As you look around the headlines today you may see many 2008 retrospectives and they may be saying something about how bad the economy is and how joyous it is that we have the great Obama elected to the White House.
 Let us take a look at a libertarian view of the year that was 2008.
 
-    The media sold out their country in the name of electing a candidate of their own choosing. Journalism literally died in 2008. Attacks against Sara Palin were excessive and ignoring any background to Obama became the normal routine.
-    Socialism on a scale never before scene in this country was ushered in by a Republican President with no where to turn and subsequently embraced by the incoming Obama in what he may see as his mandate of “Change”.
-    The Libertarian Party nominated what looked to be a good choice for the Presidential ticket but then turned out to be no different than the big spending Republicans from whence he came from. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations flushed down the toilet on an incompetent campaign. Where were the commercials on TV and radio again???
-    The Free Market took the beating of a lifetime. Democrats yelled there was not enough regulation on the Free Market, Republicans actually added more regulation to it than in the last 30 years, and in 2005 when Republicans said Fannie May and Freddy Mac would fail if regulations were not placed on them Democrats laughed and said that would never happen. The public forgets and then the Democrats blame the Republicans and then we Libertarians blame all of you for not wising up and voting Libertarian instead of keeping these children in office.
-    The banking system was partially nationalized, the insurance industry was partially nationalized, the Big 3 was partially bailed out on it’s way to being nationalized, the telecommunications industry and the retail industry along with several city’s and states hold out their hands begging for Federal Bailout money.
-    Obama announces his new, new deal which is bigger in scope but just the same as the old, new deal under FDR, the same one that kept the Depression going for an extra 7 years.
-    Colin Powell abandoned his life long principles to vote for skin color.
-    The Federal Reserves plan on controlling everything is closer to reality and very few people actually care.
-    Russia is slipping back into being the Soviet Union but since they are not Muslim it is off the radar of those in Washington.
-    A Governor who knows he is being taped blatantly tries to sell a Senate seat and the world gasps but really folks…don’t you think this kind of corruption has been going on for a long time?
-    Iraq goes into the WIN column and Afghanistan switches over to the “we may have an issue here” column.
-    Obama can not admit that the surge worked but he wants to use it in Afghanistan so he can claim it was his win.
-    The possibility that a non-naturalized citizen became our President and defrauded the nation but we will never know because no one wants to investigate it.
-    The Socialists are coming, the Socialists are coming……never mind they arrived and half of the American people were dumb enough to usher them in.
-    Libertarians received major voting gains of over a million votes in 2 state elections on the local level.
-    The Republicans picked a Democrat (McCain) for their Presidential candidate and then wonder why they lost? People who voted for the Republican ticket were voting for Governor Sara Palin more so than they were for John McCain.
-    A private citizen who we will refer to as Joe the Plumber asked a simple question to Obama which made the world see that he was truly a Socialist. Joe was promptly investigated, attacked, and made fun of by the media and the Democrats. The world outside of America hailed the Socialist views of Obama. And half of the country showed why our school system is an atrocity by saying “this Socialism stuff will be good for “ME” what is the big deal”?
-    On election night celebrities in Hollywood had a collective orgasm.
-    The Republican Parties Brand name was shattered.
-    Freedom took a nose dive.

 And that was the year that was 2008…..plus or minus some details.
 I would urge every Republican out there to join the Libertarian Party so we can take back this country, take back our Freedom, and make our Founding fathers proud. We had some missteps ourselves this year but our missteps we can recover from, especially with more Freedom loving people who will fight for the individual and protect our Constitution.

-Jason Falter
 http://www.lp.org/
www.myspace.com/jasonfalter