The Liberal Case for Bob Barr and the Libertarian Party

Barack Obama is going to win the presidency. While the end of the current era of Republican mismanagement may be good news in many respects, this is no cause for complacency for anyone concerned about American liberty and America's place in the world. Senator Obama, despite his eloquent call for reform, has demonstrated that he, like other politicians, is ever ready to trim his sails to gain a few votes. A vote for Bob Barr and the Libertarian Party would be the best way to tell President-elect Obama that the American people are serious about real change in Washington.

Sen. Obama's rhetoric is uplifting and positive, but the Senator who showed genuine foresight and courage in opposing the Iraq war spent most of the primary season edging away from his initial tough stand. Will he order the troops to exit Iraq? Will he bring them all home, or simply shift them from Iraq to another foreign country?

Similarly, it would be hard for Sen. Obama not to be an improvement over the Bush administration on civil liberties. However, here, too, Sen. Obama has demonstrated his willingness to trim under pressure.

President George W. Bush violated the law when he ignored both the Constitution and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Congress should have held him and his appointees accountable for their law-breaking. Moreover, telephone companies that aided and abetted executive branch law-breaking should have been left liable in the courts.

Yet, Sen. Obama folded, backing a "compromise" that gave the administration most everything that it wanted. No individualized warrants or evidence of law-breaking is required to authorize government spying on U.S. citizens' phone calls and emails. No administration officials paid the slightest cost for engaging in illegal conduct. No private firm suffered the slightest inconvenience for helping the government violate their customers' constitutional rights. This was the moment for Sen. Obama to prove that he possessed a true dedication to civil liberties, and he failed.

Of course, we all hope that, as president, he will feel freer to stand up for American liberties. But there also will be voices advising him to use the executive powers so freely expanded by his predecessor. Will he be strong enough to resist this Siren's Song? No one knows, but one thing is known: If freed from the limiting forces of public awareness and involvement, President Obama would follow a long line of presidents who talk of enhanced individual liberty, but practice a policy of increased government power.

In other words, the best way to encourage Sen. Obama, if he is elected president, to follow the straight and narrow is to actively and clearly demonstrate that we, the American people, are concerned both about our civil liberties and his commitment to protect them. The way to do that is to vote for Bob Barr and the Libertarian Party.

Only one party has consistently stood up for the Constitution and against expansive executive power: the Libertarian Party. Only one party has consistently demanded a quick and full withdrawal from Iraq: the Libertarian Party. Only one party has demanded that all administration officials, legislators, and bureaucrats be held accountable for violating the law or the Constitution: the Libertarian Party.

Sen. Obama's impending big victory will tempt liberals to relax and celebrate. Yet the time of greatest danger will be the transition, when Sen. Obama will be deciding on who to appoint and what direction to take. The best way to safeguard our liberties is to let him know that his election victory comes with an important "but" -- in the form of a strong showing by Bob Barr and the Libertarian Party, who have placed the protection of American liberties and America's reputation in the world at the core of their campaign.

Comments

[EZKY]

haha -- no thanks, nader. we've seen where that complacent attitude got us in 2000. Did Bush send you?

[wingnutslayer]

Just a second EZKY. Patrick Buchanan, noted anti-Israel Republican took Palm Beach County, noted Jewish Democratic district. That election was about fraud, pure and simple, all the way up to the Supremes. If Obama loses, it won't be because Ralph Nader took too many votes away from him. It will be because, yet again, the GOP stole the election. They're working at it right now and they know they have a good chance because if gullibility was exportable we wouldn't have a trade deficit. That's where our current complacency needs to change. Quit believing in Republican honesty and fair play

[Hajji]

One must WIN the game before one can change the way it is played.

The WILL to change in the hands of the underdog lasts only until his victory.

Strange, that.

-T

[larry278]

To complicate the semantics & eshew CW: For some surviving to fight another day is a victory; others see dying in a noble cause as a victory.
The will to change & changing things can survive victory. There are few examples of that but such examples exist. My ignorance doesn't allow me to cite these examples.

[rainbowblue]

I had a political theory professor, while very well respected and published, had a hard time justifying his Liberal ideas theoretically. They always seemed so obtuse and hardly eglatarian when put down spoken in the abstract. Conservetive (Libertarian, mostly) ideas came out quite well and seemed very eglatarian. The problem was that when it came to putting the ideas into practice only the Liberal ones worked for the better of society. The Conservati­ve/Liberta­rian ideas refuse to take history into account as well as the political liberalism of our society.

Mr. Barr if you are so wise in the ways political ideology, then please tell me why a vote for you would be different than the past votes for Libertarian ideology. After seeing, decade after decade, failed deregulation of all sectors of the economy, do you really think that true market forces are the best way to run a country and look after its citizens? Afterall, that is the point of government, to look after its citizens. Our society has grown and evolved where we need a large enough government to take care of this task, that is as long as we value ideas of freedom and equality.

I give you props for blogging on this site, but seriously, your ideas are out of touch with reality.

[bsazur]

This is the fundamental difference between libertarians and all other political thought. We don't want anyone to "look after us." When the government looks after you, they want to know where you are, what you are doing, how much money you have and how you made it, who you associate with, who you are calling, how many guns you have, what drugs you are ingesting, etc. All of this is quite odious to any libertarian. To suggest that the government can do all this and protect our civil liberties is contradictory.

[cpro]

I'm a bit surprised at the negative response BB is getting in the comments here. Yes, I understand that most visitors to this site prefer a heavily progressive tax policy, but is there really that much animosity in the liberal community for a smaller federal government? Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the expensive and ineffective war on drugs, the federalization of law enforcement, the butchering of the first amendment-- these are problems that can only be fixed at the national level.

I know a lot of liberals want public education and healthcare, but why do those things need to come from the federal government? Both are more efficiently managed at the state and local levels, so why can't we cut the role and taxes of the federal government and increase those at the state and local levels?

Yes, if I were in a state that actually mattered I would probably vote for Obama. But Bob Barr is right in the need to show support for civil liberties. If your state is obviously swinging one way or the other, why not vote for a third party?

[EZKY]

because third party votes, in order to achieve the visibility necessary to matter, would have to threaten that very "leaning Obama" you speak of.

[GregJL]

Because the platform of the third party in this case is not progressive in the least. The Libertarian idea of supporting civil liberites is to let us do whatever we want as long as the corporations that will make us all wage slaves under the Libertarian "free market" allow it. Not very free in my opinion.

[Querent]

Hear hear, Greg.

[escobar]

Libertarians are Republicans who do not want to own up to what they created with Reagan and Ginrich. At least they do not seem to be under the spell of the Christian Right.
Barr wants to end the war on drugs. That, Trimming of sails" should draw some votes to Them!
They are a great bunch if you got yours and want to tell everyone else to go to hell.
They are all about self interest not the common good.
They are irresponsible but mostly guilty.

[goldcoastsailor]

I've been a libertarian for years, but I cannot forgive your actions during the Lewinsky affair. You are about as far from libertarian as one can get. I'm voting Obama.

[helleborine]

Melamine in every pot.

That is the consequence of Libertarianism.

[zizyphus]

After reviewing the Libertarian Party platform, I felt that it was so extremely idealistic. It is like the Wild West Party, or the Pirate Party.

If we were to suddenly adopt all these principles, the people who now control most of the wealth in the world would quickly get every last speck of it.

We just saw how an unregulated financial services sector looks after it implodes from it's own corruption and greed. We will be paying this off for generations. It seems in every case, an unregulated industry devolves at last into a criminal operation. Then it gets regulated.

Their stance on drug laws is sane, unlike the major parties. We need to move, as Europe has, toward harm reduction. You can't just keep putting people in jail for drug use. We need more realistic and rehabilitative approaches to these problems.

[Overd0g]

So you think the financial sector was unregulated? Good grief.

[MajorKong]

Mr. Barr,

While I wholeheartedly agree with you on civil liberties, I can in no way endorse the Libertarian Party's
economic policies, which are straight out of the Gilded Age.

[ADVOCATE4ZPG]

.....more aptly the Middle Age(s). That "philosophy" is the fast track back to feudalism!!!

[Mannock]

The party of Ron Paul. The party whose manifesto is a novel. And a bad one at that. Ever read Atlas Shrugged?

[RobinSeattle]

That's something that radio talker Tom Leykis has said in the past about the Libertarians (and Tom has some libertarian positions). They can't answer a question about their platform without sending you a Webster's Dictionary sized response.

[Overd0g]

That's better than Das Capital.

[McJeff]

Bob, if you are brave enough, take the best points of Libertarianism (not the stupidly insane parts) meld them together with Ralph Nader's stances, and you both might have a chance to create a viable 3rd party.

[NotARhetoricalQuestion]

That would truly be awesome.

[BlackJAC]

The Libertarian response to a natural disaster like Katrina would have be to have Blackwater offer its services to anyone in the area who could afford them and charge refugees $500 per 20-ounce bottle of Dasani due to "market forces." Their response to an attack like 9/11 would be to sit on the sidelines and quote me prices on what kind of rescue I'd like while buildings are burning and people are dying.

Obama O-Eight.

[rjmiller]

Great. You agree with liberals on issues like not slaughtering random people and basic human rights. Whoop de do. Too bad everything else is totally backwards. Libertarianism is probably the most regressive ideology in existence, and I would be ashamed to vote for it.

[GMSilvia]

Big Government spends our retirement money, it doesn't save it in an account, so don't think your SS money is sitting there waiting for you, the Dems and Reps have already spent it. I think it is rather foolish for people to think the rich will pay higher taxes and turn around and raise the cost of the goods and services they provide, thus erasing any benifit to having taxes cug for us. The rich are gonna stay rich, they will just pass their tax burden on to us.
Libertarians are more fiscally conservative than the GOP, and more socialy liberal than the Dems, so if you favor deficit spending and an eroded Constitution, then by all means do not vote Libertarian. Just for the record Libertarians do believe in rules and laws, but those rules and laws have to be Constitutionally sound.
I will be voting Bob Barr

[ADVOCATE4ZPG]

.....and just WHO determines that "Constitutional soundness"? Ayn Rand, from the grave?

[bsazur]

The courts determine the constitutional soundness of laws. That is why the Constitution provides for a Supreme Court.

[Querent]

Blah, blah, blah. A noun, a verb, and tax cuts.

[arvay]

Well, Bob, the Libertarians -- if they want freedom protected -- will need to sit still for the temporary nationalization and reconstruction of much of America's major corporations. They are the greatest threat to our freedom, and the Republicans are their political Viagra.

[Overd0g]

Why?

[arvay]

Because the corporate coup that's taken place under Bush is the main threat to our civil liberties. They need to be occupied, like any enemy nation that's attacked us, and reconstructed into a law-abiding and useful part of America.