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Having attended three conferences this summer of a libertarian bent, the most pressing issue for lovers of liberty appears to be the perils posed by our inability to come together for the purpose of seeing our vision turned into public policy. More than anything we are opponents of big government and the socialism and collectivism it engenders. Yet, as we have seen over the course of the past couple of weeks, President Trump and the Congressional leadership of the Republican Party are certainly not winning the battles against big government on the public policy front, or in the public discourse.
The libertarian and conservative movements encompass a wide range of ideologies, political philosophies, and belief systems. They bring together opponents of Communism, socialism, and collectivism…lovers of free-markets and classical liberals…individualists and objectivists…paleoconservatives and the anti-war movement…neoconservatives and mainstream establishment Republicans. Sadly, the libertarian movement seems determined to degenerate into pointless infighting and battles over ideological purism…of course, it goes without saying that this drastically hampers our ability to claim legislative accomplishments.
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Sometimes, forming alliances is a necessary evil. As it stands now, despite controlling both houses of Congress, and the presidency, the Republicans have been unable to do anything to overturn Obama’s most despicable legislative accomplishment: ObamaCare, which has proved to be perhaps the greatest lie ever perpetrated on the American people.
It is time for libertarians and conservatives to unite under the banner of opposition to big government.
The global socialist movement seeks to establish a cradle-to-grave welfare state, paid for by high taxes on businesses and individuals. It seeks to drastically expand the role of the state in our lives, our homes, our businesses, our land, and our communities. It seeks to spend ever more money on an army of useless pencil-pushing apparatchiks worshiping at the altar of bloated bureaucracies. They live like kings and queens on the taxpayers’ dime, wasting our time and money with their bureaucratic red tape and regulations.
Then, they have the nerve to tell us that they are, in fact, hardworking public servants fighting for the common good. In every way shape and form, these federal government employees have it better than workers in the private sector: salaries, benefits, pensions, healthcare. In fact, the average federal employee earns a whopping $123,160 a year…that is 76% more than average private sector compensation at $69,901. Astounding, right?
During Barack Obama’s 8 year spending binge, he doubled our national debt from $9 trillion, to $19 trillion, going on a massive Washington DC spending spree. There is a reason that no metropolitan region has a faster growing real estate market than Washington DC: Obama, often with the consent of a wishy-washy Republican Congress, was keen on ramping up the number of federal government employees, while drastically increasing their salaries.
It is time to put an end to the madness. Donald Trump was elected on the promise of draining the swamp. To his credit, he did announce plans to drastically reduce spending at several government agencies. Sadly, the big government machine, and its powerful allies in academia, pop culture, and the mainstream media, were able to generate such a public outcry to Trump’s proposed budgetary priorities, that wishy-washy mainstream Republicans quickly and quietly shelved Trump’s proposals.
So let’s fight like hell to abolish the Department of Education, the Department of Commerce, the Small Business Administration, and the Drug Enforcement Agency…and this would be just a good start. Let’s make our case to the American people that we don’t need these un-elected bureaucrats in DC telling us what to do, while living like royalty on our dime, and driving up our national debt in the process.
Nothing is more important to the future of the libertarian movement, than our ability to set aside our differences and unite with respect to our common cause: halting the rampant growth of the administrative state.
The American public is misinformed when it comes to the economic realities of the Obama era, and the so-called “progressive” agenda. How many Americans even know about the outrageously generous salaries and benefits received by federal employees? How many know that federal employees make 76% more than the average worker in the private sector?
This is an issue that the libertarian movement should be using to turn the American taxpayers against the welfare-warfare state. It is high time for fiscal discipline and prudence, and bloated state sectors teeming with armies of new bureaucrats should be in the sights of Trump and Congressional Republicans when it comes to budgetary matters.
Fundamentally, the libertarian movement has done a terrible job, during Trump’s first six months in office, of controlling the narrative. We have allowed the progressive movement, aided and abetted by the media, to thwart every one of Trump’s policy priorities, despite the fact that the 2016 election cycle was a resounding rebuke of the progressive message!
Yes, nearly half of Democratic primary voters opted for the democratic socialism of Bernie Sanders.
But from the Trump Clinton race, down to House and Senate races, governorships, and state legislatures, the small government message won an impressive victory in all but the bluest of states. It is time to come together. It is time to remember that we won the election in 2016. And it is time to muster all of our political will to fire government bureaucrats.
And when that happens, the government busy-body apparatchiks may truly discover the difficulty of earning $123,160 a year based on their own merit…i.e. in the private sector. It’s time for a few hundred thousand government employees to start dusting off their resumes. The American people will not miss you.
