I sat amongst a sea of posh suits and bald heads, speckled with cowboy hats
and American flags. It could have been a NASCAR race or a casino scene. But instead, it was the GOP convention, where Gov. Schwarzenegger and the First Lady had just taken the stage.
I will make two important confessions up front: I am a Jew, and I am not a Republican. Here I am, possibly the only Bostonian, Jewish, registered-Libertarian that you will ever hear from. Many tell me that I cast my vote in vain when I vote Libertarian, but Jews have always banked on the illogical and the idealistic, so long as it proved honest. And frankly, neither President Bush nor Senator Kerry is quite good for the Jewish people.
My party has nominated Michael Badnarik for the upcoming election. Mr. Badnarik just turned 50 on August 1. He studied marine biology in college. As Libertarians, Mike and I will never yield our guns (or our marijuana). We find most taxes unconstitutional. We don’t like jails much, and mostly feel that tougher responses to criminality – coupled with civilian rights of self defense – will rectify most situations quite satisfactorily.
Trying to make a decision among the ruling parties proved for me a process of reductio ad absurdum. I can’t vote Democrat because I value my own money too much and because I am not abed with the global community, and I can’t vote Republican because I frankly find the duopoly undemocratic and the institutionalization scary. Libertarianism fits like a glove. It satisfies my secular political interests – fiscal conservatism, isolationist and lassez-faire policies, and as a bonus, the party emerges as pro-Israel.
At some point, one must honestly admit that the emperor has no clothes, and in this case, the “emperor” is twofold: it consists of the two ruling parties, bolstered by their rah-rah conformism. For me, the breaking point came during Governor Schwarzenegger’s speech. I am far closer to conservative than I am to liberal, which effectively precludes voting Democrat, and yet the RNC proved the opposite of my expectations. Instead of a convention of intelligent, articulate capitalists, I found the institutionalization of it all, the hats and the flags and the sappy jokes, distasteful. The scene made me entirely dissatisfied with democracy as it is embodied in the two major parties.
Nothing bothers me more than a unified mass of people who conquered Madison Square Garden just before Labor Day, all tramping around in lockstep, cheering like they are at a baseball game. It works for me at Fenway Park, but when politics becomes sports I take my bat and my ball, and I sulk on home to the Libertarians.
We Libertarians will never be at home in a convention center. We’re political outsiders. We reject the status quo and the conformism of the parties that pretend they’ll change it. But in the end, we emerge much like the wandering Jew. No one wants us, no one understands us, but at the End of Days, they will all acknowledge us, simply because of the immediacy and sheer moral power of our message.
