Maybe Shortbus is the new Deep Throat

Nick Gillespie wants us to know that he was thinking of couples porn while reading Kos’ lead essay at this month’s Cato Unbound.  I have only one request–if at any point during reading one of my entries you start thinking of porn of any kind, please do not say so.  Anywhere.  Unless you’re an attractive woman.  Who doesn’t know my wife.

Nick’s points are all well-stated and well-researched, and largely reflect the libertarian blogosphere’s reaction to Kos, Bruce and Harold that’s already out there.  Except that Nick must have a “fluffer” to help him with the huge amount of linkage he puts into his post.

I just had a couple of (non-porn) thoughts while reading Nick’s post.  First, should libertarian Democrats become a fully realized demographic within the Democratic party, are Democrats such as Kos and Bruce and Harold fully aware of the challenges of incorporating their ideology into the Democratic platform without forming a schism within the party?  To that end I take some exception to Nick’s comment:

There’s little doubt that the rise of libertarian Democrats would be a great thing, or at least an interesting political development. It would be especially beneficial for the Democratic Party itself . . .  

Maybe the GOP can get away with tossing aside “Goldwater” conservatives if their base is tight enough with the Religious Right, but if the Democratic Party becomes ideologically split over the appropriate scope of government that would be a major issue to overcome.  Given all of the differences Nick points out, is it realistic to think that anything resembling a cohoerent party message can be put together?  And isn’t a lack of vision one of the things Democrats are criticized for? 

The other thought I had is that Democrats really need to do a better job taking their big picture ideas and determining whether they are really compatible with the actual programs and proposals being put forth.  Here Nick did an excellent job of taking the broad and vague platitudes and saying “Hey, wait a minute, aren’t you guys actually proposing  . . . .”  Somebody in the leadership of the Democratic Party needs to reverse engineer their own platform–don’t start with the big picture ’cause it’s plain the big picture stuff isn’t compatible with what’s actually going on in Congress.  Start with all the programs and policies proposed by Democrats over the last six years and say “what do these things have in common,” and keep backing upwards from there until they’ve figured out what their big picture themes actually are.  If they’re not happy with what they see, you can’t just change the big picture words, you’ve got to start at the bottom for any alteration of theme at the macro level to ring true.

Oh, and here’s Shortbus.  I don’t expect it to make it out to our corner of small town middle America.  However, just to close the loop, if at any point during this post, or any post on this site, you started thinking about porn, I recommend keeping it to yourself, with the hereinabove-mentioned caveats.