Quoth Brian Holtz: ----- Asking how government should be financed is hardly a trick question. It should be answerable by any candidate who wants to maintain the pretense that there is an interesting chance that he'll take office in 2009 and start working on submitting a FY2010 budget to Congress. -----
I'm not sure why you think that's the case. Do you happen to have a poll handy demonstrating more than low-single-digit voter interest in "how government should be financed?" if the choices are "coercive taxation" versus "voluntary contributions" (which are the two alternatives you seem to be positing, although they are not the only alternatives available, or even the only alternatives proposed by the LP's current presidential nomination candidates)? ---- So does Steve agree with Christine Smith that all force initiation to raise government revenue is immoral and unnecessary? ----- I rather suspect that he does. However, he's running for president in a system in which: a) "how government is financed" is a reasonably settled question; and b) the president has little, if any, power to change the answer to that question. I suspect that if Kubby believed it was possible for a president to be the last one to leave Washington, DC and turn out the lights as he did, or force Congress to hold bake sales to buy aircraft carriers, that's what he'd promise to do. He knows that's not the way things work. Instead of macho-flashing and pretending that he could magically MAKE things work that way in 4 or 8 years as president, he's offering a radical program that's consistent with reality. ----- You probably think Christine Smith has much less chance than the 5% I give her, but she clearly is (currently) more willing than Steve to pander to radicals and say she opposes all force initiation in government finance. ----- There's a difference between pandering to radicals and actually being one. I'm willing to give Smith the benefit of the doubt and assume that she's not merely a dilettante, but the disparity between her record and Kubby's is not inconsequential. Kubby has a record more than a decade in length of publicly taking and defending radical libertarian positions. Smith's record of taking public positions at all seems to stretch back a year or so, and only to have metamorphosed from a fairly bizarre variant of constitutionalism toward a radical libertarian approach in the last few months. Kubby has gone to court, to jail, into exile, back from exile, and back to jail in defense of his own freedom and the freedom of others. Smith has operated a charity to provide his cellmates with John Denver tapes. I don't concern myself with Smith's sincerity or depth of conviction; I'm more than happy to credit her with both. But I'm not worried that she'll get around his flank on radicalism. He's the real thing, and he has the scars to prove it. Regards, Tom Knapp
