Watched 20+ mins of an interview with Libertarian candidate Jo Jorgenson from last week.
https://reason.com/2020/10/16/jo-jorgensen-requiring-people-to-vaccinate-their-children-is-one-of-the-most-egregious-things-that-the-government-can-do/She's pretty mediocre. Even when she starts with an answer I support, her argument veers off into weakness or irrelevance.
Then there's just nonsense she spouts at times:
JoJo claims both parties are heading towards socialism since they both grow the federal gov't. Well, I guess if you count
national socialism as socialism ... maybe. But it's kind of comical defining both Trump and Biden as socialists.
JoJo also claims that the Dems are against freedom because back in 2012 Obama and Hillary were opposed to gay marriage. Pretty weak sauce. I'm pretty sure they were supportive of civil unions and were just afraid of getting ahead of popular opinion, which quickly blew past them. And of course now they are strong backers of gay marriage. And Jo Jo just weakly lumps Biden in there, acknowledging he never really took any position back then. So what a big nothing that condemnation was.
She wants to reduce the US military by ending all operations overseas. Her go to line is making the US a giant Switzerland. Now you can easily make the case that the US military wastes money, is in way too many countries, and the US military presence often makes things worse. But there's a huge issue of who fills the vacuum. Take a look at Libya and Syria if you want to see how things go when the US abdicates and stays on the sidelines. And it would be an immense gift to Putin and China to expand their regional power, influence, bullying. She also wants the US to pull out of all international agencies and treaties.I do agree with the Libertarians that the war on drugs is the problem. And comparing Drug Prohibition to Alcohol Prohibition is instructive. But the rest of her argument could be tightened up. She mentioned the racial impact of the drug war. But should add in the corruption and expansion of police and police powers. And the utter corruption and devastation of Mexico and Central/South America, fueling violence and immigration to the US.
She asks who do you trust more to make decisions about spending money and shaping society: business or government. Probably not expecting me to vote government.
She also makes a big deal about education and crime/policing being local issues.
But that seems a recipe for more racism and inequality, corruption and bad decisions. The Feds got into education mainly because the South were vehemently opposed to integration preferring apartheid America. Hell, in Virginia one county actually shut down all of their public schools instead of integrating. Minority rights don't exactly get well-represented or respected at the local level.
Otherwise Jo Jo likes to bring up that she was a teacher for no reason at random moments. There really seems to be a purist extremism, which I guess you can maintain when you have zero chance of winning. But I think the Libertarians would be better served by adapting their principles and ideals to the practical task of governing.
It wasn't mentioned, but my biggest knock would be how they would reduce/remove most gov't regulation on business who could go back to polluting and treating workers as disposable items. And their Covid policy is basically people can decide what to do and how to protect their own health, which ordinarily is fine, but not when that person could be infectious and potentially infect dozens or even hundreds of others. You simply don't allow potential Typhoid Marys to walk around in public because they have a right to freedom. How about others right to health and staying alive. It's just totally irresponsible and goes against the science and public health, which is exactly one of the core responsibilities of gov't.
Simply put, keeping people alive and healthy and not in danger of dying is way more important than someone else's freedom to not wear a mask in public.
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