What Democrats Deserve
by Anthony Gregory
Anthony1791@yahoo.com

Exclusive to TLE

Last year I wrote a piece for TLE called "What Republicans Deserve."

http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2003/libe220-20030421-02.html

For the most part, I stand by it, though I might have been a little soft on them in parts.

I've been thinking about it, and it's fitting to reflect on what Democrats deserve.

Of course, what Americans deserve is a half-decent opposition candidate who has a half-decent chance to win (no offense to Michael Badnarik, who deserves at a minimum to be in the debates so he can expose the two major candidates for the dimwitted bloodthirsty crooks they are). I actually considered Howard Dean to be close to half-decent. Now, don't get me wrong: I would never vote for a man who promised to Sovietize American healthcare. But he had good things to say about the war, and he even came off a bit better on the topic of victim disarmament than many Republicans, including, I daresay, the deified Ronald Reagan and my governor Mr. Schwarzenegger. This might not be saying much. Overall, Dean seemed to be the marginal lesser of two on the issue of evil, when compared to George W. Bush.

And then the Dems nominated Bush's fellow Bonesman.

For this, what Democrats deserve is something else entirely from what Americans deserve. And I'm not talking about all Democrats, but the ones who will gladly pull the lever for Mr. Kerry, who does not appear to be any less evil, except perhaps due to want of opportunity. Kerry hasn't had the opportunity yet to turn his potential evil � as unambiguous as it is �into kinetic evil, at least not on the scale that only the US president has the capacity to project.

What Democrats deserve is to lose, which is as depressing for me as anyone to say. Of course, I never expected them to turn around and embrace liberty in the unadulterated form as is prescribed in the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights. Not since FDR in 1932 has any Democrat of national prominence even pretended to believe in liberty, and not since Grover Cleveland has any delivered.

But in the meantime, until we see a revolution leading to a political atmosphere somewhere between the total demise of the state or the total enforcement of the Bill of Rights � either would be cause for celebration � I just want to see the American polity stop accelerating on its path to National Socialism.

Bush has been the biggest welfare-mongering president we've had since LBJ, perhaps FDR. Most of my past sentiments about what Republicans deserve were based on the abject success of the GOP in enthusiastically flouting every good principle Republicans ever pretended to uphold. Of course, I never expected them to understand the follies of their thinking on every "personal freedom" issue from drugs to free speech; I only hoped that they might one day deliver on their more enlightened promises and produce a semi-free economy and a government less overtly hostile to the Second and Tenth Amendments.

Unfortunately, Republicans have often been worse than the Democrats on the issues where many of us libertarians thought they would be better.

And I never expected the Democrats to pick up and read a tome by Mises, denounce central planning, and dismantle the taxation-regulatory state. I only thought, for a minute there, that they might � one day � deliver a foreign policy less aggressive and murderous than Bush's. This seems like a goal quite difficult to bungle.

Unfortunately, Democrats have often been worse on the issues where many libertarians thought they would be better.

Clinton's enforcement of UN-US sanctions on Iraq killed more Iraqis than the wars of the two Bushes. Clinton bombed the hell out of several countries, and the only thing that prevented him from matching the warmongering legacies of his partisan forefathers �Wilson, FDR, Truman and LBJ � was probably a lack of a good excuse. Or, maybe, he was preoccupied with Monica.

John Kerry has blown every opportunity to make himself seem the least bit more humane and less resentful toward innocent life than his opponent. L. Neil Smith once described Bob Dole as the "only organism in the Solar System capable of losing an election to mass-murderer William Jefferson Blythe Nosecandy."

http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle1996/le9611a09.html

Is John Kerry the only such organism capable of losing to George W. Bush? It seems so.

Bush says the war is going great.

Kerry says it's not, and it should be expanded.

Bush has turned hundreds of thousands of servicemen and women—many of whom surely thought they were signing up to defend freedom, not occupy a colony—into cannon fodder for an unending imperial adventure.

Kerry wants to grant the UN ownership of these poor souls.

Bush says the criminally ratified Patriot Act is necessary.

Kerry says it must be expanded.

Bush has been the worst protectionist, collectivist American dictator of my lifetime.

Kerry accused Bush of being too laissez faire, and being nuts because the president supposedly thinks fewer police and more assault weapons on the streets make us safer. Is he trying to get me to vote for Bush, or what?

The Democrats are so quick to whitewash their candidate's crazed proposals and even pretend he's something of a "peace candidate." They don't seem to understand why they're losing.

They're losing because they deserve to. They haven't, on any single important issue, made any single proposal that is even one iota better than what Bush proposes. How is this possible? I would probably settle for any of Bush's recent predecessors � his father, Clinton, Carter or Ford. You'd have to believe in resurrection to believe anyone else who has occupied the White House could possibly make a worse president. (I'd pick a Nixon's or LBJ's corpse over a vivacious Bush any day.) But I'm convinced that Kerry could be, if he put half as much effort into being a totalitarian despot as he has in being a pathetic candidate.

It's a shame that the Democrats deserve to lose and have George Bush win the election, because America doesn't deserve that dismal and miserably likely fate.

Anthony Gregory is a writer and musician living in Berkeley. He was president of the Cal Libertarians at UC Berkeley, where he earned his bachelors degree in US history. He is an intern at The Independent Institute and a regular contributor to the Future of Freedom Foundation, Strike the Root, LewRockwell.com and other publications. See his website: www.AnthonyGregory.com.

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