I have a few simple questions for these angry voters and their favored candidates:
okedoke
1) Have you consistently refused to vote for Republicans and Democrats, either by not voting or voting third party?
consisently? no. whenever possible i (like most of the Tea Party movement) like to vote for the most conservative
possible candidate. that's what you missed in your comment about scott brown. if all i did was vote every time for the libertarian party, then what i am doing is throwing my vote to the Democratic party. if, however, i choose to take advantage of the primary process to consistently pull the Republican party as far towards sanity as it can be pulled, then what i am achieving is actual movement in our political process. to cite somone from the opposite end of the aisle; i forgoe the cheap thrill of the conservative pose in return for the satisfaction of conservative results.
2) Do you advocate abolishing or drastically reducing Social Security?
yup. i don't think that simply chucking it overboard is something we could sell to the American people, and to be fair that would represent a refusal to honor a contract with Americans who are near retiring and have been depending on thatmoney. so this is a situation with no "good" solutions, only less worse ones. personally i advocate (as something that would be more politically palatable) a two tiered system; with people having the choice to pick between a privatized and a socialized system, which would have (fiscal reality being what it is) to be means-tested. i agree that the coercion leaves it an undesireable system; and i have no problem with edging that coercion out over time
as it becomes possible. but (again) i would rather actually achieve results rather than have a grand time waving torches and being ignored by the general populace.
3) Do you advocate abolishing or drastically reducing Medicare?
my approach to Medicare is similar to the discussion of Social Security. Medicaid should be totally a state matter.
4) Do you advocate the immediate removal of U.S. military forces from foreign nations, and drastically reducing the DOD budget?
no. i advocate culling many of our overseas bases (in Europe, for example, we have way more than we need), and definitely streamlining our missions and "achieving less with more" via force multiplier forces (advisors and drones paired with local ally forces); but what you are really addressing here is a return to a "fortress America" isolationist approach. I don't find that that has a history that particularly recommends it, nor do i find that it is necessarily the intent of the American founders (who spoke of an American empire, the inevitable conquering of Cuba, Mexico, and Canada, etc; and who claimed the right to control the level of European interaction with the entire Western Hemisphere). I also (this is partially due to my job) recognize that America right now is the linchpin in a system of international security upon which much of 'globalization' depends. right now the world is wealthy because the world has a benign hegemony. if you alter that system to one in which we see multiple competing blocs, then you will see damage to the economic system that depends upon free movement across their borders.
5) Do you advocate abolishing the Federal Reserve system and repealing laws that prohibit currency competition?
a Gold Standard? no, i have yet to see any solid evidence that such isn't deflationary. i prefer to see a severe set of restrictions upon the ability of the government to create and maintain a currency that would remove their ability to inflate. it seems to me (and i don't pretend to be an expert in this) that there should be some kind of metric to which we could tie the growth of the supply of money. Friedman suggested a set percent somewhere between 3 and 5; i would be more tempted to tie it to growth in GDP minus G or some such.