When the Right's Wrong, What's Left?
2003-06-12 10:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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When the Right's Wrong, What's Left?
By Gary Nolan
CNSNews.com Commentary
June 10, 2003
When I changed parties a few years ago, many of my Republican friends couldn't believe it. After all, I'd been a Republican since my first vote.
I had long dreamt of the day when the Republicans would win control of the House and Senate. In 1994 I got my wish. I was certain the policies Ronald Reagan espoused would soon become a reality.
Spending and taxes would fall faster than sweat from a fat man's brow on a hot day in Juarez. Freedom from government regulation would reign across the land. Political expedience in the legislature would come to a screeching halt.
I'm not sure when I realized I'd been hoodwinked. Maybe it was the passage of one of those expensive Bud Schuster highway bills, or the failure to get rid of the National Endowment for the Arts. It could have been the failure to cut corporate welfare, or the constant caving by the Republican leadership.
It might have been seeing prominent Republicans fighting for more gun control, tobacco legislation and "campaign finance de-form." The neo-cons had taken over the party and I was through. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, the party left me.
I joined the Libertarians, the party with principle. Some of my friends have come to agree with me. Others cling to the faint hope that Republicans will someday live up to their small-government rhetoric. But personally, I feel you'd be safer trusting a rabbit to deliver a carrot than to trust the new Republican Party to stand by the Constitution.
Think I'm being too harsh? Here's the neo-Republican record.
The much-hated Clinton "Americorps" program has received hundreds of millions of dollars in additional funding.
The Department of Education, once a target for elimination by Republicans has a new benefactor, the Republicans. In his first budget, President Bush asked for a 72% increase for primary, secondary and vocational education. With the passage of the "No Child Left Behind Act," the federal government is more involved in local education than ever before.
How about the despised "Gore Tax" - the hidden tax the phone companies are forbidden to list on your bill? The tax Republicans once called "unconstitutional." It's still on the books.
Did the tobacco lawsuits end? Actually, the Republican attorney general has pursued this extortion plan just like his Democrat predecessor, Janet Reno.
Think Republicans oppose federal interference in state and local affairs? Think again. Federal officials, paid for with your tax dollars, have been actively campaigning against state and local medical marijuana initiatives.
But since these initiatives keep winning by 2:1 margins, a "conservative" Republican has now introduced legislation that would allow federal agencies to spend your taxpayer dollars on advertising to influence the outcome of such initiatives.
The nose of the camel is already inside the tent and we'll soon be seeing the camel's other end.
The list goes on and on. More money for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, steel tariffs, and billions of dollars from hard working Americans sent to Africa to fight AIDS.
It's not too difficult to understand where the Republicans went wrong. They were taught by the Democrats that getting elected is a simple matter of buying the vote. What better incentive to gain votes than promising free health care, job training, education and cheese?
The neo-cons have compromised a once-great vision of small government - a government not involved in nation building; a government that respects the rights of individuals; a government that is fiscally sound, with low taxes and even lower spending. The Republicans are now the party of neo-tax cuts, no spending cuts and deficits.
Now we have a larger government than even Bill Clinton asked for, the "Patriot Act", and more debt than you can shake a bankruptcy file at. I do know what's right and I do know who's left. Libertarian thinkers, they're right and they're all that's left.
Gary Nolan is a candidate for the Libertarian Party nomination for president.
When the Right's Wrong, What's Left?
By Gary Nolan
CNSNews.com Commentary
June 10, 2003
When I changed parties a few years ago, many of my Republican friends couldn't believe it. After all, I'd been a Republican since my first vote.
I had long dreamt of the day when the Republicans would win control of the House and Senate. In 1994 I got my wish. I was certain the policies Ronald Reagan espoused would soon become a reality.
Spending and taxes would fall faster than sweat from a fat man's brow on a hot day in Juarez. Freedom from government regulation would reign across the land. Political expedience in the legislature would come to a screeching halt.
I'm not sure when I realized I'd been hoodwinked. Maybe it was the passage of one of those expensive Bud Schuster highway bills, or the failure to get rid of the National Endowment for the Arts. It could have been the failure to cut corporate welfare, or the constant caving by the Republican leadership.
It might have been seeing prominent Republicans fighting for more gun control, tobacco legislation and "campaign finance de-form." The neo-cons had taken over the party and I was through. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, the party left me.
I joined the Libertarians, the party with principle. Some of my friends have come to agree with me. Others cling to the faint hope that Republicans will someday live up to their small-government rhetoric. But personally, I feel you'd be safer trusting a rabbit to deliver a carrot than to trust the new Republican Party to stand by the Constitution.
Think I'm being too harsh? Here's the neo-Republican record.
The much-hated Clinton "Americorps" program has received hundreds of millions of dollars in additional funding.
The Department of Education, once a target for elimination by Republicans has a new benefactor, the Republicans. In his first budget, President Bush asked for a 72% increase for primary, secondary and vocational education. With the passage of the "No Child Left Behind Act," the federal government is more involved in local education than ever before.
How about the despised "Gore Tax" - the hidden tax the phone companies are forbidden to list on your bill? The tax Republicans once called "unconstitutional." It's still on the books.
Did the tobacco lawsuits end? Actually, the Republican attorney general has pursued this extortion plan just like his Democrat predecessor, Janet Reno.
Think Republicans oppose federal interference in state and local affairs? Think again. Federal officials, paid for with your tax dollars, have been actively campaigning against state and local medical marijuana initiatives.
But since these initiatives keep winning by 2:1 margins, a "conservative" Republican has now introduced legislation that would allow federal agencies to spend your taxpayer dollars on advertising to influence the outcome of such initiatives.
The nose of the camel is already inside the tent and we'll soon be seeing the camel's other end.
The list goes on and on. More money for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, steel tariffs, and billions of dollars from hard working Americans sent to Africa to fight AIDS.
It's not too difficult to understand where the Republicans went wrong. They were taught by the Democrats that getting elected is a simple matter of buying the vote. What better incentive to gain votes than promising free health care, job training, education and cheese?
The neo-cons have compromised a once-great vision of small government - a government not involved in nation building; a government that respects the rights of individuals; a government that is fiscally sound, with low taxes and even lower spending. The Republicans are now the party of neo-tax cuts, no spending cuts and deficits.
Now we have a larger government than even Bill Clinton asked for, the "Patriot Act", and more debt than you can shake a bankruptcy file at. I do know what's right and I do know who's left. Libertarian thinkers, they're right and they're all that's left.
Gary Nolan is a candidate for the Libertarian Party nomination for president.
no subject
Date: 2003-06-12 08:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-06-13 07:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-06-12 08:18 am (UTC)I mean, it's the very fact that they know they can abuse these core supporters - who comprise their volunteers, activists, and fundraisers - that the GOP will still remain viable.
Hm. I'd called it "battered ideologue" syndrome - those who believe in the principles of the GOP will constantly be abused by those who are simply seeking to win elections and yet never leave.
no subject
Date: 2003-06-13 07:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-06-12 03:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-06-13 07:28 am (UTC)The true libertarian party.
Date: 2003-06-17 08:57 pm (UTC)Libertarian bankruptcy is most easily illustrated by questioning its opposition to the fighting in Iraq. Within a society, a productive man can reliably presume that his hopes for the future radically converge with those of his fellow productive citizens and favor cooperation with them over coercion, for no other reason than that cooperation is more profitable to him. Similar reasoning accounts for why the United States Congress tolerates a technical state of war with the peoples of Europe rather than subjecting them to its laws. But what prevents it from subjecting or otherwise coercing primitives? Given the wisdom of the Bush administration, we can conclude that such violence would be costly by observing his restraint. When the Bush administration recommends hostility, however, what arguments can possibly be made against it?
For civilians, who are necessarily ignorant of the overwhelming preponderance of the facts, there can be no arguments. Whatever information and simple arguments are available to civilians are already factored into the Executive's calculations. Civilians can provide no useful input whatsoever. For the Congress, there can be arguments against hostility, but the Congress itself ultimately decides the matter, so its arguments against hostility are revealed to be valid or invalid according to the outcome if its deliberations. Libertarians, crippled by ignorance, can only oppose proposed hotilities ideologically.
To oppose hostilities against Iraq, some libertarians have asserted, without support or definition, that pre-emptive strikes against threats that are not imminent are "wrong." As I said, Libertarians have no means of determining whether or not a threat is imminent. Libertarians are ideologues.
R.W. Bradford deflects accusations of sabotaging the Republican Party by claiming that the Libertarian Party is insignificant. R.W. Bradford and others, however, intend to make the Libertarian Party significant, and they would thereby ensure Democratic rule. Frankly, I'd vote for a Democrat before a Libertarian. At least voting for Democrats is honest, open support for socialism.
President Bush has apparently acted to diminish liberty, but libertarians' only hope, whatever they suspect to actually be the case, is that Bush is setting Republicans up in the Congress to have enough power to actually legislate according to their conservative rhetoric without thereby necessarily committing political suicide. Or maybe there's another hope: that the Republicans will change some time in the future.