June 8, 2012
(Link to article at Strike the Root)
Economist Robert Wenzel recently gave Libertarian Party presidential nominee Gary Johnson a tough interview. Wenzel pushed hard for honest answers on behalf of mainly his “hardcore libertarian” readers and listeners. By “hardcore,” he refers to those with a bias toward Austrian School economic thought, Rothbardian ethics and an emphasis on civil liberties.
But trying to get answers from Johnson to basic questions, such as what books on Austrian economics he’s read and who his top libertarian authors are, seemed like a dentist trying to extract a tooth. At times, it was very painful to hear.
In the end, we can conclude that Johnson is not really libertarian, and not really liberal or conservative. No, Gary Johnson is a politician. And a statist politician at that.
In that very revealing interview, we learned that Gary Johnson doesn’t really know or understand the basic moral, philosophical and economic underpinnings of libertarianism, of liberty: the recognition of the rights of the individual to self-ownership, the importance of non-aggression, the sanctity of private property, voluntary contracts and voluntary exchange.
If Johnson is a libertarian, then he is more of a “lifestyle libertarian,” without any particular regard to the aforementioned principles of liberty. But Johnson is much more of a statist than a libertarian, and not just a minimal statist or minarchist, such as Jacob Hornberger of the Future of Freedom Foundation or Congressman Ron Paul, but a statist in general. To Johnson, it seems, the State comes first, followed by the people and whatever liberty or property the State lets them have.
For example, Johnson supports the legalization of marijuana, but not other drugs. This shows that Johnson doesn’t understand the basic moral principle of self-ownership, that the individual owns one’s own body and has a right to put into it whatever one wants, as long as one takes responsibility for the consequences of one’s decisions.
Worse than that statist position on drugs, Johnson has stated that he would tax marijuana. He also supports the “Fair Tax,” a national consumption tax. Johnson here doesn’t understand the moral sanctity of private contracts. In this instance, forcing an individual to pay government bureaucrats some extra fee just because of purchasing and consuming some product is as much theft as forcing an individual to report one’s earnings to the government and forfeit a portion of the fruits of one’s labor to a non-productive bureaucrat. Such a consumer tax-theft is also regressive in that taxing consumers of any economic background generally negatively affects the lower and middle classes but not particularly the upper classes.
Additionally, in principle, any third-party intruding itself into the private contract between traders, between buyers and sellers, is engaging in acts of intrusion. To me that is the same as trespassing and ought to be considered as such.
Another example of Gary Johnson’s apparent view of the State as above principles are his foreign interventionist views, and his proposal to cut “43%” from the military budget, and close only some of the U.S. foreign military bases. This shows a lack of understanding of the moral principles of No Trespassing and the Golden Rule. Obviously, most of us in the U.S. would not want foreign governments to place their governmental apparatus and military bases here in Massachusetts, Idaho or Georgia, so we really should not have our governmental apparatus and military bases occupying and trespassing on other countries. We would not want foreign governments starting wars against us here, so morally, our government should not be starting wars against foreign peoples who are of no threat to us, such as Afghanistan and Iraq (or Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Libya, etc.).
Another libertarian candidate for President who is not an anarchist but a minimal statist like Jacob Hornberger is Ron Paul. If elected to the presidency, Dr. Paul would close all U.S. foreign military bases and bring all the U.S. troops home, as he recognizes that we wouldn’t want Russian troops or Saudi troops stationed in Texas or California, so therefore U.S. troops should not be occupying those foreign lands that are not U.S. territories.
When asked by Robert Wenzel to cite some of his favorite libertarians or libertarian authors, Gary Johnson named the Reason Foundation, the Cato Institute and the late economist Milton Friedman. Johnson was asked specifically about Murray Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises and Henry Hazlitt, but seemed to show total ignorance of who those great masters of libertarianism were.
Milton Friedman was supposedly a self-proclaimed libertarian, but he really was a true statist who supported central banking and government control over the people’s money. Friedman only suggested that those institutions and policies could be reformed or replaced with other government institutions and made to work better.
Sorry, not really. When the state seizes control over the people’s money and banking, and over the people’s wealth, those agents of the State will use such monopolies and restrictive monetary laws for their own enrichment, and that is what we have today. It is a corruptive system that is inherently doomed to fail, a system that inherently violates the people’s right to their own choice of media of exchange and trade, their right to the fruits of their labor and their right to establish voluntary contracts in the fields of banking and investments.
The party that nominated Gary Johnson for President, the Libertarian Party, has been around for 40 years, and has not made any progress in making itself known to the general population, and it’s not solely the fault of the exclusive statist media. One true principled libertarian the LP nominated was Ron Paul in 1988, endorsed by Murray Rothbard, of course. Harry Browne was another one.
But the LP has more recently shown cluelessness in not really knowing who their nominees really are, particularly with Johnson now and their 2008 nominee Bob Barr. Barr was an inconsistent libertarian at best. But really, like Johnson, Barr is just another politician. How could a “libertarian” endorse the socialist warmonger Newt Gingrich as Barr had done this election cycle, and not Ron Paul?
And also, the statist or minarchist Libertarian Party is not really the “party of principle” when its platform shows one compromise of principle after another, and getting worse each election. As a group, they have not really taken seriously the ideas of the market-anarchists, anarcho-capitalists, voluntaryists, anti-statists, i.e. the people most of whom actually believe in the absolute rights of the individual, the sanctity of property, contracts and non-aggression.
While Ron Paul is a minimal statist and a “constitutionalist” (Doh!), at least Dr. Paul would close down those trespassing U.S. foreign military bases and end the U.S. drone strikes that do nothing but murder innocent civilians abroad and provoke foreigners and create new “militants” (i.e. people who don’t like their innocent family members being blown up and murdered and don’t like their homes and schools bombed to smithereens, etc.). And Paul would end the Federal Reserve System and repeal legal tender laws, he would repeal all drug laws and let non-violent State-hostages out of the cages to resume their lives. It seems that Johnson would never consider doing any of those things.
I am glad that Robert Wenzel was able to out the statist in Gary Johnson, able to extract from Johnson the extreme ignorance of the principles of economic freedom and civil liberties that I’m sure many STR readers already understand.
The Libertarian Party sure needs to get its act together and start considering the real principles of freedom, and include people who oppose central banking and instead favor monetary and banking freedom, and they need to get rid of the warmongers.
But, in the end, the LP and everyone else need to realize that central planning doesn’t work, and DC can never be “reformed,” as Ron Paul seems to want to do.
Perhaps voting for no one might be the best alternative going forward to a better future.
But the reality is, the federal government needs to be totally dismantled. Here is Lew Rockwell’s 30-day plan to accomplish just that. And then, after we get rid of the federal government, we can concentrate on each and every one of America’s 50 state governments. And then, we can remove each and every county and city and town government and all the non-productive bureaucrats and monopolists whose daily trespasses and thefts are the true crimes of our society.
Perhaps some day Gary Johnson will read Rothbard, Mises, Paul, Rockwell, Hornberger, and Hans Hoppe (among many other real libertarians), to give him a better understanding of what “libertarianism” really is all about.
23 Responses to “Gary Johnson: Statist”
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Statist or not, I WILL vote for him to repudiate the Mitt endorsement by Rand the Traitor.
Hear, hear!… Dead right. I’ve been constantly scratching my head lately over all the calls for supporting Johnson and I can’t for the life of me understand it. If he’s “libertarian” then Obama’s a minarchist.
Tell this to the 7% who say they will be voting for Johnson in the general in NH. I say they are nuts.
The word Libertarian is as broad as Christian ie. Catholic, Protestant, Mormon, Lutheran etc. After reading this I’m categorizing Libertarian as Reason/Cato/Friedman school, Mises/Rothbard/Ron Paul school, and the flip-flop Libertarian party.
Scott, when will you be running for office? I would like to support you. However, I am supporting Gary Johnson for President because he is far better than Romney or Obama. He has a track record as Governor of New Mexico that gives me confidence in that. I know he is not ideal. I supported Ron Paul to the max. But now Ron has conceded and Rand Paul has endorsed Romney. I hope you do an analysis of Rand’s libertarianism soon. Gary Johnson needs our support now. Thanks.
Just as with many things people come to there conclusions from different sources. I’ve never read Mises, Rothbard, Ayn Rand, or Friedman or likely much of any other economist except a few excerpts in my economics books in high school. Yet, I understand the basics of economics and the “Austrian” school of thought without having read them. My experience much like Gov. Johnson in this matter comes from a very rare source known simply as common sense. The source of your information does not preclude you understanding of a school of thought.
That is like saying if you never read the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence you can’t understand the concepts of liberty and inalienable rights.
Personally, I consider myself a consequentialist libertarian and a minarchist based on that in that I believe government has a role, but also that is stepped way beyond that basic role of security.
Gov. Johnson does understands the principle of self-ownership, but 90%+ of the people don’t. Cannabis is step one on a path to learning that by legalizing a substance the sky won’t fall. It’s not a matter of personal knowledge or beliefs but a matter of being practical.
This is why libertarians have never been successful and are viewed as extreme and a “hardcore” libertarian won’t get elected. Just because something is popular doesn’t make it right and just because something is right doesn’t make it popular, but in representative form of government you have to have popularity to be elected. For this, small steps must be taken. Consider it, “Intro to Libertarianism for the Masses 101″.
There is nothing wrong with proposing that the military budget be cut by 43% (or any other number) or that some (not all) military bases be closed. The position that a libertarian must always advocate the pure libertarian position is a “left sectarian” error (see Rothbard on strategic errors at http://lprc.org/strategies.html). Likewise with not advocating legalization of all drugs, though advocating legalizing only marijuana is certainly tepid given the public’s willingness to there already (about half are already for that). That’s just a tactical error, assuming he does favor legalizing other drugs (maybe he doesn’t, I don’t know).
On the other hand, Johnson’s positions that favor government action, such as taxing legalized marijuana, are clearly non-libertarian and it’s a puzzlement as to why he’s the LP candidate. Someone should ask him to take the Rothbard Pledge (http://lprc.org/pledge.html).
We all knew Gary Johnson is a fake. Why would he run against Ron Paul then? If one recognized a candidate with the stature of Ron Paul one would never run and endorse him instead.
For a major social change to happen two things are needed: the right time and enough people that are fed up with the current one. The leader will appear then. As they say, when the students are ready the teacher will appear. That teacher is Ron Paul, unfortunately the students are not ready. Not yet!
One of the rules of society is that tyrrany is progressive and self-destructive and freedom is all-empowering. We live under tyranny that is getting worse every passing year. We have passed a crucial point where tyrrany accelerates and we are approaching the breakdown point. There is no chance of reforming the current system like we did in the 50′s and 60′s. The system is beyond repair.
We need new blood, new people, new ideas, new system. The liberty movement presents them clearly.
Rothbard wrote in one of his essays that new movements with the potential to change society radically come very, very pure. They have no such thing as “compromise” in them. Once you’ve gone in “compromise land” the “new” turns into “the same old” very quickly. So anyone telling you they’ll compromise just a little bit (like Rand Paul just did) has already lost the game.
In the long run, I’m not worried about the triumph of human liberty. It will come as surely as the sunrise after a dark, cloudy night. It is the natural direction of human thought and logic. Our job as libertarians is to spread the ideas of Mises and Rothbard, speak the Truth, and expose the liars every day. Victory will come one day!
P.S. Not many people talk about it but the prohibition of fractional reserve banking as a fraud must be prominently present in the platform of any liberty-loving political organization.
For crying out loud, we’re talking about the party that nominated Bob F***ing Barr as its 2008 presidential candidate. ‘Nuff said.
Being libertarian has nothing to do with reading books on Austrian Economics or even the works of one well known libertarian – and everything to do with agreeing and actually acting on a few easy to understand principles that you do not need a book to explain to you (i.e. the non-initiation of force, self ownership, the supremacy of individual rights, personal responsibility – in both accepting the risks you take and to not violate the equal rights held by others, etc.). While Robert Wenzel was reading books and running “purity tests” that only allow the establishment to divide us – GJ was instead building a million dollar business with 1000 employees from scratch, balancing the budget of his State for 8 years, climbing mountains and running marathons, and spreading a message for ending the unneeded wars (including the wars on drugs) making government smaller and protecting civil liberties. THAT’s what being a real libertarian is about – NOT reverse-macho steak swinging trying to prove you are the biggest geek in the room because you’ve read the right books and the other guy hasn’t.
Gary Johnson is a statist libertarian. He’s as libertarian as the state can ever get…it’s kind of funny in its own way…y’all should take elections way less seriously…by the way I love how all these libertarian websites demand I give out my personal information.
Thank you for saying what needed to be said Scott. Ron Paul to me was the closest thing a libertarian could expect out of political candidate. He understood the basic moral and philosophical foundations of libertarianism and it showed. Asked by a voluntaryist recently about full blown anarchy, Paul said (paraphrasing) “I think that’s real goal.” Paul never went along to get along in congress, as his frequent sole ‘no’ vote in many issues shows. After Ron, people like Gary Johnson and Rand just look ridiculous. I will not be voting for him or anyone else, perhaps ever again. Ron was my last hope in this regard.
They say that “if you don’t vote, you can’t complain”. I vote in order to buy myself 4 years of complaining!
Gary Johnson’s libertarian sensibilities are good. I’m voting for him.
I’ve listened to Gary Johnson and think he has a common sense, down to earth approach that a large number of people can get on board with now!! Instead of finding reasons to divide this movement, let’s focus on what we have in common.
With Ron Paul pretty much out, let us all try and get behind this man. He may not be perfect, but has the best chance to get us to a higher level. Once that happens, all these ideas could have even a better chance to grow.
Libertarian purity rears it’s ugly head again. I could understand the outcry over Bob Barr in 2008, he never tried to do one Libertarian thing his entire congressional career. Gary Johnson is another story, he tried to pass Libertarian laws as Governor of New Mexico. Like most of the others here, I’ll be supporting him in 2012. I may not be supporting Rand Paul in 2016 but if he acts like a Libertarian between now and 2016, I will still support him. I would have preferred that Rand endorse Gary Johnson but like his dad, he’s got his eggs in the GOP basket and has to do what is best for his career in the GOP. If we plan to change the GOP then at some point we may even be happy that Rand endorsed Mitt.
So because Johnson isn’t a book nerd libertarian he’s not a real libertarian?
He wants to cut spending 43% his first year in office by promising to submit a balanced budget to congress and veto any expenditures in excess of of revenues.
Supports marriage equality.
Supports legalizing marijuana.
Wants to end all the wars now and bring all the troops home from the wars now.
Supports immediate trials for prisoners in GitMo
Supports freedom across the board for all of US.
Supports ending the Fed. Supports competing currencies.
He’s a libertarian. He might not be your tiny faction of what you think a pure libertarian is, but other than a handful of people in your living room you won’t find many that agree with you.
Its not about reading the right book. You guys seem to be missing the point. Gary Johnson has shown such ignorance about libertarianism that he would get smashed in a debate and undo all the work that ron paul has done in educating the public.
Hardy,
What does “marriage equality” mean? If I own an insurance company and as a christian I don’t wan’t to insure a gay couple at the same rate as a hetro couple does Gary Johnson adminstration send men with guns? The freedom to make contract is a right. The freedom to associate is a right. But no one has the right to force me to call this “marriage” which is a religious cermony. Because Gary uses a cost/benefit model instead of a non-aggression model he is a ultarian and not a libertarian. When Gary was a libertarian leaning republican I could support him but now he is being asked to defend libertarianism which he doesn’t understand.
Gary Johnson is no Ron Paul ( who is?) but–like Bob Barr or Ed Clark–he is somewhat less statist and collectivist than O’bomber or Willard the Rat!
It is the classic lesser of two evils problem, but it just shows how much work all of us have outside of establishment politics to advance our ideas, and replace the utterly flawed and defective status quo with something better–like private property, self-responsibility, peace, and respect for individual rights and human dignity!
Let’s get started…
PEACE AND FREEDOM!!
Thanks for the article. For info on people using voluntary Libertarian tools on similar and other issues, please see the non-partisan Libertarian International Organization @ http://?www.Libertarian-Internation?al.org , …
Libertarians that mandate that you must believe in Austian School economics are not libertarians at all.
Gary Johnson is easily more of a libertarian than the Pauls. They are social conservatives who want to be in your bedroom.
Libertarianism isn’t anarchy. If you want to be anarchists, form the Anarchy Party. If you want to be purist Austrians, form the Austrian Party.
This whole “liberty revolves around economic policy” thing is false Libertarianism because libertarianism has always believed that the state is there to protect lives, rights and property. That requires a little bit of what you call “statism”.
If someone gets your child hooked on heroin, you can be darn sure you’re going to be seeking a statist to protect them from their drug dealer. Unless you’re going to be honest and say you don’t believe in government and get to go shoot that person. Then you’re an anarchist, not a libertarian.
Forunately, no one listens to you people or take you seriously, which is why the Libertarian Party has never gotten as much as 1% of the vote in a Presidential election. So get ready for pragmatic libertarianism. It’s coming your way whether you like it or not.
The irony of an anarchist being the best person to run for public office is pretty funny, if it weren’t so sad. Ron Paul was one of the most ineffective Representatives ever. Gary Johnson was one of the most effective governors ever.
You guys can throw your little hissy fits, but you’re not going to change anything.
A libertarian by definition is a “mini-archist” as you apparently call it. You guys are as bad as totalitarian socialists calling themselves “liberals”. You think you can own the party, after driving out anyone that is sane or sensible, but things go in cycles and after driving a whole lot of us away, we’re coming back and we brought our furniture.
“Perhaps some day Gary Johnson will read Rothbard, Mises, Paul, Rockwell, Hornberger, and Hans Hoppe (among many other real libertarians), to give him a better understanding of what ‘libertarianism’ really is all about.”
Don’t think so. Johnson is a dyed-in-the-wool statist, a characteristic of nearly all politicians. They seek power over others, and what better way to achieve that by expanding the authority of government to control the lives of the people?
Ron Paul was an exception, as was Howard Buffett before him. But Gary Johnson, like Rand Paul, is just another power-grabbing opportunist.