A Facebook post from a young conservative serious about freedom responds to Republicans’ recent “Pledge to America” and other promises that we real freedom-lovers are hesitant to believe:

“Promises promises. Forgive us Libertarians, libertarian-leaning conservatives, etc. for being skeptical… this song and dance has been done before (granted, without the same publicity).

Maybe I am conflating the GOP leadership and John Q. Republican a bit, but honestly, from what I’ve seen locally, with Republicans and Tea Party folks, they’re still for all the same things they were back when Bush was President (not to mention them being xenophobic as hell and eerily theocratic). Granted, I’ve heard Tea Party’s elsewhere are more “Goldwater-esque” and less focused on extreme social conservatism. But I’ve only heard one out of thousands of Tea Partiers even mention the name “Barry Goldwater”, much less know enough about him to say what they agree or disagree with him on. They all still seem to have some fetish about Reagan, which is the same fetish Republicans have had for years. Not to mention that it’s mostly and over-40 crowd, so you know they won’t stand for any badmouthing of their precious socialistic Social Security and Medicare, which my generation will be getting the hard, unlubricated shaft on.

Honestly though, with all the “Tea Party Candidates”, I’m not impressed, at all. I can overlook a little pandering here & there (at this point, Rand Paul has wore that one out, Mr. NeoCon-lite is going to drag his family name down down down), and I’ll ignore a candidate’s strongly held beliefs that masturbation is evil, or whatever moral high horse they want to get on… but if they’re not going to actively fight against big government, against ruinous foreign interventionism, against socialistic collectivism creeping in everywhere, against the Federal Reserve and Fiat Currency, and support free market economics (REAL free markets, not the neo-Keynesian corporatism and protectionism that both parties love so damn much), then what’s the point in placing one ounce of hope in them?

Yeah, maybe I’m being too harsh, but I believe my skepticism is entirely rational. Don’t get me wrong, I’d LOVE, absolutely LOVE to be pleasantly surprised by these folks, and see the GOP turn into a Goldwater-Conservative party, and/or move significantly back to the ideals of the “Old Right”. Now, I definitely have my issues and problems with the “Old Right”, Paleocons, and Conservatism in general, but if you guys pull off the whole “change the GOP from within” thing, I’ll be the first to eat crow. I just don’t see any rational reason to think that this new batch of Republican “reformers” won’t be any less two-faced or less impotent than the last several batches.”