Written on May 20th, 2012
Edited in April 2014
The following is my response to a question from Ryan Haack: “Are you going to say something about the Milwaukee Journal[-]Sentinel "endorsing" Walker.[?] ..."
When
Walker said he had no plans to make Wisconsin a Right-to-Work state,
I wanted it to be an RTW state, but not just out of disagreement with
Walker. That made me to the fiscal right of him.
I
changed my position to being against state RTW laws because I feel
that they condition and inhibit contractual obligations for too large
a geographical area and too many people. Walker came out in the last
week or so saying he supported RTW laws, so now I disagree with him
again, which makes my overall policy slightly more palatable to the
left.
Generally,
I see the need for austerity and for cuts in government services, but
I feel that it's more the federal government's fault than it is
Walker's. I'm more likely to support austerity when the people decide
it's the right time, not when governors have allowed the feds to
bankrupt state and local governments.
Arthur
Kohl-Riggs said something to the effect of "any reasonable
governor would have accepted that federal high-speed rail money".
I disagree, and I commend Walker for rejecting it. High-speed rail
that almost exclusively benefits Midwesterners does not promote the
general welfare of all Americans, which I feel should be a necessary
condition for federal spending.
Besides,
I think the private sector would do a more efficient and responsible
job of constructing transportation infrastructure than the
government, and there is less of a chance that that money would have
been diverted to other spending projects and ending up in the pockets
of politicians and lobbyists.
Some
might respond to the above by saying that the money would end up in
the hands of CEOs and the like, and we all know how much Walker likes
tax breaks for businesses and the wealthy. But Walker and I do not
share the same economic or political philosophy.
Walker
is a corporatist technocrat who supports states' rights to some
extent. I favor local communities' rights, and - under such
conditions - taxation based on the creation of income disparity (but
I also support introducing competition in governance, so that people
can choose which fair and neutral party arbitrates disputes which
they cannot resolve by themselves).
In
my opinion, Walker is not polarizing because he is farther to the
right than people are used to. He is polarizing because – as with
any politician, especially a governor or a president, under the
current monopoly-government system – it’s Walker’s way or the
highway. And that’s just the way it will be if Barrett wins.
Nobody
will be satisfied – and the “general (read: ‘universal’)
welfare” clause will never be fulfilled – as long as people
cannot vote “none of the above” in every election without having
to vote again, and as long as people cannot choose to be governed by
anyone other than the federal government along with its state and
local subsidiary governments.
The
only politician who will not be polarizing is a candidate who lets
people refrain from associating politically with people whose
ideologies are nearly or completely irreconcilable with their own.
Polarizing,
extremist politicians are in-style in this political season. Scott
Walker and Paul Ryan may be polarizing, but they are not extremist.
But the most prominent extremists - people like Ron Paul and Gary
Johnson – are somehow not polarizing; Paul has in fact been
described as “transpartisan”.
I
feel that this shows that what we need is not “compromise, not
capitulation” – as Democratic congressional candidate Mark Pocan
put it – but “consensus, not compromise”, as independent
congressional candidate myself puts it. This premise alone would
satisfy the general welfare requirement.
Fiscal
sanity – not Scott-Walker-style soft money and tax breaks for
businesses and the wealthy – helps the pocketbooks of all Americans. A humble foreign policy with a strong national defense –
not George-W.-Bush-style interventionist military belligerence –
makes all Americans safer.
I
am a Republican only in that republicanism is a means to an end. I
respect extremists from both ends of the economic spectrum, because
they have goals. All that polarizing, non-extremist, “pragmatic”
Democrats and Republicans have to offer us is an all-or-nothing,
“my-way-or-the-highway” mindset, and a political culture where an
average of 49% of the people are dissatisfied and envious of those
who are better represented.
David
Koch was the Libertarian Party Vice-Presidential candidate for
president in 1980. Libertarians knew he wasn’t one of them then,
and they know he isn’t one of them now. Libertarianism is not about
corporate tyranny; it's about discovering to what extent any existing
corporate tyranny is the fault of the State.The results of a (very
in-depth, I must say) political quiz I recently took shows that
libertarianism is nowhere near as all-or-nothing as the framed, false
Republican-Democrat, "left-vs.-right" dichotomy. The quiz
described me as a Libertarian Party sympathizer first, a Green Party
sympathizer second, a Republican third, and a Democrat fourth.
In
conclusion, I am not voting in the recall election. I will vote in a
Wisconsin gubernatorial election when and only when a candidate makes
credible promises to start issuing passports; to advocate for the
construction of consular offices with the purposes of establishing
diplomacy with the foreign, alien federal government; and to
re-assert the state's freedom, independence, and sovereignty, which
is referenced in official federal government documents spanning from
1778 to just three years ago.
Until
that day happens, I urge my fellow (automatic, de-facto, default)
Wisconsinites to vote "none of the above" if that is an
option, and to remember to make as many qualifications as possible
when making excuses for a representative of any agency at any level
of one of the several governments to which we were presumed to have
consented to delegate powers when we decided (without informed
consent) to be born within the unnatural borders of a corporate State
in proximity to the parent company which calls itself the United
States Government.
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