When it is moral to vote for an imperfect candidate

Imagine you have just fallen off a cliff.  Your fall is stopped by small ledge. You have a chance to survive but you cannot possibly do it alone. Various people become aware of your situation and want to help.  One of them has a good rope and the strength to pull you up, but he is a flawed person with sins in his past that repulse you.  The others who come to help are weak and don't have proper rescue gear.  One of the people even wants you to fall and is preparing to tumble a boulder down on you.  You have a family at home that needs you so you need to make decision.

In my view, it is immoral for you not to choose the rescuer that has the best chance of getting you out alive.

Of course I'm talking about Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Gary Johnson and fringe candidates like Evan McMullin, the top contenders in the 2016 election to save America.  Clinton is the one preparing a boulder to toss on us: open borders, ruinous taxation, and disdain for the rule of law.  Gary Johnson and Evan McMullin have some good ideas but they don't have strong coalitions.  They can throw you some tooth floss, but they have no rope.  Trump has the coalition.  He has the rope and the strength to pull you up.  Imperfect as he is, he won't take you all the way home, but he'll get you up from the ledge.  And you'll have to keep an eye on him once your up.

When you understand the realities before us, picking a well-intentioned but ill-equipped rescuer, even if they have impeccable character, is suicidal.  If your choice negatively affects the livelihoods of others and the future of a nation, it is immoral.  This is not the time to indulge in self righteous protest votes.  It is not the time to indulge in wishful thinking about third parties.  It is time to get real and grab the only rope that can pull us to safety.

Under President Obama we were pushed off the cliff.  He initiated what is to be the eventual nationalization of the healthcare industry.  He has doubled the national debt with nothing to show for it.  The bubble economy continues and the recovery has been the weakest since the Depression.   Obama has instituted the precedent of governing like a dictator when it suits him.  As noted here, with the exception of Roosevelt, no president has justified his executive overreach by openly contending he was working around the law-making branch of government. Obama has divided the country more starkly along racial and class divisions.  These divisions are exploited to create a permanent class of people who depend on Democrats.  This is not a unifying effort.  This is an effort to balkanize and to buy votes.

Point of No Return
Enough voters expect benefits from Democrats that it may already be impossible to reform the country.   As of 2013, 35% of tax filers pay no federal tax.  12 million residents (4% of the population) are not here legally and have formed ties with sympathetic voters who believe Democrats will reward these folks .  35% of Americans receive federal welfare benefits.  When you include all federal programs, we have reached the point where over 50% of voters rely on the federal government for their welfare.    Talks of reform naturally scares those voters.  This is why we may already be doomed to collapse.  We simply don't have any more time.  We don't have the luxury of four or eight more years of Obama's policies under a Clinton presidency.

Rigged Election
Donald Trump is not the "evil" choice that I keep hearing so much about.  I just saw him stick his neck out for the unborn on National TV.  It isn't popular to challenge abortion, but he did.  He stuck is neck out to defend the Constitution, the American worker, and people of every race.  He dares call out radical Islam.  He dares to reform immigration.  He dares to be politically incorrect.  There is good in this flawed man.

Oh, I don't doubt that he may have been a philanderer.  But I'm voting for someone to save my country, not teach my Sunday School class.  I tried to get the ideal man (Ted Cruz) during the primary.  But to my chagrin, my coalition chose Trump.  As his wife said, Trump is "raw".  He is not my kind of role model in terms of demeanor.  But by the same token, his unconventional demeanor is what many voters wanted after so much political dishonesty and correctness of the years.

Accusations and video tapes have surfaced with impeccable timing.  Four weeks left before voting, and suddenly we are hearing about all kinds of supposed misdeeds that occurred decades ago.  If the media was not in the tank for Hillary, we would have heard all of this back in February when Trump was running in the primaries.  Trump got all of free coverage in those days because the media saw him as the weakest candidate against Hillary.   Meanwhile the ammunition to take him down lay dormant until the strategic moment.  The news is now 24/7 about anything salacious regarding Trump.  Meanwhile, the coverage about Hillary's corruption is downplayed.

Don't let the media use your morality against you to get their much more corrupt candidate elected.

Number one rule of Politics
If you want to succeed in real estate, they always say, "location, location, location!".  Similarly, there is only one way to succeed in politics:  coalition, coalition, coalition!  Protest votes and third parties will only bring failure.

Third Parties

Third Parties
The last time we had a new party win a national election was in 1860 when Republican Abraham Lincoln won.  Examine the following conditions and see if any of them apply today:

1. In 1860 the Democratic Party was deeply fractured.  It actually split into two conventions and nominated two different candidates.  Had they been united (as today's Democratic party is) Lincoln would have lost.
2. The Republican Party was made possible by the disintegration of the Whig Party after 1852.  The Whig Party was divided over slavery and could not survive the the turmoil over slavery.  Today's Republican Party has inept leadership, but it has no deep philosophical rift to break it up.  
3. It took 8 years for ex-Whigs, ex-Democrats and ex-Free Soilers to coalesce around the new Republican party.  The Republican party, having not yet built up a strong coalition, soundly lost the 1856 election.

The conditions for a third party to not exist today.  Also, in a first-one-past-the-post voting system such as our, it is a mathematical certainty that we'll always have just two major parties.  The only way to have persistent third parties is to have a parliamentary voting system or something like approval voting.  So any talk of a third party in the current system is just wishful thinking.  

Please Support Donald Trump

Nobody was more troubled then I was when it became apparent that Donald Trump would become the standard bearer for the Republican Party.  I was sure the country was finally ready for true principled leadership.  The Republicans fielded  several very good candidates.  But with so many candidates, it was easy for the media to elevate the one candidate who grabbed headlines for the wrong reasons. Trump was able to hijack the anti-establishment wave of sentiment and ride it to victory.

Trump helped squander the Republican debates by turning them into personality matches.   He unfairly attacked my chosen candidate, Ted Cruz.  Yes, Trump brought new faces to Republican ranks.  But he also polarized them.  Never-Trumpers have said that Trump will validate every false charge Democrats like to make about conservatives: that they are bigoted racists that favor big business.  Ben Shapiro stated that America is going toward a cliff like Thelma and Louise. He says a Hillary presidency is like flooring the gas pedal, but a Trump presidency is like yanking out the reverse handle.

So here is where I come down.  We need Trump because he is the best we have.   Our very own Constitution is an example of compromise.  Many of the framers of the Constitution would like to have outlawed slavery from day one.  But if they had stuck rigidly to those principles, the Constitution would have failed.  There is a place for pragmatism in government.  The 3/5 compromise, for example, was an imperfect solution to an intractable problem.  In the end, these compromises created the Union and allowed so much good to come to pass...including the eventual abolition of slavery.  So, should we abandon principles at the first sign of conflict?  Of course not.  The fight never ends, but at certain junctures the ideal choice is not on the table.  When that occurs, it is folly to behave otherwise.

So we know Trump is flawed.  But I call on all Americans to recognize that Hillary Clinton is much more flawed.  Dinesh D'Souza exposes the undeniable truth of this in his latest book Stealing America.  If she were a Republican, Clinton would already have been indicted and most probably convicted of selling influence and compromising national security.  Her inspiration comes from radicals such as Saul Alinksy who delight in creating unrest for political gain.  Her entire adult life has been a play for power and she'll say or do anything to get it.

Not only is her character flawed, but so is her platform.   Hillary's platform is entirely based on an attempt to forcibly correct every injustice real or perceived.  Her power, and the power of Democrats in general, comes from grievance groups.  The more grievances, the more  power.  Democratic initiatives eat at the edges of problems, but at the core, they perpetuate the problems or create different problems.  Notice how after gay marriage, the grievance mongering has now shifted to trans-gendered people.   Or take the minimum wage laws (AKA laws that make it illegal for workers to sell their labor if it isn't productive enough).  These laws increase unemployment and make it harder for new workers to get a start.  For Democrats the minimum wage will never be enough.  After it gets to 15, the battle will be for 20.  The knobs will never be perfect, and so this becomes a perpetual grievance machine.  As proof that Democratic policies perpetuate or worsen problems just look at the finances of Democratic states or the living conditions is many Democratic cities.  Democrats run 9 out of 10 of the most crime ridden cities of the U.S.  Democrats need poverty, racism, and discord in order to get votes.  As D'Souza demonstrates, Democrats need to keep people "on the plantation" every bit as much today as they did during the years of slavery.  Today's plantation is the inner city.  Today's underclass needs more self-worth, a stronger family life, and jobs.  Democratic policies diminish all three.

Back to Trump.  His platform is actually quite awesome.  I don't know how much of it he would actually deliver on, but if he only accomplished 30% of what he says, we'll see amazing results.  A quick run-down on the best of Trump:  1) Lowering tax rates on American business and  simplifying the tax code. 2) Replacing Obamacare with fully deductible transparent health insurance that does not have to be tied to your employer. 3) Enforcing immigration law. (Note: it is pro-immigrant when we treat all immigrants fairly under the law...it is a dishonest and lowbrow tactic  to claim that border enforcement is racist.) 4) Trade reform.  I'm a free trade guy.  But, I concede that China could be a better trading partner.  5) Judges.  The Constitution is doomed if Hillary puts another Ginsburg on the bench.  6)  Check it your self. https://www.donaldjtrump.com/issues/

Would Trump drop these promises after being elected?  Sure he might.  But, I agree with Dinesh D'Sousa, we may not know for sure what a Trump Presidency will look like.  But we DO know what a Hillary presidency looks like.  I'll take uncertain success over certain doom any day.

Would I put all these great solutions at risk by being preoccupied with Donald Trump's abrasive personality?  Donald Trump is at times a jerk.  But, I must confess that I too am at times a jerk.  I have lapsed into thoughtless remarks and insensitivity.   I like to believe that I am a good person.  If I can be a jerk but ultimately a good person, so can Donald Trump.

All big social causes were won when people with different back grounds banded together to make change.  The word for that is coalition.  A Trump win does not tarnish my classical liberal conservative beliefs as long as I fight for them with equal zeal regardless of who is in the White House.  And I will.  We fought the good fight for the purest form of our cause during the primary season.  That is over, and if we can't join the coalition, we all lose.

Bernie Sanders' socialism would be a disaster for everyone

With the rise of Bernie Sanders as a serious contender for president, it is evident that many Americans are turning to socialism as the solution to our problems.  It is amazing how quickly the lessons of history are forgotten. These Americans should know that socialism has already been tried, and hundreds of millions of people suffered because of it.  The Soviet Union, China, India, and even the United States have already tried socialism in different forms.  Each and every time scarce resources were removed from free market based allocation, the standard of living significantly lagged or regressed compared to free economies.  In some cases, mass starvation resulted.

Bernie Sanders has self-identified as a democratic socialist. According to the constitution of the Democratic Socialists of America, the goal of socialism is to remove profit and loss as a mechanism for allocating resources. Instead, they would place bureaucrats in charge of most resources and production.  This is supposed to be okay because the bureaucrats are controlled by democratically elected officials. This, they believe, means that the people control the economy.

The problem with socialism is simple.  It removes true pricing as a means of transmitting information about how to allocate scarce resources.  Socialists want to shoot the messenger that tells them that something is scarce.  Socialists would eliminate profit.  Profit (and loss) is the price signal that indicates that capital has been put to good use.  Socialists want to provide “free” health care, extra time off, and college tuition.  Making things free hides the fact that these resources are scarce.  Lastly, socialists would eliminate wage disparity.  Wages are the signal of how productive labor is.  In all three cases I mentioned, the socialist economy will destroy, hide, or distort information about the reality that underlies the economy.  When society’s behavior doesn’t match reality, people suffer.

China, under Mao Zedong, adopted a completely socialized economy.  All production was governed by “the people” through government officials. In 1958 he instituted the “Great Leap Forward.” This was an ambitious plan to overtake western economies in industrial output.  Having eliminated the evils of capitalism (market driven pricing and allocation) Mao could realize the dream of socialist superiority.  Farmers were forced to give up private property and organize into communes.  Inefficient production methods were implemented by uninformed officials.  Planners mandated initiatives such as “backyard furnaces” for steel production, controversial agricultural techniques, and ill-planned irrigation projects.  The goal was utopian plenty for all, the result was economic devastation and the deadliest famine in history with a death toll of around 30 million. 

Democratic socialists are quick to distance themselves from communist failures such as these because they reject totalitarianism.  Yes, there are differences between communists and socialists in how power is maintained, but they have the same economic strategy: replacing market pricing with central planners.  The story of China’s economic successes over the last several decades has been the story of liberalization and the adoption of free market principles.

India, too, has tried socialism.  The Indian Constitution says India is a "Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic".  From the time of independence in 1947 until 1991 Indians lived under a system that has been called the License Raj.  This was a system of heavy handed control of the economy by government bureaucrats.  What resulted was half a century of stagnation.  When India abandoned central planning in 1991 it became one of the world's fastest growing economies.  The average growth rate jumped from 2% to 6%.  As Thomas Sowell put it, "The cumulative effect of growing three times as fast as before was that millions of Indians rose out of poverty".

Prior to liberalization, the Indian consumer would wait months, sometimes years to buy a car such as the Hindustan Ambassador...a copy of the British Morris Oxford which remained virtually unchanged for 40 years.  In state-owned banks, costumers would wait in lines that stretched out the door.  Indian business owners were saddled with so much red tape that it was easier to open new factories in foreign countries despite greater labor costs.  A poignant example of Indian socialism is this story about price controls: Poor in India Starve as Surplus Wheat Rots. 

Probably the most famous example of socialism is that of the Soviet Union.  In order to compare the USSR with Bernie Sander's ideal government, we must overlook the worst of communist oppression which is clearly not the goal of democratic socialists.  So, I will overlook the millions of deaths caused under Stalin and focus on the years afterwards.  The soviet economy was completely planned.  Everyone had a job.  Zero unemployment.  It sounds great until you realize that prices were not reflecting the reality of scarcity.  Everything was rationed by waiting in queues.  Quality and choice suffered.  Black and grey markets supplied people with services that the official economy could not provide.

Waste and inefficiency was rampant.  In Basic Economics, Thomas Sowell describes how Soviet planners mistakenly set too high a price on moleskins with the result that surplus pelts rotted in warehouses before they could be processed.  The planners ignored requests to lower the price for moleskins because they were too busy regulating another 24 million prices.  Socialism replaces distributed decision making (also known as liberty) with top-down control.  This control led to inefficiency across the board.  State operated farms were very inefficient.  Though only 3% of arable land was operated privately in 1980, that land was over 1000% more productive than state run farms.  As another example, Soviet Industry used more electricity than American industries while producing less.  Eventually the inefficiencies grew unbearable and the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. 

Many people do not realize that the United States is also greatly influenced by socialism.  We have numerous examples of state planning interfering with a free allocation of resources.  A wave of government activism in the economy began with Woodrow Wilson when he signed the Federal Reserve Act.  The Federal Reserve System was one of the causes of the Great Depression.  The depression then led to an alphabet soup of programs, most of which ended up increasing the severity and lengthening the duration of the depression (See Burton Folsom's book New Deal Or Raw Deal).  Nixon used price controls.  Lyndon Johnson waged an unsuccessful war on poverty.  Laws intended to promote home ownership caused the housing boom, and later bust.  Government red tape of the last decade has led to a slow recovery.  We have too-big-to-fail businesses protected by government.  All the elements we have seen in India, China, and the Soviet Union exist in the United States to some degree.  The problems of a shrinking middle class, rising health care costs, and high college tuition are the result of socialistic intervention.  It is appalling that Bernie Sander's would prescribe more socialism as the antidote to the problems caused by socialism.

Bernie Sander's has said "I think we should look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway".  These are his ideal examples of democratic socialism.  He fails to understand that we are already like those countries.  Scandinavian countries rate closely with the United States in the Index of Economic Freedom.  The scores of the U.S. Denmark, Sweden, and Norway for 2016 are 75.4, 75.3, 72.0, and 70.8 respectively.   Where they may have high taxation, they make up for it with more business freedom and less corruption.  The United States federal government spends about 40% of GDP per year, much of it on social programs. When you take into account our debt, corporate taxes, and the hidden tax of inflation, our tax rates aren't that different than Scandinavia.  That is socialism.  Couldn't some of our problems be the result of the socialism we already have?  And couldn't some of Scandinavia's success be due to the free market capitalism they have?  The answer is yes and yes.  Just like India, recent economic success there is also the result of market liberalization.   

Free market based allocation of resources has been proven to be the most efficient and equitable method over the long term.  It is also more democratic than “democratic” socialism.  People voting for public officials are voting for a package deal taking the bad with the good.  Voters are also engaging in speculation since they are voting for unrealized promises.  And they cannot change their votes during long intervals between elections.  Thomas Sowell explains that in a free market, consumers make their choices every day. “A person and can buy one company’s milk and another company’s cheese…then they can change their minds a day or a week later and make wholly different choices.”  Nothing forces entrenched powers to kneel to the will of the people better than the great voting machine known as the Free Market.  

In short, socialists such as Bernie Sanders would destroy both of the things they claim to care about: democracy and prosperity.

The Threat of Excessive Sameness

This summer I have been touring the southern United States.  I have been in the valley of the Rio Grande, the bayous of Louisiana, the forests of Mississippi, and the reefs of Florida.   I marvel at the diverse landscapes and people.  I have tasted Cajun crawfish, New Orleans pralines, and Florida key lime ice cream.  I have experienced Hispanic culture in Miami and African American hospitality in Georgia.  I have seen people of different stripes.  Some excel in science, some have a love of history, some have faith, some have unique talent.

I like diversity.  I like places with different geography, cultures of all types, and people of all races.  I love the uniqueness of the different regions of our country.  I'm glad that we have distributed government that helps protect this diversity.

It is great that the world is smaller than ever with our modern communications and transportation systems.  We can experience diversity more easily than ever.  But this is a double edged sword.  We can contaminate people, places, and cultures more easily than ever too. There is a worrisome trend toward sameness.  Whenever I got outside of the historic districts, I was presented with the same gas stations, the same department stores, and the same food.  I am as guilty as anyone at patronizing multinational establishments.  When I walked into Walmart last week near Cape Canaveral, Florida, I felt like I was transported instantly to the Walmart back home in Colorado.

I am worried that we are nationalizing too much.   I was always on the lookout for interesting local foods and snacks at gas stations. But the offerings were exactly the same all across the country.  It is convenient to drive into a McDonald's and not have to worry about unknowns in price, food style, and service levels.  When you shop local establishments you risk being inconvenienced by the unexpected.  But that is what makes life interesting.

It isn't just the chain stores that introduce sameness.  Our ecosystems are being damaged by invasive species.  World travel has enabled people to bring with them exotic plants and animals that threaten local wildlife. Zebra mussels have invaded Texas, Asian hydrilla is clogging Louisiana bayous, and Burmese pythons have destroyed a large percentage of the fauna living in the Florida Everglades. This writer for the Tulane/Xavier Center for Bio-environmental Research also agrees:

 The phenomenal diffusion of species in new environments has many ecologists contemplating the possibility of a "global McEcosystem." Just as franchised fast food has homogenized local cuisines, species introduction may homogenize the world’s biodiversity.  (http://is.cbr.tulane.edu/InvasiveSpecies.html accessed 7/12/2015)

I also worry about cultural sameness.  When I was in the Acadian region of Louisiana, I didn't hear much French.  When I was in Georgia and South Carolina, I didn't hear as much southern drawl as I would have expected.  It could possibly be that I have spent too much time in the tourist areas.  Tourist sites attract people from all over.  When I went to a local ice cream shop near Charleston, the servers had a Scandinavian accent.  When I went to a fruit stand in Florida, it was run by Guatemalans.  I think the concept of "local" is being blurred.  At least I have heard a healthy dose of "ya'all".  I love that idiom.

Lastly, I worry about social and political sameness.  A few weeks ago the Supreme Court removed two more forms of regional distinctness: health care and marriage law.  We are fast going down the path of having a national identity that doesn't allow for regional variety in anything but the historical monuments (and even those are under attack**).  The Supreme court swept away the ability for state governments to reflect regional differences in civil law with respect to homosexual parternerships.  Marriage law was written by the supreme court.  This would make sense if the issue at hand was an inalienable right.  Like driving, hunting, or getting a college degree, marriage is a right conferred by authorities based on a charter decided upon by the people.  But now one-size-fits-all social and medical institutions are being laid down.  It's McDonalds, McEcosystem, and McMorality.  What is next?  Will SCOTUS decide that all states must have uniform laws with respect to gambling and prostitution?  Excessive sameness was not the design of our federal system.

The globalization of everything is a tide that probably cannot be turned back.  Europeans destroyed the way of life of the American native peoples.  Change and  homogenization is a fact of life.  But we shouldn't give up on distinctiveness.  I'm glad there are those that fight to preserve cultures.  Just as we can fight the invasive species and other damage to our ecosystem, we can hold the destructive forces at bay and, with effort, preserve some of the diversity we hold dear.


**After reading about the removal of the Confederate Flag from being flown at the South Carolina State capitol, I came to agree with the removal due to the special circumstances here. But there is no reason to erase every vestige of that history...the Confederate South was not an evil empire as modern revisionists are trying to portray.   It was misguided...but so have many governments been.  I see a lot of goodness in those people and I celebrate their sacrifices as much anyone else's.