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LW writes: What is your honest assessment of the prospect of a Libertarian becoming president, senator, or congressman in the next nine years? Be honest. If the prospect of obtaining even a one third minority in congress is nil, then isn’t the party really only about pulling the political environment to the right (the real right, lean government, reduced or abandoned regulation, reducing and removing forms of taxation, eliminating welfare in all forms, free trade, and true individual rights) than about anything else. If so, then the Republican is the only individual to elect unless the Republican is going to lose the race anyway. Then vote every time for the Libertarian to get the point across to Republicans. I hope, one day, that the Libertarian Party will be the center of the Republican party.

First, a Libertarian is already in Congress. Representative Ron Paul is a Republican, but he is also a Libertarian, being its former candidate for president. His popularity is such that I have no doubt he could win his seat as a Libertarian – the Texas Republican party, to its shame, has tried to unseat him in the primary before – and I hope that one day he will do so, or at least make the switch in office. Second, the only way that the Libertarian Party will become the center of the Republican Party is for enough people to put principle over pragmatism. Only when they fear losing the Right entirely will the unprincipled Republican strategists cease their wooing of the Left.

If you vote for a leftward-moving Republican party, you are an enabler, and as such, you are part of the problem. You cannot be part of the solution until you are willing to cease the enabling. I have no problem with voting for principled Republicans; the problem is that there are very few of them left. But no one gets my vote simply because his name is preceded by an (R). Conservatives, YOU voted for a man that is rapidly expanding central government. YOU put George Delano into power. The responsibility for all of this is YOURS. Do you honestly believe that continuing to support him as he panders to the Left is going to change any of that?

It is always hard to envision anything but the status quo. But if history teaches us anything, it is that the status quo never remains so for long. Will we still be discussing Republicans vs. Democrats in 5,000 years? 500? 50? No one can say. All we know with certainty is that one day it will change, probably for reasons that will surprise everyone. I do not need to wait for it to happen in order to stand by my principles, nor, I argue, do you.

As you can probably tell, my interest in the Democrat-Republican horse race is minimal, and I’m even less interested in the preliminaries. But things are looking pretty good for John Kerry, who strikes me as a Democratic rehash of the sacrificial offering of Bob Dole that went by the glorified name of a campaign in 1996. Kerry offers nothing that Bush doesn’t already provide, except he knows how to say “fuck”. While that will get him some of the (snicker) vote that populates college campuses and vacuous left-liberal blogs that amuse themselves by mocking the sex lives of conservative young columnists, it won’t be nearly enough to knock off George Delano Bush, also known as the Amazing Triangulation Machine version 2.0.

My only real concern is to see the Clark vanity ship, aka “the amazing campaign” to starry-eyed women who are only supporting the general because George Clooney didn’t run, sink ASAFP. Of all the Democratic candidates – and I’m including Al Sharpton here – he’s the only one who would make me seriously consider voting for George Delano.

JR asks: Hey Vox, was wondering whether you could give your height and weight? How much different is it to Franken?

I don’t know how big Franken is, but I understand he’s quite short and in his book he claims the need to lose about forty pounds. So, I’m guessing that I’m taller and lighter, but it’s hard to know precisely. But I’ve fought everyone ranging from a 13-year old weighing about 90 pounds – got my bell rung and my butt kicked – to a 250-pound Marine – same result – so it doesn’t make much difference.

It might amuse you to know that the 13-year old was the result of our sensei’s technique of destroying your confidence upon joining the dojo. He’d tell you that no one was allowed to spar for three months, but then, after your first class, he’d tell you that he could see you were different and special, and therefore he was going to let you to spar that week. Then, for your first round, he’d match you up with someone who could not only destroy you easily, but do so in a manner that would prove totally humiliating. Which for me was the kid, since I was 21. After the kid kicked me twice in the head, then hit my jaw with an uppercut that made me see stars, I called timeout, went over to the sensei and told him that I understood I had absolutely no clue what was going on and would be very grateful if he would consent to teach me. He laughed, and said that I wasn’t quite as arrogant as I looked – he’d assumed it would take at least two weeks for me to appreciate the depths of my ignorance.

A few years later, he used to use me in the same capacity when we’d get the occasional football player in. At first, they’d look at you wondering how they were ever going to avoid killing you by accident, but by the end of the round, they’d be cringing and jumping back ten feet if you even twitched.

The beating I took from the Marine was the triumph of evidence over hypothesis. I’d been bench-pressing with the guy the day before, and knew that I was stronger than he was. So, I decided to abandon tactics and try going toe-to-toe with him in sparring the next day, despite giving up 75 pounds. It was a pretty short match. He punched me in the face, I punched him in the face, he punched me in the face and I went down. Just to be sure it wasn’t a fluke, I went through the process again, at which point I realized that there was a lot to be said for having the mass to absorb kinetic energy. Lesson: when outweighed by more than 25 pounds, stay outside.

As I’ve mentioned before, what separates the veteran fighter from your average bully is that the fighter has taken dozens, if not hundreds, of physical and psychological beatings. There’s no fear of the unknown. Whereas the person who’s unfamiliar with this sort of thing will actually go into shock the first time they get hit, even if it’s not hard enough to do any damage. From the description, it sounds as if that’s exactly what happened to Al Franken in New Hampshire.

I hadn’t listened to the first Linkin Park CD in a while… good stuff and I don’t think there’s many first CDs that kick off with a one-two punch anywhere nearly as well as Hybrid Theory. Papercut, in particular, is just a great tune. It’s not exactly Mozart, or even David Sylvian, but it’s great car music. In my half of the CD changer:

Creed: Human Clay

Linkin Park: Hybrid Theory

Japan: Quiet Life

The Cure: Singles

The Cult: Electric

Finally got my copy of Sunyata. It’s quite good, but I do miss the old horn sample. Check it out, sans horns, at Basic Pleasure Model.

ST sends a link: Recently, I interviewed with a school in one of the metro Atlanta counties, only to receive an e-mail from the principal stating, “Though your qualifications are quite impressive, I regret to inform you that we have selected another candidate. It was felt that your demeanor and therefore presence in the classroom would serve as an unrealistic expectation as to what high school students could strive to achieve or become. However, it is highly recommended that you seek employment at the collegiate level; there your intellectual comportment would be greatly appreciated. Good luck.”

Yeah, I don’t think I’ll so much be sending my kids to publik skool.

DM writes to point out that Al tackled the guy from behind. And he managed to break his glasses? (eyes rolling) “Franken emerged from the crowd and charged one male protester, grabbing him with a bear hug from behind and slamming him onto the floor.”

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that I’ve taken out someone from behind myself, actually, the same guy twice in a row. I was talking with a friend who travelled in similar martial arts circles one night while he was working as a bouncer at Prince’s Glam Slam. Three guys got into a pretty vicious fight right behind us, and there as were only two bouncers at that door, I tagged along and grabbed the leftover, bounced his face off the wall and held him there with an armlock. He was stunned and seemed pretty relaxed, so I asked if he was cool. He said that he was, so I let him go. In the meantime, the other bouncer, a 300+ monster, had simply picked up one guy and marched him outside, but it had taken my friend a little while to subdue the other combatant and he was just frog-marching him past at the moment I let the other guy go.

Okay, it was dumb, but I’m not a bouncer, I don’t know these things. Anyhow, the guy getting marched out spits on my guy, who then, naturally enough, goes for the spitter. My friend managed to pass off the spitter to the huge bouncer just in time to intercept, and started wrestling shoulder to shoulder with him. I wasn’t sure what to do, being paralyzed with a plethora of options, but the guy was leaning forward, so I finally just reached over and picked up both his feet. (It would have been more elegant to sweep them, but like I said, I was frozen, I had too many options. When you train with experienced fighters, you’re lucky if you get a window that’s half-open for a split-second. And if something is open, it’s usually a trap.)

He was pretty tall, about 6’2″, so he hit the ground hard enough to knock the wind out of him. My friend was extremely annoyed at this point, as he’d taken a good punch in the face from the other guy, so as the guy started to push himself up, he jerked him up by the shirt collar and gave him a little heel of the hand into the solar plexus. That was pretty much lights out. The guy went down and didn’t fuss at all when the huge bouncer came back in, scooped him up and carried him out like a baby. That was fun. Admittedly, I was either training or lifting weights seven days a week then, so my definition of entertainment was perhaps a little off.

Other than a few minor incidents like that, I never had any occasion to seriously use any of my training, which was probably for the best. Some of the other Dragons got into some interesting tangles, though. I’ll save those stories for a rainy day.

Wise-cracking funnyman Al Franken yesterday body-slammed a demonstrator to the ground after the man tried to shout down Gov. Howard Dean. The tussle left Franken’s trademark thick-rim glasses broken, but he said he was not injured. Franken – who seemed in a state of shock and out of breath after the incident – was helped back to his feet by several people who watched the tussle. Police arrived soon after. “I got down low and took his legs out,” said Franken afterwards.

At least I know what to do to get him to respond to my little challenge. Of course, if he’s in a state of shock and out of breath after tackling somebody, I have no idea how he’s going to survive going a round or two with me. Our belt tests consisted of eight two-minute rounds against fresh black belts, with one-minute breaks and a minimum number of kicks and points required, and this after four hours of going through every kick, strike, kata and weapon drill to the satisfaction of the sensei. And that was for purple! After witnessing the two-day test for black, I was ready to go into the Federal Witness Protection program if the sensei even hinted at moving me up a level.

Anyhow, when Al gets his radio show rolling, I hope all of you will join me in calling in and asking when he’s going to respond.

Al, you freaky little coward, I’m waiting….

UPDATE – it occurs to me… does this mean I can beat down anyone who tries to shout me down at a speaking engagement? I am so stoked! Forget the suit, it’s time to break out the airbrushed Dragon jacket with the metal studs at the elbows.

I have little respect for what these days passes for public homosexual intellectuals. Andrew Sullivan is hopeless on anything that involves his personal preferences – on such matters, he’s the personification of the feminist stereotype of the man who thinks with his genitalia. Sullivan, like many other homosexual advocates, furiously denied that homosexual marriage advocacy would lead to efforts to legalize polygamy, mocking the notion as “intellectually laughable” and saying: “The slope, in fact, is not slippery at all. It isn’t even a slope.” So, naturally, it was only a matter of months before events, predictably, proved him to be completely and utterly wrong. If anyone has become intellectually laughable, it’s Sullivan, who once argued that because something was a matter life and death for him, it was not a conflict of interest.

Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the Lawrence case, arguing that overturning the Texas law would open the door to challenges of Utah’s polygamy ban. Shurtleff said he believes Barnard’s case is headed for the Supreme Court, and predicted the justices would uphold the polygamy ban. “We have a long line of cases saying that the institute of marriage is the bedrock of society. Therefore, states have a compelling interest in regulating and controlling marriage,” he said.

But at least one legal expert said Lawrence’s logic leads to the legalization of polygamy, since the high court held that morality is not a strong enough justification for the state to ban a practice deemed unpopular or immoral by the majority. “It’s not a case people can sniff at,” said Richard G. Wilkins, a law professor at Brigham Young University. “If you can’t require monogamy, how in the world can you deny the claims of the polygamists, particularly when it’s buttressed by the claim of religion?”

The case for polygamy, being rooted in Judaic, Islamic, and Mormon religious traditions, is far stronger than the feeble case for homosexual marriage. It is even arguably within the Biblical Christian tradition as well, even if it does not represent the ideal. The Supreme Court could still deny it, of course, given that they are governed by nothing more than the social whims of six or seven individuals, but the justices can’t deny it based on their recent “reasoning”.

This, social conservatives, is only the latest proof of why it is foolish to rely on the state. It is a two-edged sword that will always end up turning on you in the end.

75,000 visits in the first three months, with an average of around 1,000 a day. That’s a nice round little milestone. Thank you all for continuing to swing by, and I hope you’ll continue to do so. It will be interesting to see where things are one year from now. I think the comments have worked out surprisingly well, although I urge everyone to keep it civil even when the topic is a sensitive one. Some of you -NATE- were dangling over the edge there on the Libertarian Party abortion issue – I’m claiming the monopoly on verbal abuse on this blog, thank you very much, as I have no desire to turn it into a mutually-reinforcing group-think circle.

Anyhow, thanks again.

Vroom passes on a note: “People who claim that Christ can free us from sin, including greed, shouldn’t advocate for themselves and for their spiritual brothers a system that, as y’all are so fond of saying, “actually requires human greed to function”. Believe in capitalism if you want, just quit calling yourself a Christian.”

This doesn’t require much in the way of reply. Capitalism doesn’t require greed to function. All it requires is that people place varying degrees of value on material goods and the freedom to exchange them as they see fit. The reason that socialism is always doomed to failure is that it posits the existence of absolute objective value as a basis for justifying its labor theory of value, which is required to justify a need to rectify distributive inquities as well as the existence of a party to provide such rectifications.

The notion that capitalism requires greed to function is not only trite, it demonstrates a high level of ignorance with regards to capitalism, human nature and history. The fact that some individuals may have latched onto a shallow Hollywood sound bite in a superficial defense of capitalism is irrelevant. Capitalism is not Wall Street, regardless of whether you are talking about the movie or the industry. Modern financial state imperialism can hardly be called capitalism, as it egregiously violates the freedom of exchange concept in a myriad of ways. Try buying a car with gold coins – or cash, for that matter – if you doubt me.