Doug: As you know, I've always distinguished them this way: the Democrats definitely don't believe in economic freedom, but they say they believe in social freedom, while the Republicans definitely don't believe in social freedom, but they say they believe in economic freedom. Neither believes in both – that would make them libertarians.
Q: [Chuckles] So, it's what they lie about that really distinguishes them. Or, more to the point, it's not what they believe, or say they believe, that drives them, but what they don't believe. Not what they value, but what they fear. It's not love but hate that is the guiding principle of American politics.
Doug: Exactly. Like most of what we see in politics, it's completely perverse. The only good thing about the Democratic party is that they're at least consistent: they are collectivists and statists through and through. They are collectivists in what they say, and they are collectivists in what they do. That gives them the appearance of being more honest than the Republicans.
Q: They may be crypto-communists draped in red, white, and blue, but at least they're consistent?
Doug: Yes, but not the Republicans. They say they value freedom and the individual, but their actions lie to those claims, and they give freedom a bad name. It makes you reluctant to use words like "free market," when you have the likes of the hostile and mildly demented McCain, and the bent and clinically stupid Bush claiming those principles for what they do.
Q: Makes me mad. It adds insult to injury that Ronald Reagan got elected on essentially libertarian rhetoric – smaller government, lower taxes, getting the state off the little guy's back, etc., and then signed appropriations bills that saw government grow by huge, then-unprecedented amounts. Many people today think the Reagan years prove that less government is a bad idea!
Doug: Remember what the Reagan team used to say, "If not us, who? And if not now, when?" As it turned out, it wasn't them and it wasn't then. The worst enemies of individual liberty are knaves that claim they're for it but utterly betray it. And incompetents and ineffectual fools who say they're trying to save freedom by increasing the size of the state.
~ Doug Casey, Doug Casey on the Tea Party Movement, Interviewed by Louis James, Editor, International Speculator, LewRockwell.com, October 1, 2010
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