Welcome

Welcome to the opening of the Iowa Libertarian blog.

For the last 37 years, the Libertarian Party (headquartered at www.lp.org), has served as the third largest political party. Centered between the large-government liberal Democrats and the failed experiment of small-government, "conservative" Republican party, the Libertarian party aims at distilling the "best" of the two parties - or at least we would if either of the Big Two were capable of fulfilling their promises.

In the middle-1990s the Republican party promised to shrink the government and turn more control over to private citizens and industry. It claimed its heredity as the party of Regan and Lincoln - that's right, its highest claim was to lineages that lost a *very* recent popular election (Clinton over George H.W. Bush - VP to Regan) and a man, who declared war for the rights of the central government over that of States' rights. With due credit, slavery was wrong and should have been abolished long before the 19th century - I'll mark Regan down for that movement, but to summary declare the States (and imprisoned those who sympathized) - the foundation of the United States (even implies the importance of the original authority in our country's name) - to be illegal so that the national government could assert its "absolute" authority is shameful.

Then we have the Democrats -- benefactors of the most recent displays Republican incompetence. The party that is largely celebrated for the "New Deal" in which they claim credit for spending ourselves out of the 1928 depression. A depression that lasted until the 1940s, that's 12-15 years of dismal failures followed by the freemarkets finally overcoming the government's intervention. So basically the Democrat party's claim to fame is a flaming disregard for capitalism. Ironic considering the economy did what it did once the Democrats couldn't control it any longer. So we have the liberal party which cares less about fiscal responsibility than absolute control. If you were new to the politics of the United States, then it would be reasonable to confuse the Democrats with the Republicans -- thus the environment in which this blog was conceived.