From: Tim Hruby (hruby@his.com)
Date: Tue Mar 16 1999 - 12:55:15 MST
At 1:38 PM -0500 3/16/99, Harry S. Hawk wrote:
> I'm endorsing Steven Forbes in his bid to be the next President.
>
> While he certainly isn't an extropian (big or little e), and there are
> issues that I completely disagree with him on, I feel he represents
> the best hope to get a Libertarian minded President (in this century
> or the next).
Unfortunately, I can't share your view that Forbes is a Libertarian or a
minarchist. He may have been one four years ago, but (if so) that was in
the past, and is not a reflection of his present beliefs.
Whether (a) his views have changed, (b) he is simply more expressive of his
long-held views on issues that he was silent about in the 1996 campaign, or
(c) he is simply whoring his beliefs in an effort to gain the Republican
nomination, Steve Forbes has dramatically pandered to the religious right
in the U.S. over the past 2-3 years. If he was libertarian-minded at one
point in time, he has cast those beliefs aside and joined forces with
statists who would regulate morality. While economic freedom is a bedrock
libertarian concept, it is not the only freedom important to libertarians,
and reasonable people may differ over whether it is even the most important
freedom in the canon.
Support him if you will. It's a free country, at least in such matters.
He may even be the lesser of the many evils we have to choose between. But
in my view, he's shown himself to be at best a political whore and at worst
a statist moralist. I don't give my vote to either.
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