If you needed some of them restated...
I generally enjoyed Jesse Walker's Ten Reasons to Fire George Bush, though the majority of his closing jabs at Kerry are based in Libertarian objections to larger central government and government oversight of any kind. As the host magazine, Reason, is a Libertarian publication (their motto: "Free minds and free markets") that's to be expected.
While I do blame Congress for not taking a more aggressive investigative stand before voting, due to the atmosphere in the US in October of 2001 derived from the "intelligence" that was being attested to up and down before Congress and the nation, I'm not going to hold the Iraq vote against anyone who has since come to realize what a terrible mistake it was. I have a similar stance to the Patriot Act, as it was rammed through Congress with such a sense of alarm and panic it may as well have been riding in an ambulance.
As someone who believes that something at least approaching a national healthcare system should be a strong, short-term goal for the US, I obviously don't have the objections Mr. Walker does to such government programs. I'd looked into the Libertarians years ago, but soon concluded that their every man for himself system of social and economic survival of the fittest is a far harsher nation than I want to bequeath to my children.
I do, however, fully support the rise of Libertarian candidates, especially for local offices (which is where they have to start if they're to grow as a party), not only to enliven the debate but to provide some tempting choices for those people (especially here in Pennsylvania) who have been voting for the GOP candidates for essentially Libertarian ideals (ie less government, lower taxes, and no gun control) which the GOP has convinced them they stand for.
Though Kerry is flawed and far from my conception of an ideal candidate, I would feel far safer with a calculating politician in office than I do with the dangerous man-child currently in office, with his view of the world that is frightening in its Biblical simplicity. Someone who insists on dividing the world into Us & Them camps where I find myself repelled by both sides as he defines them isn't someone I want directing the fate of a nation and, by that nation's preeminence and power, much of the world.
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