Brin: The Transparent Society revisited, P.S.

[Ronn! Blankenship]

Another thought:

Many "decent conservatives" these days are actually [small-l] 
libertarian-leaning in spirit, in that one of the biggest things they 
want (which they saw first the Democrats, starting several decades 
ago, and more recently the neocon Republicans violating) is smaller, 
less-intrusive government that in the words of the old saying stays 
as much as absolutely possible off their (and everybody else's) backs 
and out of their (and everybody else's) pocketbooks.  However, the 
[large-L] Libertarian Party has insured said conservatives will never 
support the LP on a national level or its candidates for President 
because of the national LPs non-negotiable insistence on legalization 
of drugs as a plank of their platform.  While those conservatives not 
only admit that the so-called "War on Drugs" does not seem to have 
worked or indeed done much good at all in reducing demand for and use 
of drugs, but also many of them believe that some of the powers given 
to law enforcement and the courts in the name of said "War on Drugs" 
go too far and have been shown in practice to have been used to 
harass, imprison and even kill under color of law the innocent*, they 
don't see how blanket legalization will reduce the number of people 
who will drive while impaired and then cause accidents or keep drugs 
out of the schools and away from their minor children any better than 
the current laws [fail to] do.

Again, we'd (I consider myself a "decent conservative" even if not 
necessarily everything I have written in these posts exactly 
describes me) love to vote FOR somebody if we had a choice.  So we 
keep asking, "Where is the choice we can vote FOR in the upcoming 
election in November?"

_____
*q.v. the case of the 92-y.o. grandmother from Atlanta whose case was 
again in the news iirc last week.


. . . ronn!  :)