Wednesday, December 14, 2016

The Problem With a Trump Presidency for Libertarians

The below is a response to an email I received from a sel-identified libertarian Trump supporter. Unfortunately, he will not give me permission to reprint his original email, not even if I keep him anonymous.

However, from my response, it should be fairly easy to determine what I am responding to.
Trump does not want to end Obamacare, he wants to replace it.

Yeah, he encouraged Carrier all right with the intimidation of government.

What the hell does Trump "liking to win" have anything to do with libertarianism? It sounds Banana Republic like to me. There is nothing the United States needs to win.

There is nothing wrong with supporting Trump when he makes choices that appear to be going in the way of liberty. And I have:

http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2016/12/trumps-three-best-cabinet-picks-so-far.html

But on most issues, he is just terrible.

Under a Trump presidency, I expect U.S. combat troops in the Middle East (Syria/Iraq region) Reinforcements in Afghanistan. Major league destabilization activities in Iran. Possible taxes or tariffs against Saudi oil. And a serious threat of domestic crackdowns.

Trump is not a step toward libertarianism, he is simply a step away from the current establishment and that is far from enough.

Why can't we support his libertarian efforts and condemn his authoritarian actions?

Blindly supporting him is in my mind simply horrific.

As Wilhelm Ropke informed us in The German Question,  many Germans supported Hitler because he was considered better than the Bolsheviks. How did that turn out?

I am really not interested in "better" authoritarians, especially with the election over.
Hillary has lost, Trump will be in power. There is no reason for libertarians to support his authoritarian steps at this point.

The masses need to be shown that authoritarianism is an error. Our task has become much more difficult with Trump whose public personality causes many to fall in line with him. Including many libertarians!!
  -RW

7 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Another intellectual dunce who knows nothing about anything.

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    2. You must be one of those highly intelligent "alt-right" types that thing the word "cuck" is a good substitute for an argument.

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  2. This is an easy trap to fall into. The progressive left is so obnoxious that it is hard not to at least play devil's advocate in support of the person they hate. Just keep reminding yourself it is authoritarian v libertarian, not left v right.

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    Replies
    1. It's okay to have priorities and think that one type of authoritarianism is moderately better than the next. Thats why i am of the opinion, for now, that Trump is better than Hillary. It would be an astonishing feat for anyone to end up being worse than Hillary, considering her track record in politics.

      Just as long as you don't vote for him and make excuses for him.
      That's the only trap "Libertarians for Trump" have fallen into.

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  3. I'm relieved that Trump won the election. I believe the US dodged a serious bullet.

    But the election is over (I hope!). Trump will be prez for the next 4 years. At some point, namely on November 9th, it’s time to stop with the “but this is one hell of a lot better than the alternative” and judge him against real, possible alternatives.

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  4. If we look back to Saul of the tribe of Benjamin we can see that human beings have been looking for a king to rule over them for at least 3,065 years, and the need of human beings to be ruled like pack animals shows no signs of abating. An amazing number of people are like children who stopped growing intellectually, and emotionally past the age of five. I can not fathom the primeval need of human beings to be ruled by a stern father figure who will lead them in horrific directions they will blindly follow.

    Trump is a stern father who has used debt and guile to build his fortune, and in his presidential campaign unleashed a boorish, blustering, caricature of a candidate that the masses would blindly follow. Trump has proved he lied and obfuscated his true beliefs to his followers during this campaign, but for many this sounds no internal warning signs, I mean after all he is extremely shrewd. I am afraid Donald Trump will lead libertarians, and conservatives down a road that will destroy indiscriminately all who stand in the way of his vision of total submission to his will.

    I have no faith that significant numbers of libertarians and conservatives will wake up before it is too late. This is the ultimate test for those who emphatically espouse their love of freedom yet grovel like the dogs they are at heart.

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