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AG writes:

I went over to visit my dad and grandmother last night, because she’s in town for a few days and we haven’t seen her in a while. Anyway, the two of them are big Republicans, and raised me that way as well. So, of course we got to talking about politics and the “war on terror” and so forth. After complaining about how the media aren’t covering the goings on in Iraq very well, such that anything good for Bush is not shown, and anything bad for Bush is shown, I dropped the bombshell: I’m not voting for Bush, I’m voting for Badnarik.

Immediate reaction: well, if you want to throw your vote away, go ahead. Why are you not voting for Bush? Do you want to see Kerry elected?

1. If you want to throw your vote away, go ahead

Thank you. The fundamental point of even limited democracy is that every individual can choose to vote as he or she pleases.

2. Why are you not voting for Bush?

Because after 3.5 years of his presidency, I have learned that I do not support his policies. His policies bear more resemblance to those of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt than Ronald Reagan. I wouldn’t vote for them either.

3. Do you want to see Kerry elected?

No, otherwise I would vote for him. However, I don’t want to see Bush elected either. Since I don’t support either one of them, I’m voting for neither.

I suspect that most Republicans who’ve never considered a third-party don’t realize how similar Bush and Kerry are, as one cannot see this clearly until one takes into account the massive differences between Bush and Badnarik and Bush and Peroutka. The fact that Badnarik and Peroutka appear so similar only highlights this vast gulf that separates both Bush and Kerry from genuinely Constitutional government.

If you support either Bush or Kerry, you do not support the U.S. Constitution. It’s that simple, and it makes no difference if we drive towards the cliff of Empire at 80 MPH or 65. (I used to say 55, but Bush has certainly stepped on the gas.) What I’m interested in hearing from pro-administration Republicans is how they believe supporting someone who is actively building larger government is going to lead to smaller government.

The evidence would seem to suggest that they don’t support smaller government or constitional govenment at all. Turning things around will not be easy and in fact may not be possible. But surely it’s not hard to understand that one will never turn around when one has no desire to do so.

Laurie writes:

No Child Left Behind Act-Complete failure and will continue to be until there is more funding. The fact is, Bush is a damn idiot and the only way this world is going to change is if each person keeps voting libertarian.

That’s three silly statements in a row. 1. No Child Left Behind will continue to be a failure even if spending is increased 10x. See the War on Poverty, the War on Drugs or the very well-funded public school system for examples. 2. Bush is many things, but he is not an idiot. He has a higher IQ than most of the people who enjoy calling him an idiot. And I am manifestly not a fan of the man. 3. The world is going to change regardless of how people vote. How it will change remains a mystery, but change it certainly will and I suspect it will change faster and more dramatically than most people would believe possible.

And I have been doing sort of an experiment the past few months that might seem kind of…. immoral. I’ve been pretending to be a practicing Christian and what I’ve learned., is that they seem to be the most brainwashed people in the entire earth, on the opposite end of the spectrum of libertarians. It makes me sad to see so many young people throwing themselves into something just because most of them don’t know any better. You tell them that something is in the bible, you could tell them ANYTHING is in the bible, because you can grasp anything in there in any concept just because there is so much random stuff, and tell them it means something… you could make them view anything. Do people think that Christianity will ever become a minority? Just asking.

Libertarianism would not exist were it not for Christianity. The foundational concepts of individual freedom, personal responsibility and human rights can all be traced directly to Biblical Christianity. There is no inherent contradiction between Christianity and libertarianism, indeed, the God of the Bible would appear to be more than a bit of a libertarian in a) promising to set people free, b) allowing individuals to suffer the consequences of their actions, and c) refusing to use His power to force people to obey Him.

Will Christianity ever become a minority? It has always been a minority in what, after all, is a fallen world ruled by an evil being.

I’ve been thinking about this today, as to why the godless secularists in our midst continually refer to the Religious Right as some sort of imminent danger when a) a large percentage of the Religious Right is contemptuous of politics; and b) the historical Religious Right showed little inclination to impose its beliefs on anyone.

The key to their thinking can be found in their common comparison of the Christian Right to the Taliban and other Islamic theocracies. There is no question that these Church-State marriages are oppressive, anti-liberty and more than willing to commit violence against the insufficiently obedient citizen. The flaw in the secularist thinking is to place the blame for this on the Church half of the equation, instead of the State.

Consider, if you will, those nations which are/were fervently secular, but where the State wielded the same degree of power as the aforementioned theocracies. Every Socialist country, from Albania to Zimbabwe, has seen more oppression, less liberty and more violence against the people than in even the worst theocratic state with the possible exception of the Sudan. Even if one leaves aside the obvious differences between Christian and Islamic culture, it is clear that it is placing too much power in the hands of the State that is the heart of the problem, not the religion professed by those in whose hands that power is placed.

Christianity, from the beginning, found itself in fundamental opposition to the State. The first Christians were persecuted for their unwillingness to bow before Caesar while the American revolutionaries fought under the slogan “No king but King Jesus.” Compromise with the State has always weakened Christianity, as the history of the Papal States and the Anglican Church clearly shows.

Secularists who turn to the State to protect themselves from Christian cultural domination are playing a fool’s game similar to that played by Cambodian intellectuals in the early 1970’s, who found themselves being executed for the crime of being able to read. Iormungandr is circular; the dialectic always turns around to devour those who give it birth.

I’m thoroughly sick of the historical revisionism of the secular separationists. Not only is their position manifestly absurd in light of the congressional prayers, inscriptions on the various Federal buildings and the wording of many historical speeches and documents, but they’ve twisted the concept of “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;” wherein “Congress” means “anyone” and “make no law….” means “shall neither speak nor write any word in public relating positively in any way to the Christian faith.”

Among their cornucopia of errors, they insist that the Founding Fathers were mostly Deist. That’s true, if you cherry-pick from amidst the most famous names and ignore all those men who signed the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and were heavily involved in the Revolution from the start. The known Unitarian/Deists were: Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. The known Christians were: George Washington, Samuel Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Patrick Henry, George Mason, Governor Morris and John Jay. And Deist is not atheist anyhow, as the Paris debates between Thomas Paine and French atheists should suffice to show.

In fact, there were more Christian Bible translators signing the Declaration of Independence than there were Deists. Charles Thompson translated the Greek Septuagint into English, Dr. Benjamin Rush founded the first Bible Society and Francis Hopkinson put together the first American hymnbook. The religious affiliation of the Signers was as follows: 34 Anglicans, 13 Congregationalists, 6 Presbyterians, 1 Baptist, 1 Roman Catholic, and 1 Quaker.

Now, the mere fact of church membership is not certain proof of an individual’s Christian faith, but as no one but God can judge the heart, it is the only reasonable method of determination available to us. One thing that is absolutely certain, however, is that none of them were godless secularists pledged to moral relativism. On this subject, as always, the Left resorts to the perversion of language in order to attempt to build a weak case from nothing. It is amusing that they should uphold the Deists while simultaneously attempting to strike out all references to the Deity.

I am a Christian and a libertarian. I, too, do not wish to see the State create a Church, but not because I care what it would do to the godless. (Nothing, most likely, considering the English example.) Instead, I fear what has happened in England, where the State has corrupted the Anglican church and sucked nearly all the Christianity out of it. If the Church is to thrive, it must never allow itself to be polluted by compromise with the State. But really, in the long term, the entire debate is almost irrelevant. When the American Republic is as dead and dimly remembered as its Roman predecessor, the Christian faith will still be strong, as implacable, inexorable and ineradicable as ever.

The Original Cyberpunk writes in alarm:

I have some shocking news about the upcoming and final Star Wars movie. Annikin Skywalker does *not* turn to the dark side! Rather, he’s *dragged* over to the dark side against his will by the evil, scheming, and power-mad Padme Amidala! Here’s the proof! My God, I just realized: maybe Luke and Leia’s mother didn’t die, and maybe the Emperor is not Senator Palpatine. Maybe Luke’s mother *BECOMES THE EMPEROR!*

That certainly would be a more interesting plot angle that what Lucas has got going now…

I’ve said it before and I will say it again. If you haven’t read the OC’s Headcrash, you are seriously missing out.

President Bush, seeking to mobilize religious conservatives for his reelection campaign, has asked church-going volunteers to turn over church membership directories, campaign officials said on Thursday. In a move sharply criticized both by religious leaders and civil libertarians, the Bush-Cheney campaign has issued a guide listing about two-dozen “duties” and a series of deadlines for organizing support among conservative church congregations.

A copy of the guide obtained by Reuters directs religious volunteers to send church directories to state campaign committees, identify new churches that can be organized by the Bush campaign and talk to clergy about holding voter registration drives. The document, distributed to campaign coordinators across the country earlier this year, also recommends that volunteers distribute voter guides in church and use Sunday service programs for get-out-the-vote drives.

“We expect this election to be potentially as close as 2000, so every vote counts and it’s important to reach out to every single supporter of President Bush,” campaign spokesman Scott Stanzel said.

If the president had signed an executive order banning abortion, refused to sign the McCain-Feingold act gutting the First Amendment, declined to actively campaign for the liberal Republican who blocked Robert Bork from the Supreme Court, avoided publicly embracing Islam and openly declared his opposition to the fictional equation of any public mention of anything even remotely Christian with the written statement that “Congress shall make no law….”, he might have a shot with the Religious Right. But he’s done nothing except make the occasional pious statement. Bill Clinton did as much.

Perhaps, too, he should have refrained from criticizing Americans for speaking “in an ill-informed and insulting manner about the Muslim faith.” This, after the beheadings of Nick Berg and Paul Johnson. I can’t even think of a response to that that is either Christian or printable, so I shall say nothing except to say that I am very pleased to be voting for Michael Badnarik this fall.

I had thought Karl Rove was supposed to be some sort of political genius, instead, the president’s campaign lurches randomly about, devoid of principle and pinning its hopes on the self-destruction of its opposition. The president is lucky he’s running against a candidate as incompetent as John Kerry, because Bill Clinton would be wiping up the floor with him by now. When Massachusetts created homogamy, I wrongly assumed that Karl Rove and company would be all over the Democrats for pushing the homosexual agenda, but apparently they’d rather be PC than win. You know Lee Atwater would have created an ad showing John Kerry in a dress getting married to Ted Kennedy and blown Kerry out of the water by August.

As you may recall, I have insisted from the beginning that the current war is unconstitutional, that it has never been declared and that the Bush administration is operating outside the law in its use of military force around the world. There are those who have argued the opposite, insisting that the Congressional authorizations of the use of force is a “virtual” declaration of war tantamount to the real thing.

Perhaps the Secretary of Defense can settle the issue:

I think basically what we have is we’ve had over our history since World War II basically an idea that we were either in war or we were in peace and that we were in peacetime constraints. And of course, since we don’t have a declaration of war and we’re not in World War III, all of those peacetime constraints and procedures and auditors and contract rules and competitive bidding, all of that pertains. And the effect of it is that you end up in a war on terror, like we’re in, losing lives and yet you are still required to adhere to the rules of peacetime, because we don’t have gradations of between war and peace and therefore we need to find a way to live in this 21st century where threats can come at you from the shadows and from ungoverned areas in ways that are not predictable, as they were, for example, during World War II or during the Cold War, for that matter.

Or maybe, Donald, you might try actually paying attention to the Constitution and ask your boss to request a declaration of war from the Congress. Remember that oath of office you took a few years ago? By the way, this statement should also put to rest the notion that the administration is quietly implementing a secret strategy for waging war against expansionist Islam as well.

I don’t even know what to say about this. It’s as if the NFL somehow wound up with a Super Bowl of Detroit vs. San Diego – in the Ryan Leaf era, no less. Greece was a worthy winner, although the Czech Republic had numerous chances that it simply failed to put away. Rosicky, Koller and Barros all had excellent chances, and while the Greek defending was solid, the Czechs were clearly the better team even without Nedved.

The Greeks have had an unbelievable run, but I have to believe that it will all come to an end on Sunday. Scolari seems to have driven Portugal past its tendency to choke, they’re playing at home and it’s probably the last chance for their Golden Generation to win a major tournament. So, I predict a Portugal victory, 2-0.

A lot of great players are closing out their international careers with Euro 2004. Jap Stam, Philippe Cocu, Marc Overmars, Marcel Desailly, Lilian Thuran, Alessandro del Piero…. Other greats who may bow out include Luis Figo, Zinedine Zidane, Christian Vieri and Pavel Nedved. It’s hard to imagine international soccer without them, and yet, the sport always moves inexorably on as the old lions step off the stage and are replaced by tomorrow’s stars.

Did many mutual fund managers break the law again Wednesday? It sure looks as though they did. Just as they have at the end of countless previous calendar quarters, it appears as though a number of fund managers on Wednesday engaged in illegal activity right before the close of trading. This had the effect of boosting their standings in the quarterly mutual fund rankings. The fact that fund managers resorted to such desperate tactics should not come as a surprise. Several finance professors discovered the behavior several years ago, and I wrote a column in the New York Times about it at the time. In addition, over the past year have devoted two of my MarketWatch columns to the topic.

Yet funds show no sign of giving up their wicked ways. Maybe fund managers think that New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has bigger fish to fry. Or maybe those managers thought that, since all eyes Wednesday afternoon were focused on the Federal Reserve’s rate-hike decision, no one would notice. Regardless of their reasons, the consequences are clear: The mutual fund industry on June 30 achieved what would otherwise seem to be a mathematical impossibility. Like the children of Lake Woebegon, the bulk of them were above average.

Don’t believe it? Take a look at the chart below, which shows the performance on June 30th of the 13 Lipper mutual fund indexes that reflect the performance of different sectors of the U.S. equity market. Each of those indices reflects the average performance of the funds in its sector. Twelve of these indexes outperformed the S&P 500 on that day. And the 13th lagged the S&P 500 by just one basis point. This is a huge contrast to funds’ typical performance on all other days, of course. On average on those other days, around 80 percent of funds lag the market.

It’s just a coincidence, of course, not unlike the recent decision of the British bureaucrat responsible for the UK’s CPI equivalent to remove housing from the inflation equation. (Housing is already removed from the US CPI, as, increasingly, is food and energy.) This was necessary because the UK CPI was showing rampant inflation as housing prices increased 20 percent in the last year, and since the central banks have declared that no inflation exists, obviously the equation required changing.

You thought Enron, WorldCom and Arthur Anderson were bad? Just wait. The coming frauds, scams and bankruptcies coming to light in the next two years will make those disasters look like prudent financial management. How am I so sure? Because government-related fraud is always an order of magnitude worse, and we haven’t begun to see any exposure of them yet. But we will.

The corruption isn’t capitalism. It is the twisted mutation of semi-capitalist corporatism created by the constant and innumerable federal interventions in the free markets.

ABC News opines:

Please don’t call and e-mail us for confirmation every time Drudge runs something; his 37.8% accuracy rate and quirky sensibilities (that’s a euphemism) can have a disproportionate impact on the election, if y’all let that happen.

Over a third is pretty good by mainstream media standards. I’d guess that’s a good 5-10 percent higher than ABC would be able to manage. I’m interested, though, to see how they came up with that number. 37.8 sounds like a pretty tricky number for math-challenged liberal reporters.

Odds are that as with the degree of global warming, the acreage of timber being logged in the Amazon and the lethal results of carry laws, it’s just a number someone dreamed up out of thin air.