Politicians

In our television era, politicians—like soap—are "sold" to the public in attractive and gaudy packages. Unlike soap, however, we never get a chance to unwrap and test the contents of the package. When we gauge an office seeker by his smile or by the charm he gives off, we chase a will-o'-the-wisp. We poor voters, bombarded by press releases and staged TV appearances, can't know a man's true character. We can only judge his policies, for different policies cause different results. So we must learn to tell the difference between a man's smile and his ideas.

A particular Senator (e.g., a libertarian) may never actually vote for a tax bill, but he has the legal right nonetheless. The privilege resides in the office. A person elected to high political office allies himself with the power of leviathan. He voluntarily seeks and successfully achieves the privileges of political office which permit him to aggress against his neighbors—privileges enforced by the State. Such a person is a dangerous threat to innocent persons everywhere ... The protest of the libertarian office-holder—that he intends to use his power for beneficent ends—is beside the point.

I have attempted to show what it means to say that an anarchist politician contributes to State injustice merely by filling a role (i.e., holding political office). I have attemped to show why the intentions of the politician are irrelevant ... Political offices are indispensable roles in the State apparatus; and ... anyone who fills these roles contributes, however inadvertently, to the State process (monopoly of power) and product (sovereignty) ... Thus the anarchist politician is like the auto worker who claims to be building a boat, and who professes surprise when a car comes out anyway against his wishes.

Now we hear talk of a "final push," a sudden increase in the number of troops to leave some sort of semi-permanent imprint on the chaos. How many more have to die in order to save the face of the Washington know-it-alls? This once again underlines the basic principle at the heart of any peace movement worthy of the name: put not your trust in politicians. The people voted to get us out of Iraq, and instead the Democrats will stand idly by – at best – while we get in deeper. They can concentrate on extending the welfare state and wait for the Baker Commission to somehow magically come up with a comfortably "bipartisan" solution.

They are doing it again. "They" are the war-party politicians, Democrats and Republicans. "It" is scaring you into supporting another war in the Middle East. When will the American people learn? If in a republic the people are the ultimate check on government power, a gullible, easily frightened public is a disaster waiting to happen. Where is the derisive skepticism Americans are reputed to feel toward politicians? ... Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), for example, goes to absurd lengths to frighten Americans ... He forecast the deaths of hundreds of millions of Americans if something drastic is not done.

In sizing up Obama's "reforms" of the indiscriminate gathering of data on every American, remember this: Politicians will do everything they can get away with in pursuit of their own agenda. To them, liberty and privacy are unimportant, things to be gotten around with the minimum of public attention. Should the public get wind of some untoward thing the politicians are up to—as it did, thanks to Edward Snowden—they will put on a public-relations show to lull the people back to sleep, enabling the state once again to go about its unsavory business unobserved.

Buchanan: ... [C]ommon sense tells you that a politician is very much like the rest of us. A politician who's seeking office or seeking to remain in office ... wants to go back to a constituency and tell them that he's either lowered their taxes, or he's brought them program benefits. You plug that into politics and you have a natural proclivity of a politician to create deficits. Then the question comes along: Why didn't we have deficits before? You see the Keynesian economic revolution gave the politicians an excuse for deficits. You give politicians half an excuse ...

HESS: ... You don't have to do anything to write speeches for politicians. You don't have to know anything. You don't even have to think. All you have to do is be glib and invent great phrases. Historic phrases. You see, all politicians want to go down in the history books. Right? And history books are written, by and large (chuckle), by idiots. And idiots look for meaningless but good-sounding phrases. That's why all political administrations have to have slogans. All except the good ones, that is ... Like what was George Washington's administration called? Or Jefferson's? Madison's?