Two big rallies happening Monday for #NotMyPresidentsDay (love that hashtag – something we can use long after Trump is gone!). If you need any convincing that Trump deserves protesting, Reason magazine's Brian Doherty has an excellent piece that I encourage you to check out:
http://reason.com/blog/2017/02/17/trumps-anti-libertarian-ethno-nationalis
Here's a sample (much more at the link above)...
Trump is openly a type of illibertarian leader we haven't seen in a while. The "open" part is important. Those wanting to downplay the threat of Trump can, justly, point to all sorts of crummy and illiberal policies that past administrations and imagined alternate administrations did or might also pursue. In the context of the current political debate, that scarcely matters. Trump is the president we have, and his policies are what we have to face, and fight. It may fit any given person's amour propre to not ever risk seeming to overstate or overguess exactly how bad Trump is or might be, but it doesn't necessarily help the cause of promoting liberty.
It does matter whether a president encases even protectionist or trade-managing or restrictionist policies with a stated appreciation for lower tariffs and more open migration, which at least on the margins likely keeps bad things from happening. By paying that tribute of statist vice to libertarian virtue, at least doesn't deliberately imbue Americans with the belief that the country will be stronger by making goods and labor more expensive.
A president who openly and firmly rejects the principle of, and fails to grasp the benefits of, economic liberty is indeed worse than one who merely casually violates those principles. (And economic liberty is the core of human liberty, in a world where we must produce and trade to live).
Trump and his administration don't merely violate the core principles of individual liberty carelessly or as a byproduct of other goals; he is against economic liberty, deeply and sincerely. More than anything else, Trump is a loud and proud enemy of libertarianism.
The continued presence and dominance of Steve Bannon in his inner circle indicates that Trumpian nationalism, though the administration doesn't spell this out explicitly, yearns toward ethno-nationalism. Bannon believes American "civic society" necessarily excludes too many immigrants from Asia (even though people of that descent make up over 5 percent of America.)
While he's been careful since taking his powerful position in the White House not to say much of what he thinks about anything, Bannon's stated belief that the news organization he ran, Breitbart, was "a platform for the alt-right" and his own site's definition of that often deliberately ill-defined term, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that his nationalism has an ethnic component.
The administration's choice, apparently at the driving of Bannon and his ally Steven Miller, to launch their administration with an expensive and absurd "border wall" and for a spate of pointless (except in their disruptive cruelty) blows at movement of people from a small set of mostly-Muslim countries (that are not the Muslim countries from which any serious terror threat to the U.S. has ever actually arisen) show that the "public safety" rationale doesn't hold up. They are either idiots, or the restriction has another purpose.
What the limited travel restrictions so vital to the Trump administration have demonstrated is that they are eager to build from the most speculative and phantom of fears an expensive and disruptive apparatus of control, one that Miller considers a test run to prove the president's unrestricted power over certain matters, even in the face of the courts. And the fears they decide to focus on are fears of the foreign "other"...
The #Resistance is just getting warmed up. I have never seen so many Meetup groups being organized for any political cause. I believe Libertarians should be onboard in speaking out against the authoritarian moves and rhetoric coming from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))