LP Strikes Out on Sanctions Softball
Libertarians Miss Chance to Batter Beltway Uniparty Belligerence
Congress is nearly finished with a Russia sanctions bill it will send to the President with broad bipartisan support. Meanwhile, the Libertarian Party went to a convention in Las Vegas to hear William Shatner speak. Stay in your lane and stick to what you know. The RedBluDuopoly knows how to grow State power at home and abroad while the LP is great at LARPing. It is a match made in hell for Americans who crave maximum freedom and a minimal State.
Particularly infernal is how easy it would have been for the LP to pump out a couple of releases highlighting the Beltway’s warped priorities. Health care reform and tax reform are somehow impossible riddles but Washington always has time to play global nanny and micromanage its citizens interactions with the rest of the world. Instead we got the exact opposite from the LP, complete buy-in to the Get Russia hysteria.

Yes, America’s “pro-freedom” party thinks doing business with another nation-state is something to be “cleaned up” by the federal government. Tell Starfleet we’ve found the strangest new world, one where the political party which requires its federal candidates to pledge to shrink the State, and especially the military, nonetheless de facto cheers legislation which would commit the US to a near-permanent hostile stance vis-a-vis another world power. You see, a provision of the bill mandates that the POTUS must get Congressional approval to suspend or terminate the sanctions. As this language suggests, imposing sanctions is a low-grade form of warfare between nations. Maybe if the bill mentioned Klingons or Romulans the LP might catch a whiff of what is at stake.
An unlimited American hegemon abroad is irreconcilable with a limited, Constitutional republic at home. This is used to be libertarian, even Libertarian, 101. But it would seem the seedy one-night stand with William Weld and his patrician refugees from Team Blu has left the LP with quite the identity crisis. The party has functionally become just another snickering left-liberal anti-Trump org. Try to digest the LP’s baffling reax to Trump’s tax cut outline from April. Good start-do more-here’s how evidently was far too accommodating for the current crop of LP leadership, and/or fund-raising pitches to former Weld donors.
Which brings us to the question of the hour: If the LP can’t have a positive impact on the big stuff like war and taxes, why have an LP? Besides the LARPing, I mean. ##
Taylor writes from Metro ATL.
