A Libertarian for Bush?

[Updates below.]

Just found this op-ed by Daniel Griswold on CATO's website: A Case for Bush

Our two-party system is like cold pizza for people who love individual liberty, free markets and limited government. The two major parties seldom nominate candidates who pursue those principles in a consistent way, and this year's presidential election is no exception. Neither the Republican, George W. Bush, nor the Democrat, John F. Kerry, would ever be mistaken for a libertarian.

No joke there.

Bush and the GOP Congress have presided over an explosion of federal spending during his term. Bush championed the 2002 farm subsidy bill, the Medicare drug benefit and huge increases in education spending. He signed the anti-free-speech campaign finance "reform" bill and imposed temporary tariffs on steel imports. And most libertarians (although not all) believe the war in Iraq is a dangerous distraction from the war on terrorism.

If President Bush was serious about his talk of limited government, he'd have more credibility to support his rhetoric. But his actions reveal what he really feels.

Meanwhile, Kerry and his party have proposed huge increases of their own in federal spending. Their chief criticism of Bush on health care, education and just about everything else but defense is that he has not been spending enough. And they want to underwrite their own spending spree with higher taxes on, you guessed it, "the rich." Kerry and much of his Democratic base want to slow the advancement of free trade and accelerate regulation of the economy. They criticize Bush for his conduct of the war in Iraq but do not challenge it on principle.

Pfft, I say anyone who calls themselves a libertarian and votes for John Kerry deserves no such label. John Edwards is a hypocrite and I've already mentioned Kerry's stupidity above. Just browse his website and you can see any number of positions he takes that should make any honest libertarian puke:

• social protectionism in the form of more government school, more government day care, and expanding healthcare coverage to "every American child"
  
• a bizarre definition of civil rights that includes the racism of affirmative action, healthcare coverage, having a job, getting an education, and strengthening the enforcement of the Americans with Disabilities Act
  
• economic socialism in the form of taxpayer-subsidized "investments" in emerging technology (his talk of cutting taxes, ending corporate welfare, and reducing the federal deficit are all nice, but I don't trust him to do it right)

Shit, John Kerry doesn't even know what libertarianism is: he said Bush pursued an "extreme libertarian" agenda. Anyone can parse his issues page and discover far more things on their own time.

Griswold continues:

What are libertarians to do on Election Day? One option would be to wash their hands of the whole grimy system and not vote. That is a perfectly defensible option, a vote of sorts against a system that discriminates against alternative parties. But the risk of not voting is that the least libertarian of the two major-party candidates could win a narrow election.

Another option is voting for the Libertarian Party candidate, but in our stacked system, that option is akin to not voting at all. Even under the best of circumstances, the LP has failed to win more than about 1 percent of the vote.

A friend of mine asked me this question a while back and I responded:

...if you are going to vote, vote for the person who best represents you and your values. Since we can't vote for specific parts of a person's political platform, any vote for one or two ideal aspects of some candidate ends up being a vote for the things you don't like about that candidate. So pick the person who overwhelmingly represents good rather than overwhelmingly represents evil.

I don't intend on voting this election, even though I helped get the Texas Libertarians on the state ballot and even though I generally like Michael Badnarik's politics. My vote is literally, statistically, and figuratively meaningless for a multitude of reasons: Texas is going to George Bush whether I vote for him or not and Austin will vote for John Kerry whether I vote for him or not. This doesn't even address the moral problems of voting. And I reject the "lesser of two evils" argument. I choose principle over pragmatism.

Back to Mr. Griswold:

Given those unappetizing alternatives, voting for George W. Bush on Nov. 2 may be the best choice for advocates of a free society. In fact, on several issues important to libertarians, Bush has even staked out positions clearly superior to those of his Democratic opponent.

He then articulates these positions:

1. Social Security reform and partial privatization
   
2. "health care savings accounts"
   
3. reduced federal regulatory impact when compared to the last thirteen years
   
4. no additional gun control laws
   
5. essentially a combination of nice-sounding rhetoric supporting free trade and a number of free trade pacts around the world
   
6. tax code reform, potentially even scrapping the income tax and replacing it with a "consumption tax"

Well, let me address these. Mr. Griswold certainly has a point in saying Senator Kerry is utterly hopeless on the Social Security issue from a libertarian perspective and President Bush's goals are at least a step in the right direction. What is left unsaid is the fundamental fact that Social Security is a fraud and the only right thing to do is immediately stop taxing people to pay for it and dismantle the entire structure as quickly as possible. There is nothing libertarian about Social Security.

On #2, just read Beck. The idea that the government can allow us to keep some of our money as long as it's spent towards health stuff is fucking repugnant. The whole notion stinks; it's our wealth to dispose of, not theirs. If I want to salt away 10% a paycheck to cover a future emergency, fine. If I don't, fine. What matters is not taxing any of it in the first place.

On #3, hey that's great if it's true. But Mr. Griswold says, incredibly, "While Bush has been a big spender, he has not been a big regulator" ...and then says the cost of "new regulations" under Bush is roughly $1.6 billion a year verses averages of $6 billion to 8 billion. Does he understand what he's saying?

On #4, I covered this already. President Bush and his Republican honchos in Congress don't give a damn about freeing our gun-specific property rights from the law. Certainly not by judging their actions and statements.

On #5, you can't be for free trade and continue to impose and enforce taxes, tariffs, licensing regulations, barriers to market entry, barriers to market exit, a government monopoly on money, and billions of dollars in subsidies. It does not follow.

On #6, taxation is theft and no amount of fiddling with it's structure will ever change that. Eliminate the IRS and don't replace it with anything.

Granted, Mr. Griswold isn't happy he came to his conclusion:

Even with those issues in his favor, the libertarian case for George W. Bush is weak. But a libertarian could reasonably conclude that in our imperfect, unfair, messy and even maddening political system, the re-election of George W. Bush would leave our country better off than any realistic alternative.

Utilitarianism cannot override the reality of Bush's big government conservativism, his incoherent political philosophy, and his lack of principles.

Anyone who values individual freedom and personal responsibility shouldn't vote. If they do, they certainly shouldn't vote for George W. Bush.

UPDATE 9/24/2004 5:22pm
The Austin American-Statesman, Voting, Free Speech, and Information

Posted by Drizzten at September 17, 2004 11:45 AM