[PLUG-TALK] straw poll - the Michael Robinson effect

[Michael M. Moore]

On Sat, Dec 27, 2008 at 1:12 PM, Keith Lofstrom <keithl at kl-ic.com> wrote:

>
> Let's make the oversimplifying assumption that Michael is a Republican,
> and that the only alternative is Democrat.  This leaves out the Greens
> and Libertarians and others (including me), but it makes the results
> easier to tabulate.  So here is the question:
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Does Michael Robinson's political writings make you:
>
> (1) More likely to work for Republican candidates
> (2) More likely to vote for Republicans (but not otherwise get involved)
> (3) Not increase your political activity one way or another
> (4) More likely to vote for Democrats (but not otherwise get involved)
> (5) More likely to work for Democratic candidates
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> <http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-talk>


Probably (4), with the caveat that it's not what MR writes, or the fact that
he writes his spew on this list, that push me to (4), but it's the attitudes
his ilk hold that have repeatedly pushed me back into the Democratic fold.
I have a pretty checkered voting history -- Republican, Democrat, 3rd-Party
candidates, I've voted for them all.  This past election I held my nose and
voted for Smith for senator because I really didn't like what I'd read about
Merkley.  I also thought long and hard about whether to vote for Obama or
Barr and I would have to say that's where the attitudes of people like MR
come in.  Every time I get put off by statist, PC irritations on the liberal
end of the spectrum, I am reminded of the statist, theist nutjobs on the
conservative end of the spectrum and find myself choosing between what seems
to be lesser of two evils, so to speak.  There's no question in my mind that
the latter is the greater threat to what I hold dear about the American
experiment, at this point in our history anyway.  I'd be thrilled if the
Republican Party of my parents were to revive, but I'm afraid it's currently
on life-support.

I guess the upshot is, as I get older, I am tending more and more to vote my
fears than to vote my hopes; that is, I'm voting against what I don't
believe in more than I'm voting for what I do believe in.  I could've voted
for the McCain of 2000, the one who stood up to Falwell and Robertson with
the "agents of intolerance" charge, but the pandering McCain of 2008 with
his sideshow of a running-mate was out of the question.

Michael M.

-- 
"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits
drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the
limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so
when it violates the rights of the individual." --Thomas Jefferson
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