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 THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE Number 795, November 2, 2014 The current order of things that all of us in this room variously deplore is nothing but a new puritanism for the twenty first century.
Attribute to L. Neil Smith's The Libertarian Enterprise Attention Republicans! You're about to make an historic mistake—you're about to make the usual historical mistake that has given Democrats the upper hand too many times over the past eighty years or so. Allow me to explain: I first began my political activism in the early 1960s. One of my first campaigns was for Barry Goldwater. He was opposed, politically, not so much by the Democratic President (by assassination) Lyndon Baines Johnson, but by figures nominally in his own party: Henry Cabot Lodge, Nelson Rockefeller, William Scranton, George Romney, Mark Hatfield, Charles Percy, and a handful of other rich guys with a taste for Roosevelt's New Deal and "moderation" that Goldwater decried in his famous speech on moderation, extremism and justice, The speech that was written by a libertarian, Karl Hess. Goldwater went down to a humiliating 3-1 defeat at the vile hands of those wh were supposed to be his allies, whereupon I vowed eternal enmity to "establishment" Republicans—like Scranton, who actually wept on national TV when Goldwater was nominated—for the rest of my life. There would be no Libertarian Party today, were it not for what Weeping Willie Scranton and fellow country clubbers did to Barry Goldwater. I bring all of this up, because I saw an e-mail message the other day, from an individual whom I otherwise respect very highly, begging libertarians not to "spoil" the coming midterm election for the Republicans. Horse-apples. I agree completely concerning the dire necessity of getting rid of Barack Hussein Ebola and his communist scum once and for all, and a Republican victory might bring us closer to that goal, but pro-freedom Americans have fallen into this trap countless times since 1944, when the same clowns blocked Robert Taft and gave us the famous loser Thomas "Little Man on the Wedding Cake" Dewey, instead, and I'm not going to do it any more, no matter what the hell happens. The situation is typified by the Colorado competition for the U.S. Senate, which pits 99% Obaminist Mark Udall, from a famous leftist family, against Republican Cory Gardner, presently ahead by seven points. The latter is not campaigning on his (presumed) opposition to victim disarmament, or in support of hard money, but on what he plans to take away from women, notably control over their own bodies. "Abortion stops a beating heart" his supporters quack; I have news for them: so does a rat trap. I have heard that he wants to roll back Colorado's remarkably liberating and refreshing end to marijuana prohibition. Candidates like Cory Gardner also tend to bring the Ignoramus Inquisition out of the woodwork, the flat-Earthers who deny evolution by natural selection and believe that the world was created in 4004 B.C. So the election amounts to a choice between a socialist destroyer of the Constitution and a rabid prohibitionist. Both candidates are a grave danger to individual liberty. When I filled out my mail ballot, I rejected both of them, and chose the Libertarian Party candidate, instead. I followed the same policy in my other choices, rejecting judges and initiatives, voting a straight "fuck you" ticket. Republicans—especially "moderate" socialists like Cory Gardner and John Boehner—do not automatically deserve my vote, especially when they threaten my rights. If you voted already, I hope you followed that policy, too. If you haven't voted yet, remember that we are not Republican, we are not conservative, we are libertarians. Individual liberty is supremely important. The election of 2012 could be called "Barry Goldwater's Revenge". If Republicans are really stupid and nominate Mitt Romney or Jeb Bush for President in 2016, then I will look forward to voting against them. Again. If my policy takes votes away from poor GOP andidates, so what? As I've told them many, many times before, if Republicans really want to remove the threat of libertarian "spoilers", all they have to do—all they have to do—is be better on the freedom issues than we are.
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