Attribute to L. Neil Smith's The Libertarian Enterprise

In 1964, one of the most formative years in American history, the "movers and shakers" in the Republican Party were faced with the terrible prospect of the voters actually getting the candidate they wanted, instead of whatever member of Skull & Bones and the Council On Foreign Relations the party elite, in their wisdom, had chosen for them.

I was an enthusiastic part of a movement then that was almost indistinguishable from the Tea Party movement of today, pretty much with all the same virtues and failings: for better or worse, almost exactly the same general cast of characters. Nevertheless, over the outraged squawking of the GOP leadership, it was the candidate we wanted, Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, who won the nomination that year.

Goldwater wasn't the first mid-20th century conservative to occupy the political spotlight. That would be Senator Robert Tafta little before my timewho was cheated out of the nomination by a corrupt and empty GOP leadership that had thrown its support to a lifelong Democrat, General Dwight David Eisenhower, no warrior, and not a man of great moral character, but a military politician deluxe, whom billions of wartime propaganda dollars had elevated to virtual godhood.

Barry wasn't by any means a libertarian, either. The word had hardly been invented, but there were those of usmostly Ayn Rand readerswho willingly accepted his shortcomings, largely because the man seemed to be illuminated from within, by the flame of liberty. There hadn't been anybody quite like him since the original Founding Fathers.

That, of course was exactly what had the GOP country-club elite, the old-money Republicans, quivering with terror. In effect, their fortunes depended on ignoring the Constitution and violating the rights of millions of Americans. Aided by mass media that were just as evil, stupid, and insaneand just as left-leaningas today, they had desperately attempted to offer up one of their own lofty kind, instead.

"PLU" the Brits call them"people like us."

It's possible that you're too young to remember that in 1964, the Democratic "foe" was Lyndon Baines Johnson, a Texas politico famously "crooked a barrel of fish hooks", the former Senate leg-breaker who, as Vice President, took over the White House after Jack Kennedy was murdered in Dallas. It's worth noting here that it's recently been revealed that Jackie Kennedy always thought Johnson had arranged the assassination. She wasn't alone: in college there was an underground play, a parody of what actors call "the Scottish play" entitled MacBird.

In 1964, the lines were clearly drawn. Johnson was a socialist who infiltrated groups of dissenters, X-rayed people's mail, used the IRS to hound his enemies to death, and was waging what would be a long, drawn-out, hideous, and illegal war in Vietnam for reasons that still elude explanation. At the same time, he was expanding tax-supported entitlement programs that, in the end, still contribute to America's ruin.

Goldwater wanted to end welfare, balance the budget, and sell off white elephants like the Tennessee Valley Authority. He was in favor of gun ownership and self-defense, blaming the incredibly high violent crime rate at the time (look up "Kitty Genovese") on a failure to respect the Constitution. One serious mistake on his partand despite the fact that Johnson was the real war-monger, Barry paid for it dearly in the mediawas that he failed to see that the war in Asia was unjustifiable. He wanted to end it quickly, with overwhelming force.

Conservatives todayeven those nominally on our side, the correct side, of most other issuescontinue making the same idiotic mistake.

But I digress.

Johnson was a collectivist. Goldwater was an individualist. The elite leaders of the Republican Party were, uh, what was the question again?

You may be old enough to remember Nelson Rockefellerthis guy was typical of the lot, who, in fact, the mass media referred to as "Rockefeller Republicans". An inheritor of his grand-daddy John D. Rockefeller's billions, former Republican Governor of New York state, captain of industry, master mercantilist, and pioneering environmental fascist, some fifteen years after 1964, he died slaving over a hot secretary.

Rockefeller and his gang were often called "moderate" because they were only moderately in favor of the defense of liberty, and only moderately opposed to injustice. It was to them that Goldwater was speaking when he uttered the famous words written for him by Karl Hess. The media and his mostly-Republican opponents said Barry was crazy. (They should have met Karl!) One magazine that claimed 1800 psychiatrists had diagnosed him as insane was sued out of its lying existence.

Rockefeller was the very epitome of the useless parasite who thinks he owns Americanot just land and buildings, not just farms and factories, not just railroads and airlinesthe people of the country, you and me, our friends and families, who exist, in the view of slugs like Rockefeller, only to make him wealthier. If it happens to be by working their lives away for his corporations, while half of what they earn is stolen by the government he also owns, that's just fine. If it's by being sent overseas by the thousands or millions to kill or die, so he can fill his coffers with war profit, that's fine, too.

In the end, although he won the nomination, the Republicans went limp on Barry. Some even bragged about going on vacation during the election. To those who knew what to look for, the treachery was plain to seeand impossible to forget. Obviously they preferred to see a proto-Marxist win the Presidency, and destroy the country with an insane war and even more insane spending, while trashing individual liberty and civil rights. The 1968 Gun Control Act was passed by the Johnson regime, but that was just okey-dokey with the Rockefeller Republicansthey were vehemently anti-gun themselves. It's clear that if one of them had been elected instead, it would have made no historical difference at all. Politically, they were all Johnson clones.

Sound familiar?

Today, every scribbler or babbler in the "Mainstream Media", and at least three quarters of the pundits in the "New Media", for reasons of their own, want desperately for you to believe that if America's next President isn't going to be Barack Obama, then it has to be Mitt Romney.

"Elect Socialist Party B to avoid electing Socialist Party A!"

And they're saying all the same things about Congressman and doctor Ron Paul that their moral precursors said about Goldwater, exceptnow get thisRon is crazy because he wants to stop a war.

Conservatives I understand. They're vampires, of a sort, or at least Aztecs at heart. Most of them never saw a war they didn't like (or would willingly fight in, but that's a topic for another time). In the 20th century the poor darlings had to wait for the Democrats to start all the wars, so that they could cheer on the bloody mass sacrifices.

Democrats, who pretend to be the peace party, but did, in fact, start all the wars in the 20th century (with one or two minor exceptions), should be ashamedif they were capable of feeling shame, which a lifetime of political activity has taught me they are not.

In addition to Nelson Rockefeller and his brother Winthrop, the gang consisted of individuals like William Scranton, who wept publicly when Goldwater was nominated, that old Boston codfish Henry Cabot Lodge, Charles Percy, Mark Hatfield, and Raymond P. Shafer. These are the four-flushers, dodgers, and shape-shifters who gave us Richard Nixon.

And oh, yes, one more: George Romney, Mitt's father, to the best of my recollection, Barry Goldwater's principal enemy, who taught his son to stand for nothing so that he could be held responsible for nothing.

Mitt hates, loathes, and despises your individual right to own and carry weapons. (He has a D-minus rating from Gun Owners of America.) He has Secret Service protection already, but he did his damnedest to keep Massachusetts Bill-of-Rights-free for years. Everybody is aware by now that he is an original architect of medical Marxism. And if that's not enough, he's said he'd have signed the NDAA. In the end, exactly like Obama, he will deliver the United States and all its assets into the genocidal hands of the United Nations.

It's clearto me, at leastthat if Mitt Romney gets elected instead of Obama, it will make no more historical difference than electing his father or any of his old man's friends would have back in 1964.

Politically, all Romney is, is an Obama clone.

It is all he ever will be.

I'm voting Paulor not at all.