Not a deal- breaker. All of us (not just Mormons and not just right- wingers) have no trouble believing six impossible (and incompatible) things before breakfast.

DrS -- I don't get it either. According to libertarian theology, the State has only two purposes: 1. Enforce contracts; 2. Keep the peasants from getting uppity. Marriage is essentially a contract -- just the sort of thing that government is *for*. If a church doesn't want to recognize marriages between "inappropriate" people, that's their business -- but it doesn't affect, say, child custody.

Sounds like it's time to start mailing those used pads/tampons to some state legislators. After all, there may be evidence of a murder there ...

The disagreement is fundamental. The Libertarians and flat-taxers assume that it's all about individuals; your analogies are about groups. The difference is that Libertarians simply don't comprehend human group interaction, while other types of "conservatives" divide people into "us" and "them" and try to ensure that "they" get as little of the pie as possible.

Cats? That's what the internet is *for*, after all. That, and activism. No cats, no activism. See the Cute Cat Theory of Internet Activism.

My perception of libertarians is that they are mostly psuedo-intellectuals who think that by adopting a simpleminded philosophy they have somehow made themselves smarter than everyone else. When I was in college (back when dinosaurs ruled the Earth) it was Marxists. Same thing. Total incomprehension of how the world, and especially people, work.

Slarti -- To libertarians, it's not what's "fair", it's what you can negotiate, based on market conditions. (See the "iron law of wages"). And remember -- no collective bargaining.

I suspect that the rich "seasteading" libertarians just casually assume that "the help" will do all the work. That's how it works in their lives right now, after all. This idea isn't new -- see Plato's "Republic". But how do you get The Help to work for you? You could pay a "fair wage", but that's a null concept to libertarians. One alternative is Dubai style pseudo-slavery, where The Help has to do everything possible to suck up to the Powers that Be to have any chance of getting home. Another is the "Company store" model from the nineteenth century US mill towns. All the easy credit you want -- but you have to pay it all off before you can leave. The whole thing is an interesting concept, but I haven't seen anything that leads me to believe that they know anything at all about marine engineering, international law, or, for that matter, people.

"I never thought I would be so rich as to have my own motor car, nor so poor as I would not have my own servants." -- Agatha Christie One of the major "social problems" of the nineteenth and early twentieth century was "the servant problem". With the expanding middle class and the movement of the working class into factories, how does one hire reliable servants? From reading literature of the time, work in a sweatshop was *a lot* more attractive than "service". (One was not expected to provide sexual services in a factory, for example.) Yeah, it's a real mindwarp. It's as hard for me to imagine living with servants as it must have been for Mr. Hamilton (or Ms Christie) to imagine living without servants.

Wingnuts want to live in a Chuck Norris movie and can't understand why nobody else does. Actually, they want to live in a Chuck Norris movie *where CN is on their side*. They wouldn't like it one little bit if a vigilante was blowing up their houses and kicking their butts. It'd be amusing to watch -- the wingnuts I've had to deal with are some of the all-time cowards.

Carleton Wu: It depends how you count. We've got a grossly inadequate economic stimulus, Bush's no- accountability bank bailout, a weak- kneed healthcare plan, and a bit less war. Bush's CEO tax cuts are still there. Homeowners and veterans are still screwed. The Democrats had big majorities and the Republicans are crazy as a sackful of weasels. But Obama's kids got their puppy. That makes up for it, right?

That rebuttal is as nice a piece of nothing as I've seen in a while. "But ... we're *good guys* ...". With endorsements from other "consultants" of dubious provenance. Every bit as convincing as the endorsements for quack medicines from "A. B. of Enid, Oklahoma". If they were legit, I'd expect references to police statistics and articles in peer-reviewed publications. However, accusing the VV of publishing the original article to continue profiting from "child" prostitution is, IMHO, actionable libel. (I am not a lawyer, and I don't play one on the Internet.)

Reminds me of the Obama-Keys election in 2004. *Nobody* was willing to run against Obama, so they ended up with an out- of- state loon. The Republican candidate in 2012 will be the craziest one that can actually function in a campaign (that eliminates Palin).

[snicker] Those of us who enjoy tea as a beverage know that the Good Stuff is loose-packed. The stuff that gets put in little bags is floor sweepings. How appropriate.