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A meme machine at work Today I came across this on my wanderings, a US Libertarian Party candidate called Ken Krawchuk who seems to be making some kind of impact, in particular by wiping the studio floor in a TV debate with his Republicrat opponents. A huge haul of votes, forget it, but the serious spreading of some of our memes, definitely. Such as:
We’re letting murderers and rapists out of prison to make room for pot-smoking Grateful Dead fans. That’s insane!
That got a cheer from a mostly college audience. And there was another good one about a handgun being a girl’s best friend. Thanks to Heretical Ideas for the link.
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Right on Ken! Just a note to those of you outside Illinois: despite the Cato Institute’s report about how terrible IL governor George Ryan’s fiscal conservatism is, he’s not all bad. A few months ago, he commuted the sentences of hundreds of nonviolent drug offenders rather than building a new prison. He’s also stopped the death penalty because of massive judicial problems. For being extremely corrupt (bribes, licenses to incompetent truckers, etc.), I like him, but he’s not running for reelection.
In November, the major party candidates are all strongly in favor of drug laws. That still leaves the Libertarian or the Green candidates. Let’s see here eeni-meanie-minie-moe…
I think I’ll stop at eeni.
oh yes! Is the most important of all to just being making the ideas of real liberty public. For this can we learn from the marxists at least for it worked for them to do the opposite!
I saw the Pennsylvania gubernatorial debate with Krawchuk on C-Span. It was SWEET. He exhibited a real force of personality. Well, in the first place simply that he HAS a personality puts him way ahead of the pack.
Yet the personality was scrupulously aimed in the direction of presenting a strong libertarian perspective on the issues.
My favorite response came when he answered some college girl who was quoting statistics showing that all college girls get raped twice or three times every day, and demanding to know what they were going to do about it. After making a couple of basic points, he finally suggested that “A handgun is a girl’s best friend.”
Actually, the state is building a large new medium/maximum security prison near my town — in the total boondocks — so they should have plenty extra room in the system for those nefarious Grateful Dead fans without having to let Mumia or anybody out…. Our state rep lobbied long and hard for it to “bring good jobs.” *sigh*
Yeah, they’re building a new prison, but Ryan did grant early release to 4,500 non-violent drugees in mid-April. There’s still a lot of room for improvement, but that’s a step in the the right direction.