Wednesday, September 15, 2004
Mr. Badnarik and Me
I'm going to reproduce an email I sent to an old friend at GMU, because I think there are points which should be made public:
"So today, I got to spend an hour debating with Michael Badnarik, the libertarian candidate for president. You would’ve loved it. A few fellow Cavalier Daily (the school newspaper where I’m an associate opinion editor) and a couple other students were standing around talking to him, and I got to essentially go at it with him for a good long time. It was pretty fascinating – I really liked to atmosphere of a serious politician taking the time to intellectually discuss the real issues with mere college students.
As for Badnarik himself…well, let’s just say that he thinks the solution to terrorism is to give everyone a gun, and the income tax needs to go, since the government will do just fine without 20% of its budget. He presented his case forcefully and with a lot of backing, but we ultimately hit an ideological impasse; he thinks taxation is theft and that government cannot do anything better than the free market, I think that taxation is part of the social contract and that government is the only thing that stops the cold, harsh market from plaguing a large portion of society into dire straits. We talked about a range of issues from gun control to the war in Iraq to education to the role of the constitution.
I think I held my own quite nicely, though he certainly didn’t give any ground or pull any punches. I walk away from that experience quite convinced libertarianism works well on paper but is largely impractical in the real world, and I walk away convinced that third parties need to be included far more in the political process. We talked about REAL issues, not military records from 40 years ago; we raised points of educated discourse and philosophy and had an actual discussion that provoked the mind. Those type of conversations should be happened throughout the nation, but they’re not. Instead of civic debate, we have vitriolic, substance-less rhetoric full of more bile than policy. There isn’t an individual in this country who couldn’t benefit from an hour-long conversation like the one I had.
I’ve been doing some voter registration down here, and it’s encouraging how much people seem to care. I just hope someone comes along that has a chance to win who says these things. If no one does, I’m going to have to do it myself."
You can find more discussion of the Badnarik reception (and a more in-depth account) over at http://www.newsthoughts.net
