It is not a secret that the United States is no longer a true democracy, yes.

Heh, another conservative, it seems. Why are so many people on internet message boards either liberal or conservative? Where the hell are the independents? Those who hate all political parties?

Communism, conservatism, liberalism, whateverism.

I happen to live in MA, so the alternative to Obama, already shoved ObamaCare down MA residence throats, a long time ago.

I have a job that offered me health care, so the bill doesn't affect me, don't think I've given it much thought about how it affects others.

What the government should be more concerned about though is stuff like big business, minimum wage and the economy before forcing residence into having health care. I think once those things are straightened out, the burden of mandatory health care won't be as bad for everyone.

I'm libertarian. I was trying to avoid getting into left/right arguments.

Yeah I'm independent.

Both sides are pretty crooked and corrupt.

But even independent/libertarian candidates might be just as bad if they were ever to get elected. It seems that's just human nature, greed and corruption.

Not that there aren't any honest noble people, but greed and corruption seem more common.

Generally, in my experience, self-proclaimed "libertarians" often behave like cons who aren't satisfied with the GOP, but who don't differ from them significantly.

Some of the things you said, like our society becoming socialist, or youth brainwashed with liberalism, and homeschooling your kids, sound a lot like things most cons would say. And it makes your arguments seem a little...brainwashy, to use your own words.

What is it that you think makes you different from the typical con? I'm honestly just curious. I'm also curious as to why many people feel the need to affiliate themselves with any political parties, like libertarianism.

I think people like to put a label on things, I guess it just makes stuff easier.

I think all this talk about equality is another thing plaguing our country. We're not all equal, we're not supposed to be equal.

Also, all the talk about the wealth gap and income inequality, and the shrinking middle class, why is that happening? Because we have a socialist running the country. In communist countries, there is no middle class, there's only rich and poor, all Putin and his buddies and then the poor people who are all kept equal.

To answer your other question, I am politically libertarian and socially conservative. A lot of my views are conservative and I used to be republican until I realized that they are just as bad as the left. I did not want this discussion to be about arguing left and right viewpoints, my intent was to discuss the position our government is taking.

Shouldn't we have a government that helps promote and support growth and prosperity for the entire country and not just the growth and prosperity for the government?

Should we just step on the bodies of the fallen on our way to the top or resent a government that tries to take some small measure of responsibility for those that aren't born with the same advantages that so many of us enjoy? I think that your belief system on this says a lot about the quality of your character as a person. Just a general statement on people.

Anyways, people like to put a label on things? You just labeled yourself a libertarian that's socially conservative when those two ideologies are diametrically opposed to one another. The libertarian school of thought shuns legislating morality (ie the social conservative doctrine) and the military-industrial complex in general as well as all of the expensive foreign entanglements that it causes.

So I'm curious... Why is your outrage directed at a law (originally developed by fiscal conservatives in Massachusetts) that's trying to get more people insured so that they're less of a tax burden on the rest of us?

I get that libertarians hate or distrust any large, government apparatus, but if that apparatus' goal is to increase self-sufficiency on the most vulnerable in the tax base, which should help lower taxes in the long run (ie the biggest refrain of the libertarian), then why is THIS your target?

Why aren't you on here railing against the 25% of our budget that's allocated to maintaining the overseas empire and keeping contracts with corporations so that they can build us tanks that we can put out in the desert to rust and never use? Or how about the 10% of our budget allotted to the interest on our national debt?

Conservatives have been working to put as much money in to politics as humanly possible for years now and both Citizens United and the recent aggregate donation ruling by the Bench only furthers that agenda.

Cons have been gerrymandering local districts, trying to defund education at local and state levels, keep our tax laws as malleable and as filled with holes as possible all so that those with the money (ie corporations and the uber-wealthy) don't have to pay their share.

Yet these people generally have few problems with the "job creators" shipping jobs overseas so that they can save a little money to fatten their own bloated bonuses. Did you know that a few years ago, the CEO of Shell retired with a ten billion dollar pension? Yes. That's billion with a B.

If you honestly believe that this version of America and free market capitalism is what was intended by our founding fathers, or that this type of separation of wealth is at all the fault of cashiers working the Shell stations and not the CEO's and upper management benefiting from a system that they're continuing to mold with each passing redrawn district, bought and paid for politician and court ruling, then maybe you should stop shunning education and actually get one.

Meanwhile, people like you do your best to turn a blind eye to all of these issues that are actually shrinking the middle class (and yes, like climate change, there is a ton of legit, non-biased data that shows the middle class as a socio-economic group in our country has shrunken dramatically in the last 30 years as wages continue to fall woefully behind inflation and the cost of living), only to blame women, minorities, the poor and the non-wealthy elderly for creating a "welfare state" that's responsible for dragging everyone else down.

You're blaming the "communists" in government for trying to catch the people that fall as the gap widens and it's widening because of what conservative elected stooges for the wealthy and uber-wealthy are doing. How do you honestly rationalize that in your mind and arrive at Obama, liberals and communism as a logical conclusion for what's wrong with our government? That's like seeing firemen spraying water at a burning building and rescuing people and blaming those firemen for the fact that the building's on fire.

Oh yeah, and as for that liberal indoctrination that kids are receiving at school, that sword cuts both ways. There are PLENTY of places in this country where creationism is forced down kids' throats and evolution is banned from classrooms. You know, facts and theories supported by facts giving way to 2,000 year old stories about how our planet was created in seven days.

Now, in case you might be wondering... Politically, socially, economically, I'm a true moderate on the political spectrum. I liked George HW Bush, Ross Perot, Bob Dole, Colin Powell etc just as I've liked Bill Clinton, John Kerry, Ralph Nader.

I do believe that there's a lot of bloat, kick backs and patronage in our government at all levels and I also believe that the cynicism leveled at both parties is justified because, honestly, only the wealthy can really afford to run for office in this country, so who do you think they're going to represent?

The sad fact however is that moderates in this country now sound an awful lot like bleeding heart liberals because of how far to the right the Republican party has taken conservatism, especially on social issues. So the fact that you think that they're not far enough to the right is really quite something.

You want to rail against our government, rail against the vocal minority on both sides of the fence that are pulling this country apart at the seams and radicalizing the middle in to choosing sides when the reality is that it's not left and right or right and wrong, but the haves and the have nots.

The problem is that too many people are either willfully ignorant or too stupid to realize what "having" and "not-having" in this country actually means.

When was it ever a democracy?

At the most, it's been treated as a theocracy.

They need to stop giving their friggin money to the so-called holy land, Israel!

This whole thread is stupid.

This.

Libertarians are socially liberal, fiscally conservative. That's the baseline, but I won't bore you guys by going deeper into it as I do identify myself as a libertarian. And yes, Obamacare is retarded. Not only will it raise the debt, but it screws over many good people and arguably hurts more than it helps.

I'd sit here and call Obama a terrible president all day, but I think it says more about the overall intelligence of the American people that this asshat got elected twice.

The United States is not, nor has it ever been, a democracy. It is a Constitutionally-mandated representative republic with democratically-elected officials. And for good reason. True democracy (the majority has decided to impose its will on the minority. Now you shut up.) is a very dangerous concept. Lynchings and gang rapes would be examples of true democracy in action. Not a pleasant thought, is it?

The most significant reason why this country is in the condition it's in is simple. We're home to a significant population of the most dangerous people on the planet. And folks, they would be called low-info voters. I believe Lenin referred to them as "useful idiots".

People in government seek power. They seek to control others. To paraphrase Noah Webster "...they mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.

The only thing that's changed since our country's inception is time and they (government) have gotten better at their craft of lying, cheating, stealing and imposing their will on others.

By my first post I meant that USA does not classify as a democracy any longer. The President of the US doesn't represent the nation as a whole, but its elite. Lynchings and gang rapes? I highly doubt that the majority would ever vote for that. Besides, there are lynchings and gang rapes in USA even today: There is a ton of prison rapes occuring in the world's biggest 'prison', USA, all time. America is not a theocracy – Vatican is.You bet. The States have however changed over time. Before, USA was deemed as the bastion of peace and civilization; Europe as the continent of war and terror. Today it is largely vice versa; USA is very patriotic and eager to attack whereas Europe is a place of civilization (and bankruptcy.)

Voters in southern states aren't that useful.

So this is what America is getting up to... Obama: We're building Iron Man

The president will always be an asshat, regardless of who he/she is.

The country is ran not by merit, ethics, or active promise, but by who is agreed with the most. Office election is little more than a popularity contest, and the winners are prized with manipulating the fabric of the country however they please, regardless of previous or current majority value.

In bipartisanship, half of the involved will always get eclipsed, and considering the U.S. is bipartisan only by technicality (there are far more than two parties), more than half of the nation will always get eclipsed.

With this, every politician, let alone the president, is an asshat.

After leaving my home region and coming to the east, I can safely say that I'm a regionist. I really detest the east, in particular here in Northern Virginia and Maryland where it seems to me that the people here so desperately want to be New Englanders that they shun and denigrate Southern Virginians, West Virginians, Carolinians, and Georgians. To me, the people out here just seem really aggressive, impatient, intrusive, and impolite. It's really made me realize that I'd sooner defend British Columbia with my life than New York state or D.C.

That's in a lot of places though, from what I've found. People from northern Ohio rag on people from southern Ohio, who in turn rag on people from West Virginia, but at least the whole state can agree on their dislike of people from Michigan.

Meanwhile, being from Indiana is a joke to people from Illinois, while the same north/south rules apply for the state. Hell, the north and south side of the city of Chicago itself tends to have negative opinions of one another. Ask anyone from Casterly Rock or The Reach what they think of people from Dorne or people from Winterfell what they think of those from Skaggos or...

Wait a minute...

These rivalries exist in Europe too, they're pretty fun. Portugal and Spain, France and Britain, Finland and Sweden, Germany and Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Greece and Turkey, Hungary and Romania, Northern Ireland and Ireland – the list goes on.