Actually, IMO the terms democrat and republican are outdated, and don't mean a whole lot. About 20 years ago, a crusty old politician told me that those two names should be scrapped, and have every one be conservative or liberal,and choose up sides and smell armpits.
Even the liberal/conservative distinction is getting more and more difficult. For my own part, I would love to see a fiscally conservative administration. I'd love to see a government with a strictly limited role, with no straying outside that role and much greater efficiency within it. But I have a strong libertarian streak, and I can't abide the thought of having a bunch of self-appointed morality policemen, convinced that their own values are some kind of revealed truths, pulling strings in the Government and trying to impose their idea of the righteous life on everyone else. I don't like the impositions of the PC morality police on the left any better. They really aren't that different: in both cases we have a bunch of self-righteous individuals trying to tell others what they should think, do, and believe.
I think there are a lot of people that feel the same way, and I think a lot of us feel no affection for either party or the candidates they present. Are we liberals or are we conservatives?
I sympathize to some degree with what Europeans would call "liberal", and what on this side of the water would be called a moderate libertarian. There is no place for me, I find, among either liberals or conservatives. |
