The Glade 4.0

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/09 ... rinciples/

Republicans in record numbers moving toward the ideals and principles of libertarianism, according to a new poll by released by the grassroots group FreedomWorks.

New Poll Shows Republicans Flocking Toward Libertarian Principles
Former Texas Congressman Ron Paul and son Sen. Rand Paul (AP)
The survey of all registered voters, which was conducted last month, found that a full 78 percent of Republican and GOP-leaning voters self-identify as being fiscally conservative and socially moderate

The results of the survey were first shared with POLITICO.

The poll found that its Republican and independent-leaning respondents aren’t suddenly advocating legalized marijuana and instructing people to read “The Fountainhead.” Rather, as POLITICO’s James Hohman notes, many self-identified Republicans are simply falling in line with traditional libertarian views on limited government.

This comes after years of GOP domination by “defense hawks” and “social conservatives.”

Now, according to the FreedomWorks report, the GOP is starting to back away from social conservatism and hawkishness and lean toward libertarianism.

Asked what concerns them the most, 40 percent of survey respondents said “individual freedom through lower taxes and reducing the size and scope of government,” 27 percent said “traditional values,” and 18 percent said “strong national defense.”

Kellyanne Conway, who ran the poll, said they are seeing a massive increase in the number of respondents who think the government has grown too large and has become too expensive to maintain.

“The perfect storm is being created between the NSA, the IRS, the implementation of Obamacare and now Syria,” she said. “People are looking at the government more suspiciously. They’re looking with deeper scrutiny and reasonable suspicion.”

Additionally, two-thirds of Republican and GOP-leaning respondents said they want Congressional representatives to “keep their promises and stick to principles” as opposed to “compromise in a bipartisan way to get things done.”


“From Obamacare on down, sticking to principle is where the Republican base is today,” David Kirby, vice president of opinion research at FreedomWorks, said in a POLITCO report. “It’s an example of how off the Republican establishment is from their base.”

Other findings in the report include:

Forty-one percent of GOP respondents said gay marriage is not on their top 10 list of priority issues.
Roughly one-third of GOP respondents said abortion is one of the top three issues they care about, another third said it was in their top 10, and another third said it wasn’t an issue for them.
Twenty-five percent of GOP respondents self-identified as “libertarian” or “lean libertarian.”
Forty-two percent of GOP respondents view the term “libertarian” favorably.
Ten percent of GOP respondents were unfamiliar with term “libertarian.”
Roughly 27 percent of total survey respondents said they weren’t familiar enough with term “libertarian” to have an opinion on the issue.
Approximately 40 percent of respondents aged 18-32 years view the term “libertarian” favorably.
One-third of respondents aged 18-32 said they were unfamiliar with the term “libertarian.”
Fifty-two percent of total survey respondents said the government should not enforce or promote a particular moral code/set of values.
Forty percent, on the other hand, said the government should promote a particular set of values.
Only 17 percent of total survey respondents said they believe life will be better under Obamacare (this includes just one-third of polled Democrats).
Forty-nine percent of total respondents oppose Obamacare.
The survey, according to Kirby, bodes well for libertarian-leaning Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), and Rand Paul (R-Ky).

And as far as the 2014 midterm elections are concerned, 55 percent of GOP survey respondents said they are more likely to vote for someone who has “stronger principles” and 34 percent said they would rather choose “a candidate who has more political experience and party leaders say is more likely to win.”

Conway said these results “astonished” her.


“You’d think Republican voters, more than anybody, would want to win, but they’ve been down that road of ‘electability’ before,” she said, referring to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Sen. Bob Dole.

“Voters aren’t asking themselves who can win. They’re asking who can lead … Republican voters in particular are fatigued with this false promise of electability,” she added.

Lastly, the survey found that pessimism and cynicism towards political parties remains high (especially with younger voters).

Still, three-quarters of respondents aged 18 -32 said they believe economic conditions can be corrected by federal policy.

Nevertheless, and despite this apparent faith in the power of government, Conway claims neither party has a claim to the youth vote.

“There’s no realignment to progressivism,” she said.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

They say that. And then when election day comes, they pull the lever for a RINO.

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The Dude abides.

Which is ok, really. I've always felt the best, most practical way to move the country to libertarianism, is to do so within the rep party.

Still, all this will be, at least for a while, is a division amongst the 50% on the right, and solidarity amongst the 50% on the left.

So yes, electability is very much an issue.

The next generation has apparently decided to go full-retard.

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which could simply mean they favor changing federal policy to reduce tax burden, deregulate, etc etc.

If you feel current federal policy is the problem, then its not unreasonable to assume that fixing federal policy could solve the issue.

That's true. Ignorance causes belief in all sorts of ridiculous things.

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Including taking things that come from Glenn Beck seriously.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Even if the person speaking the truth is a wack-o, it's still the truth.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Is it? There's a poll. How many studies have we seen with exceedingly flawed methodology? What was the methodology? "Grassroots group called freedomworks" sounds like "Moveon.org" on the right.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I honestly can't believe that you're arguing that the truth is dependent on who says it, DE. If Glenn Beck said that the Sun is a star in our solar system, you'd have cause to disbelieve that truth, because Beck said it? C'mon. The truth is the truth no matter the purveyor.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

If you have a flawed methodology then the conclusion you're reaching wouldn't be the truth. If you're crazy but you have sound reasoning, then you'd be speaking the truth. A fact is a fact no matter who speaks it.

But you can't establish that it is a fact without basis. Doesn't matter if its Einstein, Hawking or John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt--you must substantiate the claim before you can use it in argument

Since it hasn't been established that any "truth" is being said.. then I'm not arguing that. I'm saying that just because Glenn Beck publishes a poll, from an organization that is not trustworthy to conduct impartial, proper polling in the first place, does not mean that what the poll claims is actually happening. Even if the poll is impeccable, polls only go so far.

Maybe if you weren't so eager to trust something just because its what you want to hear, you wouldn't be so eager to strawman what I said. People are always all eager for "small government" in the abstract, but when the reality of actually cutting the medicare their grandma relies on comes up, or Al Sharpton starts talking about how its "racist" to cut the entitlements that blacks tend to desire, they suddenly lose their enthusiasm. Trying to have it both ways is how we got in the mess we're in.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

All this is true. However, the fact is that when a source is known to be crazy in the first place, that is a reason to scrutinize what they are claiming to be a fact more closely, not just assume it's the "truth". Credibility matters. If Buzz Aldrin tells me he landed on the moon, part of the reason I believe him is that he is credible; he has never given anyone any reason not to. If some random person on the internet claims it's all a conspiracy, and has a bunch of "facts" establishing that, his general lack of credibility is a reason to scrutinize those arguments more closely. He can't just claim "the truth is the truth no matter who speaks it!" and think that somehow immunizes his "facts" from scrutiny.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

This is likely, but not necessarily true. You know the old cliché, "Even a stopped clock is right twice a day." You can reach the correct conclusion by flawed methodology, although it's rather random.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Then don't.


Then say that, not "Including taking things that come from Glenn Beck seriously."
It's obvious that the latter is just an ad hominem with poisoning the well thrown in for good measure.


Please show me where I explicitly stated, or even implied, that I trust whatever you think it is I "trust". It would be nice if you'd make comments less about me personally (it's really tiresome), and more about the facts as they are on the screen. I didn't make up fact that your whole comment was about Glenn Beck. I didn't realize Glenn Beck had anything to do with the polling methodology, or anything else, he runs a website. Now you sound like everyone else who refuses to believe something because came from "Faux News" or the Washington Post. If the politico story had been the one quoted I don't think we'd even be doing this.

What is untrustworthy about "the polling company, inc./WomanTrend"?

If you were really interested in the methodology, and accuracy, you'd have clicked on the link and seen it for yourself: http://images.politico.com/global/2013/ ... final.html
Take a look and then make your arguments, and you won't be arguing from a position of ignorance. You'll be able to make a factual argument instead of fiat declarations.

Again, I don't see how you can argue with the statement, "Even if the person speaking the truth is a wack-o, it's still the truth." But here we are.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Well, since I haven't, and you're relying on a very pedantic extrapolation from an off-the-cuff one-line post I guess we can just consider that issue closed then.



Glenn Beck is so untrustworthy that taking anything at all from him seriously without validation from other sources is at best questionable. Even in cases like this where he got it from someone else. Beck cannot be trusted not to go out and locate material that says something he wants and publish it as ground truth with no regard for its actual accuracy. He's not any different from a liberal source that does the same thing.



Again, Beck cannot be trusted to have verified (even in cursory fashion) the polling methodology himself. As for you thinking its true or not, why are you defending this point if you actually do not believe the study is accurate? Do you, or do you not, think that it is? Please, by all means, clarify, because your expressed views have tended more and more libertarian for several years now, and last I checked, most people want other people to agree with them more.



Actually, I missed the link, but thank you for pointing it out. I suppose you deserve a certain amount of credit since you're the only person who actually bothered to even look for a source of the polling methodology. That said, you are in no position to complain that I extrapolated your agreement with the poll results if you're then going to turn around and ***** about how I supposedly didn't care about the polling methodology. If you want to extrapolate what you think I think from my behavior, that's fair. You can do that; I do it all the time. You can't, though, turn around and complain about me doing it because A) it's hypocritical and B) I'll do it anyhow.

As for the last statement, the burden of proof is on the whack-o, or the person agreeing with him, to establish the truth of the statement in the first place. The fact that truth can be spoken by anyone does not relieve them of either burden of proof, nor scrutiny based on past unreliability.

Oh, are you claiming that the study is accurate and truthful? Maybe you could go to the link yourself then, and establish that somehow.

Edit: Your link says nothing about polling methodology either way; it just lists questions. Also, the results of the poll do not really support any sort of shift at all, since they are not compared to any previous point. Also, the CEO of The Polling Company is a Republican strategist. I see nothing overtly prejudicial in the questions as written, but I also don't see the methodology, outside of a few long lists noted as "the list was not read".

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

So, your argument is:

"Glenn Beck is so untrustworthy..."

"Beck cannot be trusted..."

"Again, Beck cannot be trusted..."


Really, that's what you respond with to: "Even if the person speaking the truth is a wack-o, it's still the truth."

Hehehe, you're hilarious DE, thanks.

You'll notice I responded to: "Including taking things that come from Glenn Beck seriously."

Nothing more, nothing less.

But please keep telling us how Glenn Beck can't be trusted.

So, you weren't able to come up with any evidence of how I feel about the poll or its findings, yet you still think it's about a poll, and how I feel about it. I haven't defended the poll, nor have I lauded the results. I expressed my disbelief that someone could think that a response based solely on their feelings about a person tangentially related to a news story about a poll would invalidate whatever was found in the poll. Yet somehow it's about my beliefs - and Glenn Beck.

The poll methodology is right there, pretty plainly stated. Perhaps you were looking for something else besides "methodology"? What does "methodology" mean to you?

No, the truth is the truth. There is no burden of proof needed for the truth. You can disbelieve the truth all you want and demand that someone prove it's true to you, but it makes no difference whether you believe it or don't think a sufficient amount of evidence has been presented to you. The truth remains, the truth.

Neither what I think about the poll, nor what you think about Glenn Beck is the issue, and I think you know that.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

No, you're hilarious. I'm saying that whatever the truth may be, Glen Beck cannot be trusted to obtain it from reliable sources.

You have not yet established that anyone is speaking the truth. Your entire position fails.

You'll notice I responded to: "Including taking things that come from Glenn Beck seriously."



Keep trying to score rhetorical points with stupid comments like "youre hilarious" and "please keep telling us". Oh wait. That's all you can do, since this is really just about you looking for an excuse to have an argument with me. Go get some Preparation H; I hear it helps with the butt-hurt.



I presented evidence that you think the poll is accurate and truthful. Your attempts to pretend otherwise are feeble at best. I didn't claim you defended the poll; I pointed out that you objected to my criticism on the basis that whackos can speak the truth. Obviously, that means you think there is truth here.

Oh, and sicne you're too **** stupid to otherwise understand this - I didn't say the poll was necessarily wrong or "invalidate the results". I said it wasn't believeable based on the source. I left entirely open the possibility of independent confirmation.

But then again, you're too busy being in a snit with me personally. You publicly admitted that, by the way.


No, as matter of fact it was not.



Yes, there is a burden of proof for the truth. You cannot just present a statement and say "but it's the truth!"

The fact that you are making this statement indicates basic issues you have with logic and reason. You're making the argument of a religious fanatic: "but it's the truth, whether you believe it or not!?!" how do you know it's the truth?



Yes, it very much is the issue, so far as this thread is concerned. See your PMs.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

What's particularly interesting about this debate is that Beck is the only current "news anchor" I can think of who actively and regularly encourages his audience to go verify what he's telling them.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Which, hilariously, almost always results in the revelation that he's misrepresenting things somehow. For a while he was going on about this "Agenda 21" thing that (from his vague description) was supposedly on the horizon at the U.N. Complete with disturbing radio adds that he played, but you never heard anywhere else. No one else even mentioned it.

The reason is that, while Agenda 21 is real, it A) isn't what Beck was representing it as (he presented it as being heavily focused on aborting or euthanizing disabled children when I heard him talk about it) and B) while the U.S. has signed it, it isn't a treaty under Article 6, so the Senate never considered or voted on it, it doesn't have the force of law, and cities and states can come and go as they please from participation. Several local governments have removed themselves from participation, as well as Alabama and other states are working on legislation to dispense with it as well.

The fact was that while it was filled with typical U.N. kum-ba-yah bullshit and general socialism unde rthe guise of "sustainability" it's also now over 20 years old, and the panic over it he was having last year totally ignored the fact that it had no force whatsoever. Eventually, he wrote a fictional novel by the same title.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

As far as the social issues go I think I could trust Libertarians to protect the rights of the side they disagree with more than Democrats (and some Republicans). however, I like the concept of the police and the interstate highway system too much to be a Libertarian

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Libertarian != Anarchist

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

No, but I have heard many self-identifying Libertarians advocate the removal of both institutions in favor of wholly private entities.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Glenn Beck reported on it, FreedomWork commissioned it, but it was The Polling Company, Inc./WomanTrend that actually conducted the poll. So even if it's valid to go all Bayesian on the sources (and I'm not saying it is), theirs is the only probability of truthiness that matters. Call me ignorant, but I would need to do substantial amount of research on them to determine how frequently they produce accurate information.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.