As I expected, my Twitter feed this morning is bursting with people accusing each other of consigning the nation to doom depending on how his entry into the race is likely to affect the decision they'll make the first Tuesday in November.
I'm in an interesting position these days. Well, at least I find it interesting. As with the whole national
This is odd, because I am on record as declaring myself to be an absolutist. I adhere to certain immutable principles, which I've largely distilled into my personal articulation of the three pillars of conservatism:
1.) Free market economics: A good or a service is worth what buyer and seller agree that it is worth. Period. No other entity - certainly not government - has any business being involved in reaching that agreement. Therefore, public-policy inquiries that concern themselves with macro-level phenomenon such as wealth inequality or “fair” wages are not only pointless but tyrannical by definition.
2.) The understanding that Western civilization is a unique blessing to the world: Both the Greco-Roman tradition from which the West has distilled the political structure of a representative democracy and the above-mentioned free-market economy, and the Judeo-Christian tradition from which it acquired an accurate understanding of the Creator’s nature and humankind’s proper relationship to the creator are the two most significant avenues of advancement our species has ever discovered. (And much falls under this point that needs serious discussion at this time, such as the fact that there are only two genders, male and female, and that their is no fluidity between them, and that the family structure of a husband, wife and children thereof is the overwhelmingly normal one and the one most conducive to a happy and prosperous society.)
3.) A foreign policy based on what history tells us about human nature: Evil is real and always with us. A nation-state seeking a righteous world(such as the United States of America) should only form close alliances with other nations that have demonstrated a track record of common values. Regimes that are clearly tyrannical and / or expansionist should never be appeased. Indeed, foreign policy should be guided by thinking on how to at least eventually remove such regimes as problems on the world stage.
Now, these are hard and fast positions. There's nothing situational about them.
Now, these are hard and fast positions. There's nothing situational about them.
The fact that Amash is driven by principles and they align with mine to a considerable degree is impressive. Phoniness of varying degrees and types is so pervasive in the political world that his steadfastness in itself is refreshing. (Actually, even though the principles to which, say, AOC adheres are completely loony and would destroy human freedom and civilizational advancement, I have to commend her for having a body of principles and sticking to it.)
My co-host for the Barney & Clyde, Clyde Myers, podcast hates the Amash development. On our last episode, we had the so-far-leading Libertarian Party candidate, Jacob Hornberger as our guest for the full hour, and I know Clyde was electrified. Heck, I was mightily impressed. And as Hornberger said early on, their party's dilemma for several election cycles has been the dilution of their own set of principles. Amash strays from those just enough that the dilemma seems likely to beset them again.
Of course, the main point of departure - the area outside our Venn diagram overlap, as Clyde and I like to say - between Ron Paul / Lew Rockwell / Jacob Hornberger libertarianism and conservatism as I delineate it above is that pesky Pillar Number Three. I feel that the libertarian view of foreign policy and national security ignores the glaring fact about human history: war is a given at any time and in every place. The determination of boundaries of geographical / political entities, such as tribal lands, kingdoms, empires and nation-states has generally involved some armed conflict. More specifically, Pax Americana, the 75-year-old US-led world order that has by and large prevented the world stage's bad guys from achieving ultimate victory, has been a blessing to humankind. The US and its network of allies represents the pinnacle of civilization. Our national interest, and that of our closest allies, is not based on mere amassing of power but a striving after righteousness.
Now, to the question of whether pressing the button for Amash is a throwaway vote, a gratuitous and pointless gesture, let's consider the three choices we can assume we'd have before us when it's just each of us and God standing there looking at the ballot.
Clearly, being a conservative and not a Trumpist, it's hard for me to swallow the prospect of the eternal record book showing I cast my vote for someone so glaringly unfit for the presidency. Take a scroll through LITD's posts, going back to mid-2015, under the label "Donald Trump" and you'll see that I've had that position since he came down the escalator and announced his decision to run. His handling of this coronavirus crisis has amplified all that I'd concluded.
Then there is Joe Biden. The fact that he holds the positions that modern Democrats have to hold - that the extermination of fetal Americans is acceptable, that the global climate is in some kind of trouble that requires us to abandon human advancement, that two people of the same sex can be married, as that term had been commonly understood by the entire human species until about ten years ago, that government should be involved in health care - makes him an instant non-starter. But that is going to be a given no matter who the Democrats would select as their nominee. It's those traits that are peculiar to him (and some of which are quite peculiar) and make him particularly objectionable.
He's an empty suit. He was a crummy student in high school, college and law school (and ran into some plagiarism trouble in that last stop), getting by on being a charismatic glad-hand and a good athlete.
He can be quite nasty. The driver of truck that killed his first wife and infant daughter went to his grave never getting an apology from Biden for the false accusation that he'd been drunk at the time of the collision. More recently, the remark about how Republicans would like to "put y'all back in chains" to a black audience was sadly characteristic of his bared-teeth style.
Now there's this business of the sexual-assault allegation. I touched this one. Such accusations have to be handled very carefully. It's way too easy to ruin a man's life, or at least put a cloud over it, in cases in which the story is not true. Just ask the Duke lacrosse team, the fraternity at the University of Virginia about which a lurid Rolling Stone article was written, or Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. But now footage of Tara Reade's mother calling in to the Larry King Live television program in 1993 has surfaced, and Business Insider has reported that a former neighbor of Reade's "recalls a conversation with her in 1995 or 1996 in which Reade tearfully describe being sexually assaulted by Biden." And then this:
Finally, on Tuesday, a 2008 essay by the late Alexander Cockburn surfacedin which the journalist reported that Biden had made "unwelcome and unwanted" sexual advances against a woman in 1972 or 1973 — and that he was well known on Capitol Hill for making "loutish sexual advances to staffers, interns, and the like." That establishes a possible longstanding pattern of Biden's behavior that further validates Reade's accusation (and potentially opens the door to others).Again, let me say that I'm not coming to a conclusive position about this. It's entirely possible that Joe Biden is innocent of all allegations. But it's possible he's not. This must be looked into further.
Then there's Justin Amash. And I say, the fact that he's principled is mainly what commends him. Even in instances in which he voted in ways I might, at first glance, question, further consideration makes clear why he behaved as he did. For instance, when he voted present in the matter of defunding Planned Parenthood, he did so because of his discomfort with setting the precedent of naming a specific organization in a piece of legislation. He takes the position that marriage means the union of one man and one woman, but feels that the matter ought not to be decided by government. With regard to the US forcefully inserting itself into world-stage situations, he feels that Congress ought to vote on every instance in which that's being considered.
He's opposed to tax increases and subsidies. He's a Christian.
There's a lot to like.
So I will take my sweet time to weigh all the considerations.
The grim backdrop to this is that no matter what I decide, he's not going to be president. It's going to be one of the unacceptable choices.
It's very late in the day.
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