Toward a Progressive Libertarian Alliance

TocqueDeville, at Docudharma, on "the myth of the two-party system":

The little joke about putting the interest's name after a politician's name instead of the state they're from -- Max Baucus (D-Wellpoint)-- dates back to the muckraker era. Nowadays, however, the joke would be far more appropriate to replace the party affiliation and keep the state --Charles Schumer (Goldman Sachs-NY)

In fact, when you look at the Senate, with it's binary seating arrangement, you may think you see Republicans and Democrats, neatly divided on each side of the isle. But I assure you this is merely an illusion. If you could see each senator's real affiliation as a little sign above their heads, what you would really see is corporate logos bobbing up and down on the Senate floor.

Robert Higgs, at The Independent Institute, on "partisan politics – a fool's game":

Because I despise politics in general, and the two major parties in this country in particular, I go through life constantly bemused by all the weight that people put on partisan political loyalties and on adherence to the normative demarcations the parties promote . . . Of course, it’s all a fraud, designed to distract people from the overriding reality of political life, which is that the state and its principal supporters are constantly screwing the rest of us, regardless of which party happens to control the presidency and the Congress. Amid all the partisan sound and fury, hardly anybody notices that political reality boils down to two “parties”: (1) those who, in one way or another, use state power to bully and live at the expense of others; and (2) those unfortunate others.