The Politically Incorrect Show - 05/10/2000

[Music - Die Fledermaus]

Good afternoon, Kaya Oraaa & welcome to the Politically Incorrect Show on the free speech network, Radio Pacific, for Thursday October 5, proudly sponsored by Neanderton Nicotine Ltd., the show that says bugger the politicians & bureaucrats & all the other bossyboot busybodies who try to run our lives with our money; that stands tall for free enterprise, achievement, profit, & excellence, against the state-worshippers in our midst; that stands above all for the most sacred thing in the universe, the liberty of the human individual.

[Music up, music down!]

Yesterday I left the studio to watch the presidential debate on CNN. It had already started by the time I got home, so I didn't get to see all of it, but I think I saw enough. Were I an American voter, & George W. Bush & Al Gore were the only options, & I absolutely HAD to vote, I would, with huge reservations, vote for Bush. He did not display the incoherence & long-windedness for which he has been infamous on the campaign trail, & he certainly spoke my language several times when he pointed to the increase in the role of the federal government that his opponent's programme would entail. Bush is proposing across-the-board tax cuts, a stronger military, & the allowing of oil exploration in wilderness areas where it is currently forbidden. He warned that Gore's programme would see the biggest increase in the size of the federal bureaucracy since the days of LBJ & his "Great Society" project, that the difference between him & Mr. Gore was that Mr. Gore wants to decide how Americans should spend their money while he, Mr. Bush would leave Americans alone to make that decision for themselves. He stated, quite correctly, that the surest way to damage the American economy would be to extend the government's role in it.

But I couldn't square this rhetoric with his proposals to increase federal expenditure on, & federal regulation of, health & education. To be consistent with his rhetoric, he should have been advocating progressive government disengagement from these areas. I couldn't square it with his plans for saving the ailing Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid programmes when, to be consistent, he should have been calling for their dismantling. I couldn't square it with his attempts to outdo Gore in subsidising prescription drugs for the elderly when he should have been arguing to end the mandatory prescription regime that has made drugs unaffordable in the first place. And speaking of drugs, he most certainly didn't call for - & never would call for - an end to the federal government's evil War on Drugs that has spawned literally millions of unconscionable violations of constitutional rights. In short, beneath the rhetoric, the candidates were not really arguing about WHETHER the size of the federal government should increase, but BY HOW MUCH. Certainly, Mr. Bush has not placed a dramatic REDUCTION in the size of federal government on the agenda. Neither did he once invoke in his arguments the inalienable individual rights proclaimed so proudly & poetically in the Declaration of Independence. So, though I would vote for him over Gore, it would be with a heavy heart. The lesser of two evils is still evil.

As it happens, were I an American voter, these two would not be my only options. There are several third party candidates, all of whom were excluded from this & all future presidential debates - "the system" looks after its own. One of these candidates is Harry Browne, carrying the torch for the Libertarian Party, whose rhetoric & policies ARE consistent. Doesn't stand a chance, you say? Well, of course not, when the Republicrat monopoly is so entrenched. But the impossibility of his winning doesn't alter the fact that he's right.

It's worth bearing in mind that fewer than half of voting-age Americans actually do vote in presidential elections. Disillusionment with the Big Two must have a lot to do with this. If that disillusionment could be galvanised & transformed into support for a genuinely different candidate, one who would take America back to its founding principles, then such a candidate MIGHT stand a chance. Not while the Big Two lock up the debates, though - which is, of course, why they do.

At the moment it appears that Al Gore has the edge over his establishment rival, but whoever wins, it's four more years of Demopublicanism regardless. Whatever happened to "life, liberty & the pursuit of happiness"?

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