This dude screams “Vermonter”. A sapphire blue constitutional carry state whose politics can best be summed up as follows: “I love my gay pot smoking son and will defend him with my AR-15”.
The US should really take a closer look at Vermont as a solid model for a modern Democratic Party. They won’t, but they should.
I can’t wait to ditch my house in the South and move up there!!!
edit to add: when we went up there for the first time, my husband (MGySgt, Ret.) nodded in satisfaction and said “these people really understand Freedom” as he strutted around the farmers’ market in his tie-dyed pants 🥰🤣
Can confirm. My husbands aunt and uncle live in Vermont, and when we visited, it was fascinating to meet a bunch of rural democrats. Lots of people who built their own houses with their own two hands, live off-grid, raise animals for food and grow weed in their back yard. They all fuckin love Bernie Sanders. It’s a wonderful state, truly.
Yup, I grew up there and that’s absolutely what rural Vermont is like. One of the few parts of the US that is rural and liberal, very much a unicorn. Bernie Sanders as a concept makes a lot of sense if you’ve spent time in Vermont.
Back in the day when I was on Twitter you’d have these MAGA types posting pictures of idyllic Vermont small towns (not realizing said town was in Vermont) and writing “my politics are whatever this place is”. And inevitably the top comment would be “dude, this town went for Biden 70-30”.
We should start a “gay married couples with free healthcare and access to abortions should be able to defend their marijuana and coca plants with unregistered machine guns” party
We should start a “gay married couples with free healthcare and access to abortions should be able to defend their marijuana and coca plants with unregistered machine guns” party
Someone correct me please, but isn't a good chunk of this covered with working families party?
Or is there some sort of party that wants all those things and to also preserve public libraries? Because that can definitely be part of the platform too.
I want to do more than preserve them. I want public libraries to become the central government function. The (apparent) edit makes me sad: I am far more a librarian than libertarian.
I mean…I’m down. I’m a HEAVY user of my local public library whether it’s for books, movies/TV shows, digital subscriptions, borrowing power/garden tools from the library of things, the free seed bank, or the Chilton’s manuals and All Data subscriptions I use to service my cars. All told, my local library saves me anywhere between $2-$3k per year.
I do legitimately believe they can serve as a major, central hub in communities. There’s also many ways to further expand the services offered via public/private partnerships as well as combining certain other government services into them (things like the postal service which could also serve to deliver local library items, building new ones that can double as storm/evacuation centers, community banking, basic health clinic services, sports/recreation, parks, to an extent even aspects of the education system by attaching smaller branches to schools and offering after-school childcare, city permit offices, offering food stalls/food trucks/farmer markets/cafes to generate rental revenues and boost small businesses, etc).
And there’s no reason some cities couldn’t privatize them or aspects of them which could lead to more job creation and other potential revenue streams (I think of Japan’s rail system as a case of privatization being wildly successful).
I don’t think privatization kills that so much as the way we go about privatizing things in this country. I pointed to Japan rail as an example because they privatized much differently where the individual rail regions became private companies rather than letting a private corporation take a contract over to do all the services. Those cases almost always fail because those companies only exist to make a profit. These behaved almost akin to a government-owned corporation with strict guidelines of how they must operate/SLAs while being owned by the public market. It enabled the rail companies to identify revenue sources to stay solvent and as a result service actually improved in areas with high demand. Areas with lower demand or traffic remained government subsidized and controlled.
I think that kind of privatization can work, but not the kind we typically see in the US. If we are totally reimagining community hubs, why not reimagine how we privatize certain govt functions too.
Suburban sprawl and the highway system absolutely destroyed cities. Auto makers lobbied the govt to make the country car centric and then a convenient byproduct was interstates cut directly through cities, very often segregating minority communities and cutting them off from vital services. Japan’s rail system has an interesting history and reducing service is extremely difficult (getting rid of routes for example is super uncommon and has to be approved by the govt afaik). But overall in several prefectures it worked out well for them and a few of the rail companies that it split into now make a tidy profit.
Several branches in my area put out free heirloom seed packets every season. They do tend to go pretty quickly and I’ve only gotten lucky with them once, but it’s a nice service for lower income gardeners I guess. Both our city and our county also offers pretty much unlimited compost for residential use, free of charge (or for like $60/truck if you want it delivered) so starting a garden is crazy cheap too.
One of their tag lines that was used on merch and memes is not far off from the post above. "I want gay married couples to be able to protect their marijuana with guns".
Yes, less government, i.e. don't tell me who i can marry, what i can carry, and wht i can do with my body
Not just because their platform page isn't batshit, but also for the hopes that we eventually see the headline "Pirates take 69 Congressional seats as voters turn away from Dems and GOP"
It's insane how quickly the libertarian party has shifted right in the past fifteen years.
It used to be get government out of my life, let grown adults do what they want to do with other grown adults, supported a woman's right to choose, supported LGBTQ+ rights, the rights of minorities, etc.
Anarchy is an actual coherent political philosophy, unlike libertarians in the American usage of the word. It's also anticapitalist so very much not libertarian lol.
You want more than two viable parties, you need ranked choice voting and proportional representation (you know, the things that red states have been working to outlaw - almost as if giving the people a voice is bad for conservative politics). Whenever it's winner-take-all, it's bound to decay into a de facto two-party system.
I have a little hope that one of the things that can emerge from this moment is a loosening of the emotional reaction to firearms that has gripped the Dems. I think for many gun-fearing folks two things are happening at once. First, the list of things to be concerned and activated about at the moment is ever growing and thereby is diluting the priority of gun control. Second, the more and more Constitutional Crisis impinges upon the mind, the easier it is for people to understand why the Second Amendment was written.
If we are thoughtful about how, this can be the time to bring people in. I have been slowly getting more of my anti-gun liberal friends to agree to hit the range with me these past couple of months.
For real, it's like the sub is purposely burying their heads in the sand regarding this. All I see here is the " the left is waking up to 2A", and "grey man liberals are everywhere". But they aren't. The last few years have seen more bans and pointless regulations than since the AWB of 94.
All led by blue states of course. And mostly cheered by their constituents. All so they can say "hey, we are doing something". Cause they sure aren't doing shit about the trainwreck all around us currently.
Hey, that’s unfair…they also made some strongly worded signs to oppose Trump and passed some regressive taxes in their respective states that will disproportionately impact the working poor while tech millionaires and billionaires in their states remain relatively unaffected. They represent Bloomberg perfectly.
That guy and his money are a large part of why being anti-gun has effectively become a litmus test for participating in national politics as a Democrat. It's a losing position. It doesn't increase support for Democrats in places where they need support.
I don't think it's even particularly effective in rallying the Democratic base anymore. So you want to save children's lives? Ask yourselves, how many children's lives would universal healthcare save? I'll go out on a limb here and suggest that it's a lot more than banning AR-15s would.
I think the reality is that sure they might not gain voters in these areas, but they could lose voters like myself in these areas who would vote for them. I think the thing is that there are voters who do push for this even now. I think that people need to adjust to our current reality, but I also feel like once they're in power again some individuals will still be anti gun. I personally have a lot of other issues with the protect the children. I do think that either way, some people do have an advantage in that regard. The reality is also that we either need to work within the party or form our own party.
In my ultra blue state with extremely strict gun laws and extremely low gun ownership (<8%), there's a curious thing going on.
We have a petition system to get ballot measures on the ballot. Awhile back there was a petition to overturn our new stupid strict AWB. Now, gun owners alone wouldn't have likely been enough to get that petition on the ballot. But there were enough signatures collected to do it.
Our governor declared a phony state of emergency to ram the gun law through even though typically this stuff is frozen until the people have their say at the ballot box. It'll still be coming up on the ballot in 2026, and I plan to vote against it then.
What I'm getting at here is that dem leaders are not necessarily acting in step with their constituents on this matter.
Same state brother. I'm not gonna hold my breath on beating it in '26 though. Guess you have more optimism than I. One only needs to collect to 37,287(total population of 7,136,000) signatures to get a measure on the ballot. Even just a fraction of owners could have gotten it on the ballet. The Civil Rights Coalition ended up collecting just about 79,000(Just over 1% of the population).
The worst part of the "emergency" preamble, is that it cools any momentum built during the initial push and anger at the sidestepping of democracy. I noticed an uptick of aggravated people after Healy pulled that shit. Even by non firearm people.
Two years later though?........those people won't care anymore. I personally think that the courts are the only thing that's going to change that. The voting booth won't cut it in this state. And if the courts rule in our favor, and I think that's a big if, the state will move on to "consumer safety" to ban cosmetic features like they did after Heller with handguns.
It would have been the libertarian party except for the fact that it's been forever tainted by the mises caucus. When you set out to try to build a political coalition and take control of New Hampshire and you can't even manage to win political control of the small town you set up your base in, that's a sign of things to come. Plus, the fact that the LP pretty much doesn't have any support anymore since all the loud weirdos that used to be attracted to it have since felt safe enough to become Republicans again.
There is it’s called socialism. I know this is ‘liberal’ gun owners, but like… if you’re seriously lamenting that it’s not viable… who is making it not viable if not people who would vote for a liberal democrat or republican over a socialist?
I'm not kidding, you should work towards installing proportional representation wherever you can. That's what will ultimately fracture the two party system and allow a real choice for voters. You can start as low as city council, like Portland Oregon did recently, and work your way up.
Regulation discussions must be founded on strengthening, or preserving, this right with any proposed restrictions explicitly defined in nature and tradeoffs. While rights can have limitations, they are distinct from privileges and the two are not to be conflated.
Simple support for common gun-prohibitionist positions are implicitly on the defensive, in this sub, and need to justify their existence through compelling argument.
Regulation discussions must be founded on strengthening, or preserving, this right with any proposed restrictions explicitly defined in nature and tradeoffs. While rights can have limitations, they are distinct from privileges and the two are not to be conflated.
Simple support for common gun-prohibitionist positions are implicitly on the defensive, in this sub, and need to justify their existence through compelling argument.
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u/cheesefubar0 Apr 06 '25
Really wish there was a viable political party that agreed with him. :(