John Dennis is running against Nancy Pelosi for her seat in the U.S. Congress. He says he is “for liberty”, and libertarians are certainly running behind him, but is he really a libertarian or is he one of those Republicans hoping to win our vote and then change back into your usual politician? He, at least, has been endorsed by Ron Paul.
I’ve been reading his website, and it has been pretty in line with libertarian ideology:
National Defense: “War is maybe the greatest tragedy that men inflict upon each other. It must be used only in retaliation or under threat of imminent attack.” The two latter conditions seem like caveats, but he follows up with: “Most importantly, the Constitution is clear on who bears the responsibility of the power to declare war: the Congress. The danger of allowing a President to use force at his discretion ought to be clear now. I am strongly opposed to Congress passing resolutions granting the President the authority to use force.” Nevertheless, the issue of “imminent attack” and “retaliation” are important, since Afghanistan was theoretically a retaliation, but it turned out that the retaliation was against an entirely irrelevant government. Nevertheless, at least he is at least a little bit more “liberty-oriented” than most other Republicans.
“Inflation”: He is against income tax and high government spending. He is playing two sides here, as he openly supports abolishing the department of education and that of commerce and agriculture, but only reorganizing the department of homeland defense. I would say that of the three, the latter is the least necessary. He is against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and supports closing foreign military bases, which I guess is a plus.
Liberty & Privacy: He seems pretty liberal when it comes to this, fortunately.
Federal Reserve: He supports abolishing the federal reserve and a free-market in money.
Bailout: He spends more time attacking Nancy Pelosi on the subject, and he plays a pretty tight hand, but he seems anti-bailout at heart.
At face value, he seems legitimate. Does anybody know anything about his political record? What he was voted for or against before? Running on a libertarianesque platform is becoming popular, but is it real? Regardless, he is undeniably a better choice than Nancy Pelosi.
I am way passed this point already. The “give me your vote and I’ll give you liberty.” nonsense.
Constitution, Congress, President,… Incompatible with freedom. Not libertarian!
We’ve surpassed this point already. Taxation is the problem period. Not this type over this type.
That quote right there is a blind check for unlimited spending
So is Obama, but hey, sometimes you have to defend liberty.
All useless terms today in society. Obama, Bush uses them also. Sadam also used them.
Ironic for in Mises’ article today, he mentions the fatal error in this approach in the past. What about the other agencies? FDIC and all the other hazards?
Noam Chomsky once said he supports Laisez-faire free markets at heart, but in reality, well now…
We have to come to terms with the fact that we are not living an an anarchic society and that such a society is not immediately attainable. So, “relatively more liberty” is preferrable over “much less liberty” in politics, I think. So, I hope that this discussion does not digress into some type of petty argument over whether or not politicians are generally trustworthy or not, or whether we should vote or not. I rather vote for John Dennis than vote for Nancy Pelosi, or for Ron Paul rather than John McCain or Barack Obama. Of course, ideally there would be no politicians, but for the time being this is not a realistic choice.
So, before we start to hijack the thread with discussions on how no politician is good, I just want to try to keep the thread on topic… that is, John Dennis and any prior history he may have had. He may not be perfect, but the task at hand was to verif wether or not he is generally truthful in his intentions.
That’s one of the points where one may disagree with him (and I’m thinking of writing a blog post and emailing it to him to see what he says; Dale Ogden, who is running for governor, actually replied to a letter I had posted [I didn’t know his email address, at the time]). I think that pre-emptive strikes fall under the category of possible “imminent attack”. Obviously, any pre-emptive attack must come deliberation, which oftentimes defeats the purpose of pre-emptive strikes. In any case, when it comes to national defense he seems to be catering to the right: he supports special war powers in the case of “retaliation” and “imminent strikes”, and the Homeland Security Deparment is not on his list of superfluous government spending venues to go on the chopping block.
How can the State and the statist disease be stopped? Now I will come to my strategic considerations. First off, three fundamental insights or guiding principles must be recognized. First: that the protection of private property and of law, justice, and law enforcement, is essential to any human society. But there is no reason whatsoever why this task must be taken on by one single agency, by a monopolist. As a matter of fact, it is precisely the case that as soon as you have a monopolist taking on this task, he will with necessity destroy justice and render us defenseless against foreign as well as domestic invaders and aggressors.
It is then one’s ultimate goal which one has to keep in mind is the demonopolization of protection and justice. Protection, security, defense, law, order, and arbitration in conflicts can and must be supplied competitively — that is, entry into the field of being a judge must be free.
Second, because a monopoly of protection is the root of all evil, any territorial expansion of such a monopoly is per se evil too. Every political centralization must be on principle grounds rejected. In turn, every attempt at political decentralization — segregation, separation, secession and so forth — must be supported.
The third basic insight is that a democratic protection monopoly in particular must be rejected as a moral and economic perversity. Majority rule and private property protection are incompatible. The idea of democracy must be ridiculed: it is nothing else but mob rule parading as justice. To be labeled a democrat must be considered the worst of all possible compliments! This does not mean that one may not participate in democratic policies; I will come to that a little bit later.
But one must use democratic means only for defensive purposes; that is, one may use an antidemocratic platform to be elected by an antidemocratic constituency to implement antidemocratic — that is, anti-egalitarian and pro-private property — policies. Or, to put it differently, a person is not honorable because he is democratically elected. If anything, this makes him a suspect. Despite the fact that a person has been elected democratically, he may still be a decent and honorable man; we have heard one before. ~ HHH
Please don’t use that rhetoric with me, because it won’t take you anywhere. You are intent on being unreasonable; I already posted in response to your first post that the point of this thread was not to discuss the merits of government. The premise was that government exists, and that some choices are better than others. I refuse to not vote, because by not voting I am basically saying that I don’t care who rules me, because if all rulers are inherently bad, all rulers are inherently as bad. This claim is patently false. Some rulers may be better than others, and that is under the premise I am operating. There is no choice for “anarcho-capitalism”, and so when it comes to voting it is not a choice that I consider pragmatic.
Now, if you do not intend to add anything of any value to this thread, please discuss the merits of voting or government elsewhere and let this thread retain its original use.
I think what Jonathan is trying to say is that what gets us to the point of 95% reduction in government is open to interpretation. Perhaps it is working within government through officials who are like Ron Paul or formulating separate institution to counteract government. This man could be the former. However, I trust that Jonathan knows that the last 5% is going to be done by anarchists, not by government.
I’m PM’ing you a response so this thread doesn’t get hijacked, but asking for political opinions on a forum with many voluntarists is like asking what people think of Walmart on Revleft.
I am not asking for political opinions on the process of democracy. I am asking for information on John Dennis. These are the questions that were specifically asked under the list of John Dennis’ beliefs:
At face value, he seems legitimate. Does anybody know anything about his political record? What he was voted for or against before? Running on a libertarianesque platform is becoming popular, but is it real? Regardless, he is undeniably a better choice than Nancy Pelosi.
I don’t see anywhere where I ask whether democracy is better than anarchy, or vice versa. If a voluntarist cannot answer these questions, or respond with something relevant to the topic, then I am not sure what need there is to respond.
Given the essay under “issues”, he seems more conservative than anything else. On immigration and our borders:
National Defense means America First. We must secure our borders; we cannot be serious about national security if we maintain open borders. Rule of law and the protection of our citizens requires that we enforce immigration laws not ignore them.
The issues essay is an interesting read. For some reason I see more legitimacy with John Dennis, but I may be wrong (maybe Dennis’ information is better presented). Given that ever since the Obama administration and the Ron Paul Revolution the Republicans are changing their ideology, it seems more difficult to pick out who is for real and who isn’t.