President Donald J. Trump walks into the East Room of the White House to address his remarks on Operation Legend: Combatting Violent Crime in American Cities Wednesday, July 22, 2020, at the White House. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)
Originally posted July 24, 2020.
Trump may not be your favorite, but as Francis Menton points out, he is our only option for pushing back against the malign forces for which Biden is the current figurehead and frontman. “We need to vote for Trump. We need to get Trump as big a victory as possible, hopefully a landslide. Indeed, if we really care about libertarianism, this is our duty.”
Recently Francis Menton, aka The Manhattan Contrarian, participated in an online debate on why Libertarians should vote for Trump. The debate, presented by the Soho Forum, is a monthly debate series in Manhattan. The presentations of the other debaters, Mr. Menton advises readers, will be posted on the Soho Forum website within a few days.
Francis Menton’s opening statement:
Whom should a Libertarian vote for President in 2020?
The answer is obvious: Donald Trump.
Mr. Menton discusses in great detail why in America we have a two party system. Go to his website for further reading.
“To have meaningful participation in the presidential election requires voters to join one of the two broad coalitions that constitute our two main political parties,” maintains Mr. Menton.
In other words, third parties either barely make a ripple in the water — which has always been the case with the Libertarian Party — or, if they can get up to a significant percentage of the vote, their main accomplishment is to increase the chance that the party their supporters would like the least wins.
Yes there are multiple things for a Libertarian not to like about Trump. For example, he is not a committed free trader, and he is an immigration restrictionist.
But when you look closely at what (Trump) has done those issues, he’s not very bad. His restrictive actions on trade have basically come down to a few tweaks to existing trade agreements; except with China, where there have been genuine security threats that need to be dealt with. On immigration, it’s mostly only illegal immigration that he has tried to crack down on. Legal immigration continues mostly as before.
Consider Biden vs. President Trump:
- Tax Cuts – the single biggest issue going to the size and control over your life of the government over the long pull. It should be the biggest issue for Libertarians.
- Trump supports tax cuts and has put a big one through.
- Biden actively supports tax increases, including raising rates across the board, raising the cap gains rates up to the ordinary income rates, plus new higher rates on “millionaires.”
- Medical
- Biden clearly supports increased government takeover of the medical care portion of the economy, and will clearly go along with anything on that subject that passes the Congress, including more and more regulations.
- Trump has pushed a de-regulatory agenda.
- Energy (where to begin)
- Biden explicitly supports using regulation to drive fossil fuel companies out of business and drive up your cost of energy.
- Biden has taken on AOC as his green energy advisor.
- Biden, in his 14 July speech, backed a version of the green new deal as devised by AOC that includes massive new spending on pie in the sky energy schemes with no idea how they might work.
Biden Promises to Eliminate:
- All use of fossil fuels, that provide about 80% of our energy. In the July 14 speech he said he would
- Get rid of fossil fuels from the electricity sector of the economy by 2025. He has no idea how this could possibly be done, but would impose vast taxes and growth of government to do it.
- Spend new trillions to retrofit millions of buildings in the U.S., all to be done as a government project, and you have no choice whether to go along or not.
- Ban fracking (which has driven the price of oil and gas down to about half of what it was during Obama’s presidency, and saved American consumers trillions), and is backed by the people who try to block every pipeline and energy development of every sort.
- Jail fossil fuel executives. Those are the people who provide the energy that is giving you air conditioning right now.
- A nationwide ban on the use of plastic bags. In another speech he called for a ban on the use of all plastics.
- End of shareholder capitalism. ??
- Corruption and Hunter Biden
- Ukraine: Biden’s son Hunter got a $1 million/yr gig as a two-meeting per year director of Ukrainian oil company Burisma immediately upon Joe becoming point man for U.S.policy to Ukraine. During the Yanukovich presidency, Burisma had somehow garnered all the valuable oil and gas leases in Ukraine, in a situation where no international oil major could seem to crack in. When Yanukovich was replaced and a prosecutor started to investigate, Hunter got the $mil/yr gig and Biden got the prosecutor fired.
- China: Then there’s China, where Hunter accompanied Joe on a trip aboard Air Force 2, and shortly after a Chinese government-affiliated bank put a billion dollars into the investment fund of Hunter and his partner.
- Iraq: And then there’s Iraq, where when Biden became point man of U.S. policy his brother James became Executive VP of a home building company that suddenly had a billion-dollar contract to build homes in Iraq (funded by US aid)
- Supreme Court Justices
- The “conservative” justices have varying judicial philosophies, and often take different positions in high-profile cases.
- The liberal justices almost always vote as a bloc.
Most important for a Libertarian, the liberal justices always vote as a bloc on any issues that involves a growth in the size and the power of the regulatory and administrative state. Biden would clearly appoint more of these people, and cement liberal control of the court for a generation or more. As another key example, the Citizens United case is the one that says that the government cannot restrict the free speech rights of corporate entities to participate in the electoral process. This case is a key bulwark that enables conservative independent groups to amass funds to counter what would otherwise be the unanswered voice of the liberal media in influencing elections. All liberal justices dissented, and RBG has indicated that this is her top priority to overturn.
“The best thing we as libertarians can do,” continues Mr. Menton, “is to join the coalition that is closer to our values and work with it to get its candidates elected and our values furthered. That means voting for Trump. It also means doing everything we can to get Trump elected, and working within the Republican Party to get it to move further in the libertarian direction.”
Biden, Worst President in U.S. History?
As much as I think that Wilson was the worst President in U.S. history, Biden could well be even worse. If you were kidding yourself that Biden was a moderate, that now has been completely disproved by the Biden-Sanders unity platform that came out a few days ago.
This is the government takeover of everything, vast new spending, vast new taxes, vast new regulations, vast new energy costs.
