Former President Donald Trump’s comedy sketch, portrait of a so-called authoritarian, filtered through his antique style that breaks the normsgives his fans a way out: Libertarians nervous about Trump are simply too uptight and outdated to understand his appeal in the age of comedy podcasts, they might say. Being sincerely alarmed by Trump makes You the asshole – an illusory victim of Trump derangement syndrome.

But Trump, through his comical insults and random rants, is consistently an authoritarian man: he aspires to use the power of government to punish media that displeases him (including threats broadcast licenses); legal desires immunity from liability for himself and for all government law enforcement; and more importantly, his main campaign action point is to launch a police/military action unprecedented in this century. against millions of people live peacefully and productively in America.

His appeal to those who use the libertarian label is therefore puzzling – except that he is not Vice President Kamala Harris. Harris is also someone no libertarian could positively wish was president — except she’s not Trump.

Libertarians should have the courage of their so-called convictions to radically oppose the status quo of American government (which for the past eight years has been managed or represented by both Trump and Harris) and not feel obligated to affirm positively that one or the other non-libertarian choice should prevail. Not voting or promoting either is an appropriate option. Voting for or promoting Libertarian Party candidate Chase Oliver is also an option.

Even on specific issues that seem to animate the most right-wing corners of the libertarian world, Trump is either terrible or not clearly exceptional: he has ruled as an inflationist and intends to continue to do so; he doesn’t have real concrete ideas to reduce expenses or the size and scope of government, and I certainly didn’t do it. during his first term, while vaguely and improbably promising that Elon Musk take care of it in one second; Trump can be expected to increase government spending and control in the name of so-called pro-worker industrial policy it will probably have no better effect on America’s fortunes than past industrial policy efforts; while defending “free speech” for the ideas and people it favors, it is willing to punish peaceful expressive activities such as burning flag and peaceful economic activities such as drug sales with death (while improbably promising libertarians that he will do something he could have done when he was president before, freeing convicted Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht); he is fanatically against free trade, a central principle of the market economy, and his the administration was responsible because what many libertarians never want us to forget is the “tyranny of COVID” and also – even more destructive in the eyes of many non-conformists –Covid vaccines. (We could, if we wish, take seriously his various improvised plans for eliminate wide windrows of the current tax system and the law replacing the tariffs, but I don’t really see any reason to do it.)

When it comes to foreign policy – ​​which is usually libertarians’ fallback to excuse their Trumpism – yes, he hasn’t started new wars in new places. But it has not completely shut down its activities or withdrawn the United States’ existing sprawling commitments. He accelerated the number of bombings and civilian casualties at the start of his administration in Afghanistan and was slow to come out (an operation concluded by President Joe Biden). He increase in drone strikes in Pakistan and Somalia. He escalation our incredibly destructive Saudi aid intervention in Yemen, in violation of the War Powers Act. He said he would withdraw US troops from Syria then he changed his mind.

Even this week he threatens to “Blow into a thousand pieces” Iran if he considers that this has harmed a national politician and that he long insisted that under no circumstances can Iran ever possess nuclear weapons. Trump the pacifist is largely an invention, or rationalization, of his antiwar supporters who like him for other reasons as well. In general, it retained both the spending and scope of the military-industrial complex of the American empire. growing or at least the same. (It seems likely that if he wins, he won’t be as enthusiastic about financing and supplying the ongoing war sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.)

People perplexed or ignorant of the anarchist end of the libertarian world are particularly perplexed by what many think makes Trump most clearly unfit for office: his role in instigating the January 6 protests/riots/assaults against the Capitol and its interference in the “peaceful transfer of power.” ” via elections – some libertarians don’t care much for this and may find phrases like “unfit to hold office” ridiculous to begin with given the inherent evils of government.

After all, according to some, only the Capitol and its inhabitants or defenders were injured or even disconcerted by the invaders, most of whom were not violent; it’s cool to scare government officials anyway; and if democracy is an inherently illegitimate cover for granting control over a machine of violence and oppression, then protecting its results is not. that vital, and who can prove that the vote was not rigged anyway?

Whether or not democracy is ethically justified in libertarian terms, it is simply better for libertarians and other living creatures, given existing realities, that this old “peaceful transfer of power” proceeds unhindered. Civil war or even just mass unrest over who will be president are objectively very bad for peace, freedom and market-oriented civilization. Those who participate in and support Trump’s “enemies within” scheme are objectively enemies of this civilization – especially if one has a reasonable perspective on what is likely really at stake in a Trump or Harris victory.

An election that serious supporters are trying to portray as a showdown between communists and fascists should alarm anyone who remembers early 20th-century European history. Does anyone really believe that Harris will nationalize industries or completely confiscate all of Americans’ wealth and property, beyond tinkering around the edges of the tax system that already exists? (Gun control policy and jurisprudence in this century also indicate, I think, that she would never succeed under any gun confiscation scheme she might have in his heart.) Harris certainly has policy ideas that will be terrible for the American economy, such as strict policies. antitrust hits against tech companies And wealth taxes on unrealized gains. But Harris – especially since she would almost certainly be forced by Republicans into one or both Senate And Home– it is more likely that we will continue to govern as we have been for the last four years (and indeed the last 40 years). It will overtax and overregulate. Its bureaucracy will be too preoccupied with the application of quotas and racial or identity concerns. It will maintain our current military force structure, commitments and spending.

Harris’ likely administration is also not what any libertarian or American should want, but no American – and certainly no libertarian – is forced to choose between these two evils. There’s a reason libertarians tend to be lenient to the point that in a presidential election their individual vote won’t make a winner a winner or a loser a loser. A vote therefore only serves an expressive purpose. And what you are expressing by voting for Trump is your approval of Trump’s policies, which, as explained above for a libertarian, seems indefensible. A libertarian in a non-libertarian country is much more effective as a real enemy on all sides of government overreach. That Trump seems to think he should pander to libertarians on select, disconnected issues is great; but that doesn’t mean a libertarian must actually support it, especially when his likely actions are considered as a whole, not just the libertarian elements.

Fear of the savage evils that the Other Side will commit if in power is a very powerful driving force in American politics today. It’s rhetorically effective because you can’t win a debate about how a group in power will behave with reason or evidence; such statements can only be judged with common sense and ratified with time.

It makes pundits or voters who want to think of themselves as reasonable people nervous (it made me nervous!) to turn out to be panicked simpletons, fearing or predicting bad outcomes that will never happen. Free marketers should be used to this; we have feared or predicted many disastrous consequences of U.S. government action that have not yet occurred, from hyperinflationary collapse to World War III to a social credit system. Sometimes stoking public fear can actually have salutary effects by ensuring that the fear does not come true. But it’s not the worst sin to be too cautious when it comes to who controls the federal Leviathan.

It is certain that both candidates are dangerous to American freedom, and both will continue to lead a government at least as huge and as controlling in many ways as the one we have now. But only one has the short-term promise to attack, kidnap and expel millions of residents who have harmed no one’s lives or property and, in doing so, destroy huge swathes of of America’s productive economy, thereby disrupting the lives of other millions of legal citizens. who hire them, work for them, rely on their services, or rent and sell to them. Only one has large supporters who applaud a masochistic view of him as “dad.” punish with justice a nation that behaves badly. This person, at least as much as Harris, is simply not someone who should be running the federal government. And this should be especially clear to those who claim loyalty to libertarian principles.