November 6, 2018
Notwithstanding all the heated pronouncements in the mainstream press and among the Republican and Democrat political machines, nothing is going to change as a result of today’s election. There is a simple reason for that: There isn’t really any difference between Democrats and Republicans, at least not in a fundamental sense. The election is about power and money. That’s what the two political parties are fighting over.
In fact, I say two parties but actually it’s one party that is divided into two wings, the Democrats and the Republicans, much like the NFL is divided into two conferences. One league, two wings. One party, two wings.
We can call the Democrat-Republican Party the Welfare-Warfare Party. That’s because they both support and defend the concept of a welfare state and a warfare state. Their “differences” involve minor variations in how their welfare-warfare state should be managed and controlled. But such “differences” are really just minor distinctions without substantive difference.
Consider, for example, Medicare. Republicans are sending out scare emails saying that the Democrats want to expand this federal program to Medicare for All. But Republicans are clear when it comes to Medicare: They don’t want to abolish this socialist program. They want Medicare for Some but not Medicare for all. Wow! What a big difference! I need to hurry up and get out and vote!
Or consider immigration controls. Republican scare emails are accusing Democrats of wanting open borders. That’s flat-out false. Democrats favor immigration controls just as much as Republicans do. Don’t forget, after all, that before Donald Trump was elected president, his predecessor, President Obama, was setting all sorts of records for forced deportations of immigrants living in the United States. Don’t forget also that we have had almost a hundred years of immigration controls under both Democrats and Republicans. In fact, it was Democrat President Franklin Roosevelt, citing U.S. immigration controls, who refused Hitler’s offer to send German Jews out of Germany in the 1930s, before Hitler resorted to the Holocaust.
It is only we libertarians who favor open borders. Both Democrats and Republicans oppose open borders. They both agree with the overall socialist concept of immigration central planning and embrace the immigration police state that comes with socialism. Their differences are over the manner of immigration police-state enforcement.
Consider the drug war, the most racist government program since segregation. Despite all the hoopla about bigotry and racism in America, how many Republican and Democrat candidates for Congress have emphasized the need to end this bigoted program, fully and completely, once and for all? Not any. Democrats and Republicans are all so obsessed with punishing people for ingesting things that federal officials don’t approve of that they don’t dare even mention the massive death, destruction, violence, gang wars, corruption, and robberies spawned by their beloved decades-long drug war.
Consider the Pentagon’s and CIA’s unconstitutional forever wars in faraway lands, along with the national-security state governmental apparatus that is needed to wage them. How much did you hear about these things during the mid-term campaign? Not much, at least not from Democrats and Republicans. That’s because they love their forever wars and their national-security state. They especially love the power and the largess that comes with these wars, especially for their contractor and subcontractor political donors within the military-industrial complex who are making a killing off these wars. Moreover, there isn’t a Democrat or Republican congressional candidate who isn’t scared to death to question the need for the military welfare in his particular state or district, for fear of being accused of not “bringing home the bacon” from the income-tax largess that the IRS has collected from people all over the nation.
What America needs is a political earthquake, one that shakes America’s welfare-warfare ground with sound moral and economic principles. Obviously, that is not going to come from either Democrats or Republicans.