Attribute to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

As I�ve said many times, over the years my principal interest as a novelist has shifted from what I call the Grand Idea (libertarianism and all its wonders) to the experiences and personalities of people living the Grand Idea and how do the people and the idea influence one another. Events of the last six months have seen some pretty strange behavior on the part of some Americans. Again and again the more thoughtful among us have asked ourselves what caused the spectacular, frightening, and sometimes funny 2016-2017 post-election �psychotic break� we witnessed among Democrats and other anti-trump voters.

To try to list all of the insane things that have been said and done by the individuals we have come to call �snowflakes� would take an essay many times the size of this one. From the violence and stupidity of Anti-fa, By Any Means Necessary, and Black Lives Matter, to various media pundits and socialist politicians equating Donald Trump to Hitler, and Trump voters to Nazis, to campus idiots terrified at the sight of Donald Trump�s name, written in chalk on a sidewalk, to the persistent state of denial in which Hillary Clinton stubbornly remains, it would appear that the �Crazy Years� predicted by Robert A. Heinlein have arrived.

The Democrats, apparently completely unaware of the massive pain, suffering, and hardship their ill-conceived political and economic programs have wrought over the past century, mistakenly view their reign as kindly and benign. To them, the widespread and vehement rejection of their schemes, and the enthusiastic acceptance of a Presidential candidate they regarded as odious, was a tragic event equivalent to the War Between the States. Everything was going along so swimmingly, from Wilson to FDR to LBJ, to Obama, and then BAPP! There we all were, smack-dab back in the middle of the Recent Unpleasantness.

It�s extremely important in this context to understand the whole truth about that conflict, that the 1860-1865 war was not truly a civil war—which is defined as a struggle between two or more sides for control of a nation�s government—it was a war of secession, a war for independence, a war to struggle out from under the boot-heel of an oppressor. (It�s also important to understand that it was not a war about black chattel slavery, which was only offered well after the war had begun as an excuse for Northern aggression against the South.)

Democrats today falsely see themselves as inheritors of the Northern government. In fact, their political ancestors were overwhelmingly Confederates, and slave-owners. to boot (whom they absurdly denounce as evildoers). They have attempted, in their Orwellian way, to erase the phenomenon of an overwhelmingly Republican 19th century North and imagine themselves having conducted the war against an intransigent and ungrateful South.

Thus, to them, the 1964 Goldwater-Johnson election, which altered forever the political structure of the South, was an unsuccessful and treacherous attempt by ungrateful Confederates to rise again. I�m not entirely sure what they make of the Reagan years. But with Trump, in 2016, the South has risen again, all over the country, and now plans an eight-year campaign to wipe out all of the �accomplishments� that �Progressive� Democrats foisted on the nation. The left is terrified, calling the new President a �racist� (when he decidedly is not) and accusing him of every other sin against their Democratic worldview. We think of him as Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States. They think of him as the reincarnated spirit of Jefferson Davis.

Which explains, I think, their current mania for tearing down statues and pulling down flags. It�s a coping mechanism. Most of their defenseless targets memorialize Southern politicians and military men—slaveholding villains all, who rose against the kindly and beneficent Union (which was deriving 80 percent of its income from taxes on the South and had recently threatened to double or triple those tariffs.) . That Revolutionary war heroes and great explorers often get thrown in for good measure shouldn�t surprise us. Under their skins, these creatures of the Left hate America and all its works.

The remarkable thing is how sensitive they are. In fact, the exact polar opposite of everything they stand for and impose on others is not exemplifed by Donald Trump or the Republican National Committee which merely offer watered-down versions of the Democratic line. It is libertarianism, which both �major� parties have conspired to marginalize, abetted by a cancer-like growth of moderation, compromise, stupidity, and ineptitude within the Libertarian Party itself, The LP is no longer a place for principled libertarian thinkers, and it hasn�t been for a long time.

In a way, though, to extend this metaphor to the breaking-point, libertarians could have become the Quantrell�s Raiders (look it up) of American politics, but they have chosen to arm themselves with peacock feathers instead of rifles and ride merry-go-round ponies instead of real horses. I do not know what I am prescribing, here. The LP was defined by its intellectual and moral cowardice during the first national convention it ever held (I was there). How to overcome that, without becoming like the sociofascist garbage in the streets is a problem for the next generation.