Cholera or Plague? You Decide!

October 29, 2008

Being an assortment of presidential endorsements by contributors to Taki's Magazine

Being an assortment of presidential endorsements, wild speculations, and cris de coeur by contributors to Taki’s Magazine

How I Became a Resentful Naderite
By Peter Brimelow

I”ve argued in The American Conservative that, because most states are not in contention, the only rational use of the ballot is to send a message by casting single-issue vote for the Third Party presidential candidate who represents that issue. The most important issue in facing America is the imminent abolition of the historic American nation by out-of-control mass immigration, both legal and illegal. Mass immigration is a disease of the heart; the war, the economy etc., are diseases of the skin. So that means voting for the Constitution Party’s Chuck Baldwin, who is by far the best on immigration and much else besides.

However, the great state of Connecticut, where I live, has managed to keep off its ballot both the Constitution party, for which I (along with Editorandpublisher T. Theodoracopulos) voted in 2004, and the Libertarian Party, which I would turn to because Bob Barr was good on immigration when a Republican Congressman and because his platform is still better than those of the major parties. (Which shows how awful they are).
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Symbolic Chuck
By Paul Gottfried

Despite my desire to see John McCain and his brand of neocon-Republicanism soundly defeated, I can”t stand the idea of awarding my vote to his leftist, black-nationalist adversary Barack Obama. I”ll therefore do in this presidential race what I”ve done in every other presidential contest since 1988 (when I allowed myself to be talked into voting for George I), that is, cast my ballot for neither national party. In all likelihood I”ll vote for Chuck Baldwin and not Bob Barr, since Barr is already saddled with the Albatross program of the Libertarian Party, including its immigration expansionism and openness to gay marriage. Baldwin, by contrast is running on a traditional American rightwing platform (yes I am on the right), taking a position against “abortion rights” and the invasion from across our Southern border. I am also in agreement with the Baldwin-Ron Paul approach to terrorism. Instead of invading entire countries and then trying to bring their bombed-out territories and populations into some hallucinatory League of Democracies, Baldwin and Paul have called for having Congress pass, in the manner of Thomas Jefferson dealing with the Barbary Pirates, letters of marque and reprisal. These would be aimed at allowing the president to take punitive action against individual terrorists who threaten us with harm or else have committed violent acts against us, without requiring wholesale invasion of one country by another.
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Backing Baldwin
By Jack Hunter

I have two tests that any candidate must pass in order to win my vote: Is he commitment to a traditional foreign policy and is he serious about stopping illegal immigration? Chuck Baldwin passes with flying colors.

Burkean for Barack
By Jeffrey Hart

In 1968, I was a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, then-Governor of California, when he thought he might get the Republican nomination. When Richard Nixon was nominated, I joined the Nixon speechwriter team in New York City. I have been a senior editor at National Review since 1969, but was fired last month.

I support Barack Obama because he is conservative in comparison to the Republican Party as it is.
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Naderism in Defense of LIberty is No Vice
By Justin Raimondo

No conservative or libertarian can possibly contemplate voting for either of the “major” party candidates, this time around, one several grounds, the most conspicuous being their intractable and almost instinctive predilection for deploying the all-too-visible hand of government as the end-all and be-all of “solutions” to our problems, foreign as well as domestic.

As far as the frontrunner, Barack Obama, is concerned, his vow to “redistribute the wealth” disqualifies him from consideration, although this hasn”t stopped the fabled “Obamacons” from inventing the wildest, most extravagant evasions in order to rationalize their capitulation to fashion. Here is Andrew Sullivan, reigning monarch of the Obamacons, with his own quite typical apologia:

Conservatism is not an ideology. It’s a disposition. And sometimes it takes what {Michael] Oakeshott called “trimming” to keep the ship afloat. Moderation matters. In some ways, I see Obama as a return to moderation in American politics. And it’s conservatives who have become ideologues who cannot accept it.

Moderation in defense of liberty is no vice “ hardly a philosophy to inspire us to go to the barricades, but, then again, going to the barricades would itself be immoderate, and we can”t have that.
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What Is To Be Done?
By Justin Raimondo

In writing my endorsement of Ralph Nader, I passed rather quickly over the question of the right-wing splinter parties, namely the Libertarian Party and the Constitution Party, so as not to get bogged down in an extended discussion. I see, however, from the reaction to my piece, that the bog is unavoidable.

The question I quite consciously avoided is the one that leaps out at the careful reader: why not cast a ballot for either of these two parties? Why give your vote to a “leftist,” like Nader, who’s just a commie wearing faux-populist colors?

To answer the last question first: Nader has an interesting history, one that belies the “leftist” label. His first published piece, as I pointed out in a piece for The American Conservative last time around, appeared in The Freeman, that venerable old mainstay of the libertarian media, now enjoying a renaissance under the able editorship of Sheldon Richman. The article denonced a public housing project being built near his home in Connecticut, and descried the distant authority of the federal government for overriding the clear wishes of the locals. Nader a leftist? It’s true that he finds his constituency on the left, and his campaign is directed at and supported by the few lefties who haven”t been swept up in the Obama-lanche, but he is personally very far from that. Now that the ostensible “free enterprisers” of the GOP are hailing the bailout, he’s taken up the cause of small business, which is “the only free enterprise left in America,” as he puts it.

Too true. I wonder if Bob Barr realizes that. Somehow, I doubt it.
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In Your Heart, You Know He’s Right
By Richard Spencer

“Democracy,” says Mencken, “is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” There’s probably no better summation of the 2008 election. After an interminable campaign, Americans are urged to go exercise their little slices of the Popular Will and decide who shall be the The Decider for the next four years.

Shall it be the Man of Hope, who wants to spread a little wealth down to the “disposed peoples” and a little up to his supporter base at Goldman Sachs? Or shall it be “100 years in Iraq” Mac, a man John Zmirak once likened to Erich Ludendorff, which seems to me awfully unfair”to Ludendorff. For despite his many failings, the Generalquartiermeister would never have done anything as lunatic as surround himself with advisors like Elliott Abrams, Randy Scheunemann, and Robert Kagan, all of whom are itching to open up third and forth fronts in our global boondoggle.

Get ready for some Democracy, America, it’s best to just lie back and try to enjoy it.
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Nicholas II for Tsar
By John Zmirak

On February 25, 1917, Russian soldiers serving Tsar Nicholas II in St. Petersburg faced a choice. On November 4, 2008, Americans voters will stand in the same position. They must choose between a crooked, bumbling oligarchy prone to starting futile wars”and a ravening, reckless mob. While it’s mostly made up of citizens rightly enraged, the mob is led (or will soon be led) by vicious ideologues who promise to persecute Christianity. (Be patient, I will explain.)

There is no third living option, no better Tsar ready to reign. That option was tried, has failed. If the soldiers fight to save the Tsar, they preserve a regime that sent their brothers to die without meaning, without rifles”in a faraway land, for lies. They will save the elite that let the monk Rasputin set national policy, which bankrupted and bled their Fatherland. Surely, the new men grabbing for power must be better. How could they be worse?
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