There is only one good reason to vote for Hillary Clinton. There are no good reasons to vote for Donald Trump. That causes some people, particularly Millennials – voters born after 1982 —to consider voting for 3rd party candidates like Gary Johnson or Jill Stein. Stein is your garden variety limousine lefty with the usual Government as Arts Council campaign, but Johnson is another matter: he’s a Libertarian. What exactly is a Libertarian, and why would you vote for one?
Libertarians describe themselves as small government advocates who are against regulations and laws that control people’s personal lives. Libertarians say they are for the dignity and independence of workers and for their right to individually represent themselves and their worth on the labor market. And Libertarians promise they won’t involve us in wars or conflicts that occur outside our own sacrosanct borders. On day one of a Johnson Administration, we’d pull out of Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan – and stay out.
If you vote for Libertarian Johnson you’ll be voting for the right to grow dope in your back yard, and to smoke it on your front porch. If you want to raise hogs on the Buffalo River, one hog or one million hogs, that will be okay, too. And if you want to protest against raising hogs on the Buffalo, you get to. Of course, a Koch brothers funded PAC can protest your protest. Which is hunky-dory because Johnson is four square behind the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling.
If you decide to work at Mickey D’s you can offer your services starting at $100 an hour, or any dollar amount you think you’re worth because, by golly, you’re worth it. And Mickey can counter back at .02 cents an hour, or less because he has the same rights you do. May the best negotiator win.
How are these contradictory Libertarian values possible? Because Libertarians combine the philosophical and ideological objectives of both capitalism and anarchism into a grotesque political fairy tale that masks an unrelenting Libertarian value: people with money can do anything they want. Anything, anytime, anywhere. The only Moral Authority in a Libertarian Administration is the god of Money.