Morning rant

Every day I see crazy right-wing radicals espose their views on the national issues as comments on blog posts, sticking up for every thought Republicans in Congress ever had and bashing every thought Democrats have come up with since (and including) Social Security, all the while claiming to be Libertarian.

I'm sorry, but Libertarian is not a new code word for Conservative. And it's not a new code word for asshole or hatemonger either. And as a TRUE Libertarian, I don't want that to ever be the case.

I guess it's good that Conservatives have reached the point where they know that Conservative is a dirty word, in much the same way that "Liberals" abandoned the term decades ago. They know their thoughts are out of step with the country and have found the need to hide behind a "safer" word.

There's two problems with that, though. First of all, as far as Democrats (or liberals) are concerned, Libertarians are just as dangerous as Conservatives. And in pretending to be Libertarians, the Conservatives are smearing our good name, in my opinion.

In essense, what we have is identity theft on a very grand scale. And I'm sick of it. 

I guess to avoid being confused with the Newt Gingriches and Grover Norquists of the world I could just say that I'm "moderate." Except Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist aren't Libertarian. There's more to being a Libertarian than wanting to reign in spending. And I'm not moderate. I'm radical. I am an extremist. And I know this. 

Truth be told, I've alway been more partial to the left than to the right. While both sides have their flaws, at least I've always felt that the Democrat's flaw was caring about others too much and caring about what others do with their money too much. Republican's flaws, it seems include caring about themselves too much. And caring about what others do with their personal lives too much.

I'm hardly ready to re-register as a Democrat. I'm going to stay a registered Libertarian. But I'd damn sure like it to be known that the douchebags you hear on right-wing radio and read on right-wing blogs claiming to be Libertarian are not. And they either don't know what Libertarians actually stand for because they're ignorant. Or they do know what Libertarians stand for, but want to hide behind that name in order to pretend they're anything less than greedy, selfish pigs.