Once again, here’s a reality check: Masses don’t want libertarian ideas

By David McElroy · January 17, 2012

When the supposedly conservative Republican candidates attack the leading GOP contender for being an evil capitalist, you know the world has turned upside down. Mostly, though, you know there’s not much of a market anymore for people who believe in economic freedom.

Some of my best friends are highly invested in a futile effort to elect Ron Paul president. I’ve talked before about why it’s going to fail, and I’ve also talked about why I won’t be voting for him (or anybody else). But I’ve been told forcefully by my friends that I’m wrong — that Paul can be elected. I’ve also been told that even if he’s not elected, he’s “educating” voters and the effort will pay off some other time, when the masses are (apparently) suddenly going to ditch their core values and start agreeing with libertarian principles.

Anyone who’s paying attention to the realities of this year’s Republican campaign can see that this is pure fantasy. Most people don’t want our ideas. Even if you’re willing to accept a “limited government” — if such is even possible — there’s no evidence that people want such an animal. If you listen to the Republican candidates bicker, it’s clear that everyone other than Ron Paul will say whatever it takes to win votes. And it’s also clear that Paul isn’t going to break out of his core support among a minority of libertarians and economic conservatives.

In Monday night’s GOP debate in South Carolina, the “conservative” candidates attacked Mitt Romney for having spent years at Bain Capital, which made its money buying companies and making them more profitable. As part of that process, many people in unprofitable companies lose jobs. Self-styled super-conservative Newt Gingrich has been attacking Romney for this, despite the fact that anybody who knows anything about free market economics understand that this is the way the market functions. It always has and always will. (Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter called it “creative destruction.”)

Meanwhile, Rick Perry was attacking Romney for not having released his tax returns. Why? That’s just what candidates do these days. And the reason for that is what, exactly? I have no idea what it’s supposed to prove. All I know is that if I were a candidate, I wouldn’t release my tax returns, either. I also wouldn’t parade around naked for people to inspect my body. Both inspections seem to serve purposes that would make just as much (or as little) sense.

In the meantime, Romney was downplaying the importance of a recent law giving a U.S. president the power to send Americans to military prisons with no right to trials. He said during Monday night’s debate that Barack Obama would never misuse that power — and he wouldn’t, either — so we should just trust our royal sovereign instead of insisting that we have rights. And these are supposed to be the guys who are closest to supporting individual freedom?

It’s very clear that Romney is a big fan of the big government status quo. He was the architect of the Massachusetts health care plan that was the model for ObamaCare. He favors a president having tyrannical power to arrest people and send them to military prisons without trials. Wouldn’t these sorts of positions mean that he’s being punished by conservative GOP primary voters?

Nope. In fact, Romney has won the two states that have voted so far — Iowa and New Hampshire — and he has a 21-point lead in the allegedly conservative southern state of South Carolina. Are you starting to see the picture? The voters don’t want what libertarians and economic conservatives are selling.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, reporter Kimberley Strassel explains how you win the GOP nomination. You put together a coalition of religious social conservatives, warmongering military hawks and whatever economic conservatives are willing to vote for the GOP candidate out of fear of the Democrat. (OK, she didn’t word it like that, but that’s what it boils down to.)

The bottom line is that if you want to win the Republican nomination, you have to be something that no libertarian or traditional conservative can be. You have to love big government — and promise to use it to give voters what they want.

The vast majority of voters don’t want what we want. They don’t want government that’s actually smaller. Oh, every group would like some piece or other of government trimmed, but not the pieces they care about. What almost nobody wants is a wholesale dismantling of the welfare state and the military-industrial complex. They’re not going to start wanting it just because we say it enough.

I know that. The other candidates know that. The media know that. Everybody seems to know that except for people delusional enough to believe that voters are suddenly going to reject what they believe and start agreeing with us. That’s not going to happen. Why do people persist in believing this fantasy?

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Meet my new girlfriend. Her name is Meg. And she’s my little sweetheart. A couple of months ago, a neighbor across the street told me about a new stray in the neighborhood that she and I were both soon feeding. The cat had been very skittish about contact and she had a lot of scabs and parasites in her fur, but a trip to the vet last week revealed that she was otherwise in good health. The vet estimates her to be 1 to 2 years old. I named her for Meg Murry, the 13-year-old protagonist of Madeleine L’Engle’s wonderful book, “A Wrinkle in Time.” (Please read the book. Don’t watch the horrible movie.) Since we lost Lucy almost a year ago, it seems appropriate that we finally have a new little girl to join the household. She’s already captured my heart, but Alex, Oliver and Sam aren’t there quite yet.

There’s nothing socially acceptable that’s as dangerous as drinking alcohol. Most people grow up being told to “drink responsibly” — and all of us see people abusing this drug in one way or another — but the truth is that drinking alcohol is always a terrible risk. The alcohol in these drinks is toxic and the human liver has to work hard to filter the toxins out. What most people don’t realize is that alcohol is classified as a known carcinogen by the World Health Organization — because of the well-established connection between imbibing and various cancers. Many people have taken refuge behind the idea that light or moderate drinking might be safe, but a new study shows that drinking even one drink a day increases the risks of 10 types of cancer. When I was a teen-ager, I looked around and saw the negative effects that this behavior had on a lot of people and decided not to start drinking, so I’ve never even tried this poison. The evidence keeps piling up that I was lucky to have come to that conclusion early.

It hasn’t happened yet, but there’s a possibility that I might be taking in a fourth feline. A couple of months ago, a cat-loving neighbor asked whether I’d seen a “tuxedo cat” hanging out in the neighborhood. I hadn’t, but this guy eventually wandered past my house a few weeks later — and we haven’t been able to find evidence that he has a home. I’ve been giving him water and food for the last week and he finally let me pet him two nights ago. He’s purred for me two nights in a row and he let me take a low-quality selfie with him Thursday night. Tonight, though, he let me pick him up and bring him inside to look around. This went surprisingly well, as you can see from this photo. I don’t know whether he’ll be joining the family, but I’m certain that Alex, Oliver and Sam would vote no, at least until they get to know him. I’m trying to make certain he doesn’t have a home, but if he does join us, what do you suppose his name will be?

It turns out that the radical far left has been training “Antifa cats” to sabotage anything important to Donald Trump. Everything he did was perfect. Honest. It was all the cats’ fault. Arrest all the cats! This is the latest of my ridiculous satirical shorts. Please go watch it. Then “like” it and subscribe. Please. I’m begging you. (Too much?) Although a couple of the previous videos have had views in the hundreds, most have still been seen by fewer than 20 people. So I seem to be having trouble letting people know that page exists.

Here’s the latest of my ridiculous parody shorts. It crossed my mind Tuesday to wonder what a slick and fast-talking car dealer might do right now to try to turn the high price of gasoline to his advantage. So I conceived of a fat and lovable character who tried to sell cars that don’t use any fuel — and then I started wondering if it would be funnier if all the characters were felines. Designing the King Cashpaw character took about four hours, but the rest took only another four hours, so this was a relatively quick piece that virtually wrote itself. I know it’s almost impossible for these parody videos to find a larger audience, but at least they amuse me — and there are 19 of them on my YouTube page now. The first few were very limited, but they’re getting more complex.

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