Meet Germany's new Libertarian foreign minister:

[daedalus_dude]

Here he talks about Germany's ambitious new goals for the future:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLYGPWQ0VjY

Hopefully he will be ambitious-and-competetive-in-the-global-competetive-ambitious-economy enough
to learn better english.

On a side note: He is a shithead but he is an openly gay politician with a now important role. Perhaps it will have some sort of positive impact for gay rights.

edit: in case this comes across as an "arrogant american" remark. i am also a german and as my german-half i express my embarassment.

[JackRiddler]

1. I don't know if "libertarian" is the right translation for the FDP...

They're neoliberals, certainly, and that's their central thing. They're also social liberals. But of the "respectable" kind. Do they advocate legalization of drugs? I forget.

[daedalus_dude]

2. Like most Libertarians, their main agenda is getting a tax cut.

They occasionally talk about social liberties when it helps their career. Like against the smoking ban in bars. But if the conservative party that promised them a huge tax cut would suggest cutting those liberties, they would be fine with it.

[JackRiddler]

3. Yeah, with the FDP, it's always about the money.

Linke + Greens are now over 25 percent! I'd like to see any leftists still in the SPD join Die Linke and unite with the Greens - except that half the Greens are secretly FDP!

Four years of CDU is a risk, it can always turn into forever - I remember Helmut! But now they will be responsible for their own unpopular policies, people can no longer blame the SPD. So this might end up as a good thing for the left in the next election.

Whether the left will ever really be a good thing for the people is another matter. They always seem to act differently once in power, have you noticed?

[Democracyinkind]

6. LoL. Gregor Gysi... you're kidding me, right? Those aren't really leftish people.

Funny thing is, the only reason these kooks have gotten a swing is because they finally had the guts to invest the millions they stole from the DDR into the campaign. It's a fucking joke. The party is full of criminals, crooks and crazies.

For all their talk about general strike and the great Kladderadatsch those are business men, men accustomed to a very peculiar form of business that has rightly been discarded 20 years ago.

While I sympathise with the people who vote for them it's a shame these people didn't cast their vote for the greens or made an effort to create a non-suspect "new socialist" movement, not one contaminated with the worst of german politics of the "left" spectrum.
But I can totally understand the frustration with the SPD, wouldn't know what I would have voted for... Germany lacks a good Green-liberal party, unlike most other European countries.

[JackRiddler]

8. Sigh. More demonization of people, instead of looking to the politics.

Do you prefer a neoliberal program a la SPD, but with totally boring people who cannot be demonized like Gysi?

As for the Greens, after all that struggle for peace they voted for the first NATO out-of-area attacks ever! I'll take LaFontaine over Gysi, thank you.

It's very easy to attack the existing party and imagine what you'd prefer. But it's so many miles ahead especially of the SPD, which ahem, just spent the last four years holding up a CDU government!

[Democracyinkind]

10. Trusting crooks and criminals is a bad idea. The leadership of the "linke" is both.

That's so well documented. I'm not demonizing people, just stating facts. I would love to see a genuine left emerge in Germany. But I'm old enough to know that trusting Gysi or Lafontaine is not worth it.

[JackRiddler]

11. What the SPD has done in power is even better documented.

And I hear Mr. Hartz is in prison now?

Schroeder went straight from Kanzler to Gazprom or some such, no?

I'm sure we can agree the CDU-CSU is full of outright thieves: in Berlin, in Bavaria, to say nothing of Kohl's cash dealings.

None of this is happy, or justifies bad business in Die Linke. But when you instead get most excited about Gysi and LaFontaine (what did HE ever do?), it indicates to me you've accepted a demonization, or have a political slant. Sounds to me a bit like our own right-wingers going crazy all day about someone's associations with Farrakhan or Rev. Wright or Chavez. Let me know if that's not really how you feel.

The first question has got to be about a party's program. The SPD's problem is not that they implemented a program by Mr. Hartz who turned out to be corrupt, it's that the program was neoliberal and right-wing. They need to go to the left or get out of the way.

[Democracyinkind]

15. Then let's make it about the program: Die Linke really doesn't have one.

I agree with most of what you say. All I'm trying to say is that that die Linke is simply not the alternative people have been waiting for. But I'm just as much dissapointed with the SPD, and I have no sympathy at all with for the CDU. If anything, I'd wish that those old boned fat cats in the SPD would get replaced with real social democrats.

While the catch phrases surely sound promising (Afghanistan, minimum wage) etc. I just wouldn't trust those people with running a country. You know.. fool me once ... I mean the Bayern Party is also against german troops in Afghanistan... it's pretty much the same with the Linke.. If you want an anti-war stance you pretty much have to give up having reasonable demands and expectations in domestic policy. But maybe that's the point. Die Linke is an opposition party, is meant to be, sees itself as one: They have yet no clue/ real interest in ruling except on local levels, and that is why they have no coherent program and no binding ideas, it's, as I said previously, just a panopticum of former East german bureaucrats who teamed up with the crazies from other parties. Lafointaine used to have all my respect but the way he walked out on Schroeder instead of standning up to him... Well.. I'll never forgive him that.. He's always sounded like a slightly dishonest guy to me. The kind of guy who has great rhetorical gifts and is ideal for an opposition party, but as soon as he's in power he becomes obscure and irrelevent because of his refusal to compromise.

[Ken Burch]

13. Any left-wing party that gains support will always be considered "suspect"

by the rich.

I can tell that you're the sort that would never find any left pure enough for your satisfaction.

The fact is, Die Linke was the ONLY party that defended the workers and the poor in this campaign. The SPD abandoned them and the Greens were too busy pretending they might throw their support to a CDU government(in exchange for which they'd have got less than they did from Schroeder)to be clear on much.

[Ken Burch]

4. The full results in Germany were quite curious:

The vote total of the SPD(Social Democrats)crashed, falling from about 34% to 23%...BUT

The vote total of the CDU-CSU(Christian Democrats/Christian Social Union)ALSO declined, from 35% to 33$

The Left Party's vote rose from about 8% to 12%, and the Green Party vote rose from about 8% to 10%.

So it isn't really a "swing to the RIGHT" in straight ahead terms.

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. It's a move away from the previous governing coalition, and also a move to the right

The FDP increased their vote from about 10% to about 15%.

So Left + Greens + SPD lost 5% in total; CDU/CSU + FDP gained 3%. So in one sense it was a swing to the right. But the previous coalition lost 13% in total, so I suppose you could say that's the big news.

[JackRiddler]

9. It's a mix. One can play with the numbers.

SPD and CDU both lost votes. Was it a movement against a CDU-led coalition? Was it a move to the right? Greens + Left went up. Was that a movement to the left?

FDP is not exactly "right." They are the party of bankers and neoliberal economics, pure and simple. They put on an image that looks very progressive to their yuppie clientele, however.

[Ken Burch]

12. It was a swing away from the SPD in TWO directions

on balance, the SPD lost more votes to the left(Die Linke+Greens)than it did to the FDP(the CDU/CSU vote actually dropped almost 2 percentage points, the worst showing for the party of Adenauer and Kohl since it was founded by the CIA after World War II.

[Democracyinkind]

7. The video is several years old. Guido has improved his english a bit and he ain't no libertarian.

I'm no friend of the FDP but calling them/him libertarian is just crazy.

That's like calling Obama a socialist, kinda.

Well maybe a little less.

The difference between a neoliberal and a libertarian probably is smaller than between a socialist and a centrist.

[Ken Burch]

14. Not necessarily

libertarians, at least in the U.S.(and I'm talking of the Libertarian Party types I've known)have generally favored a non-interventionist foreign policy(they've also tended to oppose the death penalty, unlike anyone on the conventional U.S. right).

[bridgit]

16. Holee Shit, all Libertarians look the same *apparently* worldwide

Like illegitimate unions between Grover Norquist & Ron Paul = not good