Wall Street Journal columnist Barton Swaim’s “A Suggestion for Young Radicals” to embrace moderation (October 1) might seem to bring the second least appealing news hook for a commentator whose outlet is named after the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison who famously asserted that he would rather “tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm” than “use moderation in a cause like the present … I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.”

At least Swaim’s contribution keeps the Journal‘s op-ed page going when even the New York Times has moved on to so-called “guest essays.”  P.J. O’Rourke, in contrast, opened A Cry From the Far Middle with a proposal for “an opinion-free news media source” called “Happy Medium” — and while Swaim commends Aurelian Craiutu’s Why Not Moderation? for how it “distinguishes moderation from ‘lukewarm wishy-washiness,'” O’Rourke would happily “bring the Wishy and the Washy back together … The extreme moderates’ non-negotiable demand? Negotiation.”

While O’Rourke made his lack of regret for moving from his hippie Maoist youth to middle-aged rock-ribbed-yet-still-hip conservatism clear with titles like Republican Party Reptile or Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut, his idea of mellowing in old age was writing a follow-up to a humor piece whose title infamously began “How to Drive Fast on Drugs” with one on “How to Drive Fast When the Drugs Are Mostly Lipitor …” (both reprinted in a 2009 book whose subtitle boasts that his ideal post-recession economy would be one “With an Oil Well in Every Backyard, a Cadillac Escalade in Every Carport, and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Mowing Our Lawn”).

In contrast, Swaim seeks refuge in “institutions that require political actors to reason, argue and compromise with one another.” The Freeman founder Leonard Read anticipated Swaim’s invocation of Aristotelian moderation as an inherent good, writing in a 1956 article for that magazine that “the golden-mean theory cannot properly be applied indiscriminately … it is patently unsound when deciding between stealing nothing or stealing $1,000.”

Swaim paints a picture of a “hard left, from the French Revolution to the collapse of the Soviet Union” which always “tried to explain life’s complexities in terms of class warfare” (which makes it almost redundant for him to note that he “regard[s] socialism as itself a form of extremism”).

In the wake of that collapse, The Freeman ran an account about how “it is good to remember that from the beginning—not just among conservatives but among democratic socialists—there were many who saw clearly that Marxism was a weird mystique set forth by an egotistical crank” by democratic socialist Martin Gardner, who related how “[H.G.] Wells tried to convince Russian leaders that in England there were at least 200 different classes.”

Gardner could then point to Bertrand Russell’s The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism as a book-length exposé of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics from the perspective of a less doctrinaire socialist “widely known” enough compared to Wells’s Russia in the Shadows to not need popularization (a category for which he could have also mentioned John Spargo’s Bolshevism: The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy).

As for actually existing capitalism, it includes not only such deviations from clichéd socialist theory as individuals like Wells’s “works foreman who is being taken in a train by an engine-driver to see how the house he is having built for him by a building society is getting on.” The editors of In These Times, which to Swaim exemplifies far-left “periodicals that might fairly be termed immoderate,” observed in 1980 that “federal regulation of the economy has been welcomed or sought by American business leaders” while being sold as a populist imposition on them — and thus socialism would involve “dismantling the highly centralized agencies created to insulate corporate power from popular control.”

New Yorker Joel Schlosberg is a senior news analyst at The William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism.

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“A vote for the Libertarian,” Madison Cercy tells the Washington Times, “or a protest vote from any Republican who sits this one out, is a vote to hand the U.S. Senate to the democratic socialists.”

Cercy, a spokeswoman for Ken Paxton’s US Senate campaign in Texas, is responding to a Rasmussen poll that shows Paxton trailing Democratic candidate James Talarico by 1%, with 5% of likely voters undecided … and 4% planning to support Libertarian Ted Brown.

It’s not just Texas. In Kansas’s Senate race, Libertarian David Graham also draws 4% in polling, with incumbent Republican Roger Marshall trailing Democrat Adam Hamilton by 2%. In Montana’s 1st US House district, Libertarian Nick Sheedy enjoys 5% support, with Republican Aaron Flint enjoying a razor-thin 1% lead over Democrat Sam Forstag.

In every election cycle, Republicans and Democrats start playing the “spoiler” card whenever a race looks uncomfortably close.

Usually it’s Republicans griping about Libertarians and Democrats grousing about Green Party candidates, on the supposition that those two “minor” parties’ voters would, in the “normal” course of things, vote Republican and Democrat respectively.

That supposition is probably incorrect — many third party voters simply won’t vote if they don’t see options they prefer on their ballots, and others might vote opposite the assumptions of the big players’ strategists.

The incorrectness doesn’t bug me nearly as much as the arrogance.

For more than a century, the Republican and Democratic parties have used ballot access laws and debate exclusion criteria to rig elections, making it as difficult and expensive as possible for “third party” and independent candidates to even appear on ballots.

Then when Republicans and Democrats lose, or look like they may lose, the whining begins.

“Why, the nerve! How dare anyone but us seek political office? Those other guys can’t win — we’ve busted our butts to make sure of that! But here they come, ‘stealing’ our votes and ‘spoiling’ the rightful outcomes! There oughta be a law! Oh, wait, there is … why isn’t it working?”

Note to political candidates:

Votes don’t belong to you, and aren’t “stolen” by other candidates.

Votes belong to voters and have to be earned — in those voters’ judgment — by you or by those other candidates.

Additional note to the Texas GOP:

You nominated a guy who was impeached on 20 counts by a legislature controlled by your own party. Those counts included abuse of office and accepting bribes. You nominated a guy who plea-bargained his way out of a felony indictment for securities fraud. You nominated a guy who committed voter fraud at least twice by voting “from”  an address he didn’t live at.

Stop blaming the Libertarian for your nominee’s deservedly poor standing with the voters. James Talarico may not deserve to win the race, but Ken Paxton definitely deserves to lose it. Texas could, and  unfortunately almost certainly will, do a lot worse than Ted Brown. If he saves you from six years of Paxton, he deserves a medal.

Stop whining about “spoilers” already and start trying to earn support instead of just demanding it.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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I suspect nearly everyone reading this column will agree that ovarian cancer is a terrible thing, and that preventing ovarian cancer, or predicting it and catching it early to enhance a woman’s chance of surviving it, is a good thing.

I open with those stipulations, burying the lede just a little bit, to preempt the obvious arguments against my position on this report from The Hill:

“A group of lawmakers spanning both parties and chambers is introducing legislation that would require insurance plans to cover genetic testing for patients with hereditary risk factors and expand education and outreach about gynecologic cancer risk. Sens. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) and Katie Britt (R-Ala.) are leading the bill, the Ovarian Cancer IMPACT Act …”

Genetic testing for ovarian cancer risk sounds like a great idea.

And genetic testing for ovarian cancer risk (and other cancer risks) costs money — typically $250 to $500, sometimes less if fewer gene markers are screened for, sometimes much more if the tests are more comprehensive.

Before considering who should bear those costs and why, I should probably take a moment to  discuss the exact role the US Constitution assigns to Congress when it comes to the provision and delivery of healthcare:

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It’s simply not Congress’s business to decide what kind of testing or treatment your insurer or other healthcare provider may, or even must, offer.

Not that Congress pays attention to the Constitution when paying attention to the Constitution seems inconvenient. They just wave their hands, quack about “interstate commerce,” and mandate whatever they want to mandate about your healthcare options — even if you, your insurer, your healthcare provider, and the testing company are all located in the same state.

So, what happens when every insurance company gets told that, by law, it must pay for this or that kind of genetic screening?

In four words, everyone’s healthcare costs go up. Not just the healthcare costs of  women who are, or may be, at risk for ovarian cancer. Everyone’s.

Why? Because patients at such risk can’t be magically identified in advance and charged for those testing costs.

The costs can’t even be limited to the half of the population that MIGHT have to worry about ovarian cancer, because many healthcare policies are “family” policies provided through employers, and the single male who gets insured today may add a female partner or daughter to the policy tomorrow.

So, all of us get to pay for testing we may or may not ever want or need.

In a free and open healthcare market, many insurers might cover these tests as part of their normal policies, or offer them as cheap add-on options to those most likely to want them. After all, testing for ovarian cancer is much cheaper than treating ovarian cancer.

However, we live in the opposite of a free and open healthcare market.

Decisions about what testing, prevention, and treatment options get covered are made by politicians and bureaucrats, usually with the “assistance” of industry lobbyists who know which testing, prevention, and treatment options best serve their employers’ bottom lines.

The Ovarian Cancer IMPACT Act is almost certainly less about women’s health than about who enjoys a payday at others’ expense.

Like speech, press, and religion, we’d be better off with complete  separation of medicine and state.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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