Paul Gottfried

October 29, 2008

Despite my desire to see John McCain and his brand of neocon-Republicanism soundly defeated, I can’t stand the idea of awarding my vote to his leftist, black-nationalist adversary Barack Obama. I’ll therefore do in this presidential race what I’ve done in every other presidential contest since 1988 (when I allowed myself to be talked into voting for George I), that is, cast my ballot for neither national party. In all likelihood I?ll vote for Chuck Baldwin and not Bob Barr, since Barr is already saddled with the Albatross program of the Libertarian Party, including its immigration expansionism and openness to gay marriage. Baldwin, by contrast is running on a traditional American rightwing platform (yes I am on the right), taking a position against ?abortion rights? and the invasion from across our Southern border. I am also in agreement with the Baldwin-Ron Paul approach to terrorism. Instead of invading entire countries and then trying to bring their bombed-out territories and populations into some hallucinatory League of Democracies, Baldwin and Paul have called for having Congress pass, in the manner of Thomas Jefferson dealing with the Barbary Pirates, letters of marque and reprisal. These would be aimed at allowing the president to take punitive action against individual terrorists who threaten us with harm or else have committed violent acts against us, without requiring wholesale invasion of one country by another.

I am fully aware that Baldwin, who is a dignified, grammatical speaker as well as a pious Evangelical Christian, cannot possibly win the presidential race. But I am not voting for him because I think he could ever win this squalid, media-rigged contest. I am supporting Baldwin because he is someone whose views I agree with and whose person and demeanor I respect. And I see in Baldwin a presidential candidate who would be suited for a less degenerate society than our own. He is the closest approximation to the kind of American leaders of an earlier generation whom I could admire, and since neither presidential frontrunner is a figure I would ever want to see in the presidency, I shall endorse my ideal instead of an odious caricature.

Allow me to express my difference in this matter with my good friend of many years John Zmirak. While John may be correct that Obama would unleash a persecution of serious Christians the likes of which has not seen since the days of Communist tyranny, I?m not sure why he believes that McCain, who has been the darling of the liberal media until very recently, would stand his ground on the right to life. Perhaps he has more faith in this RINO than I do. McCain brings the additional baggage of being an aggressive global democratic ideologue, who might take military action on several continents, perhaps at the same time. He and the GOP have tried to sell his belligerence as a ?conservative? trait, which only adds insult to injury.

Even assuming that Obama deals as ruthlessly with moral and social traditionalists as John suggests (and I have no doubt that he and his congressional allies would), it is quite possible that some good may come out of this. (I say this at the risk of being mistaken for Dr. Pangloss instead of Comrade Lenin, whose strategy I am here recommending.) Obama may land up creating what Sam Francis called ?anarcho-tyranny,? a regime that recklessly meddles into all traditional social relations while allowing underclass thugs and undocumented vagrants to take over our streets, and this would fuel a nasty backlash in due course. Under McCain we may move in the same direction more slowly, while getting entangled in imbroglios with Iran, Russia and other countries along the way. I strongly suspect that McCain would push us toward the kind of screwed-up society that Obama and the multicultural Left are trying to build, but he would do so by stages, while David Brooks and David Frum would describe his policies as ?moderate conservatism? in the New York Times and The Weekly Standard. If a crisis of the regime must or should come, let?s get it to it now! But given my utter repugnance for the new Holy Family and their sicko adorers in the universities and media, I wish no part in electing the all but inevitable next president.