You Should Become A Libertarian (Even Though Libertarians Are Insane)

Cruz supporters, #NeverTrumpers, and any other malcontents of the mainstream political parties who want the government out of your business, you should all consider becoming members of the Libertarian Party. 

“But Jeremy,” I hear some of you saying, “Didn’t you just say recently that Libertarians Are Insane?”

Why yes, gentle reader. Yes, I did though saying they are insane is a bit of an oversimplification. To be more precise, I was trying to say that the Libertarians have an excellent platform in theory, but in practice, they’ve been infiltrated by a bunch of anarchists, stoners and social imbeciles who drag down what would otherwise be a solid message of liberty into a platform that too frequently caters to an eccentric cadre of political misfits with muddled political aims and little idea how implement their agenda. 

I suspect I’m not yet convincing you of the value of membership in the Libertarian Party. Give me a second.

As bad as some aspects of the Libertarian Party may be, there’s also a solid chunk of Libertarians who truly desire small government, have taken the time to carefully consider the complex issues and will fight for their small government values with a tenacity and stubbornness that would put every member of Congress to shame, and these voices though a minority are not too far from the mainstream of the Libertarian Party. 

Gary Johnson won the Libertarian nomination for President this year, a candidate not without his merits but considerably more wishy washy on several issues than what I would prefer, but if you look at the man who took second place in the Libertarian Presidential Primary, you’ll see someone that I believe many discontented Republicans could support, Austin Petersen. Petersen is a rock solid pro-life Constitutionalist who does a better job explaining his positions than any other candidate I’ve seen running for elected office in any Party this year. He’s a game changer who could reform the Libertarian Party and make it the true voice for liberty the United States has been missing. 

And yet he lost, so why should people discontented with the faux small government proclamations of the Republican Party jump ship to join the wishy-washy small government proclamations of the Libertarian Party?

The answer is simple. Since the Libertarian Party is so small, it can easily be reformed by a small influx of true Constitutional conservatives. In 2012, only a mere one million people voted for the Libertarian Presidential candidate as opposed to the sixty-one million who voted for Mitt Romney. If only one million of the GOP voters, a tiny fraction of the whole, became sick of the games and changed their political alliance to the Libertarians, that would be more than enough to push the crazy Libertarians to the fringe and create a party that truly represents limited government. 

If you’re determined to stick with the GOP as the lesser of two evils, I understand, but you’ve got to know that the GOP will betray you this time just as they’ve betrayed you in every Presidential election since Reagan. They aren’t truly conservative or Constitutional, and if you’re telling yourself things will be different this time, you’re just fooling yourself. The fact that the GOP primary was a contest fought between two anti-establishment candidates proves the GOP’s days are numbered, so why cling to the dusty bones of the past? If you truly want a revolutionary change for individual liberty, why not try to reform the party that’s small and easily malleable rather than the big intransigent party that stabs you in the back every chance it gets?

The Bright Side of Mass Murder

I’ve had the misfortune of reading the news over the last couple weeks, and no doubt much like you, I feel like I’ve been emotionally clobbered by a bevy on nunchuck wielding ninjas putting a beatdown on my soul. It’s tough to think of all the lives lost and all the emotional wreckage left in the wake of the murders while at the same time enduring the streaming torrents of rage from opportunistic pundits and the endless political pandering as everybody uses the latest pile of dead bodies to push their political agenda. I can’t speak for you, but this and the generally depressing political climate of the election season has all combined to make me want to crawl into bed, pull up the covers and sleep away the rest of my days in blissful ignorance.

However, there is a simple bright truth lurking underneath these layers of awful, and I hesitate to point it out for fear of seeming naive, but I believe it to be true, so I’m going to say it anyway. 

Here’s the bright spot. In a world where people can walk into a club and murder forty-nine innocent people, most people don’t. 

I hope you will forgive me for being morbid, but the simple truth is that it’s not that hard to kill people. It doesn’t take a criminal mastermind to think of easy ways to murder a person or two, and given a little time and consideration, most people could probably find easy ways to commit mass murder. It’s not as if the douchebag Orlando club shooter accomplished some inconceivably supernatural feat of terroristic genius. As hideous as it is to contemplate, these types of crimes are something we could all replicate if we chose, and yet we all choose not to do such wicked things.

Over the past week, the media has been flooded by story after story of violent crimes, the number of guns, the dangers of religion and other tales meant to inspire fear and feelings of doom, and yet, can’t we take the exact opposite message from these stories? Sure, some people are dicks, but in a country of 319 million individuals of all different political views, religious affiliations, racial groups, sexual orientations and with almost all these people having access to guns and other weapons, the overwhelming majority of people choose to live in peace.

These general values for life and peaceful coexistence might seem like small consolation compared to the recent murders, but the fact that America holds these values is actually quite remarkable. A simple look around the globe and throughout history will show you that common decency is not all that common, and in many ways, we live in a golden age of peace, freedom and prosperity. We’d be fools to let the few wicked nutjobs of society keep us from recognizing how remarkably blessed we are as a people and spook us into treating our neighbors as our enemies. 

We have serious problems in need of serious solutions, but in the midst of our pain, let’s not forget that in a nation full of all different sorts of people, the overwhelming majority of Americans choose the path of peace

On the Orlando Club Shootings, Have We Lost Ourselves Completely?

I feel tired and defeated. 

The lives destroyed by this monstrous excuse for a human being pain me, but the murders themselves don’t discourage me. Evil only provokes me to want to prevail for the cause of good. 

What I find discouraging is the way people respond to this story. Anytime something bad happens, it's just used as an excuse for the government to seize more control, and people are not only letting this happen but begging for it to happen. When I see evil, I wish more power were in the hands of good people so they could defend themselves, but so many of my fellow citizens, well-meaning but misguided, wish to see power consolidated in the hands of the already overpowered and undeniably corrupt government. In a million tiny ways, the American people have allowed their fears to guide them and bind them. They've said, "I don't care what you do. Just make us safe!" and those with wicked hearts and ambitious minds lick their lips when they hear those words. 

Too many of us have become cowardly and lazy. Freedom is hard. It's so much easier to hand the problems off to someone who promises us utopia. It's so much easier than considering, striving, working, struggling and taking personal responsibility. 

We look at these tragedies and say, "Why us? Why here? Why now?" but in so many ways, we are merely reaping the seeds we continue to sow. Generations have been so isolated from responsibility that they don't know how to handle it to the point that the very idea that people should be held responsible for their own actions is now deemed offensive. We refuse to think about or even listen to any ideas outside our comfort zone locking ourselves in safe echo chambers where everyone affirms our own beliefs. Rather than attempt to understand the world around us and growing as people, we demonize and attack those who view the world differently. We hate each other, and as we waste effort in hating one another, those who hate us all implement their plots. We wonder how a soul can become so lost as to murder in the name of a god, and yet we say morality is relative, all views are equally valid, there is no truth and there is certainly no Truth-Giver. We wonder how things got so wrong while rejecting the very concept of right.  

The solutions to our problems will never be found in Washington. The answer has been and always will be with the individual who chooses the difficult path of righteousness. Any society which through its own wickedness degrades and destroys itself will eventually require a strongman to put the house back in order. Only a moral people can be a free people.

Can We All Admit Democrats Are Socialists?

Hillary Clinton finally secured enough delegates to win the DNC Presidential nomination, so unless the Department of Justice indicts Hillary or some other unforeseen catastrophe befalls her, it looks like Hillary has finally bested her challenger, socialist Bernie Sanders, but though Sanders and his particular version of socialist utopia might be temporarily defeated, the Sanders campaign has revealed one of the political world’s worst kept secrets, the Democrats are all socialists. 

Now upon hearing this, some people will immediately get defensive and complain that I’m resorting to name-calling, but the word socialism is not a slur. It’s simply a description of someone’s political views, and when describing the political views of Democrats, socialist is the only fitting description. 

Look at the popular vote split between Hillary and Bernie. Sanders has 43% of the support from left leaning voters, so everybody has to concede that roughly 43% of Democrats support an admitted socialist as opposed to a comparatively moderate candidate, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Over the past few months, Bernie has consistently held higher approval ratings than Hillary among Democrats and Democratic leaning voters. Since Bernie has earned 70% approval from the Democrat voters, that leaves only 30% who could possibly find socialism objectionable, and keep in mind, this approval number is measured at the heat of the campaign season when Democrats’ attitudes should be at their most divisive and hard feelings about competitors at their strongest, and therefore you would expect disapproval numbers to be at their highest. 

All this just proves that Sanders and his socialist views aren’t the fringe of the Democrat Party; they are the mainstream. 

Still, Hillary is winning, so doesn’t that show that socialist feeling in the Democrat Party, though prominent and appreciated, isn’t quite dominant? No, it doesn’t prove that at all.

Perhaps we need to refresh out memories on the actual definition of socialism. Socialism is, “a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned OR regulated by the community as a whole.”

It’s true that Hillary doesn’t advocate for the government to own the means of production, distribution and exchange (also known as business), but without question she wants to further regulate business as does every other Democrat living. Over the past hundred years, we’ve had a nigh constantly growing set of laws increasing government control over every single industry, and yet I challenge you to find a single industry that Democrats don’t want to regulate further. 

The distinctions between Hillary and Sanders are slight. Sanders wants to control the banks by nationalizing them and Hillary wants to control them with increased regulation. Sanders wants to control healthcare by making it universal whereas Hillary wants to do it while working within the confines of Obamacare. Democrats aren’t choosing between a socialist and a non-socialist but between two slightly different versions of socialism. 

For generations, Democrats have hidden behind masks of progressivism and liberalism without telling the American people their true agenda, but at this point, the Democrat ideology is clear. However they want to dress it up or disguise it, Democrats have fully embraced socialism. 

If you enjoyed this, please share it, and don't forget to follow me on Facebook and Twitter. Or don't. I'm not your socialist dictator. 

Libertarians Are Insane

I’ve been calling myself a Libertarian since 2008. I’m beginning to think I’ve made a mistake. 

For me, voting for Hillary is clearly out of the question since she’s socialist in everything but name and voting for Trump is also off the table since he’s a habitual liar and vindictive bully whose positions vary from strong conservative to left of Hillary depending on his mood and the time of day. Since I generally want the government to get out of my business, you might think the Libertarians would be a perfect fit for me, and I thought so too for a time, and yet…

On paper, the Libertarians are great. Looking over the Libertarian platform, I object strongly to abortion, but beyond that, I find myself in nigh complete agreement. Personal freedom, economic liberty and minimalist government? Sign me up!

However, I’ve spent a lot of time over the past month looking more carefully at the Libertarian movement, and sadly I’ve found that though their official positions are sound, they have an huge problem, the Libertarian Party is infested with druggies, anarchists and social imbeciles. 

Let me break it down for you. 

Druggies

The Libertarian Party supports drug legalization, and this causes a problem. The problem isn’t the position itself but the fact that this position attracts large amounts of stoners who don’t care about anything other than drugs. This stoner-centric thinking causes Libertarians to spend an unnecessary large amount of time discussing the issue. Perhaps the best example of this occurred at the recent Libertarian Party National Convention where the Libertarians got some rare coverage on C-Span. Through the entire televised portion of the convention, the Libertarians only showed one policy video, and what video did they choose as the most important thing they must tell the nation? They wasted six minutes of national air time on a mini-documentary about a pot dispensary. (11:30 to 17:30)

I think drugs should be legalized, but instead of emphasizing how it’s your right to get high, why don’t the Libertarians emphasize the fact that there are people dying of terminal diseases every year that are denied the opportunity to try experimental drugs because the FDA hasn’t approved of them? Better yet, why not take those six minutes to talk about an issue of greater importance like the national debt, domestic spying or any one of several dozen other pressing concerns? If there weren’t so many of them stoned, the Libertarians might realize how stupid it is to make pot their central issue. 

Anarchists

Libertarianism represents small government not zero government, and yet there’s a sizable and vocal faction of the Libertarian movement usually posting under the #TaxationIsTheft mantra that believes all government is wrong. Though the anarchy position is rejected by Libertarian think tanks, anarchist ramblings among the base are significant. These words from libertarian anarchist Christopher Cantwell typify this view. “Libertarians are anarchists, whether they realize it or not…the goal is not to win your elections, the goal is to turn a large enough minority against the legitimacy of the State as to make its continued function impossible.”

I’m all for drastically reducing the size and scope of government, but anybody who thinks that we should be living in the world of Max Max is nuts. 

Social Imbeciles

The Libertarians present themselves horribly. To a certain degree, the lack of polish is understandable. After all, nobody donates money to Libertarians and few people actually are Libertarians, so they’re drawing from a limited pool or resources which partially explains why they don’t have the political and media sophistication to match the mainstream parties, yet Libertarians problems aren’t just in terms of polish but in a complete misunderstanding of the rules of polite society. 

Examples of this can be found everywhere, but the latest and greatest example was brought to light by James Weeks II who while running for the position of Libertarian Party Chair stripped on stage at the National Convention while it was being broadcast on C-Span. To their credit, most of the Libertarians in the room rejected the strip tease and jeered the juvenile display, but if the discussions I’ve seen online are any indicator, a large portion of Libertarians see no problem with Weeks’ strip routine. 

When this is allowed to happen and celebrated by a good portion of the community, it either means that the Libertarians don’t even take themselves seriously or they have no understanding whatsoever of social standards, and either way, it’s incredibly damaging to the movement. 

Conclusion

In theory, Libertarians hold most of the principles that the United States needs to adopt to get back on the right track, and for my money, the severely flawed Libertarian presidential candidate is still a much better alternative to Hillary and Trump, but I’m not sure I want to call myself a Libertarian anymore because a bunch of people in the Libertarian Party are out of their minds.