The Libertarian Case for Kamala

No, please keep reading. It's not what you think.

I know, it's a little late in the day for more pre-election commentary. I haven't said a whole lot about the elections, and didn't plan to, but then I went and listened to Tom Woods and Dave Smith talk about why they plan to vote for Trump, and why – this time especially – principled libertarian stances against voting just don't make any sense… and I had to say something.

I'll start off by saying that I think I agree with everything each of them says here. I'll also say that I am sitting down to write this at 8:06pm on the night before the elections, and after an incredibly stressful several days that I won't go into but believe me it was stressful. So, I'm not going to take the time to hunt down links for everything I say here, or to re-listen to the entire conversation, or to wrap this up as neatly as I possibly could. This is going to be very slap-dash, so please read it with that in mind.

What I need to say about this does not have to do with anything that either Tom or Dave said here, but with something they both left out. Or that maybe hasn't occurred to them. And I'll also add that I could be wrong in my assessment of what the best choice is here. But to leave this angle out of the discussion is, I think, a mistake.

Tom and Dave start off (and I'm going to paraphrase a lot here, but I don't think I'm misrepresenting anything that was said) by talking about how absolutely imperative it is that Kamala and her crew lose. They absolutely must lose, says Tom (I think), because:

1. She is dragging down the intellectual level of public discourse to a level previously unimaginable; and,

2. The people responsible for what was done to us under the guise of "public health" over the past four years need to be punished for it. They need to be. And they haven't yet been. Most of them haven't even been voted out of office, and that is a disgrace.

Nothing to argue with here.

They go on to enumerate some of the more obvious evils that characterize the Democratic Party, including a desire for complete control over our speech and being much more committed supporters of the warfare state than are the Republicans. They both acknowledge that Trump is far from perfect, but take the position that Kamala and her gang are much, much worse.

Again, they get no argument from me.

The two also spend a lot of time venting their frustration at libertarians who insist on ideological purity, even as the world is burning before their eyes, and who sometimes fail to even recognize that the world is burning, but prattle on about positive externalities and privatizing garbage collection, while Venezuelan gangs take over apartment complexes and kindergarteners push dollar bills into the g-strings of drag queens.

Tom has nothing against privatizing garbage collection. Or against voluntary, free-market solutions to environmental problems, for example. "On paper," he says, "there's nothing wrong with that. But that's not… what time it is now!"

He's right, it's not. He's also right that a whole lot of libertarians aren't very good at knowing what time it is.

He goes on to lambaste those who assume a "more principled than thou" stance:

"My first principle is: I'd like to have a livable society for my kids. That's actually my first principle… my kids are more important than your philosophy."

I could not agree more.

So I'm not finding much to disagree with in this conversation. But I do have a problem with it. And here's my problem: Both Tom and Dave are making the assumption that the "better candidate" is what America needs right now.

But is it?

Kamala threatens to turn our political discourse into a three-ring clown show that Barnum & Bailey could only have dreamed of. She promises to render the national conversation so moronic as to make our government the laughing stock of the entire world.

Is this a bad thing? Because from where I sit, on the night before the election, I'm only seeing the upside.

Hear me out: Are we really sure that getting "the better candidate" into the Oval Office is what is best for America? Are we sure that that is what is most likely to secure a free, safe, and civilized society for our children?

Or maybe… is it just possible that what we need is for the Federal government to become so laughable, so over-the-top monstrous and evil, so out-in-the-open visibly pitted against the lives and the interests of all of the people who live under it, that the relatively sane among us are left with no choice but to cut it loose?

I would not have written this five years ago. I would have been afraid to write these words five years ago, because I would have been afraid that what I was advocating was something that might have devolved into violence, even civil war. But now, after the experiences of the past four years, I am almost certain that it will not.

We've just witnessed the Federal government, and many state and local governments, becoming over-the-top evil and absurd. We've seen layers of darkness and destruction that even the most skeptical among us are having a hard time wrapping our heads around. We've seen lives and livelihoods upended for no good reason, what can only be described as institutional murder for money, and ongoing attempts to force dangerous medical products on everyone.

And how have people responded? By rioting in the streets? No, that was a bunch of other people. By calling for civil war? Nope. They've responded by, in some cases, ignoring or nullifying Federal directives with regard to lockdowns and related nonsense; in some cases refusing to enforce mask mandates and other idiocies; by physically protecting their own borders when the Feds refused to; and by standing up locally against Federal initiatives such as CBDCs and "Fifteen-minute Cities".

And the folks who don't want to live in the dystopian nightmare world their "leaders" have planned for them have been migrating towards the localities where more of the above has been going on. I know – our family is among the many who have migrated.

Maybe what America needs is not to fix Washington, D.C., but to let it sink and fall away. Maybe we need a lot more of the decentralization of power that we've seen beginning to stir over the past four years. Maybe we really do need a kind of National Divorce.

We have the tools at our disposal to bring about this decentralization. And none of it requires violent revolution, civil war, or really, any kind of violence at all.

Even better, we're already starting to use them.

Near the end of their conversation, Tom says "…in politics, I'm dealing with hundreds of millions of people who think I'm a space alien for my opinions. So, in that arena, you can either say 'I'm better than everybody because I have my principles', or you can say 'in this particular arena, the best I can hope for is some incremental improvements and maybe one or two big victories. And I've come to be at peace with that."

I believe the arena has shifted much more than Tom allows for.

I know from my own experience that there are a lot fewer people now who think I'm a space alien than there were five years ago.

Tom and Dave are one-hundred percent correct when they argue that a Donald Trump presidency will mean incremental improvements. Maybe, if we're lucky, even a few big victories. He will make the Federal government a little less awful than it otherwise would be.

But that's not what time it is anymore.