Richard Ebeling emails:
Dear Bob,
My new article on the website of the Future of Freedom Foundation is on, “If Political Candidates Advocated Liberty.”
Running for political office never ends for politicians. As soon as one political season ends, they are already looking to the next election cycle. Election and reelection is everything, and any principled advocacy of individual liberty and limited government is rarely seen.
Having recently attended a luncheon at which a group of GOP candidates offered themselves as
nominees to state-level elected office in South Carolina, it was soon clear that their rhetoric hid the fact that in substance there was little in the form of any detailed agenda for smaller government and a freer society.
It made my mind wonder about what a prospective candidate offering himself for elected office to a state legislature might actually outline as program and agenda for liberty relating to taxes, regulation and land use, infrastructure, schooling, healthcare, and drug use prohibitions.
I offer an imaginary stump-speech that a real friend of freedom might offer the voters for election to a state legislature, if such a candidate were ever to run.
https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/political-candidates-advocated-liberty/
Best,
Richard
Great Ebeling post.
ReplyDeleteThane, I was going to accuse you of being redundant, but this article by Ebeling does stand out, even among his routinely superior works.
ReplyDeleteEbeling: "South Carolina bears a good part of the historical responsibility for discrediting the traditional idea of ‘state’s rights’ under the U.S. Constitution because of the misuse of this concept in the years before the Civil War to justify the attempt to maintain a slave society."
I have never heard this idea expressed before, but it is brilliant. It states clearly the hypocrisy of professing state's rights, while simultaneously defending chattel slavery.
If butchers advocated veganism...
ReplyDelete