Dissapointed

In September of 2006 I had finally come to the realization that the Republican party of which I was a part of (mainly as I had seen it as the much lesser of two evils for years), was not a guardian of individual liberties and free market capitalism, and I decided to leave the Republicans and become a Libertarian. I contributed to the national party and the state party (Virginia), I also joined the Wood for congress campaign. I figured that I would be giving up Election Day victories for the foreseeable future, but at least I would be holding a more intellectually honest stand. I knew there were some nuts in the Libertarian party, but I figured every party has its extremes, the Democrats have their environmental extremists, and unabashed communists, while the Republicans had their ultra religious right, I am not referring to most church going people, but the ones who secretly hold that the Taliban had it right with the exception that they follow the wrong god. In the end I figured the media portrayal of Libertarians was exaggerated, but lately I have had my doubts, because it is hard to discern where the Libertarian populace is on things.

Bill Redpath (chairman of the national Libertarian Party) once relayed to me what appeared to be a common thought and that is “people join the Libertarian Party for two issues,” and those seem to vary widely. My frustration has risen in the last week as I believe the Libertarian movement was presented a golden opportunity to differentiate themselves from the two major parties, but to my chagrin, with the exception of talk radio (Neil Boortz, Larry Elder), no one has picked up on it. The opportunity I speak of was handed to us by Hillary Clinton, when using very euphemistic language told us what here plans for our country were, She called for (and I am paraphrasing here) going away from an “on your own society,” ( I read that as a society based on individual rights) to a “were all in it together society, based shared responsibility and shared prosperity,” (I read as a society where government is above the individual and law, where the productive are subjected to unproductive, where everyone can share in same level of misery and mediocrity). I know as Libertarians we know this is what Hillary and most Democrats / Republicans are all about (based on the last six years I can’t believe anything else), and my be yawn as old news, but this is about a clear cut as I can recall her saying it. No matter what pet freedom project , you support smoking, guns, capitalism this effects you. Up until now the Democrats war on the individual and individual rights was in the marshaling resources phase, I consider Hillary’s remarks as the first open volley against the individual, they think that enough of the populace is ready to forsake their liberties and accept the yoke of socialism, and I fear they may be right.

What was the Libertarian response, crickets? Well not exactly, What did libertarians or the Libertarian party do? Did we stop eating our own in our inquisition of intellectual purity? Did we take a break from fighting the anitsmokers, antigun, and the envior-communists? No Hillary’s throwing down the gauntlet was largely ignored instead I got a mass emailing railing against Rudy Gulianani (which even if I took the accusations at face value, it is not as big a threat as Hillary’s war on the individual), and I also received the normal quota of Bush bashing which is fine and he has done much to be bashed for, but guess what he is done in two years time, and his approval rating is a 28%, I think you have reached point of diminishing returns on the bush bashing thing. So far the libertarian community has said little or noting in response to Hillary. The Libertarian Party has done nothing to seize on this can the Libertarian party be considered an advocate of liberty if it can't respond to such an affront? If we can’t stand together for individual liberties, then I don’t know what is important to other people who consider themselves Libertarians. Pleas e if any one knows of response to this that I am missing please let me know, until then Boortz and Elder and i hate to say it Hannity are the biggest defenders of liberty out there , no matter how much the libertarian inquisition disagrees with the first two on the war and out right hate the latter.