Month: July 2013

I see that Adam Kokesh will run for President, presumably as some variety of “libertarian” candidate. Opinions on Kokesh’s positions are as numerous as cherry blossoms in a Potomac spring, and are not the subject here, though it did get me thinking about how a “libertarian” President might act.

Presupposing the highly improbable success of a “libertarian” (or anyone other than a government-approved) candidate, one might question how such a presumed activist would move to alter the face of government.

Given that POTUS would face an implacable and problematically united legislative opposition, one is drawn to the conclusion that POTUS would have to resort to executive orders/actions to achieve any changes. This is tantamount to imposition of individual power over the electorate — hardly a libertarian position.

The simple fact is that no one individual, be it POTUS, Senator, or Representative, can, acting alone, affect the momentum of government one iota … without assuming dictatorial powers. And that, dear readers, is as far from libertarianism as you can get. (Though not so far from the platforms of our two state parties.)

We have to face the fact that the game is rigged — and that’s the easy part. The hard part comes when we are forced to realize that any government, regardless of how it is tagged, will ultimately have to try to control a significant minority (at minimum) of its citizens. Once again, to state the obvious, not at all a libertarian position.

All of which leaves us with the “monster under the bed” question — what can we do about our little government problem? As I see it, the options are three:

• accept the status quo ante, and pray for a positive resolution
• engage in active revolution and pray for a positive resolution
• strive to inject liberty-minded ideas into the existing framework and pray for a positive resolution

Bottom line, it looks as if those promoting a libertarian revolution better revise their platform to include a healthy dose of entreaties for divine intervention. Yeah. That’ll happen.

It is literally impossible to find any unbiased discussion of the so-called “Moral Monday” protests that have been ongoing since April here in North Carolina. An Internet search will produce countless hits, almost all originating from the usual “progressive” suspects, and all long on rhetoric but short on logic.

Some things, however, appear certain:

• While it would be technically incorrect to call the protests a pro-Democratic movement, it is safe to say that they are very definitely anti-Republican. The impetus for the protest has almost everything to do with the fact that the Republicans own the Governor’s Mansion and both legislative houses for the first time since Reconstruction.
• The cast of characters driving the protests are clearly more socialist than liberal (especially in the classical sense of the word). As such, their agenda focuses exclusively on protesting the rollback of their century-old program of government entitlement programs. from education to subsidies to labor.
• There was not so much as a hint of the outrage expressed by the protesters under a Democratic governor or state legislature, regardless of the actual legislation advanced and enacted.
• It is difficult to assess the value of these protests, though it is certainly unfair for their proponents to drape themselves in the mantle of the civil rights movement. Their trespasses to provoke arrest pale in comparison to the outrages inflicted on those activists of decades ago. Of course the Republicans have done nothing to dispel that comparison, acting like the reactionary buffoons we have come to know and love from the Grand Old Potty.

I wish I could find something positive to say about one side or the other in this manufactured political conflict. But to me, it’s just more of the same old tired “left v right” false dichotomy. It is no more than political theater on each side of the imaginary aisle, wherein one party seeks to thwart the statist efforts of the other to replace them with their own.

If we have no better positions to advance in political discourse than those represented by these two, then there seems little point in discussing things further. We should, I suppose, all just invoke “The Thumperian Principle“, and get on with our individual lives.