Oh, 'Bama!

by Alberto Arredondo

As we cheer on our favorite sports team we cheer on our favorite political parties and personalities. We are comforted in our side winning, whether it’s the big game or the election. But what does it really matter to us if Alabama or Texas wins the big game? Our lives will go on either way though touched, perhaps, with a bit of joy, entertainment, disappointment, or indifference. And though a Republican supporter may be thrilled in one election and a Democrat in the next, we may as well be cheering for a sports team because neither party is capable of governing in a way that we all pine for when recalling the ancient stories of our nation’s founding, stories that have been transformed to myth precisely because of each party’s incapacity to lead.

I was thinking of the analemma which shows the position of the sun on any given day following a path that traces the horizon upon the sun’s rising over the year. It’s as if Democrats are a cult whose goal is to reach the sun by traveling a bit left in the mornings and Republicans a bit right. Each side firmly believes that their way will get them to the sun and that the other side is misguided, foolhardy, or even underhanded. Yet neither side realizes that following any path along the earth will never lead them to the sun. Libertarians lift a rocket toward the skies and are misunderstood or even ignored by the general public who follow the fruitless leftward or rightward journey to the sun.

In order to break the public of the spell that leads the majority of us to follow a fool’s path, we must accept that we must take back our personal responsibility that we’ve traded away to the government. We must accept the consequences of the risks we take, we must accept the consequences of the choices we make. This, one would think, is natural, but we’ve been ceding this to the government for decades.

Jefferson succinctly stated the Libertarian principle, “Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law,' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.” Yet the answer offered by Democrats and Republicans is law upon law upon law, each one designed to untangle complexities created by previous laws but only adding to the snare. This continuous complexity and resulting limitation of “unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others”, supported by the general public, is equivalent to the fool’s errand of reaching the sun by walking towards it.

When making our choices in the ballot box we must forget the quips, personalities, tie colors, smiles, apparent compassion, and eloquence of politicians as well as our comfort their supporters. Choosing candidates on this basis is like choosing a team because you were born in the vicinity or you like their colors. Instead we have to ask ourselves how our government got to be the way it is and wonder how it is that those that led us here can possibly lead us to liberty. The alternative that the mainstream political class will have you dismiss is precisely the one that, if you choose it, will compel you to dismiss them for good.

For all those sports fans out there, let me put it another way, forget the Senators, go Rockets!