Anyone who has read this column knows that during the most recent Republican primary season, I wrote voluminously in support of Texas Congressman Ron Paul.\u00a0 It isn\u2019t that I thought that Paul was anything at all like the ideal candidate. However, among the race\u2019s contestants, it was a no-brainer to me that Paul came far closer than his rivals to personifying the rhetoric of \u201climited government\u201d that marks the GOP.<\/p>\n
Yet as things stand today, Paul is done. Mitt Romney is the presumptive nominee.\u00a0 And the lovers of liberty have a decision to make.<\/p>\n
If they want to make an informed <\/em>decision, there are several considerations that they need to bear in mind.<\/p>\n First, Romney is neither a conservative nor a libertarian.\u00a0 He is perhaps a neoconservative or soft liberal.\u00a0 That is to say, he is but another proponent of Big Government.\u00a0 Given his record, it is hard to come to any other conclusion\u2014despite the game that he is talking at present.<\/p>\n Second, Romney\u2019s rival is our beloved president, Barack Obama\u2014who is also neither a conservative nor a libertarian.\u00a0 But neither is he a neoconservative nor a soft <\/em>liberal.\u00a0 Obama is a radical leftist whose chief objective is to \u201cfundamentally transform\u201d our country into the bastion of \u201csocial justice\u201d for which he and his ideological ilk have always ached.<\/p>\n Third, come Election Day, the lover of liberty will have but one of two choices to make: he can cast his vote for either Romney or Obama.\u00a0 Repeat: whether he stays home, writes in, say, Ron Paul or Mickey Mouse, or votes for a third party candidate, he will be casting a vote for either Romney or Obama. <\/em><\/p>\n Simply put, come the day after Election Day, either a Republican or a Democrat will be the president for the next four years.\u00a0 No one else will.\u00a0 To abstain from choosing one or the other is itself a choice.<\/p>\n Fourth, liberty is not an abstraction that has fallen like manna from the sky.\u00a0 It is not an all or nothing thing. What we refer to as \u201cliberty<\/em>\u201d is actually a complex system or tradition of specific liberties.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n It is true that both Republicans and Democrats have done much to erode this majestic tradition of English liberties that the Founders sought to bequeath to their posterity.\u00a0 It is equally true that if the pioneers of the American experiment could see the extent to which the federalized structure of American government has been subverted, they would be horrified.<\/p>\n Still, it would be less than fully accurate to say that our liberties are altogether gone. Thus, the question the lover of liberty must ask himself is this: under whose presidency do our remaining liberties stand the best chance of surviving, Romney\u2019s or Obama\u2019s?<\/p>\n It is with good reason that legions of liberty lovers have long ago concluded that there is scarcely a dime\u2019s worth of difference between these candidates and their respective parties. After all, as I have already acknowledged, both parties, time and time again, have revealed themselves to be detriments to liberty.\u00a0 Once in power, our elected representatives, irrespective of their party affiliations, have sought first and foremost to consolidate that power.<\/p>\n However, while this is <\/em>a good reason for refraining from lending one\u2019s support to both Republicans and Democrats, it is not good enough.\u00a0<\/p>\n For one, even if there is \u201cscarcely a dime\u2019s worth of difference\u201d between our two national parties, a dime is still a dime: the fate of the country could turn on what little difference there is.\u00a0<\/p>\n For example, let\u2019s suppose that in November, we had to reckon with two candidates, A and B.\u00a0 Candidate A wants to require all citizens to purchase medical insurance.\u00a0 Candidate B, though, wants to go much further than this.\u00a0 Encouraged by the Supreme Court\u2019s majority opinion on the constitutionality of ObamaCare, candidate B is determined to demand of all citizens that they exercise at least three (or more?) times per week and alter their dietary habits.\u00a0 To insure that this occurs, Candidate B will not stop until every citizen purchases a gym membership and receives a government-issued debit card that they will use to buy the mandated foods. \u00a0<\/p>\n Candidate A objects vehemently to Candidate B\u2019s plan, and swears that as long as he is president, Americans will remain at liberty to eat whatever they want to eat and exercise or not.\u00a0 <\/em>If, let\u2019s say, Candidate B is already the president and has already begun to implement his \u201chealth care\u201d plan, then we can imagine that Candidate A swears that on day one of assuming the office of the presidency, he will repeal it.<\/p>\n Candidate A is an undesirable candidate for sure.\u00a0 But if he was our only viable alternative to Candidate B, isn\u2019t it obvious that he would be a far less undesirable choice than the latter?\u00a0 There is no question that Candidate A would slow down the erosion of what remains of our liberties while Candidate B would accelerate the pace.<\/p>\n And in the real world, as opposed to some utopia, the lover of liberty knows that his choice is never really between a world replete with liberty and one utterly devoid of it. Rather, it is either between a greater and lesser degree of liberty or, more frequently, more and less tolerable infringements upon it. (Of course, theoretically, revolution and secession are options also.\u00a0 But since no one is calling for them at the moment, we needn\u2019t give them much thought here.)<\/p>\n But for argument\u2019s sake, let\u2019s just say that, substantively, there is no <\/em>difference between the policy prescriptions of Obama and Romney.<\/p>\n From the perspective of the lover of liberty, Romney would still be a preferable choice.<\/p>\n The reason for this is simple: it is only the mistaken belief, shared by tyrants, visionaries, and utopian dreamers the world over, that politics is only ever a matter of politics that leads us to measure the differences between Republicans and Democrats solely in terms of policies. <\/em><\/p>\n In actuality, though, there is much more to it than this.<\/p>\n To begin with, Romney and Obama are men with very different sorts of intentions.\u00a0 Putting it bluntly, Romney may very well enact policies at which the lover of liberty will look aghast.\u00a0 But Obama definitely will.\u00a0 This is because while Romney is not always very clear as to what traditional American liberty entails, Obama is resolutely opposed <\/em>to it.\u00a0 Romney is not resolved to \u201cfundamentally transform\u201d the land of the free and the home of the brave.\u00a0 Obama has already put us on notice that he indeed is.<\/p>\n Another crucial difference between Romney and Obama is that the former needs conservatives and Tea Partiers to win.\u00a0 These same people, though, have been distrustful of Romney from the outset and still haven\u2019t really warmed up to him.<\/p>\n Translation: Romney has every incentive to walk the line that they have drawn for him. It will not be without paying a grave cost\u2014a cost of the sort that President George H.W. Bush paid back in 1992 when he violated his pledge to refrain from raising taxes\u2014that Romney will cross his base.<\/p>\n Obama, in stark contrast, is not constrained by any such constituency.\u00a0 In fact, just the opposite is the case: his base <\/em>promises to continue pulling him leftward (not that he needs anyone to do so).<\/p>\n There is one final reason why the liberty lover should vote for Romney over Obama.<\/p>\n If Obama is re-elected, that will be his last election.\u00a0 The incentive he has now to appear more moderate than he really is will be forever gone. Among the ways that he can give unimpeded reign to his radicalism is by his selection of justices to the Supreme Court.\u00a0 <\/em>A single decision on his part here promises to impact the future of the country for at least the next generation and quite possibly much longer than that.<\/p>\n Matters are otherwise for Romney.\u00a0 Especially<\/em> in light of John Roberts\u2019 recent ruling on ObamaCare, the Republican president, whether it is Romney or anyone else, is going to be under incalculable pressure to nominate justices that have unquestioned conservative bona fides\u2014i.e. justices who are staunchly against judicial activism.<\/p>\n When the lover of liberty considers his prospects in light of all of these considerations, he will recognize that his beloved stands a better chance of enduring longer under a President Romney than under our current president.<\/p>\n originally published at American Thinker<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Anyone who has read this column knows that during the most recent Republican primary season, I wrote voluminously in support of Texas Congressman Ron Paul.\u00a0 It isn\u2019t that I thought that Paul was anything at all like the ideal candidate. However, among the race\u2019s contestants, it was a no-brainer to me that Paul came far…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n