When asked to write an essay on who I plan on supporting in the coming election, I was a little bit surprised. While I did know when I joined GamePartisan that I would be forced to talk politically from time to time, I can honestly say I didn’t expect it to occur this soon. This seems pretty naive, looking back on it, as we ARE very close to what may be the most important election in the past 16 years. After thinking long and hard about who I plan on supporting, I finally reached a conclusion, and decided that I would be swinging my support in favor of Bob Barr, the Libertarian candidate. As anyone who read Jeremy Bennett’s article will know, Barrack Obama was not his first choice. Sadly, this is true for me as well, as I had supported Ron Paul for the past year and a half, and was very disappointed upon his dropping out. And yes, I realize going into this article that Bob Barr isn’t going to win…the Libertarian party has nowhere near the support it needs to succeed. However, many of the points Bob Barr brings up ring true in my eyes, and I’d like to at least inform you, if not convince you to change your minds on, the politics of Barr.

I’ll start off by saying, I’ve always supported the Libertarian Party as opposed to the Democrat/Republican duo. This support means more to me now more than ever, as central government gains more and more power in the U.S.A., and individual rights get lost on the wayside. While I strongly dislike politics, I feel that I’m politically informed enough to state in the coming election, the Libertarian party is the lesser of 3 evils. This brings me to my first reason on why I support Barr: unlike the other candidates, he doesn’t seem to feel he needs to be completely in control of the country every second of the day. He’s willing to allow people to live their lives the way they see fit(to a legal degree), and chooses not to impede on their civil liberties, a problem that has occurred quite a bit during the current administration. I’ll be blunt in saying that pretty much every form of unnecessary government intrusion into my life makes me pretty fucking angry. While I’m not at the point where I’m running down the street screaming "Anarchy!" to my neighbors, I do believe that less intervention into private and business affairs by the government will improve the vast majority of American lives. And to any who are getting up-in-arms about my use of "vast majority" in favor of "all", I’ve got a big middle finger aimed at you. It is physically impossible, in this day and age, to make everyone happy. It cannot be done, and the fact that you even expect it makes me doubt the intelligence of people that think that.          

Another reason that I support Barr is his stance on the War in Iraq. While he supported it at the beginning, as many did, he now believes in a complete withdrawal from Iraq. I find this preferable to the policies of McCain, who has no clear idea on when a withdrawal can begin, and Obama, who believes in a withdrawal that keeps some forces in Iraq. I, however, personally believe that it’s time we completely end this war. We did many of the things we set out to do at the beginning of the war, including overthrowing a dictator, and that is admirable. However, it’s their country, and if so many Iraqis would rather watch it burn than accept our help, so be it. We have no debt to them, and it’s time we focused on internal problems in lieu of external ones. 

This brings me to my next, and final point: we need to put more effort into maintaining our economy, and reducing spending, and I think Bob Barr is the best candidate to do that. Aside from the complete removal of the money drain that is the Iraq War, he also advocates large reductions in government spending. While I don’t see reductions in government spending necessary forever, I do think that if they occur over a period of 10-20 years, it’ll drastically help the U.S. economy reset itself in a position of power, instead of the constant decline that we’ve all watched occur over the past 5 years. Barr is also against corporate welfare, which I support in the belief that America needs as much separation between government and business as possible. While I realize this is impossible on a grand scale, due to the nature of both types of organizations, I believe if the government doesn’t have the ability to dole out corporate welfare, we’ll have a great decrease in archaic and useless businesses, in favor of new, innovative businesses, who have to put more effort and skill into their work, as they can no longer be bailed out by the government.

As I stated at the beginning, Bob Barr is not my first choice. My first choice, Ron Paul, is no longer in the running, and so I chose Barr as the next best candidate. Do I agree with everything he says? Of course not. Do I believe he can get America excited in the way that Barrack Obama can, or have as much as a shot at winning as John McCain? No, I dont.   However, I believe in the coming election, and the next few years, Bob Barr has the potential to more effectively change American government, and a drastic change is what we need.

Current GamePartisan Staff Election Tally:

Barr (L) - 1

McCain (R) - 0

Nader (I) - 0

Obama (D) - 2