Republibertariangoodguys suggest reading Ron Paul for all Americans.

[theVOID]

I was under the impression that Hoover made the Depression worse by cutting spending and trying to balance the budget. Far from promoting a stimulus package, he tried the "austerity" of the time. It made the Depression worse.

That's my understanding. I could be mistaken so feel free to correct me here.

I posted data to the contrary you can find near the bottom of the last page.

Let's assume for a minuet that he did in fact cut spending and aim for a balanced budget; Considering just 9 years earlier in the middle of a depression Harding cut spending, lowered taxes and removed regulatory burden which promptly ended a depression you'd find yourself hard pressed to make the case for thrift being responsible for worsening the depression. It's something I see all too often, people when discussing the depressions/recessions of the past tend to stop as soon as they see "Tax/spending cut" and conclude they've found some clear-cut cause and thus don't bother looking for other causal factors or examples of situations to the contrary.

As for the whole debate on Libertarians, it's kind of a moot issue here in America because they always seem to get sucked into to right wing. Republicans seem to do to them when the Democrats do to progressives: make promises and then throw them under the bus after the election.

I think it's more important to consider the influence of the 3rd parties, how much influence have libertarians had on republicans compared to progressives on the democrats? I'm aware of a few examples regarding gay marriage in New York, medical marijuana and Ron Paul getting the Fed audited but beyond that I don't follow any of it too closely, I'm much more familiar with the libertarian influence on our economic right-wing ACT party, they are now more socially liberal than any other party in New Zealand (with possibly the exception of the Greens) and that is due largely to the youth in ACT pretty much all being libertarians.

What about the contemporary progressives? Have they had many solid victories in Dem policy?

The Tea Party is the perfect example. It was started by Ron Paul, hardly a social conservative, but since have been completely absorbed by Palin, Bachmann and other Christian conservatives. One of the primary things the new Tea Party congressmen have done after the election, particularly on the state level, is enact some of the most draconian anti-abortion legislation we've seen since Roe v. Wade. Abortion seems to be high up on the Tea Party agenda, however much they may offer lip service to "less government".

Paul was sadly partly responsible for the anti-abortion legislation, though rather than try and entirely outlaw it like the social conservatives he want's a states-rights approach which, being technically as far as I'm aware "constitutional", is a big red flag on Paul for me, though considering his stance on gay-marriage, drug reform etc he's still largely a social liberal, though compared to the likes of Garry Johnson, who is pretty much the most socially liberal of any American politician I'm aware of, he's about half-way between social liberal and social conservative.

The libertarians have demonstrably no power in the Republican ranks, as demonstrated by how Ron Paul has been repeatedly snubbed despite his 2nd place showing at the Iowa Straw Poll. Why they keep falling for it is beyond me.

It's the media (both liberal and conservative) who are mostly responsible for Paul and Johnson being snubbed, Paul is consistently in position 3/4 amongst GOP candidates, behind Perry and Romney, and Johnson consistently out-polls most low-tier of the candidates like Huntsman, Santorum etc. The most amusing aspect of this to me is not how intellectually dishonest and biased the media is, but how this flies in the face of the people who want to claim that the libertarians are just corporate mascots - the LP and libertarian candidates get less attention from corporate media and get a significantly smaller percent of their campaign funds from corporations.