Fellow Libertarians, I Damned Well Told You So

As early as 2006 I caught grief from some self-described libertarians because I refused to be impressed by former congressman Bob Barr, even after the Libertarian Party was damnfool enough to give him a leadership position. At the time I called Barr a:

drug warrior extraordinaire who pays lip service to the cause of liberty yet believes Granny should go to jail if she smokes a joint to make her chemotherapy-induced nausea go away. There are two reasons a libertarian should oppose the war on drugs: it's a perfidious assault on personal freedom and an enormous waste of money. Barr fails on both counts.

Fun fact about human biology: often, when a person is dying but not yet dead, the muscles of the anus and rectum will go completely slack and any fecal matter inside the intestines of the soon-to-be-corpse makes its way out to freedom.

I suspect Barr’s appointment is merely the pants-shitting phase of the Libertarian Party’s death throes. But "appoint Bob Barr" would be a marvelous euphemism for the process of expelling solid waste from the body, don't you think? "I just ate three pounds of fermented cabbage and refried beans. Please give me a match so I can light it after I appoint Bob Barr."

And now, four years later, I might be the only American libertarian who's not particularly surprised to hear Barr has taken a job -- presumably a well-paying one -- as adviser to former Haitian dictator "Baby Doc" Duvalier.

Dear Reader, I do not mean to insult your intelligence, but bear with me while I point out the obvious: when Barr was a congressman with actual authority to write and vote on bills, he consistently voted the anti-liberty position, and only started paying lip service to ideals of freedom after he lost his job and couldn't actually DO anything about said ideals.

If you want to judge a man's character -- or even a politician's character -- "what he does when he wields actual power" is a far better yardstick than "what he says after he loses it."