Registering Republican

Today I did something that I never suspected that I'd do: I sent in a voter registration form to the Putnam County Board of Elections to change my party affiliation from "Independent" to "Republican."  Still reading?  Good.  Clearly you have an open mind, and are not easily given to knee-jerk reactions.  Here comes the explanation.

Those of you with whom I have discussed politics may or may not know exactly where I stand on the political spectrum.  In any case, let me state my position clearly: I'm philosophically anarchist and politically libertarian.  I think the ideal that we should strive for is a sort of individualist anarchy in which all social institutions (including the functions of protection and arbitration that most now assume must be provided by government) are the product of voluntary contract.

Unfortunately, not too many other people agree with me.  Certainly not enough of them to protect us from the rest of you who seem to think it's ok to promote social ideals at gunpoint.  So we're a long way off from this ideal, although I do feel what I guess I can only describe as a sort of faith that it is something we are destined to achieve.

But more fundamentally, you can't vote anarchist.  There's no anarchist party.  By voting at all, you're pretty much buying into the whole government thing.  And I do feel that if we have to have a government, we're better off with a minimal one.  So I normally vote Libertarian.  In fact, I've been a member and suporter of the Libertarian party since the mid nineties.

However, the first time I voted Libertarian was long before that.  It was, in fact, the first presidential election that I ever voted in, in 1988. At the time, Ron Paul was running on the Libertarian ticket. He was the only candidate on the ballot who was advocating something very near and dear to my heart at that time: the legalization of marijuana. And so it came to pass that the first time I ever voted, I voted Libertarian. The first presidential candidate I ever voted for was Ron Paul.

Fast-forward to 2012.  On the slightly-left-of-center we have President Barack Obama.  A man who has been just as bad on civil liberties and foreign wars as his predecessor.  A man who architected a package of health-care legislation that imposes the costs and restrictions of socialized health care without even having the ease-of-use benefits.  A man who has presided over the raids of more medical marijuana distributors, even, than his predecessor.

On the slightly-right-of-center, we have a bunch of lackeys whose ideas on protecting our borders seem to disagree only on whether the fence should be made of chain-links or "boots on the ground."  The front runner of this pack is a guy who implemented his own bad socialized health-care in his own state.  And then there's Newt, who had his opposition by the short-hairs in the nineties (I didn't really notice a difference when they shut down the government) but then caved to popular pressure, presumably violating the terms of his "Contract with America".

And then there's Ron Paul.  A man with a long congressional record of voting on small-government principles.  A man with a lot of anti-establishment ideas that he's willing to defend with good arguments when confronted on.  The first man that I ever voted for.

Paul winning the primary would be a libertarian dream come true.  I'd love to see him in the presidential debates pitting his simple arguments against Obama's smug, statist rhetoric.  The other Republican candidates are all just more of the same.  From the perspective of civil rights and cutting government, a Gingrich, Romney or Perry presidency would be no different from the Obama presidency, which in turn was no different from the Bush presidency.  Paul would be different.

This is why I've changed my voter registration.  To vote for Ron Paul.  This is why you should do the same, even if you're a lifetime Democrat (unless, of course, there are other candidates you care about voting for in the primary).  You can't change the Democratic presidential candidate, but you could change the Republican candidate to a man who is unequivocally opposed to our continuing involvement in Afghanistan and the destruction of civil liberties in our country.  And if you believe that Paul is unelectable at the presidential level, what better way to insure a second Obama term than to pit him against an unelectable candidate?

And finally, if you'd like to see me register as a Democrat in 2016, all you have to do is put a candidate on the ballot who is as strong on civil liberties, ending war and government transparency (all positions traditionally given lip-service by Democrats) as Paul has been.  Dennis Kucinich would probably work.