So as I suggest in a previous article, many of us should vote for the Libertarian candidate where it will not harm the chances of Trump being thrown out of office. To call the orange thing a cancer on the nation and the Constitution is frankly an insult to cancer. He is a wannabe tyrant who surrounds himself with the most vile filth in existence who have no respect for the law, rights, reason, or truth and they cannot be allowed. They are small bigoted people who want only temporary power and care nothing about securing “the Blessing of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” Trump and all of his ilk need to go. There is no question about this at any level. They are an evil that cannot under any circumstances be allowed to continue to be in power, and after they are out they cannot be allowed to roam free, they must all be jailed for the rest of their disgusting lives as a testament to what trying to destroy this country will get you. Vote for the Libertarian in safe blue and red states, especially in safe red—see if you can pick off as much as possible. But in swing states, if you can stomach it vote for the dumb guy over the dumb and evil guy. I know it’s not a great choice but we need to keep the union alive if we are going to fix it and Trump has the goal of burning it to the ground.
But getting rid of Trump is only the first step. The problem is that he tapped into a vein of evil in this country that I think many of us didn’t want to admit existed. Before this sad excuse for a human got the traction I would have said that honest to god racists were only about 5%-10% of the Republican party and Independents, and between 10%-15% of the Democrats, and maybe, just maybe 20% of the people who didn’t vote. Holy shit did I underestimate those numbers. I still think there are way too many racists and bigots in the Democratic party and they pander to interest groups without shame of the fact that they work to ensure progress and harmony don’t continue. But whether the racists were always there in the GOP (yeah I underestimated) or Trump brought in all those racists who didn’t usually vote (which he did). Honestly, I’ll never know exactly how far off I was because there is probably no way to measure accurately who came into the Republican party and who left when the stench of bigotry went from the fringe that everyone ignored to party plank, but it doesn’t matter. The Republican party has become a party of white supremacy, fascist big government control, and a complete opposition to the Constitution and rule of law in their piggish desire for power. Their own party platform says they stand for nothing but a blind devotion to Der Fuhrer.
In 2014 the GOP was still suffering for what now comes off as minor infractions of Richard Nixon. It would take a century to end the taint of the evil of Trump. And as the Democratic Party keeps leaning towards mindless progressive socialism we don’t’ have a century to wait to stop them. So there is really only one answer on what to do with the Republican party. Take a page from the Romans at Carthage, burn the party to the ground; jail, destroy or exile those who still hold to the name Republican, salt the ground, and never look back.
Luckily there is historical precedence for this. The Whig died after they elected Zachary Taylor (a man with huge popularity, no experience, and no adherence to the Whig party platform) because the party was torn asunder after his win in 1848 (unlike Trump, Taylor at least had the good manners to die in office and spare us the hassle of hanging him for gross incompetence.). But after Taylor, the Whigs quickly died and a mere 12 years after he was elected to his pathetic term (so really only 8 years after the Whig term ended).
So history shows that a new party can rise up in a relatively quick fashion. (And if it has to involve a Civil War where we slit the throats of every last bigot and not make the mistake of Reconstruction where we thought we could bring the traitors back into the fold…so be it. The good news is that now all the bigots lack having the best generals on their side as the South did, it would not be a national tragedy, only a massacre of mowing down Klansmen, skinheads, and Proud-boy incels showing them all the mercy they have shown to others.)
But what should that party be about?
We need to start thinking about this now.
So here are my suggestions. I’m under no illusion that huge numbers of people listen to me, but ideas have to start somewhere and if you find this and spread the ideas to other who talk about them to others, so forth and so on, maybe this can be the spark that will reach someone who really can change things.
Social Safety Net:
Replace everything (Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, SNAP, unemployment insurance, everything) with a Universal Basic Income ($1,000 a month) which will guarantee that no one falls into poverty but no one has to waste dozens of hours every week justifying to the government why they shouldn’t be in poverty. A $3,500 voucher to buy any private insurance plan of your choice—along with a law every insurance company has to offer a plan for that price that will cover all major and emergency medical— will guarantee that no one goes without health care. We can therefore get rid of ACA and all other laws, rules, and regulations governing healthcare. Also with a UBI there no longer needs to be a minimum wage.
Taxes:
Everybody pays the same rate income tax rate. No other federal taxes, no tariffs, no death tax, no capital gains, no taxes on anything other than a flat tax on income. If corporations want the rights of individuals, I support that and they will pay the exact same rate. I calculate it’s 33% and a 14K deduction, plus a 2K deduction for every child (keep in mind you’re no longer paying social security or medicare taxes and you’re now getting a $1,000 a month from the UBI…basically, everyone, making under $75K is probably going to have more take-home money under this plan). Corporations get to deduct payroll, capital investment, and R&D, but not things like advertising. No other deductions for individuals.
Charities will have to spend everything they take in within 12 months of getting the cash (being allowed a 6-month reserve and probably some way to store money without taxation for larger projects). But otherwise, this will stop the practice of hiding family money in fake charities to pay out the kids from said charity…it’s not just the Trumps who do this.
Once the debt is paid down we can probably drop the tax rate further.
The numbers of course are all best guesses on my part and economists who can run better models with dynamic scoring should probably be listened to more what I can calculate on my spreadsheet.
Foreign policy:
I would like a return some sane foreign policy. Things like supporting the free market through trade treaties and engaging in the WTO, pushing for human rights, opposing tyranny through soft pressure where possible…and if necessary have small targeted and well thought out military action. And when that all fails to actually have a plan for what to do after a war is over (because the Wilson/Bush idiocy that democracy just magically springs up is just preposterous even before it was tried after WWI, and W. has no excuse for that shortsightedness). Support the good and push back on the evil, you know act like an adult and realize that isolationism has never and will never work, no exceptions.
The goal also needs to be absolute free trade, no tariffs, no Jones Act, no subsidies, let the free market rule and we need to push that for all of our allies as well.
The Military:
With that, we also need to modernize the military. The future of any war is more about technology and not about the biggest army and biggest navy. Out tooth to tail ratio (the number of people in the military who are in combat versus those who are not in the field providing support) is one the highest in the world, but that is more a symptom of waste than efficiency. There is a lot we can cut from the military and still have it be stronger and more able to react to the needs of the nation.
Education:
This is more a state thing but we should start pushing to transition to a completely voucher-based education system (about $10,000 a year). You can have public education, and they get the voucher, but charters, private, pods, and homeschooling need to be treated as entirely equal in funding and we will see who can get the best result for society’s investments. And if we make those vouchers go from 3 to 21 then we can guarantee universal pre-K and have everyone get at least some trade school or college it’s up to them. Really bright kids with a dedicated parent can probably get done with high school before the age of 18 use that voucher for community college, AND get a trade school degree, before still having time to put those remaining voucher years to a state school.
All we have to do is ensure there is a national set of standards and tests to make sure the institutions or individuals. It would again be cheaper than the current system, have far less bureaucracy and waster, and get much higher rates of graduation and college attendance with vastly less debt.
End the War on Drugs:
Let’s admit it, the corruption, abuse by police and prosecutors, gang wars it funds, and general idiocy in government caused by the war on drugs is vastly more destructive to society than drugs could ever be.
Just legalize it all and let states tax the sales.
Immigration:
Open Borders. First, because there is no power in the Constitution to regulate immigration—every member of ICE should be on a gallows for trying to enforce blatantly unconstitutional laws. Second, because all laws of economics and human decency show that there is no downside to immigration and anything to the contrary is racist lies. THERE ARE NO GOOD REASONS TO RESTRICT IMMIGRATION. NONE.
Limits on the Executive:ddddd
It has become abundantly clear over the last 12 years that presidents all too often are in their position because of a cult of personality, not because of their character, virtue, intelligence, or skill. Too often now presidents are ruling by fiat than by law and we need to stop that. We need Congressional veto of executive orders, we need an independent Department of Internal Affairs that can investigate anyone in government and arrest anyone but a Congressman (because the Constitution says they can’t be arrested while Congress is in session, notice how the founders put no such rule for the President so the DOJ’s policy that the President can’t be arrested is unconstitutional and right now anyone enforcing that should be strung up for aiding and abetting), removing the president’s absolute ability to declare national emergencies without having his declarations questioned, removing this insanity that executive authority means the executive doesn’t have to comply with the law…you know basically make everything that Obama and Trump things that will land future executives on the receiving end of a firing squad. Over the course of the Cold War, we gave the president vastly too much power and that needs to be undone.
Move as much power as possible back to the states for things that they can control by themselves
90% of the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Energy, Interior, Education, Transportation, Labor, Housing and Urban Development, and Health and Human Services are things that the states can do on their own, and as much of those departments need to be returned to state power with only minimal federal oversight for issues of true interstate commerce, the tragedy of the commons, and externalities like pollution.
The Departments of Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security, and the Secret Service were all cute experiments but have clearly been shown to have no value, made everyone’s life worse, and serve absolutely no purpose.
Removing government waste
Granted everything above would remove a vast amount of government waste and insanity but there should always be a goal to cut as much of government as possible, specifically the federal registry. Right now there are more rules that govern every part of the government than any human could ever be expected to read let alone understand. We must return, as much as possible, to have the rules of government be limited enough that a person can be expected to read up on any area they are working in and thus once again ignorance of the law is not an excuse…as it stands right now ignorance is not only an excuse it should be expected.
Public investment
At this point there is relatively little a federal government would need to do for national infrastructure as so much of it should be turned over to the states, but one thing the government should be putting money into in R&D, especially in sciences where the commercial value isn’t immediately obvious, there is a growing body of research that a lot of what we take for granted today was the private sector building off of scientific discoveries made in the immediate post-war period on scientific research that didn’t have immediate value to the private sector. If we want to retain our edge we need to be at the forefront of science and that requires not just improving what is known but breaking new ground and finding out new things. The market has yet to fully find a way to fund these otherwise expensive but not usually immediately profitable kinds of research. The best way to do this would be to set up public-private research funds (where the government will match a donation made by individual interested in this kind of research—it’s a policy that was created by Benjamin Franklin, so it’s not like it doesn’t have some impressive roots). Further rewards for coming up with solutions to major problems should be offered in return for only earning a minimal fee off their patents (because a person will spend hours trying to find a solution to a problem if there is a $100M reward plus the possibility of an equal amount in patent fees for that discovery whereas they won’t spend the time if they have to make the discovery and then spend a lifetime marketing something only to earn $200M, people have short-term thinking we should use it to our advantage rather than pretend it isn’t there). Batteries that will hold the kind of changes we need to make solar, wind, and electric cars actually useful, concrete mixtures that won’t wear down and require repaving every three years, room temperature superconductors, you know things that we all could benefit from but which may require the wacky genius of someone not working in a lab and trying something that no legitimate scientist would try because the scientist “knows” that it will never work.
Social Issues
Let’s take the intelligent libertarian take on social issues and neither fund nor hinder these things and let society deal with them and keep them out of government.
There are dozens of other little things I could go over but at the heart of it is a faith in the free market and individuals on the whole, with an admission that there are a few things it doesn’t work for very well. Respect for individual rights, and dedication to rule of law, and belief that human progress is both a good thing but that it doesn’t require either radical revolution or intractable stagnation.
So this is the goal. Does it have to be exactly like this? I wish, but I doubt I would ever get everything I would want. But this is a start for the conversation.
The Conservative New Ager 