Libertarians Not Wanted By Voters
We’ve heard a lot about Libertarian presidential candidates in 2008, but the voting public does not want these people in power.
Congressman Ron Paul’s Republican primary campaign was a flop. Despite raising a lot of money from a core of true believers, Paul did not have nearly the success of outsider primary candidates Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988 or Pat Robertson in 1988.
Wedded to his government job, Paul did not run for President on a third party ticket in 2008. Instead, he is running for re-election to Congress in Texas.
Instead, Libertarians have nominated former Congressman Bob Barr ( photo above) of Georgia as their 2008 nominee. Losing a Republican primary in 2002 to keep his seat in the House, alleged Libertarian Barr is now looking for another government job at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
No Libertarian nominee has ever won more than 1.1% of the total vote in a Presidential election. And that was way back in 1980. Ed Clark was the Libertarian who delivered the 1.1% for the faithful.
Libertarianism is a philosophy that says, when all is said and done, that no person has any obligation to assist any other person. Even in individualist America, this view has been soundly rejected at the polls. In 2008, Barr will be yet another in a long line of Libertarian electoral non-entities.
Libertarianism is the political equivalent of anarchism except that anarchy can be a part of a progressive progress leading to greater liberty. As a political party, Libertarians are confused and don’t really agree on much except that the status quo needs to be changed. Part of that change is certainly that we are entrenched in a 2 party system.
But if skinhead racists find a political party home with Andrew Sullivan and Bill Maher, I’m not voting for them or with them and I don’t really care what they say they’re going to change. It’s like saying, I don’t like speeding tickets so let’s remove the traffic lights and fire the police. There, now we’re all free at last.
TJ -
A little harsh.
Thanks for your comments.
Get serious. The voters want them, it is the media and people like this author who don’t want them and carry all the power to keep them from getting traction. The third parties need to all have a run-off and ONLY run one person against the crooked democrats and republicans who are owned and operated by the elites that also own and operate Washington and all the media, tv and newspapers. If we are tired of government lying to us about corporations and what they are doing to the public, then we better get behind someone who is outside of the two party system-unless it is Ron Paul we vote in. If the Republican Party had any integrity, it would be begging Dr. Paul to be their nominee.
I’d like to comment that Americans also seem to prefer Big Macs and KFC instead of a healthy diet.
Mass acceptance by a generally underinformed and misinformed audience is not the barometer of a valid political philosophy.
They idea once was to educate the public up to the levels of a high political discourse. Now the idea appears to be to dumb down the political discourse to the lowest common denominator.
It’s no wonder we now get to choose the political equivalent between Ronald MdDonald or The Burger King, for president of the US..
A sad commentary on today’s society in America.
Thanks for the opportunity to comment.
I maintain that statism is a philosophy that claims no person has an obligation to assist another. Statism assumes people are essentially evil, and need to be compelled by the violent force of government to help their fellow man.
The moral reality is, it is not a question of the ends justifying the means, but rather the inevitability that the means become the ends. However well intentioned statist intervention for “the good of all” the result is closer to what one expects from more typical violent coercion. Take the welfare state in America. The welfare state mearly keeps poor peopl, who are being attaclked via the war on drugs (the welffare-warfare state) sustained, but dependent on the government. The result is a violent existence that is more impoverished then mere lack of material wealth.
People must evolve past the notion that helping others means picking up a gun.
JohnGalt300,
it should be noted that most bad things done with good intentions never had true good intentions to begin with. If the original intent of any action is truly good, and by that I mean good for all, then the results will mirror the good intent. Most people claiming good intentions are unaware of how fatally flawed their interpretation of good is. For a good intention for some will always have undesireable and unforseen effects on many.