Isn't it about time that we, despite the many contributions Barry Goldwater made to Arizona, say, HEY! wait a doggone minute? Barry's long gone. But his words remain with us. From the 1964 Republican national convention, where he was nominated for president,
Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. -- Barry Goldwater said in the 1960s.
In an election year when the Libertarian Party put forth Harry Browne as a candidate for president, I was able to call in to ask him a question during a radio interview on local station KTAR. I don't remember if it was 1996 or 2000. The question stumped Browne who, of course, was an ardent advocate of liberty and restraining government at all levels from interfering with people's lives.
My question to him related to HOW or whether his platform promoted egalitarianism or, equality, in America. He had no answer. That's because it does NOT promote any degree of equality in any area. Liberty as a political doctrine, taken to its extreme, most definitely promotes INEQUALITY.
From Libertarianism.org,
Liberty and equality have usually in England been considered antithetic; and, since fraternity has rarely been considered at all, the famous trilogy has been easily dismissed as a hybrid abortion. Equality implies the deliberate acceptance of social restraints upon individual expansion. It involves the prevention of sensational extremes of wealth and power by public action for the public good. If liberty means, therefore, that every individual shall be free, according to his opportunities, to indulge without limit his appetite for either, it is clearly incompatible, not only with economic and social, but with civil and political, equality, which also prevent the strong exploiting to the full the advantages of their strength... But freedom for the pike is death for the minnows. [According to the Constitution of OUR country, we are NOT minnows, literally or allegorically.]
Well, certain evil geniuses have gotten away with hoodwinking the American people in our government and economics ever since, to restrict the public dialogue from even considering the brazen contrast as spelled out in the quoted paragraph from Liberatarianism.org.
Now, because the history of the last 60 plus years has produced copious amounts of data, we can and do know that Barry G, a godfather of the movement for extreme economic liberty by way of deregulation, all but eliminating the duty of the Capitalist elite from carrying the financial burden for the infrastructure that has enabled them to get filthy rich, and empowering them to completely capture American government at all levels was obscenely wrong. and so obviously antithetical to the purpose of the Constitution.
Instead of ensuring domestic tranquility, we have Fascism hoodlums without identification attacking our cities where everyday Americans are doing nothing more than shouting their demands for equal rights according to the law.
Instead of promoting the general welfare, we have the most egregious degree of economic insecurity and inequality since the Great Depression or maybe longer.
Instead of establishing justice, we have police getting away with murdering Breonna Taylor in Louisville in cold blood and Daniel Prude in Rochester, NY in an incident medical examiners ruled a homicide, and Mr. Prude's death occurred BEFORE George Floyd... not to mention epidemic levels of cops shooting unarmed young Black men nationwide.
Instead of providing for the common defense, we have a presider over the federal government who is overtly in thrall to Russian dictator Vlad Putin. Said presider along with elected and appointed officials in the same political party refuses to take action to eradicate Putin's interference with American elections IN 2020.
We have the opportunity to change the direction of our government in less than 40 days.
VOTE. Assert your most basic citizenship. Speak UP. Speak OUT. Rise UP!
From Kurt Andersen's Evil Geniuses (P. 359),
Among the great examples of nonbinary thinking are the efforts of both presidents Roosevelt: they got the federal government to intervene in the free-market system in the early 1900s as it never had before in order to save the free-market system, to keep out-of-control capitalists from wrecking capitalism. The year upper-class FDR said of the forces of “business and financial monopoly” and “organized money” that he “welcome[d] their hatred” was the same year F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time.”
I believe Joe Biden is capable of holding two opposed ideas in his mind at the same time and that he can direct the federal government to change direction so that we see a return to the purposes the Founders spelled out in the Preamble to the US Constitution.
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