I'm a Libertarian, thus my love for decentralization and cryptos, I am with you on Kavanaugh BUT after watching the brutal and vile process the Dems put this man through, I'm going to ditch voting for Libertarians this election cycle and vote Republican. Sick and tired of the drama, the media and their siding with Democrats is so freaking obvious and it makes me puke. Perhaps the day will come when Republicans will agree to meet Libertarians in the middle on many issues (not all), many of us Libertarians will start supporting the Republican party.
I've also been feeling that way
on an intuitive level. I don't like the Republicans, but I can't
stand the Democrats. A decade ago they used to at least pay lip service to a few good things like opposition to war and some individual freedoms. I actually became a libertarian
from the left. But now they're very pro-war and maybe as bad on free speech etc. as the Republicans due to their focus on identity politics. However, I have to keep reminding myself that the Republicans will do plenty of harm if they gain a lot of power, and in fact it may be an improvement if the Democrats get the House (but not the Senate) in the upcoming election because it'll make it harder for anything at all to get done. Even though it'll be absolute hell to have to listen to a Democratic Speaker for 2+ years...
If the Democrats gain both the House and the Senate in the upcoming election, then I'm calling it right now: Trump will get so amazingly frustrated that he will do something massively stupid/illegal and end up getting impeached (via the support of many Republicans). I'm not sure whether this would be good from a libertarian perspective.
Kavanaugh is better than anyone who a Democrat would nominate, so that's one good thing, though it's still disappointing. I don't even really trust him on the 2
nd amendment -- probably he would support all sorts of incremental regulations. Though maybe his experience with his nomination will make him more radical, which might be interesting.
I am a recovering Democrat/leftist, I supported Obama in 2008. Completely fed up with the Bush admin and Neo-con wars, the economy was going down the drain and I wasn't sure I was going to get a job as a new college grad. Now that I think back, I was naive, perhaps lost in the rhetoric of the day and I was a "Progressive", although I was and am still a strong proponent of the 2nd Amendment. The Left's obsession with abolishing the 2nd amendment was one of the reasons I left.
But the biggest wakeup call for me was the ACA/Obamacare. When the Democrats wrote the law to "mandate" people pay a "fine/tax" for not buying a product, it shook me to the core, I realized that if Congress can write a law to punish me for not buying something, what else can they force me to do? If they can weaponize or arm an agency (IRS) and bestow new powers on this agency all "for the greater good", what other agency can they weaponize?
This shift started in 2010 and I completely left the party and the progressive left in 2012 after witnessing the IRS being weaponized against the tea party. I wanted to see if there were minorities like myself (I use the word minority because at the time I still saw things through the prism of racial identity), after a quick web search I came across Thomas Sowell, I read he was a "Libertarian", I decided to buy his books and it rocked my world. He was calling out things in the 1980s that were happening in America in the 2010's. I went from Dr. Sowell to Milton Friedman and I also got introduced to Ayn Rand.
I was a Collective/Leftist and now I'm a born-again Individual. I use the word "Individual" because I now understand why The Bill of Rights was crafted. The Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers opened my eyes to the virtue and importance of an individual person. The Consitution isn't a "charter of negative liberties" as Obama stated, instead it allows the individual person to flourish and be who they want to be without being dictated to by 'Big Brother" as long as they do not harm another person or persons, they are free to pursue their dreams to the fullest.
I will vote Republican this cycle, even though Trump may not be the perfect person in the WH, I'm sure damn glad he's in there. He's exposing everything that people fear about big government. If he can bring the Korean War to an end, audit the Fed and legalize at least pot, I'd be nice if we can get all drugs legalized but that's a different story, anyway, if he can at two of those three things I'm gonna be on the Trump train in 2020. I want peace, prosperity with limited government interference so we can all pursue our individual dreams.
I'm afraid the Democrats have gone far left, there's no sane person left in the party! Hopefully, Gen Z is seeing all this chaos and they will all move Libertarian or at least move to the middle, because my generation, the Millenials, are advocating big government, socialism, even communism, and it scares me.