30 October 2005

A Libertarian President (in 2048)

I consider myself a fairly hardcore free market laissez-faire libertarian (there's a mouthful !) Even voted for Harry Browne in 2000, (and soon discovered what a mistake he would have been -- Did you happen to catch his public statements post-9/11? They seemed rather creepy and Xenophobic, if you ask me).

Less than 400,000 people voted Libertarian in 2000.
(that's zero-point-three-six percent of the popular vote)

Over the course of next generation is there even a chance that we'd see some great charismatic professed Libertarian leader with the kahones to actually try to convince this country to stop being such damned dependent victims? I don't think so -- not even a hint.

The Republican party had been a signficant home for the libertarian-minded, but their Patriot Act and "War on Terrah" have highlighted a faction of Civil Libertarians (who would seem to have more of an affinity with Democrats) ... making Nolan's chart come true:

So ... I've decided to focus less on getting idealistic Libertarians elected for the time being. I would rather find and support those working from a libertarian point of view within the ranks of either majority party.

What I'm wondering is: If this approach caught on, would it represent the dawning of "party-free" era in our politics? Here's the idea:

Sow these Libertarian seeds now, then maybe some candidate in 2048 will be in perfect position to assemble a more balanced Libertarian-minded majority from the tattered remains of our current two party system.

2 comments:

cryptozoologist said...

i think i am on the left wing of part of the chart. the difficulty i have with the libertarian quadrant is that it allows the rich to keep getting richer until they have leveraged the entire economy for their personal gain. antitrust was codified for a very good reason. there is no shortage of megalomaniacal sociopaths (carlos slim helu, john d. rockefeller for instance) who would happily acquire everything, and i mean everything.

Will said...

http://xkcd.com/868/