The American Conservative asked a number of writers about their choice for President and published the results online.
Here is my response:
I am not going to be voting this coming Tuesday. Obama has proved a bitter disappointment to all those who hoped that he would rein in the warmongering of George Bush. To the contrary, Obama has continued our senseless war in Afghanistan and now seems bent on war with Iran and Syria. Thousands of troops and “contractors” remain in Iraq. In blatant disregard of moral decency and international law, he has ordered drone strikes that kill innocent people (“collateral damage”) and has claimed and exercised a supposed right to have American citizens killed at his own discretion.
Romney, amazingly, criticizes Obama for not going far enough. We must increase the defense budget, he says, even though our spending on armaments exceeds that of all other industrialized nations combined. He thinks that Obama has not acted with sufficient ferocity against Iran, and he and Obama vie with each other in avowing their unconditional commitment to continued Middle Eastern entanglements on the side of Israel.
In domestic policy, though Romney promises to repeal Obamacare, his own proposals require intrusive government control of healthcare. He proposes no fundamental reform of our inflationary monetary and banking system. He is one more in the long list of Republican candidates who want government to dominate the economy even as they declare their devotion to the free market. Concerning Obama and the free market, it is not necessary to say anything at all.
Why not support Gary Johnson instead? I do not think he has broken sufficiently with the dominant statist assumptions of contemporary politics, though to his credit he has taken steps in this direction. Those who favor a noninterventionist foreign policy will view with misgiving his statement that “Our military should remain the most potent force for good on Earth.” In domestic policy, he supports the so-called Fair Tax. The “fairness” of a punitive national sales tax escapes me.
There is only one nationally prominent political figure who champions a completely free market and noninterventionist foreign policy. I would enthusiastically support Ron Paul, but sadly he is no longer a candidate.
David Gordon is a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute and editor of The Mises Review.
I'm a Candian & vote libertarian, I'd write Ron's name in if people here knew who he was or had any principles themselves. As Doug Casey said the two prevailing themes are collectivism & statism, hopefully when this whole system that has been so fully corrupted fails voices like your's(Bob W), Ron Paul, Tom Woods & our budding liberty movement will lead the charge in picking up the pieces, I doubt the survival of much if we allow the continuation of what no passes for Western civilization. It's not all bad though, I sit here on my iPhone 4s & post comments on a blog while I watch horror movies on my 10 acre farm. Just hope the rest of the world catches up to these views before its too late.
ReplyDeleteVoting is for suckers.
ReplyDeleteGreen Party Jill Stein. Statist but anti- war.
ReplyDeleteMr. Gordon:
ReplyDeleteYes, the Fair Tax is not fair. But did you know that Ron Paul's Plan to Restore America did not call for a reduction in the personal income tax (except for taxes on savings)? How is that fairer than the Fair Tax?
Did you know that Gary Johnson proposes to balance the budget in 2013 and to veto any spending in excess of revenue, whereas Ron Paul said he would take three years to get to a balanced budget?
And did you know that Gary Johnson calls for ending the war in Afghanistan immediately and cutting defense spending by 43%, whereas Ron Paul, in his Plan to Restore America, called for a cut of only 15% to the defense budget?
Yes, Johnson is not perfect. Neither was Ron Paul, who I supported until his campaign fizzled out, and who I wish would have endorsed Johnson.
Paleoconservatives don't vote for libertarians.
DeleteRon Paul's position was consistent- the income tax should be abolished and replaced with NOTHING.
DeleteThis is the same Gary Johnson who does not want to end the war on drugs (except for marijuana)?
DeleteThe same Gary Johnson who thinks America's military should "remain a force for good" and wanted troops to be sent after Joseph Kony?
Oh, and Ron Paul has said on numerous times that the income tax should be abolished. It is disingeneous or ignorant to claim that he doesn't want to "reduce" income taxes.
If we are to trust either of these two in the things they CLAIM they'd want to do, Gary Johnson is quasi-libertarian at best when compared to Ron Paul.
Yes, of course RP has said he wants to abolish the IRS. But when he submitted his famous Plan to Restore America last year, he only proposed to extend the Bush tax cuts, with the exception of taxes on savings, which he proposed to eliminate. The IRS is still there. http://bit.ly/pSORgI That's what Johnson's tax plan should be compared to.
DeleteFWIW, Walter Block is supporting Gary Johnson.
DeleteI refuse to lend any legitimacy to this farce by voting. I find the entire thing nauseating. In the time I take off work to vote I can make enough to buy a few silver eagles which might actually impact my life positively. It's going to take a collapse to turn this thing around.
ReplyDeleteI just hope we don't go full retard and scrap the entire thing for overt fascism or socialism.
Fairly sobering and disheartening ain't it?
Gary Johnson is the man!
ReplyDeleteDavid, Bob, Justin and Sheldon had 4 great responses.
ReplyDeleteMurphy makes the obvious point that your vote doesn't matter. And even in the case of a tie vote in your state, your vote wouldn't decide anything, the issue would end up in our judicial system. On the whole I like Lind's. "The only thing genuine about Romney is his phoniness." He seems to recognize that voting is a religious ritual inside the religion of statism.
ReplyDeleteNormally I don't mock people's religion beliefs. You can sacrifice to Neptune as far as I am concerned. (Incidentally, creating a demigod by voting is a pretty lame story compared to the creation myths of the Summerians, Egyptians, and Greeks and less plausible.) Unfortunately, statists are worse than Seven-Day Adventists in pestering you and much more pompous. Also the fact statists indulge in human sacrifices (brown skinned middle eastern people) disquiets me.