Limit what government can do so that it can't provide lavish benefits to some at the expense of others and that pretty much solves the problem.

So, pretty much get rid of government, then. As long as you allow taxation, government can provide exceptions to taxes that provide a huge benefit to those favored few. And without taxation, government can do nothing. Everything else is the same: any power to regulate includes the power to exempt from regulation, which provides a huge competitive advantage. Any power to enact laws includes the power to enact loopholes that exempt from those laws, etc.

No wars or economic disasters? Throw in a lack of blatant civil rights abuse and you might have just set a bar no administration has met since Harrison.

Maybe it's your genteel manner of polite debate that has prompted the downmods? Or your charming responses to those who do make a counter point?

Which is actually a somewhat scary conclusion. Are the only alternatives in our political system truly the insanity we see out of the Rs or the incompetence we see out of the Ds? Seems there ought to be some way to set up a system that encourages a sane, competent governing body, but I've yet to see it. The somewhat rare occasions we see competent sanity, it tends to boil down to an individual or group of individuals accomplishing DESPITE the system.

I think the key is to distinguish between Joe down the street, who is a registered Republican, and the folks in the legislature who are Republican. It is pretty clear that the Republican Party, as represented by it's leadership and politicians, is very much more insistent on adherence to the party line than Democrats (as defined by the same metric). Or at least more capable of enforcing such - I suspect Dems would if they could. You are right that it is foolish to make the same statement about the individuals who have no more affiliation with either party than their voter registration, which is most people in the country.

Of course there are ass-hats in both parties, and on every side of any issue. The main difference is that the GOP is a tightly controlled party that asserts firm party discipline. And the party line is major asshattery. The Democratic Party (DP?) is much more splintered. While there is probably just as much asshattery, it is on a more individual basis because the Democratic Party leadership doesn't have nearly as much influence over individual votes. So they can't enforce their preferred brand of asshattery as the party line.

It's none of your business what I think

And yet you and Mr. Card both are expressing your thoughts via a public forum. If you think it is none of my business what you think, keep those thoughts to yourself. As for what is and is not an acceptable boycott, I don't see that I (or anyone else) has any obligation to provide you (or anyone else) my business. Maybe I don't want to shop there b/c I don't like your opinions on the works of Dolph Lundgren. Why shouldn't I base my purchasing decisions on whatever criteria I find relevant? You are welcome to find my decisions frivolous or despicable, but unacceptable to me implies you feel that my decision should, you know, not be accepted. Maybe you simply meant disapproved of?

There is a huge difference between boycotting someone for their views and for their actions. Only the latter is acceptable

What's unacceptable about boycotting someone because of their views?

by 'better place' you actually meant 'more conducive to your pet politics.' Smarmy arrogance like this is why many have problems with the left.

Because the Right thinks the world would be a worse place if their political beliefs were implemented? I don't get how simply believing the world would be a better place if it ran more aligned with how I think it should run is indicative of smarmy arrogance. What kind of psycho wants to see the world run in a way that he thinks makes it worse? What a bizarre, logically devoid justification for disagreement.

social contract theory is neither voluntary nor something clearly negotitated and agreed upon by two parties

Whenever I hear this argument against the social contract, it brings to mind a teenager complaining about doing his chores saying "I didn't ASK to be born!"

This. In school, it was my job to understand and learn as much as possible. It took me a while to realize that learning and understanding are nice in my job, but I'm getting paid to produce solutions. It's somewhat surprising how often I find I can produce a solution without the sort of thorough knowledge of the problem space I pursued in school.

I think it depends on whether you are characterizing Southerners as racist or The South. To my mind, one is a large swath of people that have a wide variety of opinions and beliefs. The other is a historical political/social culture that still has an influence on modern institutions in regions where it was most pervasive at its height. And that political/social culture undeniably has some roots that were planted in racism. Which makes it tricky to distinguish, in modern institutions, what occurs because of the normal stupidity that everywhere is subject to, and what occurs because of the influence of those historical roots.

On the bright side, I do love the irony of athiests letting themselves get drawn into a holy war...

I think this is where a lot of the dispute between atheism is/is not a religion comes from. Non-interested third parties see the rabid fringe of atheists behave as zealous in their proselytizing as any religious zealot, and naturally lump them together as having some agenda around god that they are pushing. When you behave just like the rabid religious zealots, the small detail that your agenda is "No god" rather than "My god" is no more than a technicality to me. The leopard might find his spots to be extremely different than the tiger's stripes, but I'm overwhelmingly more concerned with the similarities between their teeth and their claws.

It's not a slur. The X reference the Greek letter Chi, the first letter of the Greek word for Christ.

Pretty much everything else you said is quite ironic. If you want to have an intelligent discourse, best not to start by taking unnecessary offense at an imaginary slight. If people using perfectly acceptable language that just happens to not be your preferred nomenclature bothers you so much, you should probably reconsider your objectivity.

Ah, and your point is that non US citizens who are admittedly waging a war against all who do not accept their narrow creed

Or even those who are merely accused of such. Or those who are standing too near those are merely accused of such. I'd be all for drone attacks if I believed for an instant that our intelligence agencies were capable of correctly identifying the threats. I mean, who cares if murderers are in turn murdered? The entire problem with vigilantism is its terrible track record of actually getting the right person. And killing someone because you really really believe he is a bad guy, you just don't have any proof, is vigilantism, whether it is Joe down the street or the US president.