Political stances - or - What the hell just happened?

I'd like to think that I'm relatively intelligent and aware of the way things are. After all I've been around for nearly half a century - probably at least half of that somewhat aware of my place in society and the eternal loop of life and death.

Like a good number of persons of my generation with no true promise of a future and no funding for college (or grades to support scholarships) I elected to join the military - for what was supposed to be a single tour. Eighteen years later I found myself retiring during the Clinton draw down of the military forces.

While I never saw any combat or direct combat support - I do subscribe to the attestation of President Regan that the American military helped defeat Communism and con the cold war. I was part of that.

When I graduated high school politics was a blur to me. I didn't know one party from the other. After my time in the military I counted myself as a Repbulican. Again withotu truly knowing what that meant. Now I consider myself to be more of a Libertarian. Most of this "growth" has simply been a name change. My core beliefs in our society have never truly changed.

I am a firm believer that the individual is responsible for themselves. We are all given the same opportunities. In my degree program I had a class in Cultural Diversity where the professor postulated that some person in this country are not aware of the opportunities because they don't know what questions to ask. To this I reply balderdash (well stronger words). In this day and age of mass media you have to be deaf and dumb not to know about opportunities for education, job training, etc. The individual chooses to not take advantage of them.

I am also a proponent that the money I earn is just that - MY MONEY! I may have to pay taxes, but its MY money to pay. Not pay in to give to someone else. pay in for my share. The ones getting my money better damn well be doing something positive and paying their own taxes.

Which leads me to the government in general. I can't tell you how I came to this, but I realized very early in life (High School) that this country was founded as a collection of States. Each of these states voluntarily joined into a Union for the common good and defense. Thus the federal government was born. To provide for common defense, common trade, international relations. NOT to control the states. In fact the states are supposed to be in control of the federal government.

And yet we have just (2008) suffered through yet another vainglorious politician evolution of greed, blatant out and out lies and grandstanding of the worse sort. Frankly I never paid attention to Obama before the election. Never looked into his past or any of the other issues. I was a Repbulican and I voted straight Republican because the alternative was NOT something that I belived in. But hey, we've had Democratic presidents before. So if the worse happened - how bad could it be.

Well I never envisioned anything of this magnitude. People voting for a president NOT because of what his positions were but who he was - worse insinuation was just because he was black. Well I'm here to tell you that from my perspective we have just elected what could very well be the beginning of the end of America as we know it. I don't truly belive that he will declare a dictatorship - not even given a horror of eight years of this. But he has done more than enough damage already (and not even 6 full months in) to jeopardize our national wealth and international standing. And with that damage comes the very real perspective of internal strife and potential attacks within the continental boundaries.

For that reason alone I'm pissed. In researching politics in general I have come to believe that I am more of a Libertarian than anything else. Unfortunately without some miracle the number of people who feel that way will probably not be enough to overthrow the standard political parties - or even make them sit up and take notice. And we'll be stuck with politics as usual for our lifetime.