TGIF: Clueless Presidential Candidates

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are no friends of liberty. This is not breaking news, of course. In fact, I can’t think of a less controversial statement: unlike past Democratic and Republican presidential candidates, they don’t even pay lip service to liberty. I can’t recall either of them talking about the need to roll back government power to give individuals more room to make their own decisions. Clinton believes in choice only in the matter of ending pregnancies. I don’t disagree, but is that the only freedom of choice worth protecting. Trump says nothing about freedom in any area of life. Even when he talks about curtailing business regulation, he does so purely as a way to stimulate the economy. Like Clinton, he has no ear for liberty.

Read the rest at The Libertarian Institute website.

TGIF (The Goal Is Freedom) appears on Fridays. Sheldon Richman, author of America's Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited, keeps the blog Free Association and is executive editor of The Libertarian Institute. He is also a senior fellow and chair of the trustees of the Center for a Stateless Society and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com. Become a Free Association patron today!

Regarding the Presidential Debates

I want to make sure I understand this: The nonpartisan commission created and run by the Republican and Democratic parties won't include anyone but the Republican and Democratic candidates in the debate because the other contenders, who theoretically could win 270 electoral votes, did not meet its arbitrary polling threshold, a gauge that is almost entirely in the hands of the corporate news media. Is that it?