Don't know much about political candidates

Public Policy Polling released a poll today showing (deploring?) that voters know little about political candidates. While it may be true, this observation really misses the point.

Ideally, we wouldn't have to know much about our political candidates... or care about them in the least. Ideally, our politicians would be so powerless as to be inconsequential to our own lives.

"My idea of a great president is one who acts in accordance with his oath of office to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." Not since the presidency of Grover Cleveland has any president achieved greatness by this standard. Worse, the most admired have been those who failed most miserably." (Robert Higgs)



It is only because our politicians are so arrogant and insist on having so much arbitrary power over us that any of these things matter.

The best politicians would do NOTHING about healthcare or any other economic issue other than REPEAL existing government restrictions and mandates and subsidies... and enforce the few statutes that make sense fairly and evenly.

The free market does anything and everything better than government could ever hope to. It is the government that causes our economic problems and the free market that is always the solution. The best political platform is this: "My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them." (Barry Goldwater)


It is merely because politicians in Washington and Raleigh and state capitals are so tyrannical that knowledge of them becomes important. But the political class has managed to make government so complicated that many feel they cannot understand it. But if you ask those same people what they want out of government, the answer would be very simple: LEAVE US ALONE. STOP SPENDING OUR MONEY. STOP TAXING US TO DEATH. STOP STEALING OUR LIBERTY. LEAVE US ALONE.

1984: A Review

While 1984 is now considered a cautionary tale about totalitarianism, it should be remembered that Orwell was an ardent socialist. Perhaps the most important (and least discussed) element of the story of 1984 is the doublethink of its author: Orwell's ability to condemn an outcome, while advocating its cause. Even as Orwell portrayed the corruption of socialist government in Animal Farm and the cruelty of totalitarian government in 1984, he insisted that these are perversions of socialism, rather than the inevitable fruit of socialism.

This is the same foolish idea as Marx had; that human nature is malleable and can be forced to adapt to a socialist zeitgeist. Sadly, many people suffer the same delusion today: believing that government has the right to mold human nature rather than the responsibility to yield to human nature and respect our natural rights. Socialists do not like that human nature opposes slavery (i.e. socialism) and insist that with enough socialist indoctrination and through the force of socialist government, human nature can be remade to love subjugation.

When we look to the troubling conclusion, it appears to be a break from the tradition of a successful resolution for the hero of the novel. Just as Brave New World ended with the State purging its misfits from its midst, 1984 ends with the arrest and reeducation of its misfit. Could it be that this was a successful conclusion in the mind of a socialist? Could it be that socialists are so wedded to their ideology that they have lost the ability to sympathize with human rights to liberty and freedom of conscience and would rather sympathize with the State? What if the ending reveals that the hero of a socialist novel was never meant to be the individual; is the hero in fact the State?