USA 2024 Elections Thread

[grarpamp]

Congratulations on recent elections.
Many people have also been freed from Twitter jail.
Expect more interesting results.


Milei and Wilders Elected: Is The Libertarian Moment Finally Here?

https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/milei-and-wilders-elected-is-the-libertarian-moment-finally-here-5535891

It used to be said that conservative guys just called themselves
“libertarian” so girls would talk to them at cocktail parties.

At least one well-known conservative talk show host called them
“losertarians” since they didn’t always toe the line and vote
Republican.

Nevertheless, many of us are still convinced Henry David Thoreau,
sounding very libertarian, was correct when he wrote in his 1849 book
“Civil Disobedience” that “the best government is that which governs
least.”

Thomas Jefferson and John Locke earlier had said much the same and
now, after a couple of hundred years, that libertarian view seems to
be growing globally.

Much of this is a reaction to the obvious: Marxism or quasi-Marxism
does not work economically and, worse, it has engendered horrendous
totalitarian oppression with a massive death count in China, Russia,
North Korea, and Cambodia, among others.

Libertarianism has started to look a lot better, especially—and
ironically—in the eyes of Karl Marx’s beloved proletariat, unlike the
so-called “elites,” who are a protected class.

Here, in the United States, the MAGA movement that now dominates the
Republican Party tilts libertarian.

Its leader, 2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump, has also done so
in most of his recent pronouncements.

Meanwhile, in South America and Europe, even more overtly libertarian
candidates have won their country’s elections.

First it was economist, professor, and sometime rock musician Javier
Milei in Argentina, who in reaction to the catastrophic 134 percent
inflation and a concomitant rise in poverty in his country, has become
the new president-elect.

Then in the Netherlands, longtime political libertarian and strongly
anti-immigration gadfly Geert Wilders out-paced all predictions in
their elections and will attempt to form a government.

Mr. Wilders success is partly due to the Dutch farmers who were fed up
with new “climate change” regulations that would make it impossible
for them to make a living—and therefore for many of their countrymen
to eat.

The corporate media and their political allies in the European Union
and the United States immediately branded Mr. Milei and Mr. Wilders
with their now-favorite designation “far-right,” though these men are
no more far-right than Jefferson, Locke, and Thoreau, the very figures
these so-called liberals and progressives—though they prefer to ignore
or “forget”—once considered their intellectual heroes.

What is transpiring now globally is a fight between these rising
libertarians of various stripes and the incumbent statists. In recent
years, despite the Trump interregnum, the statists have seemed to be
in the ascendancy.

The Davos/globalist set, Klaus Schwab et al., was almost assumed to
have already taken power under the mantra “You’ll own nothing, and you
will be happy,” a phrase that originated in a 2016 video from the
World Economic Forum. It was a new supposedly benign form of
communism, though oddly reminiscent of the “three rounds and a sound”
(bicycle, watch, and sewing machine plus a radio) deemed sufficient
for life in the Communist China of the 1950s.

Meanwhile, those advocating this mantra, the aforementioned globalist
set, flew in and out of that glamorous Davos resort on private jets to
deliver speeches on global warming while their desired constituents,
who rarely had a chance to fly business and felt lucky when they were
admitted to an over-crowded airport lounge, looked on via television
and internet with increasing skepticism.

Globalism was a shell game taking place before their eyes. Bill Gates
would never be happy “owning nothing.” He was buying up all the farms
in America (that weren’t already bought by the Chinese).

He and his cronies had found a new way get rich (or richer) and stay
rich. Globalism was just a mask for oligarchic power, with that
oligarchy extending into a one world-wide state. Why think small?
National borders are so 20th Century.

So a battle has been joined between these mega-statists and the
libertarians (again of various stripes, often nationalist), but for
the first time the latter seem to be ascendant.

Mr. Wilders and Mr. Meili are not far-right or “hard-right,” to use
the term adopted by The Economist, which called the Dutch leader a
“headache for Europe.” (Actually men like Mr. Wilders will be Europe’s
salvation, if allowed.) They are not Nazis, as they are sometimes
called, or nearly so. The Nazis were socialists—the National Socialist
Party—it is always worth reminding ourselves.

Mr. Milei and Mr. Wilders are not far-anything. They are a return to
the values enshrined in the United States’ “Declaration of
Independence,” the importance of the freedom of the individual.

We are seeing this new ascendancy domestically in the renewed
popularity of President Trump as his poll numbers continue to rise.

But is the MAGA movement truly libertarian? In the largest sense, yes,
because, after all, "libertarian," like most political terminology
these days, is rather vague. To some, a libertarian is a
self-indulgent, pot-lover. (I’m not. I despise pot, though I used to
smoke it. There are a number of things about some libertarians I don’t
like.)

But MAGA stands firmly against the Deep State, and nothing is more
libertarian than that. Cut the bureaucracy, cut the regulations, deep
six as many government agencies as possible.

If fact, deep six the Deep State in its entirety.

That sounds pretty libertarian to me.

And while we’re at it, keep the government out of our cars, our
refrigerators and stoves, our bank accounts, our medical care, our
security systems, our reading material, our cable connections, our
emails and text messages, internet, social media, cellphones, or
anything to do with our private lives.

It’s a safe bet Mr. Milei and Mr. Wilders would agree.