(satire) Libertarian Party Reminds Americans They Can Actually Choose Lesser Of Three Evils
babylonbee.com/news/libertarians-remind-ameri...
babylonbee.comPosted Sep 11, 2020, 2:44 PM UTC
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babylonbee.comGood on the Bee for being equal opportunity satirists
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I feel like we're finally getting noticed. ;]
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But but a vote for anyone but Biden is a vote for trump you fascist nazi sympathizers!
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This but unironically
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I'm confused about Republicans that call themselves Libertarians
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Republicans that call themselves libertarians are usually just (American) Republicans that are cool with people smoking weed and don't want to defend Republican policies.
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Well it's not wrong lol
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Yeah but to the average American Libertarians are not the lesser of three evils. Killing minimum wage, medicare, social security, and welfare is not something most voters want. When a person gets frustrated with the two party system and starts investigating a third party and get hit by a candidate with a boot on his head and videos of autists yelling about how drivers licenses are bad they quickly make the logical choice that Libertarians are not what they want.
On the bright side Libertarians support pot legalization but also so do most Democrats. I don't see what a Libertarian candidate offers that the average American would even want to vote for.
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Yeah but to the average American Libertarians are not the lesser of three evils.
Meh. They're a lesser-evil branch of Republicans (in theory). But, as Trump (and Bush and Reagan before him) demonstrated, they're likely interchangeable in practice. Making lots of libertarian mouth-noises, then as soon as they get behind the wheel they do the exact same shit their predecessors did.
This is a Power Corrupts problem. Libertarians think that they're immune to corruption because they're out of power. They're not. They're just powerless.
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neither trump nor bush was in the libertarian party, though. there's a difference. I think anyone who looks up the current libertarian party understands that it's not connected to republicanism even if there is a stereotype
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neither trump nor bush was in the libertarian party, though.
Trump is the Most Libertarian President Since Calvin Coolidge, or so libertarians once told me.
I think anyone who looks up the current libertarian party understands that it's not connected to republicanism
The LP literally nominates former Republicans for the highest offices. Hell, the only officially Libertarian Congressman in my lifetime carries the title because he was booted from the GOP a few months back.
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I always thought that libertarians identified more often with the GOP because it used to have a sizable libertarian-wing in the pre-Goldwater era. The ones who remain maybe tried to revitalize it, but obviously that's doomed to fail at this point. The party is rotten to its core.
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A candidate who is against the large and excessive military system we have, defunding the police, and the support of body autonomy. Immigration too
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I can get at least some of that by voting Democrat. Even Biden, a moderate, supports most of those things (to an extent). Negotiations with more liberal Democrats would likely see some progressive policies get signed off by Biden regardless of his moderate stance.
But the Democrats don't want to kill all social services and worker protections. So as an average American why would I vote for a Libertarian candidate?
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I specifically picked those topics becuase they are important to me, seemingly a large section of the population, and would not be addressed by Biden. Biden has said he would bot defund the police nor have his actions or words given me any hope of decreased military engagement.
It is true that the average American is good with the status quo and don't want much to change, and to that I say yeah, go for trump or Biden. But if you are someone who wants actual change your support is better towards the green party or the libertarian party.
Also keep in mind libertarians are not anarchists. Libertarians are pretty split on a lot of issues but generally agree that social services can be good. The libertarian echo chamber of reddit probably isn't representative of the general libertarian population in the same way that obviously the Democrat echo chamber here isn't representative.
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Libertarians are pretty split on a lot of issues but generally agree that social services can be good.
It's a shame then that Jo's platform seems to lean in the direction of slashing as much social service spending as possible.
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Social security is going to collapse but obviously very few people are advocating zero social services. Low personal income tax and simplification of the regulatory body allows small firms to compete with massive ones without legal fees and rent seeking. The democrats are horrible with money, as evidenced by their utter failure to fix the last major economic depression. Obama presided over the slowest recovery in modern American history and we got orange man as a result.
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Most people don't actually want to defund the police, they want to reform the police.
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Less crony politicians
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Agreed. If Jo was actually on the debate stage it would remind Americans that third parties are usually full of whacko fringe lunatics. I mean for Christs sake, Jo's 'plan' for healthcare - one of the most pressing issues for the electorate during a global health crisis - is to take an axe to as much public health spending as possible. It's fucking insane and tonedeaf.
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It's satire
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Oh shit guys!! We forgot to check with this clown to see what the average American wanted!!
If only we had asked ahead of time!!!!
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If only we had asked ahead of time!!!!
Considering Libertarians are lucky to get 1% of the presidential vote yeah, I'd say you should probably pay more attention to what most of the country actually wants. Libertarian ideals are undeniably in the minority.
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What's up with that last sentence?
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Trump voters are going to unironically and wholeheartedly believe that Trump is the least evil person
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I think that voting for a third party in this election is too dangerous for what's on the line.
And while I'd absolutely begrudge anybody for doing so, it wouldn't be for too long. Y'all can vote how you please.
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"Libertarians got into a shouting match with each other over whether it should be "lesser" or "least" and decided they would all just not vote and not change anything again this year."
It's probably true. My guess is 90% of libertarians won't vote.
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Wish people actually knew about their third party options. Out of everyone I know only one person is planning to vote for Jo, and everyone I talk to thinks I’m a idiot for voting for someone who “clearly won’t win anyway”
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This sub is so naive man lmao. How the fuck do y’all think Jo would do seeing how trump is handling all the shit being thrown at him for not complying ? She is either going to break down or she will abandon us like most politicians do with their core constituency
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https://youtu.be/w7NeRiNefO0 Classic Simpsons - Go ahead, throw your vote away!
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First good Babylon Bee article I have seen. This is almost good enough for The Onion.
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The Babylon Bee is funnier than The Onion
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Not even close. The thing about satire is that there has to be a large nugget of truth at the center of it that can then be shown as being ridiculous.
But the Bee is afraid to make republicans look ridiculous, because that will upset their readers, who don't like feeling rediculous.
And they don't have that nugget of truth when they try to make democrats look ridiculous, because they use as their basis republican talking points that have gone already through multiple levels of simplifying and exaggerating, rather than actually understanding what's going on in the democratic party. You can't make fun of something you fundamentally don't understand. Well you can, but it's not going to be funny to anyone but yourself.
I guess Libertarians are not so close to the writers hearts that they feel ashamed to make fun of them, and not so far that they are afraid to actually look fairly at the problems.
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They make plenty of fun of republicans, and most of their stories are funny because they are satirizing the truth. The Onion used to be great but you go on their site most stories are references to some fucking fact about some consumer product or cultural convention, instead of the ridiculous shit thats going on nowadays.
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Point out an article where they make fun of republicans.
Point out an article where they make fun of democrats.
The Onion has always done that.
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Yep onion went political
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Waaaay funnier.
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Babylon Bee really struggles with being actually funny, but this one hit the nail on the head. Too bad they can't do that when they try to lampoon the republicans or democrats.
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This is just a beautiful paragraph.
Based.
In order to encourage people to vote for the lesser evil, we should encourage people to judge the platform of individual candidates based on their likely consequences and effects rather than based on their declared political party. In many cases Libertarian candidates may be the greater evil. In 2016 Clinton and Trump were the lesser evil because they did not support a harmful national sales tax.
Cringe.
In some cases the Libertarian candidates are the greater evil though.
For instance in 2016 Johnson was advocating for a national sales tax, and in many state and local elections Libertarians have advocated for sales taxes or keeping sales taxes in place while prioritizing cuts to other less harmful taxes.
This is despite the fact that increases in sales taxes 1) are inefficient, 2) are regressive, 3) are invasive of privacy, 5) increase transaction costs, 6) promote monopolies, 7) suppress investment in marginal areas, 8) are used to finance regressive wealth transfers from the poor residents to rich developers in many cities, and 9) are historically a contributing factor to social revolutions (Venezuela, Vietnam).
Promoting the idea that individuals will promote freedom as long as they declare they belong to a particular political faction does not actually promote freedom in practice and discourages critical thinking.
Or it's possible that you call them the greater evil based on differing stragies with sales taxes, which you claim are more harmful than [what?] taxes. It could be that you are wrong too, right?
I mean, fuck tax, but I am a minarchist and know we need to find the most fair way to steal from people (least unfair lol) to pay for a bare essential gov't. What strategy do you think is optimum?
I'm a longtime supporter of a federal sales tax as opposed to income taxes. The reasoning is that it taxes poor and wealthy at the same rate (of spending). It incentivizes savings. All but the ~5 states that don't have state sales taxes already could implement it immediately. It doesn't waste millions of tax dollars with socialist government jobs (IRS) to calculate and (holy shit!!!) refund over-payments. It eliminates the burden on the citizen to calculate their own taxes and immediately removes any reason for most investigations of tax fraud, placing the burden on the businesses and corporations to accurately report tax witholding in relation to reported revenue.
This is false. The wording sounds correct but the affect is clear and not equal.