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The one time Libertarian presidential candidate John Hospers has endorsed President Bush.

“I still believe in those principles as strongly as ever, but this year - more than any year since the establishment of the Libertarian Party - I have major concerns about the choices open to us as voting Americans,”

The entire letter.

Hospers goes on to recognize his criticisms of President Bush, then mostly pushes them all aside for the major, overriding issue of this election.

“His great virtue, however, is that he has stood up – knowingly at grave risk to his political viability – to terrorism when his predecessors, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and Clinton did not. On many occasions during their administrations terrorists attacked American lives and property. Clinton did nothing, or engaged in a feckless retaliation such as bombing an aspirin factory in the Sudan (based on faulty intelligence, to boot). Then shortly after Bush became president he was hit with ‘the big one’: 9-11. It was clear to him that terrorism was more than a series of criminal acts: it was a war declared upon the U.S. and indeed to the entire civilized world long before his administration. He decided that action had to be taken to protect us against future 9-11s involving weapons of mass destruction, including ’suitcase’ nuclear devices.”

But what of the Libertarian candidate? There are times that voting for your own candidate would be more harmful than voting against the worse candidate. Here in Indiana it’s not an issue as it will be a landslide for President Bush. In other states, especially swing states, the rather small Libertarian vote shifting for President Bush, even if it’s a “just hold your nose and do it” could very well be the deciding factor on who the next President of the United States is. Otherwise a vote for the Libertarian candidate for President is a vote for John Kerry in those states just as a vote for Ralph Nader is a vote for President Bush. At least I’d like to think the Republicans are closer to Libertarians than the Democrats… but the spectrum has shifted so far, so fast over the last 20 years it’s hard to tell.

“When the stakes are not high it is sometimes acceptable, even desirable, to vote for a ‘minor party’ candidate who cannot possibly win, just to ‘get the word out’ and to promote the ideals for which that candidate stands. But when the stakes are high, as they are in this election, it becomes imperative that one should choose, not the candidate one considers philosophically ideal, but the best one available who has the most favorable chance of winning.

“The forthcoming election will determine whether it is the Republicans or the Democrats that win the presidency. That is an undeniable reality. If the election is as close as it was in 2000, libertarian voters may make the difference as to who wins in various critical ‘battleground’ states and therefore the presidency itself. That is the situation in which we find ourselves in 2004. And that is why I believe voting for George W. Bush is the most libertarian thing we can do.

“We stand today at an important electoral crossroads for the future of liberty, and as libertarians our first priority is to promote liberty and free markets, which is not necessarily the same as to promote the Libertarian Party. This time, if we vote Libertarian, we may win a tiny rhetorical battle, but lose the larger war.”

I actually like a lot of what the Libertarian party stands for and even scored a 50 on the purity test. But the questions that I would have to change to make a perfect score strongly emphasis why I could never actually be a Libertarian in the sense of the Libertarian party.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 27th, 2004 at 12:44 pm and is filed under Politics, Current Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.