Topic: Presidential Campaign 2008
Love the Candidate, Hate the Sin
There's a lot to celebrate for Libertarians on both Republicat tickets. We should acknowledge Obama and Palin as heroes, game changers, great Americans... and just plain wrong on the issues.
by John Wingspread Howell
(libertarian)
Friday, August 29, 2008
Barak had me in tears. Goosebumps too. It was a historic moment. It made me proud to be an American. No sarcasm. I agreed with a lot of what he said in criticism of George W and John McCain. Most of the rest of what he said was so last-century Nanny State I would have normally needed to puke, but he pulled it off. Hit it out of the park. It's history. I'm glad I'm alive to see it. And I thought that would be it for this kind of excitement for a while.
Then McCain played his card. I found myself falling in love with Sarah Palin. Any Libertarian has to love a woman who said no to pork she was being spoon-fed, who took on the Good Old Boys and won, who is a lifetime NRA member, and who gave back "excess" state revenue. And I found myself-- not crying this time-- but at least getting goosebumps. History again. More cracks in the glass ceiling. You have to love it.
I know most of my Libertarian contemporaries like to hate the sinner and the sin. I must agree, it's tempting. Shoot the messenger along with the message. That's one way to kill the message eventually, I suppose. Or not.
Because there's the whole issue of nuance, and of respect for human beings who believe in their hearts their way is best, who truly care about their country and want to make a difference in the world (at least until they get elected and get caught up in the whole tangled web). These people-- not all certainly, but I'll give the current group the benefit of the doubt-- are great Americans. Heroic in some sense. Not completely uncorrupted but far from completely corrupt. And two of the four will be running our country for the next four years because we Libertarains haven't done anytning to give them any real competition. (see How Libertarians Can Win at Nolan Chart.) They deserve our respect.
And they deserve one thing more. As a Libertarian, I not only work for minimal government, an end to taxation and regulation, an end to military adventurism, foreign meddling, the War on Drugs, victimless crime, prison for anyone other than acutely violent offenders, private solutions for 99.9 percent of things the government is currently screwing up (99.95 if Barak has his way), but I also work for complete equality of race, gender, and any other distinction that tends to divide us and result in some of us getting more of the pie than others.
On the equal opportunity front, all Libertarians should celebrate the first major party nominations of an African American for President and a woman for Vice President. This is huge in the struggle for equal rights and civil liberties. It is as much a Libertarian victory as the achievement of any other part of our agenda. We should celebrate the heroism, vision, and sacrifice that brought both of these candidates to this appointment with history. We should work our hardest to continue these advances, as well as the rest of the Libertarian agenda.
And then we should vote against both of them and for the Libertarian ticket.
©2008 John Wingspread Howell, all rights reserved. You must have written permission from the author in order to republish this work.
Published: Friday, August 29, 2008
Last modified: Friday, August 29, 2008
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