The following collection of news stories and articles from across the country are a sampling of events that deeply disturb me.  At a time in which the national government has obviously gone off a cliff in restraint and prudence, it's worrisome that even state and local governments have left the reality-based community.  I just need to keep telling myself that there's nothing wrong here, I should just trust government.  The state is never wrong.

I have no intent of reading Jonah Goldberg's new book Liberal Fascism.  I fully expect it to be a complete and absolute waste of my time to read.  But I do encourage you to read this amusing review of his book in The American Conservative, Pat Buchanan's magazine.  Reviewer Austin Bramwell will have none of Golberg's games.  Excerpts below.  

No, this isn't just another Ron Paul diary.

This is about a new movement, Yogis for Ron Paul.

Don't think I'm serious?

Well, I'm probably not.

But read on . . .

As a libertarian Democrat, I struggle sometimes in my reaction to the more big government rhetoric of Democratic candidates.  I am largely a Democrat because of social issues, foreign policy, and environmentalism.  Lately, I have become very turned off by the rhetoric coming from Daily Kos favorite John Edwards, who was my second pick after Howard Dean back in 2004.  He increasingly seems phony to me, spouting off populist rhetoric without really thinking about the issues.

The country of Belgium is having problems forming a new government, the King of Belgium will be calling ministers of state to try to work things out between the deadlocked parties.    At the core of the dispute are the growing differences between the French and Flemish parties in Belgium.  Ethnic and cultural differences are now aligning with economic ones.  Belgium is already a curiosity; between the European Union and the devolution of power to regional governments the powers of the government at the country level seem to be fading away.  The possibility of Belgium splitting into multiple countries is on the horizon.  If Belgium is considering it, why not the United States?

In the past, I've found this "Intro" section one of the most frustrating parts of blogging at Daily Kos.  Writing a good introduction is probably the hardest part of writing, rivaled only by writing a good conclusion.  The fact that the majority of this post came flowing out of my mind while I was waiting (impatiently) for some friends to get ready to go out to dinner doesn't help.  I didn't really have a purpose other than formulating some ideas that had been bouncing around my head for a while.  Both this intro and the title are rather poor attempts at summarizing my thoughts.  My focus is this idea of "liberalism" and what it has meant in the past and what it means to me.  And maybe, what it should mean.  It's so long that I've decided to chop it up into several diaries that I'll post over several days.

I am cross-posting this diary, although with some modifications, to the libertarian Democrat blog Freedom Democrats and to the new progressive site Open Left.  The Freedom Democrats version focused more on questioning assumptions about libertarianism, while the Open Left version focused more on signs that a left-wing mindset may be influencing some conservatives.  This diary here is closer to the Freedom Democrats version, focusing on the assumption that a free market would mean a corporate economy.