Walter Block, the legendary economist, helped start the Libertarians for Trump campaign. Robert Wenzel, a superb economics blogger, thinks Donald Trump is one of the worst candidates in 2016 for liberty. Tom Woods, one of the greatest libertarian commentators today, hosted a debate between these two gentlemen. It’s sure to incite a lot of excited opinions.
Don’t forget to check out “Libertarians for Donald Trump? 5 reasons libertarians can’t support Trump.”
Here is the debate:
Like this article? Get ECN delivered to your inbox daily. Subscribe here.
Walter is my very good friend and has been for 35 years. So please don’t slam me as a Block hater. I’m not! Sadly though, Walter is wrong on this, and here’s why: Donald Trump is the only candidate, Republican or Democrat, who has advocated a public policy of murdering completely innocent persons. I refer to his December pledge to kill the family members of terrorists [ http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/02/politics/donald-trump-terrorists-families/ ] . Walter asks us to compare the candidates and judge, on balance, which is closer to the libertarian ideal. And that is fair. So lets do that. To my knowledge, Trump is the only candidate who advocates the explicit and purposeful murder of innocent people. There is no more definitive a violation of the Non Aggression Principle (NAP), the single and fundamental ethic that defines libertarianism. It is true that any one of the other candidates, if elected as president, will end up killing innocent people too (all presidents do) but only Trump has advocated it as a public policy. That position alone disqualifies Trump form any genuine libertarian consideration. One does not need to go any further in comparing the candidates from a libertarian perspective. Trump fails right out of the gate.