One of them is not that Obama would make a better President–I’m not saying that! Frankly, I have self-righteous-socialist fatigue and was ready for a change even if it just meant being lied to–I guess I prefer surreptitious, shame-faced socialism to the blatant, arrogant kind, but that’s just me. So I’m not glad Obama won, but there are a few things to give the stalwart libertarian some small comfort.
1. The Liberty Movement and the Tea Party were totally betrayed by the Republican establishment who used the now discredited excuse of “electability” every time they threw a Tea Party candidate under the bus in 2010 or cheated Ron Paul in the 2012 primaries. But the days of beating into submission the grassroots movements struggling to keep the Republican party honest may be behind us. Every single one of the people I know who are disappointed (some devastated) by Obama’s reelection are no more disgusted with Obama then they ever were, but they are freshly and totally disgusted with the Republicans. As I’ve always said, the Republicans are worse than the Democrats because the Democrats honestly represent the statist left, while the Republicans pretend to defend limited government and in so doing take the place of those who actually would. Now that it has been shown that the political strategy that demands people of good conscience choose the lesser of two evils instead of actual good is no more a winning one than sticking to one’s principles would have been, perhaps it can be put to rest. (Well, a girl can dream, can’t she?)
2. We are headed for a financial and political crisis just like the one we are seeing in Europe. We are one step behind Europe on the road to serfdom and one step behind them on the road to collapse. Romney’s insistence on maintaining every last government program and Obama’s insistence on bloating them all further is the difference between death by a thousand paper cuts and cutting an artery. I’m not crazy about those options but maybe it’s better to take a razor to the jugular–at least you’ll know what killed you! Here’s why: Nixon closed the gold window in 1971 and we had unbearable inflation within a decade. Had Reagan and Volcker not intersected at a singular moment in monetary history and voluntarily put the brakes on, people might have realized the problem and at least maintained some appreciation for real money. However, Reagan and Volcker delayed the inevitable; now we have arrived at a much later stage of the crisis and it’s almost impossible for the average citizen to connect the dots.
