Do the Libertarians Have It Right?

I have akways considered myself a conservative.  If you look at my profile, it says that my political views are conservative.  However, over the past few years, I have begun to lean farther and farther toward the Libertarian position on most issues.  These happen to be positions that are extremely important to me personally.  I know that this political leaning came about as my freedoms came into focus.  Obama took the presidency, and pretty soon, the freedoms that I had taken for granted for all of my life were being threatened.  So, maybe I'm really a Libertarian, and I just don't know it.

Oddly, I don't feel that my views have changed much for as long as I can remember.  I do feel that the stance taken by a lot of politicians that claim to be conservative has changed on many important issues.  Maybe they feel that they need to move toward the center to appeal to the moderates and independents.  Does that not move the center viewpoint toward the left?  If it does, then conservatives continue farther and farther to the left as they move toward a moving center.  Does that make any sense at all?

This has created a great deal of frustration in me, and I'm sure that I'm not alone.  Today, a winning candidate that is neither a Republican or a Democrat is as rare as hen's teeth.  A true Libertarian voter faced with a choice of a Republican or Democrat doesn't see that there is a "lesser of the two evils."  The Libertarian believes that Republicans and Democrats are exactly alike.  They will either stay at home on election day or vote for a Libertarian candidate that has no chance of winning.  I personally believe that there is a difference between a Republican and a Democrat, but they are getting much closer together than I would like.

I think a lot of voters find themselves in the same predicament as me.  So what do we do?  How can we express our views in the polling place?  How do I get my elected representative to represent my viewpoint?  There are some choices.

• We could write letters and communicate with our Republican or "Blue Dog" Democrat elected officials and tell them when they don't represent our views.  This needs to be done repeatedly until they feel threatened in the next election.  We must steer the Republicans back toward the right to the position they were elected to represent.
• We could stay home on election day, guaranteeing a Democrat win.  Someone please tell me how this helps advance the conservative or Libertarian cause?
• We could vote Libertarian and hope that more conservatives will move in this direction.  In other words, we would be willing to wait on the world to come over to the Libertarian point of view, regardless of how long it will take.  How many years of Democrat control will we suffer through before the Republican party is replaced by the Libertarian party as one of the big two?  Will there be a country left then?
• We could hope for a stealth Libertarian like Rand Paul to win the presidential election on the Republican ticket.  This one might even happen.  I can't think of anything Rand Paul has ever said that I disagree with.  It's almost like getting Ron Paul without the quirks.

To me, #1 and #4 are the only viable options.

The real truth is that the full blown Libertarians I know have a few positions that are just too radical for me.  They seem like conspriracy theorists on some issues.  I hear quite a few anti-semetic remarks about zionist money policies, jews running wall street, and the federal reserve being dangerous.  I definitely agree with them about the federal reserve causing many problems with their Keynesian money policies, but I'd rather not have the anti-semetism thrown in.

I've heard remarks about the federal income tax being illegal and unconstitutional.  Well, the federal government needs a source of revenue to exist, so federal taxes are inevitable.  I do agree wholeheartedly that the government takes way too much money though.  That is done to support a bunch of programs that shouldn't exist.  I will write again what I've written before:  the government is not very good at doing most things, so it should be limited to doing only those things that MUST be done by government.  That means they should take care of national defense, police and fire protection, roads, and minimal law making, but not much more.

I also get the impression that Libertarians don't believe in national defense.  I'm not sure that is a totally correct impression, but the media has tried to paint them this way.  I believe the Libertarian stance (and you Libertarians feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) is that national defense should be used strictly to defend America.  It is not to be used to free the oppressed in other countries or guarantee access to oil supplies in the middle east or even protect our allies around the world from whatever threat they face.  Generally I agree with this position.  I believe that we sometimes have seen expansion of communism or facism or a dictatorship as a threat to our national interest, and we have fought a war to protect our interest.  I'm not sure how anyone could argue that the European campaign in World War II was a bad use of our national defense.

So what about Benghazi?  Why were we in Libya fighting a war?  Would the USA be involved in the war on terror if we had allowed Saddam Hussein to overthrow the government in Kuwait?  Would the World Trade Center towers still be standing?  We will never know, but I suspect the Libertarians have that one right.  We should have minded our own business instead of starting a MessAPolitico.