After receiving some interesting comments and e-mails, I want to make it clear that I don't particularly like either Glenn Beck or Bill Maher. I can understand why people don't like either guy. I do find both of them incredibly entertaining at times. What I am trying to point out, is that as a Libertarian, I agree with ideas that traditionally come from opposite sides of our current 2-party system.
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Most people I know in Generation X are completely over the two party system in America. No one identifies with either the Republicans or Democrats anymore. I consider myself to be Glenn Beck and Bill Maher's love child...I am a libertarian. I guess you could call me a small government, freedom loving social liberal. Economic and individual freedom are the most important things influencing my politics.
I like to think kids get the best qualities from their parents...and I consider Glenn and Bill my two daddies. Since I don't agree with either of them 100% of the time, I have to find the pearls of wisdom both of them speak. Here are some of their opinions that I agree with.
Glenn Beck Quotes I love
Every time the government grows we lose more of who we are.
Good for you, you have a heart, you can be a liberal. Now, couple your heart with your brain, and you can be a conservative.
'Hello my name is the Republican Party and I got a problem. I'm addicted to spending and big government.' I'd like one of them just to stand up and say that.
I believe that if we get out of people's way, the sky's the limit. The sky is the limit.
I have not heard people in the Republican Party yet admit that they have a problem. And when they do say that they have a problem I don't know that I believe 'em.
It does not have to be that the greatest generation is behind us. It does not have to be that our children will have a lower standard of living. It will be that way if we choose to believe that. I choose not to believe that.
It's not just spending, it's not just taxes, it's not just corruption, it is progressivism, and it is in both parties. It is in the Republicans and the Democrats.
Let me tell you, it is still morning in America. It just happens to be kind of a head pounding, hung over for four hours in America - and it's shaping up to be a nasty day, but its still morning in America.
No one is guaranteed happiness. You can pursue it, but if you happen to find success along the way on that road to happiness, Conservatives believe you should not be demonized or penalized for it.
Please stop teaching my children that everyone gets a trophy just for participating. What is this, the Nobel Prize? Not everybody gets a trophy.
Political Correctness doesn't change us, it shuts us up.
Progressivism is the cancer in America and it is eating our Constitution, and it was designed to eat the Constitution, to progress past the Constitution.
Remember, beneath every cynic there lies a romantic, and probably an injured one.
The worst is still ahead of us. But no one in Washington has the spine to tell you that.
To restore America we need less Marx and more Madison.
We all know what the problems are: it's tax and spend. One party will tax and spend, the other party won't tax but will spend. It's both of them together.
We just put General Motors in the hands of people who can't even run our own government.
We should reject big government and look inside ourselves for all the things that built this country into what it was.
We're giving our freedoms away. The American experiment was about freedom. Freedom to be stupid, freedom to fail, freedom to succeed.
What does it mean to be a conservative? I don't even know anymore. I know what it means to me. It means to me, personal responsibility. That if I've done something wrong, its up to me to pay the price. It's up to me to make it right.
What is the point of competing for a trophy if everyone gets a trophy?
What we don't have a right to is healthcare, housing, or handouts. We don't have those rights.
When did it become a problem to be a small businessman and become successful? The small businessman - like my father, or like me?
When did it something of shame or ridicule to be a self-made man in America?
Without failure there is no sweetness in success. There's no understanding of it.
You can get rich making fun of me. I know. I've made lots of money making fun of me.
You know, we all have our inner demons. I, for one - I can't speak for you, but I'm on the verge of moral collapse at any time. It can happen by the end of the show.
Bill Maher Quotes I love
I do think the patriotic thing to do is to critique my country. How else do you make a country better but by pointing out its flaws?
Kids. They're not easy. But there has to be some penalty for sex.
Let's face it; God has a big ego problem. Why do we always have to worship him?
Let's make a law that gay people can have birthdays, but straight people get more cake - you know, to send the right message to kids.
Maybe every other American movie shouldn't be based on a comic book. Other countries will think Americans live in an infantile fantasy land where reality is whatever we say it is and every problem can be solved with violence.
Religion, to me, is a bureaucracy between man and God that I don't need.
Suicide is man's way of telling God, "You can't fire me - I quit."
The Bible looks like it started out as a game of Mad Libs.
We are a nation that is unenlightened because of religion. I do believe that. I think religion stops people from thinking. I think it justified crazies.
We have been the cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it's not cowardly.
To me a real patriot is like a real friend. Who's your real friend? It's the person who tells you the truth. That's who my real friends are. So, you know, I think as far as our country goes, we need more people who will do that.
What Democratic congressmen do to their women staffers, Republican congressmen do to the country.
We need more people speaking out. This country is not overrun with rebels and free thinkers. It's overrun with sheep and conformists.
Whenever the people are for gay marriage or medical marijuana or assisted suicide, suddenly the "will of the people" goes out the window.
When you want to make it clear to the rest of the world that you are not an imperialist, the best countries to have with you are Britain and Spain.
I have a high state of resentment for the conformity in this country. If you`re not married and having children, it`s like your life is empty or you`re a communist meanie.
When we talk about values, I think of rationality in solving problems. That’s something I value. Fairness, kindness, generosity, tolerance. When they talk about values, they’re talking about things like going to church, voting for Bush, being loyal to Jesus, praying. These are not values.
Welcome to the camp
ReplyDeleteKids naturally do get their qualities from their parents, and through their own lives they are suppose to improve and refine them. It is a strange, as many posters have pointed out, to think of oneself as a cross between Maher and Beck, but not too uncommon, contrary to what few people around here may think. Maher and Beck are two polar opposites of left and right spectrum of the current thought, although Beck has been going through a slow and painful recovery (it really pains me to see him stumble through his "liBECKtarianism" every now and then.
You call yourself a libertarian, and righteously so, because you believe in the firm principles that created this country, and influenced many others to espouse individual liberty and the diminished role of the state for centuries now.
Both left (on individual freedoms) and right (on economic freedoms) are easy for you to comprehend, because of your pure libertarian roots. As I have pointed out, libertarians are not either left or right...that would be like comparing libertarians to the likes of communist China and Hitler's Germany.
It is the truth that "conservatives" today are more libertarian on economic issues (unless it comes to military industrial complex and war), as much as the "liberals" are more libertarians on social issues (unless it comes to the government interfering in the free market forces to preserve status quo).
Republicans and Democrats the the two wings of the same bird. According to your statements, you belong in the bird-shooter camp. You are a radical because when you see something wrong, you want to change it immediately. You are a liberal because you believe that your gay neighbor should be allowed to marry and smoke pot all they want, because both marriage and pot legalization today are defined by the state, and by the definition, the state should never have anything to do with either one of those. You are a conservative because you believe that "too big to fail" institutions should and must fail and not suck out the tax revenue from the working people. You are all that...and by admission, you are a libertarian.
As a long time member of Libertarian National Committee, I have to welcome you to the camp. We are glad you're awake. We are glad that you know what's going on around you. We'd be very glad to see you never again wasting your vote on either one of the extremes you outlined in your post, because if you do, they win. They win for as long as there is either a smidgen of their doctrine left to rule over us. Be a radical. Demand a change now. You will be hunted down, but prevail. There's only one common denominator in this country, and that's libertarians. That's what the founding fathers had in mind when they declared "The government shall not...".
You will be called a kook, an extremist...the enemy of the state, but as I see it, that is the highest of all callings in the history of human development. State stifles individual. With enough time, the individual liberty always prevails.
I hope to see you at the finish line of our current struggle victorious.
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In Liberty!
I will always be a champion of liberty. I agree with you completely. I wish these kinds of views were more common on the national political stage. I think there are a lot more people out there than think this way. Thanks for the post!
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