The Economist has been a pet Bilderberg publication for decades, and
has reasserted its place as the preeminent Bilderberg propagandist with
several invites in recent years. So it wasn't a big surprise to find the
Bilderberg house organ launch a salvo at the pro-freedom party and candidate
who dare challenge their anointed savior Obama and old standby John McCain.
From
The Economist May 29th 2008:
"ON MAY 25th a dysfunctional minor party picked a grumpy ex-Republican
as its presidential candidate. This may be just another quirk in the
quirky history of the Libertarian Party.. .
The new Libertarian champion, Bob Barr, a former four-term Georgia
congressman, is most famous for his poor judgment and sour temper. He
led the fight to defang anti-terrorism legislation after the Oklahoma
City bombing (among his achievements: preventing the government from
designating foreign groups as terrorists and denying their members visas
to enter the country). He championed social-conservative causes such
as the Defence of Marriage Act, which he drafted, and the impeachment
of Bill Clinton. His moralistic fervour faltered only when it came to
his own conduct: twice divorced, he was once photographed licking whipped
cream off the breasts of a particularly buxom woman. He says he was
raising money for leukaemia research. (Well, he would, wouldn't he?)
The Libertarian Party is one of the perennial jokes of American politics.
Barry Goldwater, a party hero, once argued that “extremism in
the defence of liberty is no vice”. Many Libertarians have interpreted
that as meaning that extremism in defence of liberty is a positive virtue:
one of the liveliest debates in the party is whether all drugs should
be legalised, and all federal taxes abolished, next Monday or next Tuesday.
The party's best presidential performance was back in 1980 when Edward
Clark won 921,128 votes, or 1.1% of the electorate. Most Libertarian
candidates have hovered around just 400,000 votes. The party is also
badly divided between what might be called its Ruby Ridge wing and its
Reefer Madness wing. The Ruby Ridge wing, which has still not recovered
from the terrible day when the FBI shot several survivalists at Ruby
Ridge in Idaho, believes that freedom comes from the barrel of a gun.
The Reefer Madness wing is more interested in keeping the government's
hands off its spliffs.
Mr Barr's candidacy is not likely to heal this division. The Georgian
has a solid record on guns—he once accidentally discharged an
antique pistol at a gun show—but he is much dodgier on other Libertarian
shibboleths. He joined the party in 2006 only after being redistricted
out of his congressional nest. He once supported both the Patriot Act
and the “war on drugs”, though he is now repentant. He won
the party's nomination only after six ballots and five hours of voting.
Yet the Republicans would be unwise to write him off as irrelevant:
instead, they would do well to consider the reasons for the enduring
success of Ron Paul, a Republican who shares many of the Libertarians'
views. . .
Mr McCain is not Mr Bush. He has an honourable record as a fiscal conservative
(he opposed the prescription-drug benefit, for example). He is Washington's
leading campaigner against pork. He is a principled federalist on issues
like gay marriage. . .
Mr Barr and the Libertarian Party, as well as Mr Paul, are both imperfect
vehicles for all this pent-up anger. But they are vehicles nonetheless...
