lol, i know but who's elected president in the US will effect the people who live in Europe as well, so that's why I care.
Very true in some ways. Globalization is in full force. Look at what the collapse of the banks and housing industry did to the rest of the world. At least our government is big enough to do these bail outs (even though I am against the bailouts from Congress recently, but that is just my opinion). Some countries have entities who would have bigger GDPs than the countries they're in, and if a bail out were needed, the country could not do it.
Also, I wanna clarify that I don't mean to belittle anyone, or push my views on them. I am open about who I am supporting, but I have also been open about researching and deciding yourself. Only when someone attacked my choice for President did I do a line by line comeback, and in retrospect, maybe I should have ignored it.
It's no secret I am conservative, that I have leanings toward libertarianism and that is going to bias how I reply. However, I am a Decline to State voter with no party affiliation. I hate political parties. I study the issues, listen to smart people on both sides, and make my decision. On here, I do try really hard to present facts, sound theories, and real life examples of how things may affect us, but I don't want to impose my views on anyone. When I graduate college in June I am going into teaching, and I just want people to be aware and think for themselves. But, in order to do that, you have to know each side of an issue.
Is Bob Barr the perfect choice for President for me? No. But in my gut, I couldn't live with myself if I didn't vote for someone who most closely represents my ideals, and whose platform, again IMO, is actually Change, and not vote for "the lesser of two evils" just because they have a chance at winning. IMO, neither McCain, nor Obama, are bringing anything new to the table. Both are parts of political parties that are the establishment, and both parties have changed for the worse (Kennedy's "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country" is so far from the Democratic platform layed out by Obama that the party is unrecognizable, just as the Religious right has made the Republicans unrecognizable).
Those who have followed in Martin Luther King, Jr.'s footsteps are equally unrecognizable from his platform. Black Revs. in the LA Times telling me that I only have two choices, vote what's best for the country, or vote my racial fears? How is that judging a man by his character, and not by the color of his skin?
Unbelievable.
I am conscientious of an exchange of ideas in the public sphere, and not verbal attacks against one another. I do have my views, and I think it's responsible in this exchange to listen, understand, and take into account differing views.
In fact, this is Bush's critical fault. If you're dumb, you surround yourself with smart people. And if you're smart, you surround yourself with smart people who disagree with you. Make no mistake, Bush isn't dumb. He is actually smarter than all of us on this board. The guy may have gotten into school based on family, but they DON'T have to keep you there. He graduated from Yale and Harvard with better grades (albeit slightly) than the "smart" John Kerry. But, make no mistake, as it stands now, I am no fan of Bush. And unless what he started changes the middle east for the better 20 years down the line, he will have been seen as a failure. He surrounded himself with "yes" men, and he had no tolerance for an opposing view, which is fundamentally anti-democratic.
If Obama surrounds himself with extreme leftists, we will be in the same boat as we have been with Bush. Kennedy learned he needed to have people around with opposing points of view, and because of this, he came out of the Cuban missile crisis differently than he had the bay of pigs.
This is also why, IMO, the liberal media demonize someone like Bill O'Reilly. It's BECAUSE he runs as fair of a show as one can. And viewers have responded to it. His ratings are unbelievable. Yes, he is a political conservative, but he is NOT Republican. He runs a fair show, has people on all the time that disagree with him, and he personaly critiques Obama and McCain evenly. They're scared because he does what smart people should do: understand or explore opposing viewpoints. After each issue, at the end, he tells the viewer to decide for themselves. Exactly.
