Wanted: Jeffersonian Republicans, Part II

By Robert Ringer

A little more than a hundred years after the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, Congress acted again and passed the U.S. Sedition Act of 1918. Among other things, the act made it a crime to "willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States."

And so it has gone. Power is a corrupting influence on those who achieve it. The very nature of a democratic republic makes it virtually impossible for a politician to adhere to libertarian freedom principles and manage to stay in office.

I believe that some people come to Washington with sincere intentions to roll back big government, eliminate federal handout programs, and abolish anti-freedom laws and regulations. But once in power, they become convinced of the need to buy votes, lest they find themselves out of the club and having to look for a real job.

As I have stated before, without several hundred million dollars at its disposal, a third party has virtually no chance of winning the White House. The Libertarian Party has been trying to gain national attention for thirty-seven years. I admire what its leaders have done, but it continues to be a tough sell without that several-hundred-million-dollar grubstake.

Ron Paul tried running for president on the Libertarian ticket, and ultimately concluded that running as a Republican was his best hope. But the press — and his own party! — simply ignored him (to put it mildly). When his fundraising became too successful and the cheering got too loud, the media simply pretended he didn't exist and stopped listing him as a candidate. It gave new meaning to the word outrageous.

I believe that the best chance for liberty to make a comeback in the U.S. is for the Liberty-Education Revolution to become so widespread that some well-positioned, well-meaning politicians in the Republican wing of the Demopublican Party would be willing to embrace a Jeffersonian platform. They would have to be convinced that the public is ready to hear an unvarnished message about the efficacy of liberty.

Right now, the politicians who I believe are most likely to hold the seeds of Jeffersonian beliefs are Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal, and Sarah Palin. In Huckabee, we're talking about a white country boy, a minister, a former governor, a guitar player, and now a TV star. It doesn't get much better than that.

In Jindal, we're talking about a good-looking, vibrant young man of Indian descent (meaning the country of India), a governor, and a do-it-now type of persona. In Palin, we're talking about beauty, down-home charisma and charm, tenacity, and, like Jindal, a governor.

Huckabee and Jindal are easygoing and likeable. Palin is a mixture of easygoing and tough. She is beloved by her advocates and hated by her antagonists. But all three are hard-core free-market proponents.

If any two of these three would become convinced that people are ready to hear a platform based on individual freedom (as opposed to the phony, abstract "public good"), they could be an unbeatable team in 2012 — especially considering that the country will by then have experienced the pain resulting from a Marxist-oriented government.

In the meantime, let's hope a Hussein Sedition Act isn't enacted between now and 2012 — which could result in a "postponement" of the next presidential election for "security reasons." It is this possibility that could present the biggest obstacle to a free-market ticket getting electing the next time around.

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