Pot Smoking Makes You Stupid Gary
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 41 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
It was pretty bad. But did you notice in the last seconds of the clip Bill Weld picking Angela Merkel as his favorite foreign leader? The ticket is a joke, for libertarians as much as anyone else.
Libertarianism in practice has become legalize pot, yay for abortion, bash those Christians, and let the rest of the world go to hell and allow whoever can reach us to come live in the US.
The libertarian subculture has always had its oddballs and cranks, but it’s had some serious critics of political economy as well: Friedrich v. Hayek, Milton Friedman, Gottfried DIetze, the younger Robert Bork, Thos Sowell, and Richard Epstein. You’ll notice the youngest person on that list was born in 1943.
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The Libertarian Party decided on a change of scene, so refrained from nominating one of their own hobbyists in favor of people who’ve actually run something. What they got for their trouble was a business Republican who plumbs the shallows of contentious issues appended to a highly intelligent careerist whose metier is looking down his Brahmin Ivy League nose at the Republican electorate with an explicitness one cannot imagine Mitt Romney or the Bush clan manifesting (if they shared his disdain at all). I’ve found the few Johnson partisans I’ve encountered to be deeply annoying, so if he embarrasses them I figure it’s good.
I’d have a hard time naming a favorite foreign leader myself. At least a living one.
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Does Nigel Farage count?
He will if Trump is elected.
Good point. The question was inane, especially limiting it to current incumbents. Admiration of foreign politicians is strictly optional. Libertarians face an additional problem: an indifference to the common life and a self-aggrandizing habit of disdaining it. None of them really give a damn about fidelity in curating institutions or admire anyone but their wilfull selves (or peers outside of narrow professional subcultures). Johnson couldn’t offer the obvious answer (Benjamin Netanyahu) because Netanyahu manifests virtues that libertarians disdain (other than eccentric libertarians like Thos. Sowell). He could not mention anyone who actually builds a rapport with their public (e.g. Victor Orban) for much the same reason. He could not mention the man he most agrees with (Justin Trudeau), because Trudeau’s name’s a punchline.
What about Geert Wilders?
If I remember right, sometime during Bush’s 2nd term John posited in National Review that the GOP was morphing into a more European like paternalistic “conservative” party like the Tories or the CDU. This was at the time that the liberal-tarian hype was at it’s hyperest. I dismissed it at the time. Now I’m wondering if it wasn’t prescient after all.
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Also, whether or not the GOP is the best vehicle for that kind of political party, if in fact that’s the kind of political party that’s needed right now.
Netanyahu was the obvious answer and I missed it too.
John O’Sullivan that is.
I’d vote for Johnson over Hillary in a two-way race.
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I have relatives that hold to libertarian ideas. I go easy on them because they are family. I get the ideas. But, they can’t be squared with the real world. I mildly am nauseated by their conspiracy theories of why the Fed is evil. I agree the Fed stinks. But, their facts and history are different than reality.
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In the category of being basically wrong on every practical matter, libertarians are not nearly as far out as are liberals.
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I cannot vote for a dude with a crappy wig, or such a bad haircut, I can’t tell.
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In conclusion, libertarians I know and love are good people who lack formal education, background and context in the complexities of the world. They are good people. In contrast, liberals, e.g. Crooked Hillary and anybody that would consider voting for her, are subhuman scum.
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Esterson’s Law, every political party has 2,000 kooks. The corollary is, in a political party as small as the Libertarian Party or the US Green Party everybody could be a kook. Esterson’s Law explains why getting a new political party off the ground is so difficult. A new party must quickly grow to get big enough so the normal people among its members are the norm, not the 2,000 kooks.