One of my favorite political horserace sites is Electoral-Vote.com. In addition to a daily run down of new polls and current projected candidate electoral counts, there’s usually an interesting commentary from the Votemaster. Today’s commentary mentioned the fight over political party platforms. On this the Votemaster stated:

Nobody ever reads the party platforms anyway, but activists are willing to draw blood to get them their way. It is probably the only aspect of American politics where ideas dominate.

He’s probably right considering that his site generally only recognizes Democratic and Republican candidates. However, when considering alternative political parties, he’s not quite right. As a Libertarian, I know that platforms occassionally are considered sources of ideas for negative attacks. And activists do their darnedest to make the platform represent the philosophy. Usually, alternative political parties and their candidates even express these ideas (often to their electoral deaths). I would say that this is the other place where ideas dominate in politics. But the general reluctance of people to vote for these idea-filled candidates gives us an insight to the American’s regard for the concept of ideas in politics.

The Fourth of July is about grilling, hanging out with the family, fireworks, maybe even drinking a beer. How dare anyone ask me to sign my name to a petition or take a few minutes to discuss issues important to the future of my children’s freedom?

This weekend has made me think that if the people were oppressed in the 21st century, most people would pass on revolution and gladly accept slavery. This also leads me to believe that, while nowhere near perfect, the Founders had guts, something that more and more Americans are lacking now-a-days. That’s bad for the future of America, but great for dictators and other evil-doers.

This evening I rushed home from the make-up fireworks display in Cary, North Carolina’s Koka Booth Amphitheater to watch “The Libertarian Alternative” on Raleigh Television Network’s Channel 10. Raleigh Television Network (or RTN) is one of the community access offerings available to Time-Warner subscribers in Raleigh, North Carolina. “The Libertarian Alternative” is the show that I scheduled and injested to run on RTN for this quarter. As the name suggests, it’s about public policy and issues, except told from a uniquely libertarian perspective.

While I had seen this episode a number of times, I was curious to see how it played on air. It turns out that it’s third weekly airing on Saturday at 11:00pm puts it coming on after a black minister guy giving a sermon. If he only knew that the inaugural episode featured a Thomas Jefferson impersonator. Sorry, no mention of Sally Hemings was made in this episode.

During the entire show, I kept thinking that this Thomas Jefferson bore a certain resemblance to Mike Munger, Duke professor and candidate for Governor of North Carolina. You be the judge:

Maybe that’s a good indication that people should vote for Mike this year. Just be sure to keep him away from the slaves when he gets elected.

The end of the show had wrong contact information that I tried to remove at the studio to no luck as one second of it was still left. Oops. This gave the RTN staff ample opportunity to play a message emphasizing that it’s a community station, just anybody can become a producer, and you might see things you don’t agree with (like more freedom and less government, for example). This was a good transition to the show that followed, “David Young: A Musical Journey“. Amazingly, he can play two recorders at the same time. While I dissed this concept at first, his show may oddly enough be my new favorite show on RTN. Other than “The Libertarian Alternative”, that is.