Could someone summarize those videos for me? I had trouble watching more than 5 minutes of the rhetoric and certainly wasn't going to spend 20 minutes. I would, however, like to know what arguing over social programs and speech rights have to do with libertarianism.

Well, except for the wonderful interview with good 'ole Ron Paul who again repeats the concept that the "free market" solves everything. There's no explanation of how exactly it does that.

I don't understand how anyone can say that the government will do X thing badly but a private organization doing the same thing will do it better. That doesn't make any logical sense. Both groups are run by people. Is there something inherent in a crook being in congress or Enron that makes him more or less corrupt in one area than another?

The key difference, however, is that the government is somewhat accountable to the people. Believe it or not a corrupt politician can be voted out or a corrupt judge impeached. You can't do anything about a corrupt CEO.

Now comes the argument "well, someone else will come along and put his corruption out of business!" Seriously? That's your reasoning? A high school economics book might disagree.

We all know that corruption is weeded out by small business. That's why criminal organizations and monopolies do so poorly and small businesses rule the world. Right?

You can't just say "oh, that's because the government is interfering." That's not why. When we adopted a laissez-faire economic structure small businesses didn't rule...Rockefeller did. You think anything computer related wouldn't be owned by Microsoft right now without antitrust laws? Really?

Power congeals. If left alone those who seek power try to put it as centralized as possible so they can control the most of it. I agree with the libertarian idea of decentralization but it's not a libertarian idea. It's the United States's idea of having multiple individual states that had their own sets of rules and power. It was the United States before Lincoln decided to or was forced to violently demolish the sovereignty of the individual states.

But simply saying the problem is the "government" and letting the power pool in the private sector isn't going to fix a durn thing. It would be nice if that were the problem. But it really isn't. Sorry.

Jacquesne