A Beginner's Guide To Freedom

Do you ever wish that there was a blog like mine, but written by someone who could get straight to the point?

Do you ever wish you could read a serious libertarian site that covers the issues without erupting into name-calling, goofy pictures, and vitriol?

I have just the place for you to visit....

I met Stephen Smith at my first Tarrant County Libertarian Meetup. (Come to Pop's Safari Bar tomorrow night for one of our mini-meetings, and you can meet him too.)

He writes a political blog called A Beginner's Guide To Freedom, and also ran for the State Legislature as a Libertarian.

In this post about his campaign experience, he wrote:

"You see, the Republicans and Democrats in each state have set certain rules about who is and who is not allowed on the ballot – i.e., whom the voter may or may not vote for. The specifics vary, but generally speaking, the Republicans and Democrats get space on the ballot automatically, but every other party has to go through a time-consuming and wildly expensive process of obtaining signatures, verifying names and addresses, and fighting off legal challenges just so they can have their candidates listed as a choice for the voter to ignore come November. And should the voter ever pay more attention to these renegade candidates than the major parties might like, the number of signatures required to gain ballot access in the next election cycle is simply raised higher."

In other words, The Mommy Party and The Daddy Party ain't about to go gently into that good night.

Here's Steven on Gay/Lesbian marriage in general, and California's passage of Proposition 8 in particular:

Nevertheless, I think both sides of the gay marriage debate miss a fundamental point. The real question is not whether government should recognize gay marriage. The real question is “Why does anyone – gay or straight – have to ask government for permission to marry at all?”

Well said. But almost immediately afterward, Steven couldn't resist having a little fun at Melissa Etheridge's expense.

Melissa Etheridge inadvertently stumbled over a good point recently. After Prop 8 passed in California, she fired off an angry blog post in which she threatened to withhold her state income taxes because the vote didn’t go her way. She backed off that threat in a later interview featured on the November 17th edition of Access Hollywood, but she did mention how bizarre it seemed that her right to marry the person of her choice had been put to majority vote.

Yeah, it seems like a fundamental right to me, too.

But I can’t help laughing at the irony. Melissa Etheridge is a proud “progressive” who has been outspoken in her support for the likes of Dennis Kucinich and Al Gore. So normally she’s all for putting things to a vote – like voting for new and creative ways to waste your money on some ill-conceived socialist plan.

....Now that she’s on the losing side, however, Ms. Etheridge is slowly coming to grips with the fact that direct democracy is a double-edged sword. Do you think this will be enough to get her to reconsider her lifelong worship of big government? Neither do I.

Me either. Why Gays and Lesbians insist on voting for Democrats is God's own mystery.

Stephen's blog is one of the few I've discovered where I've been impressed enough to start at the beginning with the goal of reading the whole thing.

Read him, link him, save his site to your favorites, and meet us at Pop's tomorrow night.