Time for a third party with Gary Johnson

by Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 12/6/11

I said “hey” to Gary Johnson as he was standing mournfully outside the state house in Concord, NH, when he signed on to the primary. The former governor of New Mexico seemed the most normal or human of the candidates; does not “prepare a face to meet the faces that he meets” or see himself as an object that is Gary Johnson, candidate, as most of the others see themselves. We talked of Tuckerman Ravine and New Hampshire. He said recently on the John Stossel show that he could possibly run as a third-party candidate. I hope he does.

Others threaten to do so, like Trump and Bloomberg, but they would run as third or fourth gargantuan party just like the other two but with themselves as the new Godzilla.

But Gary Johnson, with Ron Paul, has added enormously to this campaign. As he told Stossel, the rising energies in conservatism today are in Libertarianism and Johnson is a libertarian. Most of the gargantuans, or globalists or neo-totalitarians - Clinton, Bono, Trump, Bloomberg - act out of a basic anthropology which would claim that if you can conquer New York City then you have conquered the citadel and you have conquered the world. The presumption is that people are sheep, but our two existing globalist parties helped make them sheep. There is little inner satisfaction in conquering sheep. A libertarian third party approach would liberate individuals, freeing them from the neurosis to “save the world” and guide the child instead to Krishnamurti’s direction, allowing them to free and conquer themselves as individuals and as communities. This cannot be done with a top down, one-size-fits-all federal government.

I was drafted into libertarianism in 2003 when I wrote an article titled “A states’ rights defense against Dick Cheney.” It took a long time to figure out what it was, but Johnson, Ron and Rand Paul and Judge Andrew Napolitano have clarified things. I claimed then not knowing it was libertarian that New Hampshire and Vermont need not participate in the war on Iraq citing Jefferson’s Kentucky Resolutions.

In those days it seemed only a few hundred were listening, but today millions nightly follow Judge Andrew Napolitano on states’ rights, constitutional government, Austrian economics and personal freedom. I have never voted for a third party but would not this round consider voting for either Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich. It would be a nice option.

Besides the books of Judge Napolitano, there are two recent free state and libertarian books that some western governors are already using as texts: Rick Perry’s “Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America from Washington” and “Nullification” by Thomas Woods. I have spoken at a series of conferences which featured both Johnson and Woods and the energy and ideas presented brought a vitality that I’ve not seen elsewhere in my lifetime. It brings new karma arising. Much is to be done in this regard because most states are in truth not ready for self government and rely on federal government as the inmates of the cuckoo's nest rely on Big Nurse. The northeastern states; the oldest states and Vermont in particular, are most dependent. These are ideas for new people and new regions like Texas, California and Johnson’s New Mexico: The west is the best.

That is where the future of the free state lies. Those who have made the journey across the desert sense it, feel it, and Washington, D.C. is just too far away to tell them what to do.

Would a third party skew results. This time, in a race between Newt Gingrich and Barack Obama it makes little difference.

The late distinguished historian David Smiley used to say that when the United States moved to centralized government in the 1850s all of the major governments in the world followed suit. It may prove to have been the greatest disaster ever to befall the human race. Johnson, the Pauls, Napolitiano and company offer us an auspicious new beginning.