Of course, it is great news that the Wall Street Journal covered the alternative candidates on the eve of the NY State Governor’s Race debate. I applaud the Journal and Erica Orden for recognizing that New Yorkers are capable of processing information beyond the dumbed-down drivel that comes from most of the political class mainstream media. Apparently Orden and WSJ understand why the voters are running screaming from the incumbent parties that got us into this mess. That’s a big step toward a real dialog on the issues. I only wish there was enough space to address some of the actual issues that separate the alternative candidates from the incumbent parties and from each other.
So let’s do that here.
The dumbed down version of the political spectrum would have us divide the candidates along a left-right, liberal-conservative line. The left side of that line includes Green, Working Families, Democrat and Freedom Party Candidates. The right side includes Conservative, Taxpayer and Republican Parties. The left is usually associated with more social freedom but less economic freedom. The right is usually associated with more economic freedom and less personal freedom. The problem is that today’s incumbent Republicans and Democrats both support more war, more welfare ( corporate and personal) and more limits on personal freedom via laws like REAL ID, the PATRIOT ACT. In short the incumbent parties are both for more big government when that big government works for them and against those other people.
I left out the Independence, Libertarian and Anti-prohibition parties.
I have to put the Anti-prohibition Party on the left because they support legalizing marijuana, prostitution and gambling – great ideas in support of more social freedom, but they support extraordinary taxes on those activities – a bad idea that reduces economic freedom and funds more and more bigger government. Much as I applaud the APP’s refreshing positions on victimless crimes , unfortunately, the APP is for the most part, a single issue party without any history or much to say about dozens of other important issues. It’s also interesting that Kristin Davis the APP’s candidate for Governor also opposes the Ground Zero Mosque. It’s hard to understand how Davis can see the issue of victimless crimes so clearly and completely miss the point on issues of economic and religious freedom.
The Independence Party sits squarely in the middle exhibiting no actual discernable principles of any kind.
But what about the Libertarians? Libertarians are a diverse crowd but for the most part they are fiscal conservatives who support lower taxes, lower government spending, less regulation and generally more economic freedom. But the Libertarians don’t really fit in on the right because we also support more personal freedom and typically left positions. We support Civil Rights and we oppose war , corporate welfare, the PATRIOT Act and REAL ID Act, and laws against victimless crimes such as the Drug War.
So how do we vote for a future for New York with religious and social freedom, a sane policy for victimless crimes and an economic climate conducive to job and income growth?
You reject the Democrats and Republicans immediately because they are the ones who got us into this mess. Hoping it will be different this time is really deluded.
Thinking people will reject the Left if they ever hope to retire or if they have children or even a basic sense of fairness. The Left has nice dreams but no way to pay for them. Putting your economic future in the hands of corrupt politicians is truly irrational. We should have learned that lesson in the last 100 years or so.
So what remains is the obvious choice. You can choose to vote for personal freedom and economic freedom. You can choose to vote against war, against the drug-war, against corporate welfare and against intolerance based on religion, race and gender-identify. At the same time you can vote for a healthy economy where free people benefit from their own hard work and where there are jobs for those willing to work and honest business is something we admire again. You could vote Libertarian.