Campaign Finance and the First Amendment: Why Justice Thomas Was Right

by Gerard Emershaw

Recently in McCutcheon v. FEC, the Supreme Court voted 5–4 along ideological lines to overturn a campaign finance law which limited the amount that an individual could donate in a two-year election cycle to a total of $48,600 to candidates and $74,600 to political action committees. However, the Court ruled that the legal imposed limit of $5,200 to any individual candidate—$2,600 for primary election and another $2,600 for general election—was constitutionally valid.

In his concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas argued that the Court should have also ruled this $5,200 limit on donations to any one individual candidate unconstitutional. Justice Thomas was correct.

The rationale for limits on how much an individual may donate to a single federal political candidate can be found in Buckley v. Valeo (1976). In that case, the Court ruled that the limiting of political donations that individuals can make to a candidate is a justified limitation of First Amendment rights for the following reason:

Under a system of private financing of elections, a candidate lacking immense personal or family wealth must depend on financial contributions from others to provide the resources necessary to conduct a successful campaign. The increasing importance of the communications media and sophisticated mass-mailing and polling operations to effective campaigning make the raising of large sums of money an ever more essential ingredient of an effective candidacy. To the extent that large contributions are given to secure a political quid pro quo from current and potential office holders, the integrity of our system of representative democracy is undermined.  

Justice Thomas focuses mainly on issues related to the First Amendment and the appropriate standard of review that should be imposed upon campaign contributions. Justice Thomas objects to the view in the Buckley ruling which stated that “[t]he quantity of communication by the contributor does not increase perceptibly with the size of his contribution,” and “[a]t most, the size of the contribution provides a very rough index of the intensity of the contributor’s support for the candidate. Instead, Justice Thomas claims that campaign contributions do increase the quantity of communication by allowing the candidate in question to amplify his or her voice. He also claims that larger contributions express the level of approval a donor has for the candidate in question. Justice Thomas also objects to the practice of limiting contributions but not limiting direct expenditures by a candidate because the two are just “two sides of the same First Amendment coin.”

What Justice Thomas does not discuss is the aforementioned worry about corruption. Without doubt if donors were allowed to give unlimited contributions, it would increase the worry that such a donor could “own” a candidate by having that candidate “in his [or her] pocket.” However, on the other side of that is the First Amendment which states: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

While the Court far too often allows other considerations to outweigh free speech, they are wrong in doing so. The First Amendment says “no law.” It does not qualify this by saying “unless the government has a more important objective which outweighs the value of free speech.”

The real problem is this. The government has grown far beyond its Constitutional boundaries. The President is akin to a Caesar. The executive branch agencies do most of the true legislating in violation of Article I of the Constitution. Congress has surrendered most of its power to the executive branch, but it uses the Commerce Clause to do the bidding of its corporatist campaign contributors. So, how does Congress and the Supreme Court address all this unconstitutionality? By violating the Constitution once again by limiting free speech. This is wrong. Two wrongs do not make a right. This is a political version of swallowing the spider to catch the fly. The real question is why does the Court keep allowing the federal government to swallow that fly?

A Constitution-sized government is not a powerful government. The President as defined in the Constitution is no Caesar. The executive branch is not a one-headed legislator with a multitude of tentacles. Congress is very limited in what it can do. The Tenth Amendment further limits the power of the federal government. A Constitution-sized government has elected civil servants who do not have enough power to be worth buying. Even if they did, there is nothing preventing the people from amending the Constitution to enact term limits for members of Congress as was earlier done with the President. It would not even be impossible to further limit the President to merely one term if necessary. This would further the amount of time that elected federal civil servants could accept anything akin to bribes. The bottom line is that unless and until the people limit the power of the federal government to what is stated explicitly in the Constitution, bribery and corruption will be the rule rather than the exception regardless of any campaign contribution limits. There will always be ways around those.

NY SAFE Act Makes Second Amendment Less Safe

by Gerard Emershaw

Last week more than 1,000 people protested the SAFE Act outside New York’s capital in Albany. The New York gun control law was passed over a year ago, but an upcoming deadline by which New Yorkers must register their assault weapons has created renewed fury on the part of the Empire State’s gun owners.

The SAFE Act—The New York Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Act of 2013—contains a number of important provisions:

• It bans “high capacity magazines” of over ten rounds
• It requires that ammunition dealers perform background checks
• It creates a mandatory registry of New Yorkers who own assault weapons
• It requires that mental health professionals who believe a mental health patient made a credible threat of harming others report the threat to a mental health director, who would then have to report serious threats to the state Department of Criminal Justice Service
• It makes it a crime not to report a stolen gun within 24 hours
• It requires a background check for all gun sales except to immediate family
• It mandates that guns be “safely stored” from any household member who has been convicted of a felony or domestic violence crime, has been involuntarily committed, or is currently under an order of protection
• It bans all internet gun sales in the state
• It requires New York gun owners to renew their permits every five years
• It allows law enforcement officials to preemptively seize one's firearms without a warrant or court order when there is probable cause the individual is mentally unstable or intends to use the weapons to commit a crime

I have previously made an absolutist defense of the Second Amendment, and these considerations still hold true. The fact that the Supreme Court has ever allowed the federal, state, or local governments to infringe the Second Amendment rights of Americans either means that they cannot read or that they have the hubris to think that they know better about what the Founding Fathers meant than the Founding Fathers did. It does not get much clearer than “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

Banning “high capacity magazines” is clearly just an attempt to create an eventual slippery that will eventually lead to more bans on guns. What is so magic about ten rounds? Would it be so difficult for a mass shooter like Adam Lanza to carry three 10 round clips instead of one 30 clip? Is changing gun cartridges that difficult? Does the New York state legislature and Governor believe that the lives of the first ten would be victims do not matter? It seems that it should be all or nothing in this matter, and for the SAFE Act advocates, it is all or nothing. They want to ban all guns, but they are doing it in a gradualist fashion. Originally the SAFE Act made the limit 7 rounds, but that was struck down in court. Eventually, if gun control advocates get their way, the limit will be a zero round magazine.

Laws like the SAFE Act create solutions in search of a problem. Mass shootings in the United States are not on the rise. The total has held steady for the last 20 years. The 24/7 cable news culture and internet makes coverage of tragic crimes like Sandy Hook omnipresent, and this creates the illusion that such crimes are increasing. Enhanced background checks will likely not prevent such crimes. An examination of 93 mass shootings from 2009 through September 2013, conducted by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, found no indication that any of the perpetrators were prohibited by federal law from possessing firearms.

The New York requirement that assault rifles be registered is clearly nothing but a way for the government to invade the privacy of its citizens and be able to single out gun owners in the state for potential future persecution. There is no reason why the government needs to know who owns an assault rifle. In 2010, there were only 358 murders carried out in the United States using a rifle of any kind. Twice as many were carried out by hands, fists, or feet. Assault weapons are simply not used in very many crimes. Therefore, it must be that the gun grabbers in New York are after something else.

One possibility is that they know that many will not register their assault weapons with the state, and thus, the New York government can magically turn law abiding New York gun owners into criminals through the use of this unconstitutional law. A similar law in Connecticut was ignored by scores of gun owners in that state, and there is little reason to believe that the same will not be true in New York. This will give the New York government ample reason to begin a witch hunt of gun registry evaders. It will allow it to use the SAFE Act’s unconstitutional gun grabbing provision to grab unregistered assault weapons without a warrant.

Background checks and government gun registries of any kind egregiously violate the Second Amendment. Self-defense—particularly against a tyrannical government—is a natural right of human beings. Laws such as the SAFE Act make Americans less safe by eroding the protection of that natural right. Such gun control measures are part of a death by one thousand cuts strategy by which guns will gradually be outlawed. Such a strategy must be opposed from the very beginning.

Can Libertarians Make Free Markets Cool?

by Gerard Emershaw

Social freedoms are cool. It is not hard to get Americans of all backgrounds to cheer for social freedoms. When reading books such as Nineteen Eight Four, Brave New World, or It Can’t Happen Here or when watching movies such as V for Vendetta, Brazil, A Scanner Darkly, The Hunger Games, Equilibrium, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Running Man, Serenity, or Soylent Green, it is natural for any American to cheer the freedom loving and oppressed protagonists and jeer the totalitarian antagonists. However, economic freedom is another thing entirely. Many lovers of the natural rights to life and liberty scratch their heads at the idea of the right to property or even scoff at it.

For whatever reason, many just do not consider free markets and economic freedoms to be sexy. In fact, many on the left—especially Millennials—consider free markets to be a bad thing. They view them as oppressive, racist, sexist, classist, etc. It does not help that pop culture and art offer little compelling entertainment which does for economic freedom what something like The Hunger Games does for social freedoms. One might point to Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. However, while a devoted group of readers practically worship the novel, many are daunted by its length. While the novel’s concept is undeniably original and intriguing, many readers are put off by its flat, one dimensional characters, its pretentious dialogue, and its clunky prose. It does not help that the first two of a planned trilogy of movie adaptations of the novel have been massive critical and commercial failures. While the novel certainly deserves better, these films are low budget disasters which look like they ought to be direct to video. Making matters worse is that the cast has changed in each of the films. Imagine if different actors had played Luke, Han, Leia, and Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy. It would not have been a compelling inducement to see the films.

So, how can people be educated about the importance and necessity of economic freedom? There is a mountain of empirical evidence that shows that the freer the economy of a nation, the wealthier the people of that nation. Unfortunately, this does not seem to convince the skeptics. They will always have a Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, etc. to point to as models of how they think the American economy ought to be structured.

It is often difficult or a libertarian to understand why so many Americans are unimpressed with the idea of the free market. How can anyone be truly free if he or she is not economically free? Even if a nation has every social freedom that one can imagine, if that nation has a centrally controlled economy, then there is no freedom. If the government can control the economy, it can control every financial transaction that each individual makes. It can take away any individual’s assets. It can starve any individual. Just as one is a slave if he or she does not have social freedom, one is also a slave without economic freedom. This is not a matter of simply being a greedy economic royalist who does not wish to pay his or her “fair share.” But how can libertarians convincingly spread the idea that free markets are a necessary condition for true freedom?

Can Libertarianism Appeal to Hispanics?

by Gerard Emershaw

Hispanics make up an increasingly large and increasingly important part of the American electorate. If libertarianism is going to continue to grow in influence over politics in the United States, it is imperative that more Hispanics are won over by the message of liberty. Currently, the vast majority of Hispanic voters support the Democratic Party. In the 2012 election, 71% of Hispanics voted for President Obama. This does not bode well for libertarianism.

What issues concern Hispanics in the United States the most? According to a June 2012 Gallup poll, the four issues which concerned registered Hispanic voters the most were: healthcare (21%), unemployment (19%), economic growth (17%), and the economic gap between the rich and the poor (16%). Surprisingly, only 12% considered immigration policies to be important. The libertarian approach provides the best solutions to each of these problems. While Obamacare has been a disaster for the ages, a free market approach to healthcare in which insurance companies could sell policies across state lines would be beneficial. Unemployment would decrease and the economy would grow if the federal government would follow libertarian ideas of cutting spending, cutting taxing, and eliminating draconian business regulations. These policies along with eliminating the Federal Reserve would shrink the growing gap between the rich and poor as well.

In a March 23, 2013 interview with NPR, Gary Segura, co-founder of the polling firm Latino Decisions, was asked what it would take for Hispanics to vote Republican. While mainstream Republican policies are not that consistent with libertarianism, there is a growing match between the two thanks to the work of Ron and Rand Paul. Therefore, considerations which might make an Hispanic individual more likely to vote Republican might also make him or her more likely to embrace libertarianism. According to Segura, Hispanics increasingly favor gay marriage. This is not a problem for libertarianism. Hispanics also favor progressive taxation. They typically consider it just for the rich to pay more than the poor. While libertarians oppose income tax in general, it is true that the wealthy and well connected often escape paying their fair share under the current corporatist system. Eliminating the IRS—as many libertarians suggest—and replacing the current inefficient and unjust system of federal income taxation with a different model could be attractive to these voters. In truth, there is nothing at all just about the current progressive model of taxation. When combined with the Federal Reserve’s “inflation tax,” the current system is nothing if not a reverse Robin Hood. Seguara also says that Hispanics are very entrepreneurial, so freeing small businesses from unfair regulations might appeal to them. Libertarianism is very concerned with the health of small business in the United States, so this could be where the movement could begin a fruitful dialogue with the Hispanic community.

While immigration may not be the most important issue to Hispanics, it is obvious that the demonization of Hispanics that is common among Republicans does not please Hispanic Americans. In reality, the illegal aliens are not the true problem. The welfare state is. If entitlements were not at a level where they will one day collapse the American economy, then immigration in general would not be a problem. In addition to the expensive and counterproductive welfare state, stifling taxes and regulations on business shrink the size of the American economic pie and shrink the number of available jobs. When such a job shortage is created, unemployment grows. When unemployment grows, immigrants are scapegoated. The kind of free economy endorsed by libertarians is the kind of economy that would produce ample jobs. In such a robust economic climate, immigrants do not become scapegoats. Therefore, a free libertarian economy is the kind which would most benefit Hispanics in general and Hispanic immigrants in particular.

If the GOP is going to continue to be a party of RINOs, then it will increasingly become a regional party. If it continues to follow the ideas of xenophobes such as Patrick Buchanan, then Hispanics will eventually vote for Democratic Party candidates at the same 90%+ levels that blacks already do. If the GOP wishes to attract more Hispanic voters, becoming more libertarian in its policies would not be a bad place to start.

Foreign Policy Double Standard

by Gerard Emershaw

When the United States invades a country which has not attacked it, this is considered justified, but when Russia does the same thing, it is viewed as grounds for sanctions. When the United States stations troops in over 140 countries, this is considered acceptable, but when Russia announces plans to build bases in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, it is considered an act of naked aggression and viewed as grounds to restart the Cold War. Why does such a hypocritical double standard exist? In what sense is “Do as I say, but not as I do, Vlad” a policy which gives the United States the moral high ground that it once held?

Since the Cold War ended, the United States has taken an aggressive stance against Russia for no apparent reason. Former members of the Warsaw Pact—Albania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and Slovakia were admitted to NATO. Georgia and the Ukraine have been under consideration for membership. Combined with American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and the Manas Transit Center in Kyrgyzstan, Russia can rightly feel as if the United States is attempting to surround it. Until it was cancelled in 2009, the United States had also been planning to install a dubious missile defense system in Poland. Yet neocons pretend as if the United States has been well behaved and that Putin is somehow out of control?

If Russia wants to overextend its empire again as it had done decades earlier as the Soviet Union, why should the United States seek to stop it? Despite its resources, with its centrally controlled economy with little economic freedom, Russia is bound to collapse again despite the natural resources that it controls. The United States virtually bankrupted itself during the Cold War when it was clear to anyone who understands economics that the Soviet Union was destined to collapse no matter what the United States did. Why in the world do neocons insist on having the United States again make a similar costly mistake? Do these former Trotskyites really still hold a grudge against Russia for what the Soviets did to their beloved idol? Or is the Military-Industrial Complex secretly funding the countless lame neocon think tanks where friends of Bill Kristol gather to play nerdy war games and have bull sessions about the third rate philosophical ideas of Strauss? Maybe these chickenhawks would not be so laughable when construed as Neo-Cold Warriors if any of them had spent any time in actual military service. Instead, they do a fine job of screaming about spending other people’s money to send other people’s children to die in pointless wars that do not make the United States any safer. Neocons need a new name that is not such a flagrant violation of truth in advertising. Neocons are about as conservative as fool’s gold is gold. Then again, pyrite can actually look like gold. Neocons never look like real conservatives.

Typhoid Mary, Tyranny, and Defense

by Gerard Emershaw

Canada recently had an Ebola scare. A man who had returned to the country from West Africa, which was experiencing a terrifying Ebola outbreak—fell ill in a Canadian hospital while exhibiting potential symptoms of Ebola. While it turned out to be a false alarm, this raises an interesting issue. With Ebola, 1,500 of the 2,200 recorded cases have been deadly. If individuals were thought to be infected with such a deadly and communicable disease, the CDC would no doubt act by quarantining those thought to be infected—taking away the liberty of these individuals despite the fact that no crime was committed.

Fear of such deadly outbreaks has long been a part of the American pop culture zeitgeist. Films such as Outbreak, Twelve Monkeys, and Contagion have tapped into this primal fear. The current “zombie apocalypse” craze represented by films such as 28 Days Later and World War Z as well as the popular AMC television series “The Walking Dead” often involves plots which are set in motion by contagious diseases.

The most famous case of an American being forcibly quarantined is that of Mary Mallon—a.k.a. “Typhoid Mary.” Mallon was an Irish immigrant who was born in Northern Ireland in 1869. She moved to the United States and eventually worked as a cook. Mallon was an asymptomatic carrier of typhoid. It is estimated that she infected as many as 49, three of whom died. In fairness, not only was Mallon not big on the hygiene, but she stubbornly refused to do even the most basic things that a cook ought to do—such as washing her hands. Mallon refused to give up her profession as cook or have her gall bladder—which was badly infected with typhoid salmonella—removed. As a result, in 1907, Mallon was arrested and detained against her will for three years in a clinic on North Brother Island on New York’s East River. Upon her release, she was given work as a laundress. However, under an assumed name, Mallon soon began working jobs as a cook, again infecting people. She was again arrested and detained on North Brother Island until she died in 1938,

Mallon was obviously a willful and spiteful woman with no regard for the safety of others. However, it is not difficult to imagine a case where a sympathetic person becomes the carrier of a contagious illness. Does the government have a right to take away such a disease carrier’s natural right to liberty? One could imagine a die hard libertarian like the fictional Ron Swanson of NBC’s “Parks and Recreation” saying: “A man is responsible for his own immune system. A lady is, too. We don’t need big government wiping our noses.”

The United States federal government claims the power to forcibly quarantine individuals with communicable diseases under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. The specific law granting the President the power to allow the Center for Disease Control (CDC) powers of quarantine is 42 U.S.C. § 264—Regulations to control communicable diseases. According to this law, the President may specify in an Executive Order a communicable disease for which the government may apprehend, examine, and detain an individual. An individual may be detained if he or she has a communicable disease specified by the President and is either moving from state to state or in the process of doing so or is a probable source of infection for other individuals who are likely to move from state to state. Given how mobile Americans are in the modern age and given the various forms of transit, this essentially gives the President the power to have any person with a communicable disease detained “for such time and in such manner as may be reasonably necessary.”

Using the Commerce Clause as justification for this executive federal quarantine power is dubious. Having typhoid, Ebola, influenza, the zombie plague, or the monkey pox has nothing to do with regulated commerce. However, the federal government may have such a power based merely on its national defense function. As commander-in-chief of the armed forces, the President has the duty to protect the nation and its citizens. While Congress has the power to declare war, the idea of declaring war against typhoid, Ebola, influenza, the zombie plague, or the monkey pox is absurd. In the Prize Cases during the Civil War grants the President the power to resist an attack by a foreign power without consulting with Congress. In the modern technological age where an attack can be launched in minutes rather than months, this is essential in defending the Republic. In many ways a serious communicable illness can be seen as a threat akin to a military attack.

Even if there is enough of a parallel between a military attack and a communicable disease, this still does not necessarily give the government the right to detain an individual who has committed no crime. It seems odd to claim that a person’s Fifth Amendment right to due process can be satisfied by a physical examination by a doctor instead of an impartial court hearing or the like.

Another issue is that this may be giving the President too much power. History has shown what Presidents are willing to do in the name of national security. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order to place Japanese Americans into internment camps without due process will forever be a scar on the nation and the office. There seems to be no mechanism that limits the President’s authority here. Where should the line be drawn? Ebola? A bad case of the flu? A mild cold? If an illness is in a “precommunicable stage,” then the President can only have an infected individual detained “if the disease would be likely to cause a public health emergency if transmitted to other individuals.” This is a bit vague, but it at least provides a coherent criterion. However, if the disease is at a “communicable stage,” then there is no limit. There is also no specific criterion for what “for such time and in such manner as may be reasonably necessary” precisely means. Determined to be “reasonably necessary” by whom? By the Surgeon General? By the physician involved with the individual’s case? By the President? By someone else? In principle it is possible that nearly any individual may have some virus or the like which is communicable at any given time. What would prevent a President from simply using this fact as an excuse to detain an individual for arbitrary and capricious reasons?

There does seem to be some justifiable point at which an infectious individual can be quarantined against his or her will when the infectious disease is serious enough. Even though the person is innocent, he or she can be detained in the way that a person who is acting violently and who has become a danger to others as a result of some force beyond his or her control—mental illness, brain tumor, brainwashing, hypnotism, etc.—can be detained. The last thing a nation with a $17 trillion debt needs is herds of zombies roaming the countryside in search of brains to eat. However, how can a line be drawn? There are some people with very compromised immune systems? Should the President base his or her decisions in this regard on the case of some “Bubble Boy” or on someone with an iron constitution and supercharged immune system? While perhaps this all seems like an absurd problem that is not genuine and that has no place outside some hypothetical discussion in a philosophy class or in a bong smoke filled room, given how recent Presidents have trampled on the Constitution, is there any reason to rule out abuse in this particular area?

Why Haven’t More College Liberals Become Libertarians?

by Gerard Emershaw

Libertarian Republican Senator and 2016 presidential contender Rand Paul of Kentucky recently gave a speech on civil liberties at California’s notoriously liberal Berkeley. This prompts the question of why college liberals have not become libertarians. The Obama neo-progressives in the Democratic Party are on the wrong side of most issues that traditionally liberal college students care about.

1. War

College students in the United States have traditionally been anti-war. It was, of course, the universities and colleges of this nation which spearheaded the anti-war movement during the Vietnam War. Despite having been strangely—and prematurely—awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, President Obama is not a man of peace. He has continued the War on Terror which he inherited from President George W. Bush. In fact, President Obama has escalated wars. He has continued the Afghanistan War. He sought unsuccessfully to continue the Iraq occupation, thwarting only by Iraq’s refusal to grant blanket immunity to American troops. President Obama has also waged war—er, “kinetic military action”—against Libya, conducted a bloody drone campaign in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen, and zealously attempted to gin up a war with Syria. If traditionally liberal college students are still anti-war, then libertarianism with its axiom of non-aggression and its non-interventionism is the true doctrine of peace.

Perhaps the fact that there is not an active military draft is the reason that college students have seemingly become apathetic about war. If they cannot be drafted and their friends and relatives cannot be drafted, then perhaps it does not matter to them anymore. If volunteers are instead risking their lives in these wars, then maybe most college students just do not care. Though one would hope that these students do care about the innocent people who are suffering due to President Obama’s warmongering zeal. With the exception of President Jimmy Carter and unsuccessful candidates such as Eugene McCarthy, the Democratic Party has been a bloodthirsty war party since President Woodrow Wilson. It is unclear why college peaceniks have supported the progressive cause for so long given this violent streak of the party.

2. Civil liberties

Libertarians are champions of the Bill of Rights. While college students mostly seem to be indifferent to the Second Amendment, they have traditionally cared a lot about the First and Fourth Amendments. Libertarians like Senator Rand Paul support Constitutional rights over the growing despotism of the state. In contrast, President Obama smiles like a villain as he allows the NSA and other American spy agencies to violate the privacy rights of Americans and treat them like they are all criminals. The Democratic Party has long since stopped being the champion of civil liberties. So why do college students continue to support the party? Is it because President Obama is allegedly cool? Was he cool when he wore his “dad jeans” when throwing out a first pitch at a baseball game? Is he cool when he is on the golf course like any typical square politician? Is he cool when he allows the NSA to spy on everyone’s communications?

3. Drugs

It is no secret that many college students like to smoke an occasional bowl—or bong— of Mary Jane. Even those liberal college students who do not use drugs tend to disagree with the War on Drugs. Libertarians favor ending drug prohibition. The Democrats have had ample opportunity to end the War on Drugs, but they never do. President Obama has the power to pardon every single nonviolent drug offender languishing in federal prison. He has not. How can college students support a party whose leadership is okay with throwing people in cages like animals simply for using or selling drugs? Do they believe that these individuals deserve to be put in cages with murderers simply because they choose to use or sell substances which are like prescription drugs, alcohol, or cigarettes in many ways yet are not approved of by the powers that be? Do these college students believe that drug offenders should suffer just because the alcohol, tobacco, and pharmaceutical industries do not want the added competition? Really?

4. Race

Liberal college students have long opposed racism. “Color blindness” when it comes to race relations has long been practiced by these students. Just because the leader of the Democratic Party is black, it does not mean that the party is not racist. Continuing to prosecute the War on Drugs—which disproportionately harms minorities—should be evidence enough that the Democratic Party is racist. If it is not enough evidence, then the welfare state should provide more than enough evidence. The idea of the welfare state—as well as related programs like affirmative action—is that blacks and other racial minorities are not equal to whites. They simply cannot compete. Welfare programs make racial minorities and everyone else enrolled in the programs into dependent wards of the state. If these programs worked, then one would not expect poverty rates to be so high among blacks, Hispanics, and American Indians. The truth is that these programs do not work. Most likely, they were never intended to work. They were intended to make obedient and dependent citizens who will not dare question authority. In that regard, these programs are a success.

Libertarians, in contrast, support free market and economic opportunity. They support the due process clause of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment. They defend the natural rights of human beings regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, gender, age, etc. The same is true regarding gay rights. Libertarians do not believe that it is the business of government to worry about, let alone discriminate against, people on the basis of their sexual orientation. The Democrats, in contrast, have only recently begrudgingly begun to support gay rights.

5. Economics

College students are inevitably anxious about their economic futures. They often carry a lot of debt for their educations. Student loans cannot be discharged in bankruptcy, so it is often imperative that college students be able to get well paying jobs to support themselves and pay for their loans. President Obama’s Neo-Progressive Democrats are crony capitalists who support the status quo. As long as their friends on Wall Street and in the “Green” sector do well, they care not about anyone else. In fact, the more people who fail economically, the more people who go onto welfare. The more people who are on welfare, the more people who are dependent on the government. Economic failure creates more potential voters who will support the Democratic Party.

Libertarians, on the other hand, favor ending the Federal Reserve, cutting government spending, cutting taxes, and cutting federal business regulations. These things will promote the growth of the economy. If college students want a bright economic future, then why are they not libertarians?