Thursday, June 9, 2016

Should Republicans Vote Libertarian?

Should Republicans vote Libertarian in this election?

Tom Belton passed along an article written by Jacob Weinberg about the Libertarian Party. “The Libertarian party’s nominating convention, held last weekend in Orlando, Florida, was typical of its gatherings. One of its more popular Presidential candidates, software magnate John McAfee, is wanted for questioning  by the police in Belize as ‘a person of interest’ in connection with his neighbor’s murder. Another candidate, who goes by the name of Vermine Supreme, wore a rubber boot on his head while explaining his platform of time travel, self-defense against zombies and free ponies for all.” And perhaps you saw on TV the often repeated clip of a naked libertarian of great weight dancing at the mike.

The party ended up nominating Gary Johnson, a former Republican governor, who is pleasantly rational, maybe a little kooky but nothing like “Jelly Belly” Trump. “Today’s Libertarians are not so much extreme left or extreme right as they are lost in the clouds of utopian anarchism. . . . During their nominating debate, delegates booed Mr.Johnson for endorsing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”

The Koch Bros. are libertarians, and so is Peter Thiel, “the billionaire co-founder of Pay Pal and a Trump delegate to the Republican convention. Mr. Thiel contends that extending the franchise to women in the 1920s destroyed American capitalism.


That might still happen. It’s a work in progress. 

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