Posted on my Facebook on January 7th, 2021, links and image added August 23rd, 2021. Image via CNN.
I’d moved most of my political content to Twitter mostly so y’all would have less politics to deal with when you just want to see how your friends and family are doing over the holidays. Plus, I hope most of you already know me well enough to know where I stand most of the time.
But just to be clear, as I see it, true defenders of liberty do not:
- seek to subvert election losses with an end-around of the Constitution
- employ force for any reason other than self-defense
- support a president that increases government power even more than your typical Democrat or Republican politician
The violent mob that stormed the Capitol are neither libertarians nor conservatives. They have embarrassed themselves, the Republican Party that has tolerated them for far too long, their populist/nationalist movement that has usurped the party, and this whole country. They are why I left the GOP for the Libertarian Party last year. The writing on the wall has been evident for quite some time.
Also, my wife spent some time living in Russia when she was a student, and she’s been telling me for years that she’s seeing signs of our country’s decline that mirror theirs. I did not want to believe her, but days like today are a clear sign to me that (as usual) she’s right.
The one big upside from all this is that I hope it is now clear to everybody that our system is not nearly as robust and well-designed as most Americans think it is. It is instead antiquated and filled with design flaws that had been papered over with norms that can be easily violated on a single person’s whim. It’s high time we come to grips with this and seriously reform it.
Perfectly Good Ink 