Some history for you, for those who don’t believe that governments stage false flag incidents (including terrorist attacks on their own buildings and people):

1. Most historians now believe that the Reichstag fire of 1933 was an inside job, done by the Nazis themselves and blamed on Van Der Lubbe.

2. The Gleiwitz Incident, in which Germany dressed up dead Polish soldiers at the German-Polish border and said they attacked a German radio tower (a false flag incident), was how Germany invaded Poland.

3. Mukden Incident – Japan blows up part of its own railroads and blames it on China. This serves as the pretext for their invasion of Manchuria.

4. Northwoods Document of 1962, declassified. In it, some Joint Chiefs of Staff proposed killing American citizens and blaming it on Cuba to start a war with Cuba. Thankfully (due to Kennedy) this never got implemented.

5. Gulf of Tonkin never happened.

If you’ve read the Federalist papers, and the writings of Thomas Jefferson, you would know that the Founders were skeptical of government power, as am I.

Government is not your mommy! It says it wants to use your tax dollars to help the poor, but in reality it enriches the corporations and the military industrial complex. Government is Force! You think it’s bad if the government can’t borrow? How about our $9.5 TRILLION DOLLAR DEBT????

How about if instead of forcibly taking money from our pockets, the government can ask for donations, and anyone who wishes to donate to the Treasury for “ABC Government Program For the Children” can donate.

KTK, I’ll make it really simple for you. The government is like Ted Bundy. It’s actually worse because its powers of force and confiscation have killed millions of people in Iraq and around the world.

Do you want this evil powerful Leviathan to be responsible for helping the poor?

The Constitution was designed to limit the size and scope of the Federal government! People need to learn some history.

At any rate, I thought my point was fairly simple. McCain and Palin are each loosely, but significantly, linked to radical (in the literal sense) parties that are deeply opposed (in the “want to do away with” sense) to fundamental aspects of the basic system of American government. It’s more than just guilt-by-association, as with Obama’s pastor: each of them explicitly sought endorsement by people who had run for the highest executive offices as official candidates of parties dedicated to repudiating all or most of the functions of the US federal government, and who then retreated back to, and were officially embraced and nominated for office by, the “mainstream” party that McCain and Palin are now part of. Palin has herself given invited addresses at a secessionist party’s official convention, at least three times, including twice while serving as a governor elected from the Republican party, and her husband was a member for years..

The two parties in question are very different, but the common element is that both halves of the GOP ticket – now standing as candidates for President and Vice-President of the United States – are linked to, and have sought or received endorsement by candidates of, secessionist or quasi-anarchist parties. In addition, their political party has repeatedly made itself the home of former Libertarian Party candidates who hold that many of the ordinary and traditional functions of the US government are actually illegal, one of whom is still closely linked to that party while also an official GOP primary-race candidate for president.

My suggestion is not that the two parties’ platforms are alike in particular detail, but only in that they both largely repudiate the US government – and McCain and Palin have both flirted with those parties knowing they take those positions. In light of this, and their own constant harping on “smaller government”, I think we are entitled to ask about McCain and Palin’s commitment to the US government as a legitimate repository of authority, and their plans for using that authority if it is granted to them. I think we are entitled to ask why anyone who, at least implicitly, endorses or consorts with a political party whose basic platform is that the US government is illegitimate should be given top executive power within that government. I don’t care about the AIP or the Libertarian Party – they are radically opposed to our nation’s political system, but as political forces, they’re negligible. I do care that the President and VP candidates of the party currently in power seem to share the beliefs and goals of those parties – which makes them very much non-negligible – and I want answers about that.

I’ve got no particular interest in defending the bits and pieces of big-L libertarian theology, but I think, KTK, that you might be stating things in a slightly biased manner. I also dunno if it’s just my reading or if you did this by mistake, but the method of writing you picked makes it look as though the Constitution-party-affiliated AIP is similar in policy to big-L libertarians. They’re fairly economically libertarian, but socially heavily conservative.

Please do try and make it a large issue. I’m certain that, of all the policies out there, you really want to make the election about Obama’s AmeriCorps 2,000,000.0, complete semiautomatic gun bans, and abortion against a Republican ticket that will try its damnest to be about reasonably small government, lawful gun ownership, and against irresponsible sex. Those are the strong points of the Democratic movement, resonating with all modern voters.

That seems a particularly bad idea when the best arguments against the concept you can provide takes a post the average viewer would mark tl;dr.