“Vinny! How can you call yourself a Libertarian and think about voting for Obama? He's a socialist taking our rights and freedoms away. It's a fact, just look it up.” My protestations declaring an incapability of distinguishing between Obama and Romney make no dent at all against such an irreproachable source.
It seems to me that Obama is true to the FDR tradition of his party and Republicans on other hand campaign for small government and then administer a RINO (Republican in Name Only) stampede of too much Government. It took three terms before Democrats recovered the White House with Bill Clinton and after George W. Bush's pooh pooh pile Republicans don't deserve this next election and until they get their heads straight, nor the next few.
How is it that Republican's can only serve up RINOs? If you preach and believe in small government you have to be against a liberty sucking garrison state with an empire to defend. Other than Ron Paul, no other GOP candidate gets it. In last fall's Republican debates we saw most of the candidates decry the fact that Obama missed the opportunity to stay in Iraq longer! We saw Mitt Romney in South Carolina pandering to the defense industry by declaring we need an even bigger Navy with more aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines to fight the likes of Al Qaeda. Just how dumb are we suppose to be? Come on Mitt, a clear analysis of the U. S. Government from the perspective of a Bain Capital would have you taking a meat cleaver to the U. S. Defense budget. Why don't you say it? Otherwise what is your mandate? Build a bigger Navy?
Republicans are the management class and some believe they can tame government excess, show fiscal restraint and pay down the debt. The last time I looked it was Bill Clinton who managed our economy best. It was his tax increase early on his administration that created the fantastic boom of the nineties. George W. Bush, on the other hand, never made a hard decision. He just made easy ones such as tax cuts and spending increases setting the stage for a Japanese style lost decade.
Which brings up the point of what does left – right mean in the political debate? Liberal versus Conservative means nothing when you understand that the word “Liberal” meant a believer in the individual during the 19th century. Because it was such a new and radical idea it became associated with “new and radical.” By the time of FDR's administration Liberal just took it's “new and radical” modifiers over to the government interventionist camp. Conservatives on the other hand are the general fighting the last war. They were the Tories in our revolutionary war, the America Firsters before World War Two and now the pre-emptive first strikers.
I became a Libertarian years ago because of my dis-satisfaction with the moral interventionist the GOP includes in it's tent along with its half hearted belief in free markets. The counter to libertarian is authoritarian. Let me posit that an authoritarian is a believer in government and a libertarian a believer in the individual. The spectrum from left to right extremes would be Stalin's or Hitler's regime, both equally horrifying and on the same side, versus a hermit on a deserted Isle. The middle of this spectrum is one where reasonable people can acknowledge some legitimacy in the other's argument and find a cordial way to compromise between more government and less government.
One ideological lever between the two sides is raising or lowering the bar of “Federalist,” proponents of central government, versus “Antifederalist, ” supporters of states rights. Obama's Health Care Act may be argued as federal over reach. My problem is that I can't trust Republicans to consistently push back protecting states and ergo individual rights. Rick Santorum, for example, appears to be much more willing to intervene with federal authority in our personal lives than any Democrat I know, when one considers his intrusive grandstanding performance in the Terry Shiavo case. What does the likes of a U. S. Senator from Pennsylvania have to pontificate about when the head of family makes a personal decision on pulling the plug on a body on life support in Florida? Jeb Bush's intervention was bad enough, but at least he was Governor of Florida at the time.
