My condolences. When I was a kid, I identified as a Democrat. Then, I went to college, and started learning about US foreign policy via students from all around the world. That definitely knocked me left. Learning that the US had supported dictators and was involved in overthrowing democratically elected world leaders was a shock.

How does that old quote go again? Something like "the government is like trash: it has to be taken out regularly or the whole place starts to stink"

I agree with you

I'm curious, what about "conservative politics" disgusts you?

the government is way too corrupt to put that kind of trust in imo.
Third-party payers have no incentive to make good choices, so single payer healthcare is bad, just like any other monopoly and as evidenced by the VA.
Charity is a better way to care for the poor than the Democrats' social engineering providing perverse incentives against people pulling themselves out of poverty, which is designed tomake people dependent on the government instead of independent. It works a lot like addiction to mind-altering substances. We need to wean people off while providing a safer alternative (e.g. private unemployment insurance).
I see the government continuing to be mired in the same old debates that already have clear answers while more pressing issues are ignored, no matter how many parties it has. It still has people arguing that there's a right way to do central planning and common ownership despite all of logic and history contradicting them. Meanwhile, the development of AI that could threaten our very existence gets no attention from the government as the warning cries of people like Dave Cullen (Computing Forever on YouTube) go unheeded.
And I see people like you promoting the tyranny of the majority, also known as mob rule or direct democracy, which is exactly what the electoral college was designed to guard against.

@Jnutter819 THAAAAANNKK YOOUUUUUUUU ...Finally, someone else here gets it..

do you even know what fascist means? Trump has a vested interest in not letting the government control business. He does not teach people "strength through discipline" or "strength through community" but instead promotes deregulation (as you pointed out) and individuality. Watch the Wave on YouTube, it's 45 minutes and will teach you more about fascism than years of listening to "Antifa" and their ironically fascist methods of rioting and silencing those who dissent.

War is peace, freedom is slavery, libertarianism is fascism!

That may be the government's job, but it does the opposite all the time. The drug war is a great example of how government infringes on people's rights more than anyone.

Wealth inequality doesn't matter to people who aren't jealously greedy. As long as your quality of life is improving, what does it matter if someone else is getting more money than you? The economy is not a zero-sum game, and taking the money from the rich and giving it to the poor only makes everyone poor.

Governments can't survive without revenue. Good point. Maybe we should cut all the government's revenue so it can die.

@michaelinlivonia You're right, free markets don't allow for corporate monoliths. You know what does? Government. Get rid of that and corporate giants would lose money back to lower classes.

Also, I used to think of them much like you, but the other day I saw a talk by someone high in business that expressed another perspective; they have to pay lobbyists to keep government from regulating them into un profitable beasts. So in that way, it's as much protection money as taxes are. They could be victims too.

@michaelinlivonia Oh I'm not saying I trust them, just that it's a possibility I hadn't considered really, and I don't have enough proof to push me one way or the other. I guess you could say I'm agnostic on that issue lol. That's why the last sentence was in the subjunctive case. In any case though, getting rid of the government would prevent lobbying lol.

@michaelinlivonia I'd say government is the parasite in society, but same difference.

@michaelinlivonia A society that actually allows individuals to prosper?) Excuse me while I laugh at my own grammar nazi humor.
Seriously though, from what I've seen societies that are more libertarian also have greater investment. Maybe that wouldn't hold true if everywhere was libertarian, but Japan lets people start businesses easily and has tons of small businesses IIRC. Also, everyone knows there's a ton of capital in Swiss bank accounts and the Cayman Islands.

@DEricLee Many thanks, but I'm happily taken by a fellow agnostic. Also, your family and friends would likely make certain assumptions based upon our age difference. I hazard I'd grow tired of the stares and lash out at someone, and I'm rather fond of having no criminal record. However, my man is not jealous, so we may continue our correspondence amicably.

Lol, sorry for dragging that out a little. I've always been interested in language, especially its more historical aspects.

@michaelinlivonia "Switzerland and Caymen aren't known as economic powerhouses but great place to launder mafia money and keep capital in its most unproductive form." I didn't say they were economic powerhouses. I said they have a lot of investment. Investment alone doesn't guarantee high productivity. Of course, I find it convenient that you ignored Japan completely.
"Theoretically your argument sounds good except that the most successful, booming economy in the world is heavily regulated and centrally planned China." Is it now? The place with so much pollution its cities aren't safe to breathe in is more regulated than us? The place where workers make what we'd consider a slave wage?
"Another example is the former communist USSR which grew faster than the US in the 70s decade which is amazing considering they didn't run up trillions in foreign debt. Nazi Germany was also an economic success." I think you're missing a couple key factors. One is discipline, the other is motivation. Discipline is one of the central tenets of fascism. Discipline makes you efficient. And when death is on the line, you can be pretty motivated.
"I don't have all the answers but I suspect that economic success of a nation is much more complicated than a nation's political ideology. Ideology is only one variable in a long fluid equation beyond full comprehension." Agreed. That said, though Somalia was terrible before and during its libertarian period, the progress it made in that period was impressive.
"Libertarianism has serious flaws as history demonstrates (toxic water, air, food polution, snake oil, quack medicine, life threatening workplaces, slavery, etc)." Flint, MI had toxic water. Mexico has water that's toxic if you haven't developed immunity. Are these places bastions of libertarians? No. Water is one of the areas Somalia made progress in safely getting to its people.
As to air pollution, we may not have much in America, but that's just because we pushed the business overseas to China. We didn't truly solve the problem with government. The problem can only really be solved by customers refusing to do business with those who pollute. And food? Even Teddy Roosevelt didn't buy meat for a month after reading Upton Sinclair's book The Jungle and you think the government is what made them learn never to disgust their customers again? Similarly, organic food isn't even proven to be healthier and it's beginning to out-compete food that's seen as lower quality. That isn't the government forcing farmers to grow organic, it's demand encouraging market entry.
Snake oil and quack medicine like diet pills, dick enhancement, and alternative medicine? Because those do so poorly under the government lol. You know what they call alternative medicine that's been proven to work? Medicine. I think you already know this, even if you haven't thought about how it's basically a continuation of that wild west tradition of falling for that which is too good to be true.
"It ignores the nature of man and the fact that the upper 1% always acts with overwlming sucess to limit and violate the freedom of the 99%." They do that through government. Libertarianism/anarchocapitalism embraces that reality far more than any statist position. Oh, and consider that even the 99% of Americans are generally the 1% compared to other countries.

@michaelinlivonia I contend that while I admitted that libertarian societies aren't necessarily economic powerhouses, they do have very low poverty and high standards of living. The examples of authoritarian societies you promoted as economic powerhouses are the kind of place you move away from if you can.
Then I gave examples of how the government fails to provide the benefits you attributed to it. I also forgot to mention something: if the water provided by the government is so good, why do water filters and bottled water sell so well?
"I have no use for ideology or dogma.
Abandonong faith is the ultimate liberating freedom." The government is just another god to worship, and faith in government officials is another thing you can abandon to become more free.

@michaelinlivonia "Saying that people wouldn't buy bottled water if gov't water was really better is the same as saying that because most people are religious, atheism is wrong." There's a difference lol. My point was that people are forced to pay for a product they wouldn't choose to buy if they were given a realistic alternative. Religions at least don't force those who dissent to support them, at least without the government. In fact, religious institutions are often maintained primarily or exclusively through voluntary donations. If taxes were voluntary, you'd have a point. However, refusing to pay taxes can get you put in prison, and if you resist, you will be violently forced to comply, if you're lucky enough not to be killed.
Ah, the old "government created things you use!" argument. Xerox had inter connected computers before the Internet, and Steve Jobs realized they didn't know the potential of what they had. How long do you think it would have been before he did what the military took millions (if not billions) to do? Speaking of Jobs, are you replying on a smartphone? If not for the relatively free market that allows for innovation, how much less would you have? Here you are promoting government regulations and monopoly on power while using a computer or smartphone that innovators made to sell to you despite rather than thanks to the government. Oh, and I wouldn't be using the Internet if the private sector hadn't developed it so much. I remember how disappointing it was even in 2000. Competition encouraging the innovation of high-speed Internet instead of dial up and the continuation of that to the streaming abilities of today's Internet is what makes it worth paying a private service provider for.
"If we look at the poorest countries in Africa, we see a strong libertarian presence. Very weak central governments coexist with powerful private individual profiteers who pillage the countries while the governments stand by helplessly. Massive poverty, starvation, disease, etc." Seriously? You not only think that they are libertarian, but that they are poor because they don't have government? Is South Africa libertarian with its ban on guns? Is Egypt a poor libertarian nation with no one people might want to overthrow? Or Libya? Do the slaves in Ghana wish their government was more powerful? Again, I point you to Somalia, which was ruled by a tyrant, then made a century's worth of progress in the short reign of a libertarian. Why is Somalia not a first world economic powerhouse yet? Because some tyrant took it over again.
"But hey none of that is important so long as taxes are low and the rich aren't oppressed the way they are in America, lol." Is the "lol" because you know it's not the rich I'm worried about the oppression of, but every American? The poor may not pay income taxes, but they pay for the government with their blood. If anything, the problem isn't that the ultra rich are oppressed, it's that those who are rich often are thanks to the corruption of the government and those who are poor can thank the government for their poverty too. Besides, first world poverty is rich to the third world. We shouldn't try to make Americans' lives better though because they're rich. [dailymail.co.uk]
"Libertarianism & comunism are two sides of the same coin. Both are cancers to be contained instead of destroyed in order to remind humanity how destructive snake oil philosophy is." Have you ever played games in the Assassin's Creed series? The two warring factions both want the same thing: world peace. The protagonists, however, support peace through freedom, while the antagonists support peace through control. So tell me, "centrist" do you want peace? It's pretty clear comunism doesn't work, so you can either embrace war or freedom. Everything you promote in the government is central planning or common ownership, so embrace hypocrisy or anarchocapitalism at your leisure.

Virtuous buzz words bra

The Tories are the British Conservative Party, currently led by Prime Minister Theresa May. Interestingly - and, some (including myself) might say, fittingly - it comes from an old Irish word tóraidhe which means "robber".

@Jnei thanks, that's cool

@arronpaul46
Thank you

@Jnei Ach, you beat me to it, re: "robber"!

@ailurophile I'm always surprised more people don't know it!