Posted on 10/29/2004 2:07:39 PM PDT by swilhelm73
There's a good argument, to which I'm somewhat sympathetic, for small-government types in non-swing states to vote Libertarian this year; Jeremy Lott laid out the case last week. But while I do consider myself a small-l libertarian, the big-L Libertarians cannot expect my support.
In 2000 I lived in New York, solidly in Al Gore's column according to every poll. So I pulled the lever for Harry Browne, the Libertarian Party candidate. For months afterward, I kept hearing that President Bush lacked a "mandate" because of the popular vote/electoral vote mismatch. It seemed that, the Constitution aside, the popular vote makes a political difference after all, if only by virtue of the fact that some people are willing to argue that it does. Perhaps this isn't as big a concern this year, as President Bush seems safer in the popular vote than in the electoral college, but then again some people said the same thing about Gore in 2000.
I might have gotten over that annoyance if it weren't for the trauma that came the following fall. I'd known that Harry Browne, like much of the LP, was a bit... non-traditional in his foreign policy views; in his 1996 book Why Government Doesn't Work he laid out his case against every American military action from the War of 1812 forward ("war is just another government program," he wrote repeatedly, quoting Joseph Sobran).
What I'd written off as relatively harmless kookiness in an election where foreign policy was barely an issue seemed a much bigger deal on September 12, 2001, when Browne wrote that the attacks were the result of our "insane" foreign policy, which made it "only a matter of time until Americans would have to suffer personally." His prescription was to "resolve that we won't let our leaders use this occasion to commit their own terrorist acts upon more innocent people, foreign and domestic, that will inspire more terrorist attacks in the future," and by "terrorist acts" he meant "any military response" (he went on to vigorously oppose the war in Afghanistan). Heaping ignorance upon isolationism, he rested his case in part on the historically illiterate assertion that "Switzerland isn't beset by terrorist attacks, because the Swiss mind their own business."
There's nothing inherently libertarian about any of this -- libertarians come at foreign policy from every conceivable angle -- but, because of a history too dull to get into right now, there are those believe that it is, and this sort of blame-America-firstism is the norm among LP activists. Michael Badnarik's campaign website perfectly echoes Browne.
Of course, Badnarik won't become president, so perhaps his foreign policy doesn't bother you. But if you believe, as I do, that a second term of President Bush would be preferable to a first term of President Kerry, then consider that the LP officially disagrees with you. Under "Operation Wisconsin Blue," the Badnarik campaign has openly raised money from liberals to run ads in Wisconsin targeted at conservatives, the idea being to swing the state for Kerry. "We don't want Bush to win in Wisconsin any more than you do," said a page on the Badnarik.org website (which has disappeared sometime since last week). And Jamin Raskin reports that vote-pairing websites, wherein a swing-state Naderite agrees to vote for Kerry in exchange for a non-swing-state Democrat's agreement to vote for Nader, now includes Libertarians making the same trade as the Naderites because, as Raskin puts it, they are "appalled by the Orwellian, antichoice, antigay, and repressive policies of the budget-busting Bush administration." (Only a hard-leftist uses words like "antichoice" and "antigay" often enough the he feels no need to hyphenate.)
If you're interested in registering a protest with a vote for that ideological coalition, be my guest. As for me, I'll be casting my vote for Bush, in protest of all of those fools in the other parties.
Every party has fruitcakes. The Libertarians I have spoken with are very supportive of the military. They believe it is one of the few functions of government that deserves serious funding.
They think pretty much everything else should be cut drastically.
Why, then, of the few bills that RP has introduced, do several related to giving tax breaks to only certain union members?
True enough.
The problem is the fruitcakes in the LP run the party. The LP itself stands for one issue nowadays - legalizing pot - and they've pulled a royal Andrew Sullivan over it.
They stand for pot legalization because it is a natural extension of their "hands off" philosophy. They believe people should be free to do as they please...in the boardroom or in the bedroom. I happen to agree with them on this issue. You should be free to make your own decisions and live your life as you please, so long as you don't commit theft or violence against others. If you obey the law and treat people with respect, what you do in your own home is your business.
Yes, illegal drugs constitute the big "dividing line" that supposedly separates Conservatives from Libertarians, and sometimes ingratiates the Libertarians with the Liberals. The Libertarians should, however, consider this: if pot (for example) were "decriminalized" (I avoid the word bad word "legalized"), the liberals would insist that it be taxed, grown on government-run farms, that it be tested for quality and purity, that it be packaged with warning labels on potential health risks, that it not be "too strong" for fear that the first time user might injure himself/herself following ingestion, that if the user were injured because the pot was "too strong" and/or did not have the appropriate warning labels, some John Edwards type would sue the grower for all he/she is worth, etc. After all that hassle, the libertine Libertarian pot smoker probably would, I believe, recognize pot as more trouble than its worth, and give it up.
Oh, I have no problem with the LP standing up for elements of libertarian orthodoxy, like drug legalization.
My problem with the LP is quite the converse.
The LP has proven - time and again - to be willing to compromise with the Left on issue of central importance to libertarian thought in return for the bone, so to speak, of drug legalization.
Fellow Libertarians should not vote with the party this year. "Libertarian" Michael Badnarik is a dangerous fraud. Badnarik--who is Lebanese and has taken tons of cash from the American Muslim Alliance (the group from which even Hillary returned the contributions!) has disturbing ties to supporters of Islamic terrorism. The Muslims are using the "Libertarian" label to hurt Bush. Badnarik is a total phony. Libertarians should not be fooled by this Wahhabist stooge!
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