Oh goodie - Bob Barr is running for President as a Libertarian (LA Times):

WASHINGTON — Bob Barr, a former congressman from Georgia and a former Republican, today announced his candidacy for president as a Libertarian who would rein in federal spending and foreign wars.

“The government has run amok fiscally,” he said at a press conference. Saying that during the first quarter of this year the private sector was losing millions of jobs while the federal government was “hiring with enthusiasm,” Barr added, “As the American people see their standard of living falling, the standard of government keeps going up.”

So far so good…

“There’s not a great deal of substance there in terms of a commitment to cutting the size of government,” Barr said He said no one who had authored the McCain-Feingold campaign reforms that cap individual donations could call himself a conservative, “at least with a straight face.”

Fair enough, though, according to Army of Dog, some liberals are still afraid of what McCain wants to do to the government.

Barr also lashed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton for saying that if Iran threatens Israel’s existence, the United States should “obliterate Iran.” Calling the New York senator’s statement “tremendously dire,” Barr called the possibility of Iran possessing nuclear weapons “remote” and said he has seen “no evidence that indicates that is an imminent likelihood.”

Saying both the Republican and Democratic Parties have “bought into a system of running a charity called the United States of America,” Barr blasted programs that use public funds to educate the children of illegal immigrants and maintain foreign military bases “that have no more efficacy in the 21st century.“

And there’s why nobody takes the Libertarian Party seriously.  The Libertarian Party’s idea of foreign policy can be best summed up as, “Take our toys, go home, get out of any and all alliances, and pretend we can just chill out in the Western Hemisphere for the rest of all eternity without anyone messing with us.”  I wish I was kidding - here’s the official LP foreign policy plank:

American foreign policy should seek an America at peace with the world and the defense — against attack from abroad — of the lives, liberty, and property of the American people on American soil. Provision of such defense must respect the individual rights of people everywhere.

The principle of non-intervention should guide relationships between governments. The United States government should return to the historic libertarian tradition of avoiding entangling alliances, abstaining totally from foreign quarrels and imperialist adventures, and recognizing the right to unrestricted trade, travel, and immigration.

Keep in mind here that the United States government hasn’t used the “historic libertarian tradition” outlined above since, oh, the First Barbary War in 1801 and the Monroe Doctrine.  Also keep in mind that, in many cases, many of the governments we deal with on a day by day basis don’t respect the individual rights of their citizens, which means it’s a little difficult to find a Libertarian way of dealing with those governments without, y’know, not respecting the individual rights of the people “represented” by that government.  Fortunately, according to the Libertarian Party, it is quite possible for us to exercise a right to unrestricted trade, travel, and immigration when we keep to ourselves and avoid foreign entanglements - this has plenty of historic fact behind it, if you ignore impressment, piracy, the Lusitania, Pearl Harbor, and any other issue this country has had while pursuing an isolationist foreign policy.

Look, I’m all for Libertarianism - I love the idea of a small domestic government and low taxes.  It sounds great.  However, if the Libertarian Party ever wants to be taken seriously in this country, they need to realize that, for better or worse, the past 200 years of American history did, in fact, happen, and there were some very valuable lessons to learn from that time period.  Trying to roll back the clock and pretend nothing happened between now and then while also pretending that, if we just magically wave our Constitutional wands, nobody will ever mess with us again is pure lunacy.  We have a strong foreign policy for a reason - every single time we’ve tried to not have a strong foreign policy, we’ve received the shaft each and every time without fail.  Until the LP comes to grips with that, I just can’t bring myself to vote for them in good conscience anymore.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS