The era of individual liberty is over.

This country spent forty years fighting the Cold War. So, now that some time has passed since we won, what do we do? Turn the purse strings of our government over to the neosocialists!

We now have the worst possible combination of controlling parties and government branches -- the neosocialists have the legislature (likely including the Senate) and the neofascists have the executive.

What's that, you say? The newly-elected Democrats are more conservative than previous candidates? Yes, but they're more conservative in all the areas where conservatives are wrong. They still believe in punishing success and rewarding failure, but they abandon the left on social issues, where the left is usually pro-liberty.

Heath Shuler, for instance, is anti-gay. That makes him a "moderate Democrat," despite his desire for even more gigantic and monstrous government programs like Medicare.

Claire McCaskill is also anti-gay. As are many other of these so-called moderate Democrats. (Excuse me, anti-equality-for-gays, as if there's a difference.) It looks to me like it's less of a move to the center than a successful act of throwing their gay supporters under the bus. Wake up, gay people. Democrats are no more your friends than Republicans are. The only way to keep the government out of your bedroom and your relationship arrangements is to elect Libertarians.

Speaking of the Libertarians, did they make a difference in this election? Well, let's take a look at the Talent/McCaskill race and see. With 98% of the precincts reporting, McCaskill has 50%, Talent has 47% and Gilmour, the Libertarian, has 2%. So, here, the Libertarians didn't deliver the seat to the Democrats. But if Talent had courted the small-l libertarian wing of his party a little more instead of offering up his pink little pucker to the zealot theocrat wing, it would have been a lot closer and maybe he could be a position to request a recount.

In Montana, however, with 99% reporting, Tester's got 49%, Burns has 48%, and the Libertarian, Jones, has 3%. So the balance of power in the Senate may indeed shift on the power of Libertarians.

Does that make us spoilers? Maybe. But all I can say is that we don't owe any allegiance to either of the two major parties. They want our votes; they're going to have to earn them.

At least Anti-Libertarian Santorum is out. That might actually be worth it.

And how did the Free State Project do? They didn't have a Senate race in New Hampshire this time, so let's take a look at their House races.

In NH-1, no Libertarian ran and the Democrat won with 52%. In NH-2, a Libertarian ran but garnered no more of the vote than Libertarians usually do, and the Democrat won with 53%. For the governorship, no Libertarian ran and the Democrat won in a landslide. Not very promising results.

So, the Anti-Libertarian Party retained control of Congress. Only now it's the neosocialist wing of that determines the agenda rather than the theocrats.

Big Government is back.

And I have a sneaking suspicion that that's just the way Diebold likes it.

P.S. We'll just SEE how centrist this new Democratic majority is when it comes to leadership assignments, starting with Nancy Pelosi. If she gets in as Speaker, that proves they're not very centrist, now doesn't it?

But I will SO enjoy referring to her as "Mister Speaker."