It’s strange to me how readily conservatives have embraced the McCain candidacy, given that John McCain is a consistently big-government sort of guy — someone who will be even more apt than the Bush administration to a) expand the social-welfare state; b) curtail civil liberties; c) centralize power in the executive branch; d) launch costly foreign wars. But these days being a conservative means being pro-war. As my colleague Alan Bock points out below, the party convention this year makes no pretense about promoting freedom. It’s all about nationalism and control. Rudy Giuliani, one of the most liberal and anti-freedom Republicans imaginable, gets the keynote speaker slot.
I laugh at this because conservatives often ask me why I refuse to vote for McCain. (I’ll probably vote for the LP’s Bob Barr.) Shouldn’t libertarians just be part of the Republican Party rather than waste our time on ineffective third-party candidacies? My response: the GOP no longer stands for any of the issues that we champion. Of course, Barack Obama is worse on many of these issues, and would be an overall disaster, for sure. But why choose between two totally awful candidates and two totally awful parties? How can we be part of a GOP that loves expanding the welfare state (see Bush’s prescription drug program), loves federal spending (Bush has grown the federal government more than LBJ), has no interest in civil liberties, is committed to Wilsonian adventures overseas, and is terrible on many social issues such as the drug war and immigration? In some years, I agree with the “lesser of two evils” argument. I voted for Bush twice, figuring that he was at least marginally better than Al Gore and John Kerry. But this compromise always leads to an even worse GOP candidate the next time around. That’s why we have Bush, McCain, Schwarzenegger and so forth.
The key issue here: The GOP no longer even talks about liberty. Limiting government is no longer on its agenda. When the GOP at least gave lip service to those issues, then libertarians could at least arguably be a part of it. But now the GOP is best epitomized by Giuliani and McCain, there’s no place for us to be within that group. It probably won’t matter, electorally speaking, but those of us who want to reignite a freedom movement will have to look elsewhere for now.
