Re: Change We Can Believe In...Right?
 

Civil Libertarians. Libertarians as in those in the Libertarian party (really a sort of right-libertarian) support the Austrian School of economics, and hate almost all government actions in the economy. You would be hard pressed to find a libertarian that likes any of the governments in Europe from an economic perspective.

Libertarian in and of itself is a pretty broad term, so it's hard to attribute a wide range of beliefs to it, but for the most part it involes minimizing the state, and increasing individual liberty.


I actually wouldn't mind having Kuchinich as president. I don't like his economic policies, but right now I think foreign policy should be more of a concern for the government, and his is great. I would be able to deal with four years of what I perceive to be bad economic policy if it would end the wars.


I would still blame you for voting for an interventionist. Though, to be honest, he was a pretty bad ass president. Could you image a president today getting shot and still staying to finish his speech?

Re: Change We Can Believe In...Right?
 

Awww, he's just like Lincoln!


Seriously, I'm looking forward to a decade or so from now, when those annoying "conspiracy theory" things comparing JFK and Abe are changed to our current president. Hopefully he won't go out the way they did, though. Bullets are not good for your health or continued public service.


PS:

Re: Change We Can Believe In...Right?
 

Security has advanced greatly and now its almost impossible for anyone to assassinate a President but than again weapons and technology are advancing too. But yeah another decade :cool:

Re: Change We Can Believe In...Right?
 

Re: Change We Can Believe In...Right?
 

Oh no! Their gonna flood the forums!

Re: Change We Can Believe In...Right?
 

Hahaha, and that's pretty much why I voted for him. To be fair, I wrote in exactly this:

President: Reanimated Corpse of Theodore Roosevelt
Vice President: Corpse of William Jennings Bryan


Hee hee :D I even got two other people to vote for that ticket ;)

Re: Change We Can Believe In...Right?
 

Which is exactly the liberals (liberarians) that I meant, there are several liberal parties over here but their core principle is reducing goverment interfearance (or to put it differently: more individualism, less rules to restrict busniness and public etc.).

That goes for most terms. There isn't one "socialist" view "christian" view and so on. But atleast you know what you can generally expect from such a party (their core principal). Or atleast what you used to be able to expect. Most labour parties seem to have moved from "socialist" ( 60-100 years ago) to centrist and further to the right. Just look at were the British labour party is on the politcal compass. The same applies to the Dutch labour party (Party van de Arbeid or "Party of (the) Labour").

Re: Change We Can Believe In...Right?
 

See, Smitty, the problem is, you have our liberals, the democrats/socialists. Then, you have the classical liberals, which are libertarians/republicans over here, but are still referred to as the liberals over in Europe. Not sure why that name change occurred, tbh.

Re: Change We Can Believe In...Right?
 

Yes, but you said social liberals, which I took to mean people who believe in social liberalism. They believe in a lot more economic regulation than most libertarians. Classical liberalism would, I think, be more closely aligned with most libertarians. Now, when I say libertarian, I mean the most popular school of libertarianism in the US. I suppose the difference in any case is slight, and I would vote for any party that would reduce government interference in the economy.


Of course, as Von Mudra said, things get more complicated since we here in the US like to call things different names sometimes. I have no idea why that happened either.

Re: Change We Can Believe In...Right?
 

I voted on the Socialistische Partij or Socialist Party in the last national elections. It's a left leaning party as the name implies, it also is the only republican party in the Netherlands (all the other's support or don't mind the Monarchy). I myself don't care about the monarchy so I don't care if this socialist party is republican or not.

Yes, I meant two different groups with them. The social liberals (or liberal socialists) are ofcourse for more goverment involvement in some areas (labour rights, wages and other sch wellfare) but also liberal rights when it comes to stuff like soft drugs and what not.

I consider myself a liberal/democratic socialist. I'm not a pure socialist, but I'm not a liberal by far (too individualistic, I feel we should support our fellow countryman that temporary or permanently is in need of aid or suport). I looked at a handfull of parties and checked their party programs to see which one I liked best: Partij van de Arbeid (Party of Labour), Democraten 66 (Democrats 66), GroenLinks (GreenLeft), Socialistische Partij (Socialist Partij) etc. And I ofcourse looked at the other party's aswell such as the Partij van de Dieren (Party of the Animals, way too concerned about animals if you ask me...) and various liberal and christian parties (which where either too convervative or too liberal for my taste).