Defense of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, especially as applied to gay marriage. Ideally, elimination of marriage as a legal institution.
-Rejection of earmarked spending in budget bills.
-Securing energy resources within our borders, including unprecedented tax breaks for solar/wind power in locations where such are feasible and fast-tracking private nuclear power endeavors.

The thing is, not everyone's going to agree with this agenda. We have multiple parties because one size does not fit all. But I believe a Libertarian party which promotes this agenda will encompass the beliefs and values of the new conservative coalition, the generation that's grown up largely without religious indoctrination or bigotry. Most people I know would stand behind a party which rallies around the personally independent and spirited nature of Americans. Even the most liberal of my friends would agree that the best solution to personal suffering is personal empowerment, and that government is most-often a very inefficient means towards the chosen end.

It's time for the Libertarian party to become the new voice of conservative America.