Attribute to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

You may have noticed that there wasn’t any The Libertarian Enterprise last weekend. That’s because our mighy Editor-in-Chief Ken Holder and his esteemed and valorous wife Pat were struck down with what doctors here were insisting on calling by its semi-formal name, “influenza”. My own wife Cathy and I preceeded them by a couple of days. As flus go, this was a bad one. I couldn’t sit at my desk for more than ten minutes at a time; my neck and shoulders got peculiarly tired and sore. As I lay in bed, afflicted by nausea, coughing fits, plain old exhaustion, and even worse, I remembered that I’m an old guy now, and that the flu is supposed to be especially hard on old guys (also that I never got to meet my grandfather because of the “Spanish Influenza”; he died, not an old guy at all, at an Army Camp near Waco, Texas, in 1918).

Now here I am, horribly behind on my two current novels, Ares and Only The Young Die Good, and with several hundred e-mail messages to contend with that I’ll be answering over the next few days. I abjure you (look it up) to be patient with me. All the time that I was sick, I wanted to write about two things especially: living politically with Donald J. Trump; and observing his unique style at news conferences.

In the first instance, it’s important to remember that nobody (in my circle of acquaintances, anyway) voted for the man because they thought he is a libertarian. He is not. I don’t know what he is, and I don’t think he does, either. The important thing (to me) is that he isn’t Hillary Clinton and that he isn’t trying to start a nuclear (“NOO-klee-err”) war with Russia—and anything else is gravy. Real libertarians (as opposed to those shriveled dwarves running the so-called Libertarian Party) will be wise to practice the same vigilance they would if Hillary had won. (And for those who haven’t had enough of her, be advised she’s planning now to run again in 2020—this is a cow who just doesn’t get it.) Donald Trump is not one of us, but it is kind of fun to watch him work.

Case in point: I’ve enormously enjoyed watching him shoot down CNN and similar types at press conferences. It’s especially satisfying to me because of the way President Alexander Hope handled the press in my 2008 novel Hope; it’s about the first libertarian President. I like the way that Trump engages the putresently corrupt news media on an individual basis, and I hope nobody ever talks him out of it. I urge you to buy the novel (at Amazon.com, via The Libertarian Enterprise). It’s not exactly predictive, but it is fairly prescient.

Remember what he’s promised and hold him to it—my personal test is that million .30-06 Garand rifles sitting in some warehouse in South Korea (the ROK makes its own battle rifles now) and the hundred thousand .30 M1 Carbines stored with them. Barack Obama—the same kind of leftist we sent Korea the weapons to fight in the first place—decided to leave them to rot or rust when they would be worth a lot to the American unorganized militia, hunters and collectors (yours truly included). The Carbines could protect a lot of American homes.

On the other hand, my biggest disagreement with Trump and other Republicans is over national socialist medicine. Yes, by all means, Obamacare has to go, root and branch. It must be replaced with absolutely nothing. Medicine is strictly a matter for the private market, not the same shoddy outfit that runs the Post Office. Whenever you talk about this issue with politicians and real human beings, mention separation of medicine and state. And I don’t give a flappy damn how popular the idea is, forcing companies to insure people against “pre-existing conditions” is the very definition of irrationality. (Thought expenriment: call an insurance company and tell them, “I just wrapped my car around a phone poll—can I get it insured?”)

Finally, just like everybody else, I’ve been a bit appalled at how hysterical and evil the oppositian has been, reacting to their loss. My side lost in 1964, and I didn’t throw a temper tantrum or single bottle of gasoline. I do think that gun people have become better acqainted with this kind of “Progressive” mindlessness over the past few years than most folks. There are now lots of actors whose movies I will never go see again. They’re guilty of everything from contemptible whimpering and whinging (hat tip to Sean Gabb) to violent rioting and arson to murderous threats. My daughter went to a Milo Yiannopoulis appearence in Boulder and saw the insanity first-hand. My solution? Massive arrests and convictees sentenced to writing the Constitution at least a few thousand times on a blackboard.