Monthly Archives: February 2018

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America’s Democracy Hypocrisy

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In late February, Venezuela’s government began accepting presidential candidate registrations and announced a snap legislative election for April. The country’s opposition denounces the process as a sham and Maduro as a dictator, both of which may be true.

Oddly,  a third voice — the US government — also weighed in. Per US state media outlet Voice of America, “the United States, which under President Donald Trump has been deeply critical of Maduro’s leadership in crisis-torn and economically suffering Venezuela, on Saturday rejected the call for an early legislative vote.”

Given the perpetual public pearl-clutching over alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election, that’s some major league chutzpah.

The US State Department wants “‘a free and fair election’ involving full participation of all political leaders, the immediate release of all political prisoners, credible international observation and an independent electoral authority.

Let’s take that one at a time.

Participation of all political leaders? In some US states, it’s harder for a third party to get on a ballot than in, say, Iran.

The immediate release of all political prisoners? Last I heard, US president Donald Trump hadn’t pardoned (among others) Leonard Peltier.

Credible international observation? The US proper committed to admitting international election observers in the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe’s 1990 Copenhagen Document, but many US states forbid international observers or, for that matter, local observers who aren’t affiliated with one of the two ruling parties.

Electoral authorities? The two ruling parties control them all and routinely use them to suppress threatened competition, as do pseudo-private entities like the Commission on Presidential Debates, which makes giant illegal (but government approved) in-kind contributions to the Republican and Democratic candidates in the form of televised candidate beauty pageants which exclude the opposition parties.

Writing in The Atlantic, veteran election meddler Thomas O. Mela — formerly of the US State Department, the  US Agency for International Development,  the National Democratic Institute and Freedom House — argues that election meddling is different when the US does it, because … well, “democracy.”

Mela asserts a “difference between programs to strengthen democratic processes in another country (without regard to specific electoral outcomes), versus efforts to manipulate another country’s election in order to sow chaos, undermine public confidence in the political system, and diminish a country’s social stability.”

The US government spends a lot of time and money (USAID’s budget alone is about one-tenth the budget of the entire Russian government) on foreign election meddling, and somehow “democracy” always gets interpreted as “whatever outcome the US government prefers at the moment.”

Perhaps we should get our own democratic house in order instead of, or at least before, presuming to tell the rest of the world how democracy does or should work.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) 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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Who’s on Third? Not John Kasich

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Libertarian Party Logo
Libertarian Party Logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“I don’t think either party is answering people’s deepest concerns and needs,” Ohio governor John Kasich said in a February 25 interview on ABC News’s This Week. “I don’t think it’s going to happen tomorrow but I think over time do not be surprised if these millennials and these Gen Xers begin to say, ‘Neither party works, we want something new.'”

The idea smacks of special pleading by Kasich, who ran a lackluster campaign for the Republican Party’s 2016 presidential nomination and got sent home by his party’s primary voters in favor of Donald Trump. His supporters (with no discernible discouragement from him) are talking him up as a possible 2020 candidate on a third party ticket.

Maybe not tomorrow, governor Kasich — and certainly not yesterday.

In 2014, Kasich and Ohio’s Secretary of State, Jon Husted, actively conspired to deny Ohioans third choices — Libertarian Party nominee Charlie Earl for governor and Steve Linnaberry for Attorney General — accepting an illegal $250,00 in-kind donation from a GOP activist  in the form of attorney bills for legal action to remove Earl  and Linnaberry from the ballot.

The only reason John Kasich suddenly thinks fondly of third parties is because he fell short of his own party’s top slot. Back when he thought the sky was the limit for himself, he couldn’t stand the idea. Sore loser much?

 

He may be right that a third party is coming, but not for the reasons he wants one. He’s enamored of the notion that what Americans REALLY want in a political candidate is a “centrist” like John Kasich, Mitt Romney, or John McCain, or, for that matter, Hillary Clinton. In other words, a candidate like those who keep losing presidential elections.

The winners of recent elections have been candidates who moved away from the center — ever so slightly in a “progressive” direction like Barack Obama in 2008, or falsely but loudly in a “populist” direction like the Tea Party’s 2010 congressional class or Donald Trump in 2016.

The problem with the major parties is not that they’re not “centrist” enough, it’s that their candidates run as something different and then move to the center after they win.

Americans clearly want change, not the same old stuff in louder packaging. We don’t agree on what kind of change, but it’s obvious to most of us that something just isn’t working.

There’s already a third American political party, based on ideas that work every time they’re tried. It’s the party Kasich did his damnedest to hide from the voters of Ohio: The Libertarian Party.

There are other  third parties, too, if freedom isn’t your touchstone. The Green Party. The Constitution Party. The oldest third party in existence, the Prohibition Party.

But they’re not the kind of third parties John Kasich has in mind. They’re parties whose supporters want to actually take America in new directions. John Kasich wants to paint a racing stripe on his broke-down ideas and sell us a jalopy with four flat tires and no engine as something “new.”

Sorry, John. No sale.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) 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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A Letter to Students Demand Action from a Gun Owner

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Gun photo from RGBStock

Dear Students Demand Action,

I understand. You’ve witnessed — far too often at first hand and in the most terrifying circumstances — the violent deaths of your fellow students. You refuse to accept that that’s just how it has to be. You’re organizing for change.  You deserve to be heard. Don’t let anyone talk down to you or minimize your concerns.

You want action. I don’t blame you. But it’s important to consider what kind of action you want, how to go about getting it, and what it will accomplish.

With respect to gun control laws, it’s worth considering how well those have worked in the past at preventing school shootings.

Article 18, Section 922 of the United States Code deems it “unlawful for any person to sell or otherwise dispose of any firearm or ammunition to any person knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that such person … has been adjudicated as a mental defective or has been committed to any mental institution.”

Nikolas Cruz was, according to Florida’s Department of Children & Family Services (which had investigated prior violent incidents in which he was involved) “classified as a vulnerable adult due to mental illness.”

But he got a gun anyway.

Another part of that US Code section, usually referred to as the “Gun-Free School Zones Act,” deems it “unlawful for any individual knowingly to possess a firearm that has moved in or that otherwise affects interstate or foreign commerce at a place that the individual knows, or has reasonable cause to believe, is a school zone.”

But Nikolas Kruz came to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida with his rifle and killed 14 students and three staff members anyway.

Nikolas Cruz was, in theory, bound up in a web of laws intended to prevent him from getting a gun or using it to commit murder. Those laws didn’t stop him.

Starting with the National Firearms Act of 1934, the US government has, with increasing stringency, regulated the ownership, carriage and use of guns for nearly a century.

What have we learned?

Among other things, we’ve learned that these regulations don’t work, at least if the goal is to reduce violence. Any list of the most dangerous cities in the United States will heavily overlap a list of the cities with the most draconian gun control laws.

The numbers are hard to pin down, but at a minimum there are more than 100 million gun owners, and more than 300 million guns, in America. The Gun Violence Archive claims 15,593 gun deaths in 2017. That’s 15,593 too many. But it’s also one death for every 6,400 gun owners and one for every 18,000 guns, and that includes police shootings, self-defense, and suicide.

I’m writing to you as one of  more than 100 million American gun owners who has never entered a school with the intent to kill. We and our guns are clearly not the problem as such.

What is the problem? How to solve it? I wish you luck in doing a better job than your elders of figuring that out.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) 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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