I recently wrote on my blog that Libertarians should not support Democrats. Ever.

The post generated a tremendous response and produced an invitation from BIG Government Editor Michael Flynn to expand on my thoughts here. I’m honored to do so.

In an election for city council, congress, president or local dog catcher, I believe a Libertarian’s realistic choices are to vote Republican, Libertarian, Independent, or write-in.

There is nothing Libertarian about the Democratic Party and Obama is a perfect example of my point.

Barack Obama ran against the wars – then expanded them.
Barack Obama ran against federal wiretapping programs – then expanded them.
Barack Obama ran against Bush’s faith based initiatives – then expanded them.
Barack Obama ran against Bush’s debts – then expanded them.

In the Democratic Party of yesteryear, there was a school of political philosophy called Classical Liberalism which offered Libertarians an option to vote for Democrats.

Those days are over.

The Democratic Party is now the party of ACORN, corrupt unions, communists, socialists, anarchists and complicit media allies who have conveniently ignored every violation of American liberty committed by the Obama Administration since the day he was sworn in as president.

Libertarians believe in the maximum amount of freedom for individuals. Libertarians believe in limited government. Libertarians reject ineffective big government policies. Libertarians are fiscal conservatives.

How have Libertarians benefited under Obama?

ObamaCare? Stimulus spending? Massive deficits? An ever expanding scope of government control?

None of these things are Libertarian.

The Democratic Party believes in big government and big spending, a philosophy which is completely antithetical to the core beliefs of any true Libertarian. The liberal policies enacted by the Obama Administration over the last few years have done nothing but insult the concepts of individual liberty and freedom.

Libertarians have one choice in 2012 – Fire Obama by voting Republican. We can deal with the other stuff later, one thing at a time. We may not agree with Republicans on every single issue, but they are far closer cousins to our ideology of freedom than the Obama/Democrat alternative.

In the winter of 2009 I participated in a conference call sponsored by National Review, during which I was allowed to ask a question of the featured guest, Ramesh Ponnuru. I asked him what he thought about the similarities between libertarians and conservatives. He said George W. Bush did some damage to our relationship but that Barack Obama was doing everything he could to bring us back together.

ObamaCare is anathema to Libertarianism and we have only one chance to repeal it.

Vote Republican in 2012.

The roots of the Republican Party are in line with the Libertarian, small government, freedom loving values of the Tea Party which now controls a major portion of congress.

I think that’s a good thing but don’t take my word for it…

“I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism.” – Ronald Reagan

What’s the real definition of socialism? How is it distinct from regulation and a social welfare state? Why are intellectuals still enamored of a system that brought us Stalin, Hitler, and more recently Hugo Chavez and Kim Jong-Il? And what can the United States learn from Sweden about free enterprise and capitalism?

Reason.tv’s Nick Gillespie sat down with Kevin Williamson, who is deputy managing editor of National Review and author of a new book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism, to discuss the meaning of socialism in history and the current moment.

About 5.30 minutes.

Camera by Jim Epstein and Anthony Fisher; edited by Epstein.

Go to Reason.tv for downloadable versions, and subscribe to Reason.tv’s YouTube Channel to receive automatic notifications when new material goes live.

No one knows the Sammies better than Andrew Breitbart, who rallied the crowd with his keynote address last year, and returns next Friday, April 8th as a judge and presenter.

Andrew Breitbart with Sammie winner John Papola and John’s wife Lisa at the 2010 Sammies reception.

But while those other awards shows are by the industry and for the industry, the Sammies are a breath of fresh air compared to those musty rooms of punch-drunk self-congratulators. The Sammies recognizes citizens who effectively stand up in defense of freedom—the very idea that makes Hollywood cringe and the rest of those awards shows even possible.

This year the Sammies is “redrawing the lines”—better yet, the Sammies is honoring those who redrew the lines on the American political landscape in 2010. These great Americans erased the “Rs” and the “Ds,” challenged the traditional left-right trap, and took on the political establishment who has been running the show for too long.

In the mold of other awards shows, the Sammies offers prizes in several categories, including the “Watchdog,” the “Reformer,” and the “Modern Day Sam Adams.” Among the finalists this year is Tim Eyman who successfully used initiatives in Washington to challenge tax increases and Toby Marie Walker whose Tea Party propelled her from local grassroots activist to national pundit.

The Sammies gives stage to ordinary people who take extraordinary steps to protect and promote freedom.  We have our fair share of celebrities on hand, too.  This year’s roster includes National Review’s Jack Fowler, bestselling novelist Brad Thor, and of course BigGovernment’s very own Andrew Breitbart.

The festivities kick off at 6pm on April 8, 2011, in the Great Hall at Union Station in Chicago. To join this fourth annual celebration of freedom lovers and freedom fighters, all you have to do is click here.

That being said, Kevin Williamson makes a good point when he says that some supply-siders have neglected the spending side of the fiscal ledger. And it certainly is true that Republicans don’t seem very interested in curtailing the growth of government. But does this mean, as Williamson argues, but that our choices are limited to 1) a 36 percent spending cut, 2) catastrophic deficits and debt, or 3) a European-style value-added tax.

I actually think it would be a great idea to reduce the budget by 36 percent. That would bring the burden of federal spending back down to where it was in 2003. Notwithstanding the screams from various interest groups that this would generate, nobody was starving in the streets when the budget was $2.3 trillion rather than today’s $3.5 trillion. But Kevin is unfortunately correct in noting that this type of fiscal reform won’t happen.

Kevin is wrong, however, in saying that we therefore have to choose between either Greek-style deficits or a VAT.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, tax revenues over the next 10 years will increase by an average of about 7.3 percent each year – and that’s assuming the tax cuts are made permanent and the AMT is adjusted for inflation. Reducing red ink simply requires that politicians exercise a tiny bit of restraint so that spending grows by a lesser amount. This video walks through the numbers and shows how quickly the budget could be balanced with varying levels of spending discipline.

By the way, it’s worth pointing out that the VAT has not prevented gigantic deficits in nations such as Greece, Japan, Ireland, Spain, England, etc, etc. Politicians in those nations implemented VATs, usually with promises that the money would be used to reduce other taxes and/or lower red ink, but all that happened was more spending and bigger government (this cartoon makes the point in a rather amusing fashion). In other words, Milton Friedman was right when he wrote that, ”In the long run government will spend whatever the tax system will raise, plus as much more as it can get away with.”

Click to Play

Big brains on the big show this week as Rob Long and Peter Robinson are joined by New York Times columnist David Brooks and National Review Editor-In-Chief Rich Lowry. They think big thoughts about entitlements, the Bush tax cuts, Chris Christie, Mitch Daniels, Bob Gates for president, potential democratic challengers, and whether infidelity is the root of all social evil.

For links or to comment on this podcast, please visit us at Ricochet.com

Or at least, that’s what the Mainstream Media force-fed to people after the 2008 election cycle. Naturally, like most Mainstream Media memes, it was an abject lie, but still, somehow the fear worked its way around establishment GOP circles to the point that a veritable avalanche of hysteria crashed down on party activists. “Why, if the internet swings to the Left,” many supposedly “concerned conservative” commentators opined, “then surely our restrictive, overly ideological makeup will make it impossible for us to attract anyone!”

One can’t blame them for buying an argument which was made with such nauseating frequency. Yet, as recent events since the Obama election have shown, the idea that conservatism cannot capture the internet is not at all accurate. What few people may realize, however, is why this argument was so inaccurate, and more importantly, why it took a Messianic bumbler like Obama to expose its falsehood. With respect, therefore, I must disagree with my fellow contributor’s rejection of youth culture as something irrevocably tainted by liberalism, though I understand his frustration entirely.

However, as I mean to prove, the current youth ethos embodied by internet subculture is fundamentally conservative in character, even if its denizens have not yet caught on to that fact. In order to prove this, I will draw on knowledge that I have gained both as an avid internet user and as a member of a generation for whom digital communication is a second language – knowledge which would require investigating not only the harmless environs of Youtube, Facebook and Twitter, but also the darkest, least talked about nether-regions of the internet – websites which produce 90% of the internet’s cultural references, and yet are so riddled with perversity that their own patrons take it as an unspoken rule never to talk about them.

Not that these sites have gone unnoticed – indeed, some of their less savory exploits are infamous. For instance, on September 22, 2008, National Review blogger Andrew Grossman named one such website in an article dealing with the hacking of Governor Sarah Palin’s email account: “According to reports, one of a group of online delinquents who hang out on a message board called ‘/b/’ on a site called 4chan — they’re known as ‘b-tards’ — discovered that Governor Palin uses Yahoo! for her e-mail. He was able to reset the account’s password using information gleaned from Google searches: Palin’s zip code, her birthdate, and where she met her spouse…After he posted the details of his exploit on 4chan, a slew of forum denizens accessed the account to root through Palin’s correspondence.”

Now, to be sure, there are those among the “b-tards” whom Grossman describes who would no doubt fit the description of “delinquent,” but what no one out there seems to realize is that, were it not for websites like the aforementioned /b/, not only would countless recognizable internet memes not exist, but also, at least one influential political figure would arguably not have nearly the level of recognition he currently enjoys.

I refer to the truest example of an internet mobilizing politician, Dr. Ron Paul of Texas. Though many people only know Paul as a vaguely conspiracy-minded, neo-isolationist anti-Federal Reserve crusader, what they may not know is that one of Paul’s many titles is “President of the Internets,” (WARNING!!! EXTREMELY NSFW)  a title which was bestowed on him early in the 2008 election cycle by the 4chan-affiliated wiki website, Encyclopedia Dramatica. As a result, according to Encyclopedia Dramatica (or ED, as its frequent patrons know it), “Paul placed FIRST (37%) in the MySpace primary, ahead of Huckabee (18%) and Giuliani (16%).” And though 90% of what gets posted on Encyclopedia Dramatica is freely acknowledged by its readers as ironic, intentionally offensive nonsense, when it comes to meticulously documenting the evolution of internet phenomena, it is one of the most reliable sources available, if you can stomach the NSFW images and extremely offensive language.

Alright, you may be wondering, but so what? Even if a bunch of rabid anarchy-mongering internet crazies turned out for Paul, what does that have to do with the GOP’s power on the internet? The answer is that, even if you accept the framing of such sites as hotbeds of craziness and rabid disorder, there is a method to their madness. As for what that madness is, once you get past the persistent ironic glorifications of perversity and take a look at how the people who frequent these sites actually behave, and more importantly, who they target, it becomes abundantly clear that not only are the values of such sites fundamentally conservative, but that their communications strategies, even if toned down for a mainstream audience, are nothing less than the perfect weapons for disassembling the Obama Presidency.

If this seems strange, it shouldn’t. In fact, much as the highly controversial and obscene Comedy Central show South Park gave rise to a populist, pro-National Security, anti-political correctness breed of young Republican in the early 2000s, I would argue that the new decade could see a similar rise of iconoclastic, libertarian, anti-political correctness sentiment among what I would term “4chan Republicans.” There are three reasons why this could easily happen, which I will explore in detail below.

Firstly, as already alluded, the current administration embodies everything internet subculture hates. For instance, some of the most common targets for internet backlash are people suffering from cases of what is termed “unwarranted self-importance.” There is perhaps no term which has been better coined to describe the current President’s outlook on life and governance. Billing oneself as the sole causal factor in reducing climate change and expecting one’s personal preferences to constitute a compelling reason to move the Olympics are hardly signs of humility. Moreover, one element of internet subculture which is persistently invoked is the drive for free expression (often of the most politically incorrect variety possible), unhampered by restrictions of either an economic or governmental variety, and certainly without regard for offended parties.

The Democratic party, dominated as it is by multiculturally-minded quasi-socialists, many of  whom have arguably been long since emasculated by sensitivity training, speech codes and other cornerstones of “progressive” victim-mongering, could not possibly provide a satisfactory home to such people. In fact, judging by the actions of internet goons, some of the Democrats’ most treasured constituencies have already fallen afoul of them.

And who are these targets? Besides the one conservative/mainstream example of Sarah Palin (who has not been pestered since), the answer is that the targets for repeated attacks are, by and large, people who most of wider society considers undesirable, many of whom are shielded from more official criticism by the wall of political correctness. These targets include such revolting examples as feminist bloggers who muse openly about aborting their teenage sons because all men are “potential rapists,” stalking vloggers who draw terrifying cartoon pornography of themselves with female friends, open white supremacists and, perhaps most infamously, the Church of Scientology. While one can disapprove of the tactics used against these institutions/individuals (some of which make the much vilified “enhanced interrogation techniques” look positively benign by comparison), it is worth noting that ultimately, the power of internet goons lies in their ability to enforce social norms against the most flagrantly vile members of society through private sanction – something which conservatives from Russell Kirk and Irving Kristol to Tom Coburn and Dick Cheney have endorsed. What’s more, at the point where their targets/members actually run afoul of the law, these users have historically turned the relevant information over to law enforcement, suggesting a desire to be hard on crime.

In short, unlike previous generations, when all the forms of counterculture have swung to the Left and emboldened the forces of chaos and social subversion, the darkest, most countercultural corners of the internet are possessed of a singular desire for spontaneous and brutally enforced social order. What’s more, their allergy to self-importance and the authoritarianism of victimhood marks them as prime targets for liberalism’s self-appointed multicultural targets, and as potential sleeper cells in the culture war. Given the power of these sites to define internet subculture, rally donations, win polls and crown previous third tier candidates as prophets of an insurgent movement, it seems indisputable that the conservative movement has much to gain if it only learns to speak in their language.

To hear Politico tell it, CNN’s stuck in humiliating fourth place behind FOX, MSNBC and their own Headline News because they’ve made the mistake of not appealing to the great unwashed who prefer partisan bickering and echo chambers:

With the proliferation of media across platforms these days, there’s less shared knowledge among people, who are increasingly heading to niche outlets for information. At the same time, there’s a large appetite for the new media world where the MSM gatekeepers no longer hold as much clout, and “he said, she said” journalism gives way to strong point of view. …

There’s no doubt that the over-the-top, and politically partisan, hosts are having more success attracting viewers on nights when there’s no major news event.

And what better place for Politico to get an opinion on such a matter than The Nation aka: “The flagship of the left“:

“The whole notion of citizenship has been declining for decades now.”

In other words, CNN is dying because of their oh-so noble and self-sacrificial decision to remain unbiased and objective. We know CNN agrees with this sanctimonious rationalization because they’re quoted saying so in the article:

CNN President Jon Klein says he knows why those approaches work, and he’s not going to go there. “It’s the oldest trick in the book to trot out over-the-top hosts and put them on a cable-news show[.]” …

Klein told staffers on Tuesday, according to TVNewser, that CNN “refuse[s] to do the things that might get us a quick number or cater to the extremes that would alienate our core viewers.”

Maybe CNN’s problem is that their president doesn’t watch his own network. After all, what self-respecting individual not wanting to smell the hot breath of someone laughing in his face could be aware of Rick Sanchez and say such things?

But online or not, this is what the dying Dinosaur Media so desperately wants to believe – or at least wants history to believe – that their slow, painful demise was the result of journalistic integrity. “We would rather be extinct than get in the gutter with low-brow partisan journalists who appeal to the lowest common denominator!”

Well, I’m going to go ahead and appeal to the lowest common denominator by stating, what a load of crap.

CNN, and much (though never enough) of the Dinosaur Media, are dying because everything they do and everything they stand for is predicated on a lie. They are liars of the highest order, have been for decades, and now that alternatives (who are not liars of the highest order) are available … we turn to them.

MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow have too many flaws to even begin to list here, but both are open and honest about their partisan agendas, and the same is true for the whole of MSNBC. The cable net may have never proclaimed, “We’re in the tank for all things liberal!” but they’re so shamelessly open about it there’s no need. Sure, MSNBC tells and spreads lies, but their existence is not based on a lie any more than the DNC.

On the other hand, CNN’s very foundation is built on a lie; the lie that they’re objective … and people, left and right, are turning away from them and others like them because they’ve had enough. No one likes smug, sanctimonious, phony posturing – and from the dim-bulb Wolf Blitzer to the Cover Boy Anderson Cooper to the Shark-Eyed Campbell Brown to OlberGeraldo Rick Sanchez – CNN is up to their 4th place necks in smug, sanctimonious, phony posturing.

What Politico and their delicate compatriots at The Nation describe as “catering to extremes” and “he said, she said” journalism, the rest of us call intellectual honesty. And no matter how sober and thoughtful, no matter how hushed the tone or furrowed the brow, CNN is a network stacked mostly with hardcore Leftists pretending not to be. Given the choice between CNN’s dishonest con job and MSNBC’s shameless hack job, I, and many others, choose a shamelessly honest hack job.

Fox News beats everyone and has the most ideologically diverse audience of them all because their straight news is straight, their opinion news is presented as such and even Obama’s biggest fans have come to learn that if they don’t tune in they’ll miss important stories like, say, that whole ACORN thing.

Of course, the Politico article won’t even consider that argument because Politico has the same con job going as CNN, and isn’t about to cry foul on their entire way of doing business.

You want to survive, Dinosaurs? Give up the asinine charade.

CNN, Washington Post, New York Times, Politico, ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, NPR… do your ratings, shareholders and consciences a favor and join the Daily Kos, Breitbart’s Bigs, The Huffington Post, National Review, Rush Limbaugh, Keith Olbermann, Glenn Beck and Rachel Maddow in coming out of the ideological closet.

You’re no longer fooling  anyone, and as you swirl the drain we chuckle at your charade like a parent dealing with a dumb little kid who insists on pretending they’re invisible.