Tuesday November 8, 2022 is Election Day in the United States of America. In addition to Congressional "midterms" at the federal level, many state governors and other more local offices are up for grabs. Given how things shook out over Election Day 2020, things could get a little crazy.
...or, perhaps, not! But here's the Megathread for if they do. Talk about your local concerns, your national predictions, your suspicions re: election fraud and interference, how you plan to vote, anything election related is welcome here. Culture War thread rules apply, with the addition of Small-Scale Questions and election-related "Bare Links" allowed in this thread only (unfortunately, there will not be a subthread repository due to current technical limitations).
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Notes -
Ahh perhaps I was not clear in my meaning here! Mea Culpa if so! I have a hearty level of respect for Libertarians. Most of the truly principled people and even politicians(!) I know are Libertarian or sway that way. But there are in my experience just not that many of you. If most people were Libertarian then I think your point would stand and maybe the world would be better for it. But that world is not as far as I can tell, this one. I exclude Libertarians not because you are wrong or because you don't count but because it is I think a given that a Libertarian would hold that opinion for basically any modern Western polity, so including them in the rebuttal is unnecessary. I really am very sorry if I did not communicate that well.
Having said that, I accept that Libertarians (often? always? mostly?) see themselves as unwilling vassals of our current governments and if that is your view then that makes sense. However there is one difference between you and the UK. The UK government opted itself to join the EU, whereas none of us have a choice as to which polity we are born into and thus bound by. The UK was not a vassal of the EU it was a willing member which traded some responsibilities for some benefits.
If you want to make the Libertarian point that the British people are vassals of their own government and THEREFORE were also vassals of the EU, because the UK government did not have the right to make that trade for them, then that makes sense from a Libertarian perspective. But it is a different thing than the UK as an entity itself being a vassal of the EU and not something that most non-Libertarians are going to agree with. Most people tend to agree that their elected government can take them into and out of various treaties as far as I can tell.
I am not being disingenuous when I say that I certainly did not view the UK as being a vassal of the EU. If for no other reason, that in my view, we were one of the wolves in this scenario, not one of the sheep. (For clarity the wolves would have been France, Germany, the UK and in name but little else, Italy). If you wanted to argue that Greece was a vassal state I think you might be close to being accurate even in my world view.
Sorry again for not being clear about my views on Libertarians and how it pertained here.
No worries. Thanks for being good-natured about the communication breakdown!
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