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I decided to make time to expound upon yesterday’s post. And, WP reminded me that, back in 2016, I made what was possibly my last exploration of the national LP alternative – a long shot then which, beyond the pondering, I had nothing to do with. And, back then, a friend, whom I’ll label as a neocon(?) pointed out that the LP’s platform was at best a pleasant fantasy. He was right.
Again, it was Charles Burris’s article at LRC that got me thinking about all of this.
The possible future viability of the LP ended in 1988. It blew it for both objective and subjective reasons. Objectively because of many missed opportunities related to the end of the Cold War and dynamic changes in American political culture during the Bush-Clinton-Bush years were ignored; and subjectively due to internal LP organizational disputes, poor leadership and the widespread delusion of selecting former GOP “libertarian sounding” congressmen or governors as presidential candidates would be the mainstreaming expedient to fast track electoral success.
But first, the almost-accurate joke version of what did the LP in – marijuana. Regardless of their other stated positions, the one thing almost all (L)ibertarians were (and are) after is the high of THC. Glassy-eyed, they speak of taxes, non-aggression, foreign policy, etc, and then always return to legalizing weed. Excuse me! Decriminalizing it. Big difference. I don’t know if they’ve been sober this century, but, the non-enforcing feds and just a couple of holdout states aside, pot is practically legal from coast-to-coast. Mission accomplished, guys! Great job. What else do you have? That’s right, nothing.
This, and a few other things, is what killed the Free State Project in NH. That’s where a libertarian, trans-whatever, satanic priest(est??) just got him/her/itself on the ballot as a Republican’t for Sheriff in Keene. Congratulations, again, pot-heads: you opened the gate, and the crazies and half of Massachusetts moved in. Good job!
Seriously, now: Burris is almost right about the causes. In fact, he is right tactically and in part strategically. However, he missed the logistical point. Like most LP national candidates, Hon. Ron Paul had no chance with only 46 states allowing him on the ballots and a 0.5% total vote tally. Even if he had won and became our 41st President – and wouldn’t that have been better than what we got??? – it most likely would not have made a difference. That is because RP (as great as he is) and the entire libertarian “philosophy” was wrong for the country, then and now.
We’ve been under attack as a people and a nation for, take your pick: 50 years, 100 years, 150 years, or longer. By 1988, the damage was done and it was time for emergency restorative action. This had very little to do with practical politics, economics, or smoking dope, which is what you-know-who almost exclusively focuses on. Excepting the green leaf, I made the same mistake for years.
But, the real issues, critical in 1988, and terminal now, are and were purely cultural and spiritual. There was no political fix, though back then, the right fix would have helped, given the honest people a chance to recover. And “right” means a return to Western nationalism, not libertarianism. The LP never even offered a glimpse of a realistic alternative.
What could have worked? Christianity, first and foremost. (I hear the calls that one cannot legislate morality. True, but one can legislate against immorality). The mass expulsion of non-Westerners would have gone a long way – including, and especially, those who gave us so much cultural degeneracy and usury. Terminating, by any means necessary, the debt-based economy. Retaking the besieged institutions and expelling the walking siege engines. If this sounds a little like a revolution, then it should be obvious that, even as they quote the rhetoric of the bold men of the 1776 original, the party with an oath against action was never the party for the job.
Neither, certainly, was the GOPDNC uni-party. Perhaps Carlin was correct when he said, “this is the best we can do…” The LP had no real answers. A pseudo-philosophy that only appeals to certain members of the dwindling Posterity was doomed from the start. If the demographics had adhered to those of the holiest and most-revered Constitution, the Declaration, and the laws, circa 1790, then said philosophy could have formed a potential basis for guidance (in my mind, so long as it was subordinated to a pursuit of Natural law in the exclusively Christian sense). But that, none of it, happened.
I imagine that I have at least a few ever-optimistic, possibly high, libertarian-leaning friends who would still say that the argument could be made that libertarianism is still the future savior of what’s left of the US. I’m not trying to be mean, but go to any preschool or a psych ward and one will hear all kinds of arguments being made.
If you’re a libertarian, with an “L” large or small, then know that, as with most people, what’s happened isn’t your fault – at least the majority of it. Should you want to do your part to salvage something out of the collapsing ruins, then: 1) cease and desist with the MJ!, and: 2) bend a knee to Christ and then rise, hard right.
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