The Sharp Contrast Between Bad and Worse
One of my modern heroes is Stephen Green, the VodkaPundit, as he has leveraged drunkenness into a career. I dream, but the majors continue to not call me up. On the other hand, his Libertarian Case for Romney nicely mirrors my previous Romney endorsement, so perhaps there is hope.
But the high-speed gravy train is beginning to derail. We’re sitting on $16,000,000,000,000 of existing debt, we’re adding another trillion every 12 months, entitlements are exploding, our job-creation machine has been broken, and when that train derails it’s going to take the nation with it.
Some of you are nodding your heads at this, with a grim approval. I know, because I’ve done it, too. We have this phoenix fantasy, that after the Federal Leviathan comes crashing down, it will be we, the libertarians, who pick up the pieces. Our predictions of disaster will have come true, we will have been vindicated, and a better America will emerge from the ashes.
Green disagrees. So do I.
Perhaps we’ll crash and various theocrats will come swarming in. Perhaps, as Alkibiades predicted in an email, the more likely result is a long, slow slide into irrelevance. I’m not sanguine about nor resigned to either option. There is still a teeny-tiny moment left. Is Romney the man for the moment? Hell no. But
What we need is breathing room, a chance to get the economy growing again, to get people back to work again. It’s no coincidence that when we reformed welfare, it was during an economic boom. Wealth papers over lots of differences, and allows people to get things done. And there’s lots that needs doing. We can start by repealing ObamaCare, repealing Dodd-Frank, and just generally undoing the last four years. These are things Romney has promised to do.
Will he do it? I hope so, and if he wins it will be our job to ride him and ride him hard to live up to those promises. What I do know for certain is that Romney isn’t Obama Lite, despite what you might think. Romney won’t dial back Washington to 18% of our GDP. But he might get it down to 20%, which, believe it or not, is a big — and absolutely necessary — improvement.
We’ll see no such improvement from a second Obama administration, which aims to ramp up Washington to something like 110% of our economy.
For those of us of a conservative or libertarian bent, we must remember our E.E. Cummings: “A politician is an arse upon which everyone has sat except a man.” When choosing between arses, the choice is about who is the better manager, not who is the better healer, lightworker, or savior. Moreover, better is often relative. As goes a Robert Heinlein quote in Green’s piece, “This is between ‘bad’ and ‘worse’ — which is much sharper than the between ‘good’ and ‘better.’”
“Perhaps we’ll crash and various theocrats will come swarming in. Perhaps, as Alkibiades predicted in an email, the more likely result is a long, slow slide into irrelevance.”
The most likely outcome in the case of a true economic collapse, especially once all the nation’s police forces go bankrupt and the very real resentment, anger, old scores, and flat out hatreds between the various class, ethnic, religious, and (there is no way to avoid this) racial groups and gender in our country are no longer checked by the strong arm of the law, is that America goes the way of the former Yugoslavia in an even more horrific fashion. Basically, instead of the libertarian paradise, one has a group of authoritarian regions ruled by warlords and their gangs.
That’s why I don’t get people who have a “lie back and let it happen” view of our financial situation.
I agree Romney is more likely (but not guaranteed) to slow the crash, but the crash is coming, it is nearing mathematical certainty, and I don’t hear anyone with any power or authority to actual do anything about it publicly suggesting anything that actually would.
I’ll take a couple extra years to prepare if I can get it, but that’s the most we’ll get from any combination of government we elect this time. The USA is broke, corrupt, and evil. Short of divine intervention, it will soon reap more of what it has sown harder and faster than ever before.
This is my feeling. I want Romney to win so we can stave off the precipice for a few more years. I don’t have enough land yet.
I’ll vote for Romney, but I’m not sure that a Romney victory is the lesser evil. If we could turn back the clock and elect Gore or Kerry instead of G. W. Bush might we be better off now? We might have a unified push against illegal immigration istead of it being on the back burner. We might have even avoided the worst of the 2008 meltdown. Your lying eyes blog described the Rebublicans best,
“The essence of this asymmetry in political combat is that Democrats are free to rabble-rouse and demagogue their positions without penalty – indeed, often with great showers of media attention for doing so – while Republicans must rouse their constituents only obliquely through proxies – religious faith, gun rights, opposition to gay marriage, and of course “No New Taxes”. Even then, we often hear pundits denounce the “Three G’s” – Gays, Guns and Gods – so even their proxies are derided.”
So the Rebublicans are only effective as an opposition party. They cannot lead because they cannot really advocate for the changes that need to happen. I am with the “it must get worse before it can improve” camp.