I used to be a Libertarian, too. But I jumped ship to the Cascadian Independence Party. It's a secessionist group that wants Oregon, Washington and Southeast Alaska to secede from the United States and British Columbia to secede from Canada and form their own nation. There's even a few partisans who want to include Northern California.
Now, that simply ain't gonna happen. The Union ain't splitting up. We saw what happened last time someone played the Separatist game (cough, Civil War, cough). But, the Cascadians do support a bunch of stuff that Libertarianism thought was a very fine idea, indeed. Constitutional right to privacy, decentralized government where the power was in the hands of count and provincial seats of government, defense-only armed forces with a budget similar in scale to that of Portugal (impossible for the United States at large, but workable when your country's populace numbers around 35 million), distribution of goods via railroad, and nobody graduates from school without two or three languages under their belt, among others. The main attraction that I found was that Cascadia would be the tenth richest nation on the face of the planet. Currently, Oregon is in the top five Poorest States in the Union. Want to talk about a rags-to-riches story?
Anyway, like I said, the Republic of Cascadia is a pipe dream. WDC wouldn't let us bolt however peacefully we split off, just the same as there's no way in hell Los Angeles would let San Francisco and up bolt and take Their Water (read: the Delta) with them. We tried to split California. Los Angeles squashed that referendum like a bug. If Oregon and Washington tried to go it by ourselves, California by itself would grab us by the scruff and drag us back onto the Field of Blue, kickin' and screamin'.
I still joined the Cascadian Independence Party, and I voted for pretty much everything running under the Democratic and Green parties.
My political philosophy is party is ancillary, it's the issues. If a Green believes in decentralized seats of power, I'll vote for 'em. If a Repub thinks the government has no place and no say in the bedroom, groovy; I may not vote for them but I won't oppose them. If a Dem openly espouses censorship (like Gore, and Lieberman), not a chance in hell and I'll call his a** out on it (and I did in 2000).
I definitely hear the "vote your conscience" part and to an extent, I do. There's a few measures on our ballot that the progressive side wants us to vote down. One of them prohibits a public sector body (government) to condemn private property so as to buy out said property and then hand to another private sector body (read: developers) to develop. The pro side says that it'll gut city governments' ability to condemn crack houses and eyesores and hamstring gentrification. But if you follow the math, the current law means that you can never truly own your own home, you're only leasing it from the bank until and unless Walmart decides they want to build another supercenter on your scatter. That aside, I fled from the Bay Area in the wake of Dot-Com gentrification. Crack houses and eyesores are bad, but being trampled under galloping urban renewal with only a "shut up and go away" bribe to show for it is worse. Houses with peeling paint, buckling sidewalks and rickety front porches aren't the best in the world but if it means that I won't wake up one morning to find a fleet of Walmart's bulldozers giving me forty-eight hours to pack my belongings and find somewhere else to live before they start ripping my home to shreds, I can live with their existence.
The progressives also oppose a measure that makes it illegal for insurance companies to hike their premium rates based on credit scores. It's in inverse proportion: those with bad credit scores pay more for insurance. You're paying out the nose for insurance, which sucks up your money, which makes you unable to keep up with debts, which lowers your credit rating, which hikes up your insurance premiums, which sucks up your...you get the idea. It's a vicious circle that has the effect of keeping the poor poor. The Insurance Measure would level the insurance premium playing field so the burden doesn't fall on those least able to cope with it.
Anyway, it'll probably go down the tubes. The "agin" side has a very slick and in-your-face campaign to defeat it and they'll probably come out on top. But, everyone I know is voting against Measure 43, which would require 48 hour parental notification of an older teen girl's wanting to get an abortion with no exception in the cases of rape or incest, and for Measure 44 which would allow the Oregon state government to buy bulk prescription drugs and distribute them for really cheap, possibly in line with or even undercutting Walmart and Rite-Aid's new $4 plans. It's give-and-take.
Sorry if I'm going on too long, I tend to go off on politics...kudos to you if you're still with me
