My, I seem to have lit a small conflagration.

Will Wilkinson says (among other things):

For all I know, Rand may have the political calculus right: the net loss to liberty is smaller under Republicans. But this really just misses the point.

Well, no. I think that it’s Will who’s missing the point. My point was not that this kind of stuff doesn’t dissuade freedom-seeking voters–it clearly does. My only point was that, given the available options, it shouldn’t. He (and Glenn) are discussing “is.” I’m discussing “ought.”

If it’s the case that the Republicans are on the whole better for liberty, then Rand should be very concerned that Republicans aren’t associated in the popular imagination with obnoxious, unappealing, totalitarian lifestyle philosophies.

I never said that I wasn’t concerned about it, and I’m certainly not defending Ashcroft–I think that he’s an ass. I am concerned about it, but it does no good for me to simply be concerned about it.

I wish that all Republicans, or all Democrats, or all of both parties, would overnight become libertarian. But wishes aren’t horses, so I’ll have to keep on walking. All that I can try to do is assuage other’s (IMHO, mistaken) concerns about the bedroom police if Republicans take over the government.

Most people aren’t as bright as Rand, and they aren’t very interested in determining what political program is really in their best interests. What people are interested in is a sense of identity. If a party grates against our sense of the kind of person we’d like to be, then we don’t want anything to do with it.

Which is why we have a responsibility to continue to propogate anti-idiotarianism (to the best of our limited abilities), so that either the Republican Party will grate less, or people will vote in a more rational manner.

For me, effective socialists grate far more than bumbling moralists. Again, Will purports to speak for all these nameless others, but I sense that he’s really speaking for himself as well (since he used the pronoun “our”). He’d apparently really rather vote for (or at least “identify with”) people who will rob him blind, as long as they’ll get down and party with him (though I understand from other posts on his site that he doesn’t vote at all).

It’s not just the Taxman, Will. It’s the guy who doesn’t let you drain a mud puddle because it’s a wetland. It’s a public-school principal who will let your kid die of asthma rather than let her keep her inhaler. It’s the corrupt politician who will consign inner-city kids to an illiterate hell in order to satisfy the teacher’s unions.

For all of his idiocy, has Ashcroft been worse for civil rights than Janet Reno? Ask the barbecued kids in Waco. Ask Elian.

What I’m saying is that this is at least partly, if not mostly, a perception problem (and Will and Glenn seem to agree in their commentary). Well, then part of the solution is to change the perception. That was the point of my post.