Of course, he voted against the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, and Medicare and Medicaid, just like the GOP managed to be on the wrong side of every great social issue of the XXth century.

But, I guess simplistic rhetoric trumps failed policies, proposals and positions. During the entire Vietnam War, the one group that both Democratic and Republican presidents could count on was those “Free Market” champions. Ditto every war since.

Ditto every disastrous deregulation and ripoff.

Explain your bold “Free market” freedoms to those retirees whose entire pensions were lost in the Enron debacle. In the S&L meltdown of the late (Reagan) 80s, in the most recent wave of bank failures, in the Bernie Madoff ponzi scheme.

Tell them how the “Free market” is going to replace their life savings.

Or, what if it were YOUR life savings? Should we turn as callous ann jaundiced an eye on you as you turn on all others?

The simple fact is that the “free market” has never been free, and the depredations of the last ten years, and the “S&L” crisis of the 1980s are the BEST POSSIBLE ARGUMENTS against an unregulated free market.

Haven’t you been paying attention at all? The “16.75 years” line has to be some attempt at appearing “even-handed” but, frankly, the greatest erosion of civil rights in this country has come at the hands of “anti-terror” and, before that, from “anti-drugs.” And the vast majority of that legislation has come from “free-market” advocates.

This ridiculous notion that you are only going to be responsible for your family and not the “couch potato” is just the same tired argument Ronnie Reagan used to whip up the morons with using his “welfare queen in a Cadillac” mythology:

the idea that some hard-working schmuck (you) is being duped by an Evil Negress (or Couch Potato) who is forcing you to support the Weight of the World (Atlas Plugs) on your broad, muscular, entrepreneurial, freedom-loving, patriotic shoulders.

And I can tell you this, buddy: You have never faced a major medical crisis in your family that cost you out of pocket.

But you will.

And then, these words will be the bitterest tonic you ever drank. We will all toast your brave freemarket fearless libertyousity, and watch you sink into financial oblivion without a soul to know or care that it turned out you WEREN’T an Island, you weren’t a Howard Roarke, designing buildings with pencils he manufactured himself, on paper he made himself, building the edifices with steel he made himself from coal and then coke and iron ore he dug himself, then smelted himself, using tools he machined himself, and, finally, driving the materials to the worksite himself in trucks he built himself, fueled from wells he dug himself, and piped to refineries he created by himself to give his trucks diesel to finish building the buildings that only he himself lived in, lit and heated by electricity he generated himself.

Bravo. You are an island. You stand alone.

You are definitely a rock.

And, seemingly, you reason like one.

There are still deserted islands for Complete Individualists like yourself. Flee to them. But only take those things that you yourself have made from scratch.

Wouldn’t want to impinge on anybody else’s “individualism.”

There’s your “secession.”

Good luck with it.

To me the basic premise is reduced federal government, stop legislating from
the bench, rein in the power of the President, and bring our troops home. Let’s
use the free market to do its job and weed out those companies which don’t have
the common sense to steer clear of ruin. I want to be responsible for me and my
family not the investor who didn’t read his disclosure statement or the people who
won’t get off the couch to help themselves. I understand people need a helping hand
every once in a while but when it goes on for years and years, kid after kid, and
I have to pay higher taxes so a bureaucracy can dole out food and direction to
them it irritates me. Is that an irrational response, I don’t think so.

One thing about loonie Tejanos: they can say the craziest stuff in such a way that it almost sounds reasonable. You’re still talking treason, but positing a virtual impossibility to make it SOUND as though you’re rational.

Trust me, Mr. Kilgore, you’re not. You’re simply insulting, and, frankly, trollish. Mere felicity of expression makes your views no less distasteful and repulsive.

As for re-arguing the Civil War, I presume that you’ve read Aesop’s “The Fox and the Grapes.”