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Libertarians versus National Isolation

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English: A peace march through Balboa Park, Sa...
English: A peace march through Balboa Park, San Diego, California, 2003 to protest the Iraq War seven days before it began. Photograph by Patty Mooney, Crystal Pyramid Productions. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On April 1, Fox Business Network’s John Stossel hosted a debate featuring three candidates — Gary Johnson, John McAfee and Austin Petersen — for the Libertarian Party’s 2016 presidential nomination (a fourth, more radical libertarian, Darryl W. Perry was unfortunately excluded). Those seeking an alternative to America’s failed political system, in which one party masquerades as two and the range of respectable political opinion covers perhaps five degrees of a 360-degree circle, might do well to consider voting Libertarian this November.

One common accusation leveled against libertarians — those affiliated with the Libertarian Party and those who hang with other parties or eschew political activity altogether — is that we’re “isolationists” because we oppose US intervention in foreign conflicts.

The standard libertarian retort to that criticism is that we support, as Thomas Jefferson put it, “friendship and commerce with all nations, entangling alliances with none,” where real isolationists have historically opposed not just foreign wars but foreign commerce, calling for protectionist trade and immigration policies (which libertarians oppose) to “protect American jobs.”

All three candidates had good responses to foreign policy questions, but I was particularly intrigued by John McAfee’s take on the “i-word.”

“I think isolationism,” McAfee says, “is taking on the role of world policeman, making us a separate entity from the rest of the world. We’re the policemen and you guys are the people that we police. … Dropping bombs on families where mothers and fathers are killed, or brothers and sisters. I would be angry too. You would be angry too. So it is not isolationism to say that we need to bring our troops home, or that we need to stop interfering in the affairs of foreign nations. It is reality and practicality.”

Kind of refreshing, isn’t it? After 25 years of continuous war in the Middle East, the “major” parties continue to mainly offer up candidates who supported the US invasion of Iraq (Hillary Clinton), who want to know if sand glows in the dark (Ted Cruz), or who admit the Iraq war was a mistake but don’t seem to have learned anything from that mistake (Donald Trump).

Those candidates, with their Caligula-style approach to foreign policy — “let them hate us so long as they fear us” — are the real isolationists.

Libertarians, on the other hand, want to make America once again a peaceful member of the community of nations — a leader rather than a menace. Let’s take them up on it.

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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Election 2016: The X-Files/Napoleon Dynamite Factor

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As we come around what may be the final curve of the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton look positioned to be the two horses who break free of the pack and make a neck-and-neck run down the final straightaway toward 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. That pairing and the likely outcome tell us some interesting things about America’s voters and their chosen candidates.

Specifically, it tells us that many voters are the political equivalents of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully from Fox’s long-time fan favorite show The X-Files: They want to believe.

Believe in what? Well, that varies.

Trump’s supporters want to believe that, working with him, they can “make America great again.” Nobody seems to really know how that might come about, except that it will involve getting Mexico to pay for a wall. But not to worry: It will be yuuuuge. It will be very nice. They’ll like it a lot, winning so much that they get bored with winning. They want so intensely to believe this that, as Trump himself says, he “could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” They don’t care whether or not he’s a “conservative” or about his actual policy positions. They don’t even demand that he make any sense from day to day.

Clinton’s supporters want to believe not only that she can win, but that she’s the only Democrat who can. They want so intensely to believe this that they’re willing to ignore her mediocre past electoral record, her dismal performances in elected and appointed office, her yuuuuge (like Trump’s) public disapproval numbers, the significant chance that she’ll be indicted over her mishandling of classified information, and the fact that she’s only been a “progressive” for about a minute, because it came to her attention that that’s what people like about Bernie Sanders.

If the voters resemble Mulder and Scully, the candidates remind me of the candidates in Napoleon Dynamite: Summer Wheatley, the “popular” student the regular kids actually love to hate but apathetically assume will win the student body presidency in a walk, and Pedro Sanchez, the upstart new guy who promises that if his fellow students vote for him “all of your wildest dreams will come true.”

I love The X-Files. I enjoyed Napoleon Dynamite.  But I’m not sure I can take eight more months of watching e-run marathons. Can you?

Maybe it’s time for a crisis of political faith. Maybe it’s time to crank up Netflix and find a new show to follow or a new movie to watch. So, two recommendations:

First, pull up Doug Stanhope’s comedy special Beer Hall Putsch on Netflix.

Second, if you must vote, vote Libertarian.

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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Election 2016: “One Person, One Vote” Kills Real Choice

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As you may have noticed, we’re in the middle of yet another American presidential election (our 57th). The news is full of musings about party primaries and delegate counts and possible brokered conventions, but if things proceed as usual,  as many as 130 million Americans will cast votes in November. A winner will be declared based on popular votes in the states as transmuted into a total of 538 electoral votes (if no candidate receives at least 270 such votes, the US House of Representatives chooses the next president).

Seems orderly and natural after 56 such exercises, doesn’t it? But “one person, one vote, the first candidate past the (plurality or majority) post wins” is a polarizing and not very representative way of doing things.

Many of us vote for our second choices — the “lesser evils” — because our first choices “can’t win.”

Many of us could live with either of two or more candidates, but vote for the one who “can win” rather than the one we may like best.

What if you could vote for ALL the candidates you like, instead of just one, secure in the knowledge that your vote(s) would not be “wasted” on a loser, or “spoil” the chances of one of your preferred candidates, resulting in election of the “greater evil?”

You could, if the United States adopted any of several far more rational voting methods. Of the three that come to mind — Instant Runoff, Single Transferable Vote and Approval Voting — I’m going to describe only the last one both to keep this column short and because it’s my own favorite. Here’s how Approval Voting works:

You vote for as few or as many candidates as you like. All the votes are counted. The candidate with the most votes wins. Yes, it’s really that simple.

Assume that this November (as seems likely), your ballot offers you the choice of Republican Donald Trump, Democrat Hillary Clinton, Libertarian John McAfee or Green Jill Stein.

If you’re a progressive, you prefer Stein to Clinton, but reluctantly pull the lever instead for Clinton because you really, really, really don’t like Trump and Stein “can’t win.”

If you’re a libertarian, McAfee’s the only even remotely acceptable choice. Maybe you’ll just stay home and watch re-runs of “Modern Family” instead of bothering to vote for someone who “can’t win.”

Under approval voting, progressives could vote for Stein AND Clinton, libertarians could vote for McAfee alone … and both candidates would likely receive second or third votes from people who also vote for Trump or Clinton. Every vote — every VOTER! — would count.

I’m not sure what effect Approval Voting would have on this year’s presidential race, but over time I suspect we’d start seeing successful independent and third party candidates for seats in the state legislatures and Congress — and eventually the White House.

Better election outcomes require better voting systems. Visit the Center for Election Science (electology.org) to learn more about Approval Voting and how to help put it into action in your city, county or state.

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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