No Way Could I Support Republicans

Tibor R. Machan

Now and then I am subject to serious consternation about not being able to address concrete political issues, ones that occupy the attention of some many politicians and pundits. Do I hold a political position that is irrelevant to what is happening in the world?

Well, maybe I do at times. At least if we are talking about immediate relevance then my unwavering support for the fully free society isn’t helping very much, I admit. I wish that issues I am passionate about, some of which I have learned are absolutely vital to human community life, came up for decision in the body politic--issues such as whether government may regulate the professions, whether interstate commerce should be subject to government meddling, whether the war on drugs should continue and so forth and so on.

At times I have the impression that maybe there are practicing political allies out there somewhere, ones who are involved with current affairs, and at times it looks like these would be Republicans and especially conservative ones. That’s because strictly speaking if one were a bona fide American conservative, what one would be working hard to conserve is the principles of the American Founders, those laid out so well in the Declaration of Independence. After all, liberal democrats, so called, have mostly abandoned any loyalty to the ideals of the Declaration and they are only champions of the American political tradition when it helps to promote their populist agenda of forcible wealth redistribution (i.e., when they invoke the 16th Amendment which legalizes income extortion). The ACLU is a joke since it cherry picks whose constitutional rights it stands up for.

But no sooner to do I hold out just a bit of hope for the Republicans and conservatives, I am reminded of just what they love more than anything else, which is to coerce everyone to follow their moral prejudices.

Consider what they did about the U. S. military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy the other day. Finally there was chance to purge the legal system of this unjust policy, of making gays jump through all kinds of hoops so they may serve in the Army, Navy and Air Force of a supposedly free country. As it was reported at Newsmax.com, “With the 56-43 vote, Democrats fell short of the 60 votes needed to advance the legislation [to repeal don’t ask, don’t tell].... Senate Democrats attached the repeal provision to the defense bill in the hopes that Republicans would hesitate to vote against legislation that included popular defense programs. But GOP legislators opposed the bill anyway, thwarting a key part of the Democrats' legislative agenda.”

I don’t give a hoot about the Democrats’ legislative agenda because it is mostly bent on robbing Peter to give out gifts to Paul. But I do consider it grossly unjust to bar gays from serving in the military, just as it would be to bar bakers, Catholics, tall people, or opera singers from doing so. What on earth does being gay have to do with military service? (In fact in ancient Greece it was widely believed that gays would make the finest soldiers!) What kind of Neanderthal mentality must these people have for making it their huge objective to stand in the way of gays who want to volunteer?

When this kind of news comes to my attention I have to hold my nose and just hope that in time there will be an opposition political party that will not be linked to such nonsense. Will that ever happen? I don’t know but I am not giving up working to that end. For when we reflect seriously on the principles American conservatives are supposed to be conserving, preserving, they are clearly such that they do not give the slightest support to gay bashing of any kind, any more than they support female or short people or farmer bashing.

We are all human beings with basic rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of our happiness. And while there are some neo-conservatives who do take issue with these ideals, thinking them to be pedestrian and shallow, any genuine American must consider them central to a just human community. In such a community no official discrimination against gays is tolerable, nor against anyone else who lives peacefully!