I appreciate your input. I've usually voted Republican because that was the only party interested in smaller government. You are right, however, that the current crop of Republicans are no longer interested in smaller government, only in controling people and staying in power.

If I ever saw a Democratic candidate that said that he believed in property rights and was against wealth-redistribution, I'm sure that I would give him my vote. But somehow, I don't see that happening anytime soon.

I want to know: why can't we have a viable party that is for personal freedom AND personal responsibility. I'm left with the theocrats or the socialists.

If you're concerned about statism, I suggest you vote for Democrats. At least they seem to be able to balance the budget and are much less concerned with what people do in their private lives.

As BletchleyPark said, they are coming for our money. The Democrats have their hearts in the right place, but their hands in the wrong place: our wallets. It is time for the Democrats to embrace freedom, not just for minorites and gays, but for taxpayers and property-owners. The freedom to control your life and what belongs to you, what you have worked hard to earn.

If I want to see church/state separation and smaller government, is there a viable party for me?

Your spiteful afterglow posted above is not constructive or helpful.

I didn't claim it was either. I claimed it was cathartic. This country has been controlled by a cabal of warmongering fanatics for too long for me not to feel joy at the election returns. As I said, however, once the euphoria fades, the real, constructive work of undoing the damage they have done and returning America to the path of sanity will begin.

And overshadowed by the election to the House of the first Muslim is the election to that body of two Buddhists:

Hank Johnson of Georgia
Mazie Hirono of Hawaii

Like the Muslim, both Buddhists are Democrats.

Free markets are good (usually). "Capitalism" is a word often used to cover corporate welfare and other forms of rent seeking, which is not good at all. And it's been a long time since Republicans were the party of less intrusive government in anything other than empty rhetoric (longer than my lifetime, anyway). Why don't you ask Michael Schiavo which party is less intrusive?

You seem to be one of those people under the delusion that the party of Eisenhower and Goldwater is still around. It isn't. There's a wolf in elephant's clothing instead.

P.S. Fire brigades and fires were not originally my metaphor, but Churchill's (who used it as an example of when to reject neutrality); I just embellished it a bit to apply it to the media.

This site should remember that separation of church and state is good; being an atheist is good; smaller, less intrusive government is good; low taxes are good; capitalism is good. Your spiteful afterglow posted above is not constructive or helpful. In a few years, you'll be upset again, "gnashing your teeth" when the public see how much of their paychecks disappear into that big sinkhole in Washington.

Well, those of you who watched the Daily Show last night know that Howard Dean has said they don't plan to impeach him. Most likely they just don't have the majority to do it.

No, not by a long shot, unfortunately - not in the House, and especially not in the Senate. I wouldn't be upset if they tried anyway, as a symbolic gesture. After all, Bush has committed impeachable offenses; for one thing, he admits violating FISA, the punishment for which is up to five years in prison. On the other hand, given that meaningless symbolism is what the Republicans excel at, I'd still be happy if the Democrats decided instead to pass some genuinely realistic and meaningful bills to improve Americans' lives. I just hope they don't hold back on impeachment because they don't want to seem "extremist". That's how they lost power in the first place.

Joe Hardwick:

This post caught me off guard. There is a glaring presumption that your readership shares your political affiliations.

There is no such presumption: I write not to please an audience or to say what I think people want to hear, but to express my opinions. If you don't agree, you're welcome to say something in response, which is why each post has a comment feature. However, the fact of the matter is that most atheists are politically liberal, or at least libertarian, and the Republican party is neither of those things. On the contrary, it is wholly controlled by some of the most regressive and authoritarian elements in American politics at the moment.

The Republican party was founded in the time of Lincoln, for the explicit purpose of supportting those causes for which he has endeared himself in the proud hearts of many Americans, Republican and Democrat alike.

I don't deny it. But the Republican party has done a complete about-face from its founding vision and now stands in unapologetic support of the very causes that people like Lincoln and Jefferson opposed. The Democrats are now the progressive party, which is why I support them.

Democrats are as plastic as Republicans...

Sorry, no. I don't deny that there's corruption, cowardice and ineptitude among the Democrats - truth, that's how they got themselves into the minority in the first place, by refusing to stand up for what they supposedly believed in and instead only advocating positions deemed sufficiently bland and inoffensive. But to say that there is no difference between the two parties is just wrong. The Democrats do stand for the kind of liberal, progressive values that the Republicans do not; it's just that they've fallen short in defending them. Given the role of citizen activism and small donors in this election, and given the many excellent new candidates who won this year, I'm hopeful that there is a new progressive movement building that will remind the Democratic establishment where they came from.

Chris:

The modern "mainstream" press corps is made largely of people who maintain a principled and dignified neutrality between fire brigades and fires (or perhaps more precisely, arsonists), and are very careful to avoid the appearance of taking sides in the controversy over whether or not calls to extinguish the fire are irresponsible alarmism.

Hah, well put, sir! That's a brilliant metaphor that captures the heart of the problem: the mainstream media has so often been criticized for not being impartial that they now think they're supposed to be impartial between truth and falsehood. I wrote about this a little in a post from June, "The Illusion of Balance".

Read Conservatives without Conscience before you try to draw connections between the Republican party of today and the Republican party of even one generation ago.

The party was, quite simply, hijacked.

As for whether Democrats are any different... we'll see in the next two years, won't we? If Pelosi keeps all the autocratic, authoritarian methods of running the House that were pioneered by Gingrich, DeLay and Hastert, then it may indeed be proved that the existing parties aren't significantly different.

Certainly, many of us will be watching. We're not going to tolerate the same garbage in a new bag. But I think there's good reason to suppose that the parties *are* different and the reason you think they're not is the media's longstanding practice of false parity. The modern "mainstream" press corps is made largely of people who maintain a principled and dignified neutrality between fire brigades and fires (or perhaps more precisely, arsonists), and are very careful to avoid the appearance of taking sides in the controversy over whether or not calls to extinguish the fire are irresponsible alarmism.