Monday, August 5, 2013

The Strategic Importance of Matt Bevin

That libertarians are a small minority of the homo sapiens that now wander this planet is not something that libertarians and non-libertarians would tend to dispute.We can't win elections even if we wanted to.

The majority parties are the parties of the great handouts and the great wars. The political candidates of the major parties have pollsters that tell politicians exactly what they must say to keep in reach of just over  50% of the population of likely voters.

Rand Paul is a perfect example of this. Given his pedigree, he surely understands what the libertarian positions are on all subjects and why they are important. But, yet, we see him flying off to Israel pretending to favor support for that foreign country. We see him call for the privitization of the tracking of the flying pubic, rather than the abolishment of such intrusive tracking. And we see him supporting the evil establishment senator from Kentucky, Mitch McConnell.

Rand is trapped in the political black hole that is sucking him in. He wants power and he thinks he is going to get it by getting closer to the center of power. But power only crushes independent streaks. It molds those who step close. Rand is not stronger than the black hole of power. The black hole is more powerful than he is. Rand wasn't even able to fight off the black hole on a minor issue. I speak of former Rand aide Jack Hunter. Rand seemed genuinely sincere when he spoke of Hunter as a decent person, but the black hole would have none of such talk. To speak so kindly of Hunter was talk crushed by the black hole. Hunter was tossed aside by Rand like a rag doll, as Rand moved one step closer toward the black hole of power.

As we get closer to the 2016 presidential elections, we will see the black hole mold Rand in many surprising ways. The seeking of power should not be the libertarian way.  As I have explained before, the only use for the political process for libertarians is as an educational process. The goal should be to stick to principle and lose.  The masses are nowhere near ready for us.

The most we can do at this point is be sharp, continue to study liberty in all its depth and richness and advance liberty, step-by-step, by using the levers we have at our disposal.

There are many ways to do this on many levels, even, curiously, occasionally on the political level in a strategic sense, for those so inclined---but not by winning elections. Even if one wanted to do so, the votes are just not there for libertarian victories.

These thoughts come to mind as a result of an email I received from Anand Venigalla:
When I was visiting zerohedge.com, I saw one of the ads that portrayed Matt Bevin as a person who lives off of bailouts.
I clicked on the ad and it linked to this from the Mitch McConnell committee, which claims that Matt Bevin refused to pay taxes when his businesses needed help, while he received thousands in taxpayer bailouts.
What is your view on this, Mr. Wenzel? Can you please deal with this if you have time?
Bevin's taking of bailout money is no surprise to me. In fact, last week, I linked to the video that McConnell put out on this subject.

I am not pretending that Bevin is libertarian pure. As I have said before, anyone that wins an election is suspect, and Bevin could win. That said, Bevin does not appear to be bad on most issues, but he is more important to principled libertarians as a tool to knock out the very dangerous establishment creature McConnell, who Rand has cozied up to. Indeed, it is icing on the cake that Bevin is quite free market oriented.

A McConnell victory would bring out the choir of faux libertarians, who would take credit for the victory and distort the libertarian message into some type of establishment approved half-baked concoction that would have nothing to do with the principled libertarianism of Murray Rothbard, Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell, etc. It would confuse the masses even further about what real libertarianism is about. This is why McConnell needs to be stopped.

This is a just a small skirmish in the overall libertarian battle, but it is an important skirmish. Indeed, if McConnell survives the primaries against Bevin, a victory by Democratic opponent  Alison Lundergan Grimes would best serve principled libertarian interests. Libertarians are far outnumbered in terms of numbers relative to the crony capitalist paid for McConnell machine, but we can certainly help in cheering on and instigating some of the mayhem that Bevin and Grimes bring to the race. This isn't as much about a Bevin or Grimes victory as it is about a defeat of the very dangerous McConnell. That is the strategic importance of this race. McConnell campaign manager Jesse Benton is already talking about the fusion of  "Team Mitch" with "Team Rand", after a McConnell victory. That is the last thing a principled libertarian wants to see, so-called libertarian Rand being made indistinguishable from McConnell. Bevin is a Tea Party candidate, no one is going to mistake him for a pure libertarian. Grimes is even further from being a pure libertarian, no one is going to mistake her as such. But a distorted looking Rand, sprinkled with Team Mitch body powder, will be considered a libertarian and that is what needs to be stopped.

5 comments:

  1. Excellent post, Bob. You have not truly woken up until you walk away from politics. As LeFevre liked to say: Abstain from beans.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Please do not confuse a $100,000.00 grant from the state of CT as a bail out! THAT is the only thing McConnell can "find" against Matt Bevin...pathetic. Bevin never owed back taxes. He paid off back taxes when he took over a tiny, family company. His uncle had not paid taxes. People should not believe everything that they read, especiallynnot from a corrupt, hypocritical politician like McConnell.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Precisely. Politics should be seen mostly as an entertaining distraction, but it can be an educational tool. While a Bevin win may not promote perfect libertarian ideals, it certainly deals a major blow to the very confusing (to those unfamiliar with or just becoming acquainted with libertarian ideas) Rand-Mitch relationship.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks, Mr. Wenzel for another awesome post.

    ReplyDelete