Leftists are in a full-blown panic over Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson. I’ve never seen anything like it. After ignoring the LP candidate for president for years, suddenly there is a spate of op-eds and editorials from all over the mainstream press feverishly coming out against Johnson and exhorting young people to vote for Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton instead.
Why the panic? The reason is that an increasing number of young people are rejecting both Clinton and Republican candidate Donald Trump and supporting Johnson. Even worse for the Clinton and her leftist supporters, Johnson is pulling more votes from Clinton than Trump.
One catalyst for the left-wing panic is an article that appeared in the New York Times last week entitled, “Hillary Clinton Struggles to Win Back Young Voters from Third Parties,” which cited the latest New York Times/CBS poll showing that 26 percent of voters age 18-29 saying that they intend to vote for Johnson.
Another catalyst undoubtedly is the Chicago Tribune’s recent endorsement of Johnson, which is entitled “A Principled Option for U.S. President: Endorsing Gary Johnson, Libertarian” and which stated, “This is the moment to rebuke the Republican and Democratic parties.” As the Wall Street Journal noted in its article entitled, “Gary Johnson Keeps Picking Up Newspaper Endorsements,” the Tribune’s endorsement followed an endorsement of Johnson by the Detroit News, “marking the first time in its 143-year history it endorsed a non-Republican for president.” And of course there is also the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s endorsement of Johnson.
And of course, that’s as of now. Obviously, Johnson’s support from millennials could grow over the next month, which explains the panic among the left.
So, how are Clinton and the left responding? They are responding with idiotic attacks on Johnson. The two biggest attacks are that Johnson didn’t know what a leppo is and that he couldn’t name a favorite foreign dictator. I’ve addressed the mainstream press’s childish leppo ambush here. The second attack brings back bad memories from my public-school experience, where I was forced to memorize inane things — like the capitals of the states — and then regurgitate them back in a pop quiz. I would have been better off learning how to think critically, to analyze events, and to think in terms of principles and ideals.
The big question, of course, is: Why aren’t Clinton and the left promoting her own positions to young people rather than going negative with silly, non-substantive attacks on Johnson?
The answer is: Clinton and the left are not stupid. They know that if they tell young people what she believes in and what she intends to do if she’s elected president, the young people who are still supporting her might start leaving in droves as well and moving toward Johnson and libertarianism.
Let’s examine why. Let’s begin with Clinton’s position on foreign policy.
For 25 years, the U.S. government, led by the U.S. national-security establishment (e.g., the Pentagon and the CIA), has been killing people, principally Muslims, in the Middle East and Afghanistan. It’s one of the biggest, longest, and most deadly and destructive killing campaigns in history.
Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere. Nothing but death and destruction, not to mention a gigantic refugee crisis resulting from all the chaos and mayhem that the U.S. death machine has produced with its interventionist antics in the Middle East and elsewhere.
What has been the motivation for those 25 continuous years of death and destruction? Interventionism and regime change, two core principles of the national security establishment ever since it was brought into existence after World War II to fight a Cold War against America’s World War II partner and ally, the Soviet Union.
The Persian Gulf War. The sanctions on Iraq that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children. The post-9/11 regime-change war in Iraq, which was sold to the American people on a bogus claim of WMDs. The war on Afghanistan, where most of the people who were killed or maimed had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. Regime change in Libya, which has left that nation in a violent and deadly perpetual civil war. Yemen, where the U.S. national-security state’s proxy, Saudi Arabia, continues to wreak death and destruction. And, of course, Syria, where regime change continues to be the U.S. goal no matter how many people have to die to achieve it.
Now, ask yourself: What young person is going to find all that death and destruction attractive? Young people are about life, not death. What interest do young people have in continuing all that death and destruction?
Yet, that’s what Hillary Clinton is all about — death and destruction because not only was she a fervent supporter of all that interventionism and all those regime-change operations in the Middle East and Afghanistan, she (along with Trump) is fervently committed to continuing the death and destruction in that part of the world.
Oh sure, Clinton now calls her support of the Iraq War a “mistake” but make no mistake about it: It’s just a political formality. She hasn’t issued a peep of protest over President Obama’s sending U.S. troops back into Iraq. She continues to support the U.S. intervention and regime-change efforts in Syria. She’s still proud of her regime-change operation in Libya, where she crowed after the murder of Syrian dictator Muammar Gaddafi, “We came. We saw. He died,” an epigram that would have been embraced by the greatest of imperialist dictators in ancient Rome.
And let’s not forget Clinton’s embrace of Madeleine Albright, the former U.S. Ambassador to the UN under President Bill Clinton, who infamously declared that the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children from the sanctions was “worth it” — that is, worth a regime-change attempt in Iraq.
Hillary Clinton loves interventionism. She can’t get enough of it. She even wants to establish a “no-fly zone” over Syria knowing full well it could result in a U.S. war with Russia. She knows that a war with Russia would give her an early opportunity in her presidency to display her “toughness,” a rite of passage for all modern-day U.S. presidents. The problem, of course, is that they display their “toughness” vicariously through the U.S. soldiers they are willing to sacrifice on the field of battle, like Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon did in the Vietnam War, where they sacrificed more than 58,000 American men to show how “tough” they were against the communists who were supposedly coming to get us, just like ISIS (or the terrorists or Muslims) is supposedly coming to get us today.
Not all young people are dumb. Many of them fully realize why Clinton and others of her ilk force young people to register for the draft and why interventionists wish to force young women to do the same thing. Young people are figuring out that if Clinton and the U.S. national-security establishment to which she is wedded succeed in getting the United States in a major war, like with Russia or China, the Pentagon will not hesitate to order young men (and possibly young women) to report immediately to a military installation to attend boot camp, learn how to kill, and then be sent overseas to die for one of the national-security establishment’s never-ending foreign wars.
Lots of young people are figuring out that foreign interventions and foreign wars are not in their interests. They’re not buying into the bogus scenarios that the national-security statists have been selling to old people for decades — that ISIS is coming to get us — or the communists, Russians, or whoever happens to be the boogeyman de jour.
Many young people are sick and tired of the lies, the endless wars, and the economic and monetary crises that come with a warfare state. They just want to live their lives in peace, harmony, prosperity, and freedom.
So, it certainly shouldn’t surprise anyone that millennials are moving toward libertarianism and the Libertarian Party candidate for president. Libertarians stand for America’s founding principle of a non-interventionist foreign policy. No more interventions in the Middle East or elsewhere. No more overseas U.S. killing campaigns. No more regime-change operations. No more support of foreign dictatorships. No more state-sponsored assassinations. No more torture. No more fear-mongering over ISIS, the communists, Russians, Chinese, etcetera. No more NATO provocations of Russia and China. No more out of control federal spending and national debt to fund America’s wartime machine.
Instead, a society based on freedom, peace, harmony, prosperity, and a limited-government constitutional republic. That’s what libertarians stand for. That’s what we’re fighting for.
That’s why millennials are moving to Johnson. They’re seeing through the interventionist tripe that is being promoted by both Clinton and Trump.
Clinton and the left would be better off targeting old people, most of whom still slavishly defer to the wisdom and judgment of the old Cold War-era national-security establishment, still glorify the troops and thank them for their service in overseas regime-change operations, and still support the U.S. national-security state’s policy of perpetual war for perpetual peace.
