Bush Shoulda Listened to The Libertarians; Obama Still Can!
Columnist Ron Hart writes
[Last] Wednesday was Tax Day or, as Obama Cabinet appointees called it, Passover….
Libertarians look at things differently than most. Quirky, cantankerous and misunderstood, we do actually get it right. We have about as much power within the GOP as the Log Cabin Republicans, and not nearly as fun Halloween dress-up parties. But, had George Bush and Congress listened to us on the five major areas where they went wrong, we would all be better off….
Using Congressman Ron Paul as the best proxy for libertarian decision-making abilities, let's look at the five areas in which he differed with "W," Congress and the GOP in the past eight years. You decide who was right.
The five areas where Bush disagreed with Paul and went wronger than Joe Pepitone include spending, creating new entitlement programs, invading Iraq, perpetuating home ownership policies with no regard for economics, and bailing out the financial system via TARP.
Hart puts on his best Bartles & Jaymes at the end and writes
Reasonable people have to look honestly at history and see who had the right answers to past issues. If you look at these five major mistakes made by Congress in recent years and where we libertarians stood on each issue, I think you will agree that more government is seldom the answer.
Editor's Note: As of February 29, 2024, commenting privileges on reason.com posts are limited to Reason Plus subscribers. Past commenters are grandfathered in for a temporary period. Subscribe here to preserve your ability to comment. Your Reason Plus subscription also gives you an ad-free version of reason.com, along with full access to the digital edition and archives of Reason magazine. We request that comments be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment and ban commenters for any reason at any time. Comments may only be edited within 5 minutes of posting. Report abuses.
Please
to post comments
"Using Congressman Ron Paul as the best proxy for libertarian decision-making abilities"
WTF???
(maybe on those five, but c'mon, now)
Hmmm... that line about the Log Cabin Repubs and Halloween parties sounds familiar...
Does columnist Ron Hart have an opinion on asking politicians tough questions and posting the answers to youtube?
As a libertarian you have to balance the gift of always being right with the curse of no one ever listening to you.
Why can't a reasonable person think that more government IS the answer so long as it's more government of a different sort?
At least I'm pretty sure that's what all those reasonable folks currently in charge think.
Hey, now. The difference between you and me is that I actually successfully predicted things.
As a libertarian you have to balance the gift of always being right with the curse of no one ever listening to you.
We can throw Cassandra themed demonstrations! Not only will no one understand, but we'll confuse everyone with a reference to mythology. It's perfect.
VM,
WTF???
You have a better GOP congressman to use as a proxy?
I dont think Hart was trying to say that he was the best representative* of libertarianism amongst everyone, just amongst federally elected officials.
*not in the "House of" meaning of the word
It would be appropriate to call Ron Paul Cassandra, both for the straightforward reasons and for his (and the Austrians) Cassandra effect they have on the rest of us.
It's no fun having to say "I told you so." Not about things like this.
I still think describing the war in Iraq as a bipartisan affair is being a bit cute, but good article otherwise.
"Bush Shoulda Listened to The Libertarians; Obama Still Can!"
There is about as much chance of Obama listening to libertarians as there is of hell freezing over.
Hmmm. Maybe we could have spent the last election highlighting these five issues instead of debating amongst ourselves if Bob Barr was a sincere convert or a neo-con plant.
Libertarians ... FAIL. We are some 10-20 percent of the population, yet we cannot muster a reasonable voice in opposition to the present Big Government. Paul was our chance, and we blew it ... we are too factionalized. Between Fed hating Von Mises-ites and core disaffected former conservatives, we cannot unite with one logical voice against the present statism.
It's ok to hate the Fed ... it's fine to adhere to the Chicago or Austrian school of economics. But unless we present a message that the average American can understand and relate to, we are dead. We are just another voice in the wilderness ...
That's why there is a tiny glimmer of hope in the Tea Parties. We agree with the central message, though we may detest some of the hangers-on for their reflexive militarism or rah-rah patriotism. Better to ignore the divisions and focus on the central protest issue: Taxes and spending.
No offense to supporters of Rep. Paul, but if he's the best us libertarians have to offer, then we're beyond screwed.
I still think describing the war in Iraq as a bipartisan affair is being a bit cute, but good article otherwise.
Look up the voting records on the AUMF. You don't get much more bipartisan than that.
Way to convince yourself that you were right, when you were dead wrong:
1. Convince yourself and everyone else around you that Bush was a unrepentant capitalist and shrank government. Say stuff like "Starve the beast" as often as you can.
2. "Prove" that more govenment would have stopped [insert NPSM moment here] from happening.
3. Profit!
Obama will never listen to libertarians, because Obama (and his minions) think Bush was a libertarian. See how that works? Libertarianism is a discredited political philosophy that lost the last election, drove the country to war and caused the need for massive bailouts and shrank government to its smallest (and least effective) size since FDR single-handedly invented the American Dream with the New Deal.
Reasonable people have to look honestly at history and see who had the right answers to past issues.
Drink!
Bush is Illuminati. He was never going to listen to reason. Everything he and Obama (and the other Presidents for the last 50 years) do is to set up the NWO. Wake up.
if you don't think Ron Paul represents for the most part the libertarian message what the hell do you think a libertarian is?
Problem with Bush was, whenever he did say or do something "libertarian" (as with his very reasonable immigration proposals), the wingnuts of his own party (in this case, the Lonewacko Tancredoites, and the talk radio idiots) hounded him down.
I don't doubt that Obama is, at the very least, sympathetic to some libertarian ideas. The question is whether the wingnuts of his own party will cooperate.
I don't doubt that Obama is, at the very least, sympathetic to some libertarian ideas.
Three months into his term, there's scant evidence to back up your assertion, and a lot of evidence to the contrary.
The only remotely libertarian policy change I've seen has been loosening restrictions on trade and travel with Cuba, but that could well be interpreted as just sympathy for his fellow Communist dictators.
...the last real libertarian-style Republican, Ronald Reagan...
Reagan? Reagan? Calling that guy "libertarian-style" is pretty messed up.
"...the last real libertarian-style Republican, Ronald Reagan..."
If Reagan is the closest we'll ever get to a libertarian president, well...*mounts chair, slips noose around neck, jumps*.
"It's ok to hate the Fed ... it's fine to adhere to the Chicago or Austrian school of economics. But unless we present a message that the average American can understand and relate to, we are dead."
Unless people understand the role of the Fed in the current crisis, we can't honestly win anyone over. The Fed's policy for the last 7-8 years is the elephant in the room that regularly gets ignored by both the right and left.
"I don't doubt that Obama is, at the very least, sympathetic to some libertarian ideas."
I would rephrase that to "I don't doubt that Obama will cynically say something libertarian-y on occasion to secure the votes of poor fools like David Weigel and Steve Chapman when an election rolls around".
"It's no fun having to say "I told you so." Not about things like this."
It's even worse when they add insult to injury by reversing the history and claiming they "saw the signs" but you were too intransigent to let them do anything about it.
Umm, excuse me, but he MOST CERTAINLY DID! LISTEN TO LIBERTARIANS.
He even appointed one to his friggin' Cabinet!!!
First ever Libertarian Party member Gayle Norton to Secretary of the Interior.
And then in 2004, the Bush Social Security privatization proposal came straight from Peter Ferrera and the Cato Institute.
Bush appointed more Libertarians to his administration than all other previous Presidents combined. People like Bill Evers, longtime Libertarian National Committeeman, and Gerald Roberts over FCC, and Leon Drolet, Michigan Civil Rights Commission Chairman.
But that just doesn't fit the Left-Libertarian bash Bush template of Reason, so all those facts just get ignored.
No wonder so many real Libertarians see Reason as in the hip pocket of the Democrat Party USA.
Has anyone actually heard of Leon Drolet before? Anyone?
Yeah, when you expand the government enormously, there's a lot more patronage positions to hand out, to buy support from poor sods who think you're their ally.
But appointing people to largely irrelevant patronage positions in your government is not the same as listening to them.
Ravac, Hart has used that line in past columns describing libertarians.
He is one of the leading voices in the south for us. He is W\well read in papers here and very good.
Donderoooooooooooooooooooo
"And then in 2004, the Bush Social Security privatization proposal came straight from Peter Ferrera and the Cato Institute."
What, you mean the plan that left the structural deficit in place and fell through anyhow? That social security privatization proposal? And ditto on Hazel Meade's post on irrelevant patronage positions.
# Gilbert Martin | April 23, 2009, 4:12pm | #
## "Bush Shoulda Listened to The Libertarians;
## Obama Still Can!"
# There is about as much chance of Obama
# listening to libertarians as there is
# of hell freezing over.
Then again, it has snowed in Las Vegas these past several winters. So you never know...
Ronald Reagan was the template for GOP candidates who talked the talk of libertarianism on the campaign trail, but governed as the covert Statists they were, once in office.
I understand that the Federal government is a big machine, and no Libertarian captain is going to be able to turn that tanker around immediately. But Reagan apparently deliberately sabotaged his claim to libertarian credibility on numerous occasions, most notably for me when he escalated the Drug War, which is about as unlibertarian a project as government in the US has ever pursued. It's one thing to excuse lack of progress on the basis of structural obstacles in your path, which you have yet to overcome. It is another thing to choose the wrong direction and then run full speed away from the goal -- liberty -- which your earlier rhetoric once implied you had.
Republicans don't listen to libertarians; Democrats think libertarians are dangerous, likely criminal, extremists.