Back from the Libertarian National Convention
 

I just got back home after attending the Libertarian Party's national convention in Atlanta. It was a hell of a con. The best man (although, not the guy I voted for) won our nomination for President. Everybody, Michael Badnarik, Libertarian candidate for President, 2004.
Badnarik, who was in third place going into the convention and expected to get around 10% of delegate votes, really came into his own during the Presidential debate Saturday night (televised over C-SPAN in case anyone watched it). He was, incredibly enough, the best speaker of the three (better than a professional talk show host and a Hollywood producer). He's been interviewed on C-SPAN since the nomination, and will probably be seeing a flurry of media events. There was a front-page announcement and a 4th page story on Badnarik in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution the morning after the nomination.
He came from behind, expected to place third, and took the nomination.... let's hope this is an omen of what the Presidential election will look like. :)
Anyway, for those of you visiting the website link above, as of the time of this posting his campaign staff hasn't had the time to update his website (they weren't expecting him to win the nomination, either!). Please excuse him if his website isn't updated right away.

i saw some of it. i just cant help but feel that maybe a more moderate candidate would have been better. link1 and link2

i mean, baby steps seems to be working for socialism, lets turn it toward libertarianism. jailing irs employees and returning to the gold standard just seem a little too extreme.

that said, Bednarik does seem to be a very likable guy. Comes off honest and not trying to push some bullshit or anything. so maybe I'll vote for him to support the libertarian movement, but I just dont see this getting libertarians anywhere.

I have a really bad tv with just an attena. So in other words I just found out from here. (This is belive it or not where I get a lot of news...) Anyways anon, hoe did you get tickets?

Yes he is a little umm whats the word isn't it radical? But I personally would vote for a tap dancing chicken before I would vote for kerry and I would give my reasons now but I don't really want to take up that much space...

What's his view on technological issues?

How'd I get tickets? I was the chair of the Nebraska delegation! :) Did anyone see me on tv during the nominating process?

Anyway, although he (and many libertarians) may sound extreme, keep in mind that he will still have to deal with Congress, so his extremism will be tempered.

On technological issues, he's against most of the restrictions Republicans place on research for "decency" and "morality", and against most of the restrictions Democrats place on research for "the environment" and other such things. He's not in favor of government funded research, though. After all, when you think of privately funded research, you get things like cars, phones, refrigerators, planes, computers, etc. - things that help each of us out in our daily lives. When you think of government funded research, you get things like putting a man on the moon decades before we had the technology to get anything useful out of the moon. Government research generally wastes money, whereas private research has to develop things that people actually want and need in order to make the money to continue doing research. So, he'll encourage private research by reducing many of the restrictions on it and by leaving more money available for it through tax/spending cuts.

I'm glad that guy got on the moon, btw. But all that sounds good.

I'm no Libertarian (quite the opposite, really), but I am quite sceptical of the Libertarian candidate. I like Libertarianism much better than the watered-down nonsense that is the Republicratic Party. I hope he's not some Libertarian version of Lyndon Larouche, because I feel the Libertarians need to be strong to smack the Republicans the way Ralph needs to smack the Democrats. From the guys I saw I felt Gary Nolan to be the better choice - not nearly as... scary.

Aaron Russo and Jeffrey Diket were definitely the "scary choices" (Diket was scary enough that the convention booed him off stage during his opening speech - if you're so scary even the Libertarians are afraid of you, you're too fucking scary). I liked Nolan a lot too, he was definitely my first choice, but Badnarik wasn't a bad second choice. He's so not LaRouche.
Even if you don't agree with Badnarik on everything, and even if you don't feel you can afford to vote for him, a donation will go a long way towards getting his message out, and forcing the Republicans and Democrats to actually stand for something in order to win votes.

"So, he'll encourage private research by reducing many of the restrictions on it and by leaving more money available for it through tax/spending cuts."

But what is the balance? You take away government restrictions but is he seriously going to support cloning? The military being able to research a drug to push people against their limits until they die?


However, in terms of technology, I'm talking about the restrictions placed on technology in terms of patent rights, copyrights, and things such as region codes on DVD players and home computers. Who is his advisor in those regards, what does he know in that respect, etc.?

I used to be libertarian myself, but I think they're somewhat out of touch with regular people because of they're slavish belief in unfettered capatlism and libertine stances on hard drugs and prostitution.