Category: Politics

The Plight of Palestinians: Repressed and Forgotten

While Americans retire nightly to their flannel sheets and fluffy pillows, their stomachs well fed, two million Palestinians have no where to flee, their homes flattened, their food, water, and energy resources curtailed. They sleep on sidewalks, or sixty in a room. They suffer cold. Whole families wiped out, yet Israeli bombing and gunfire continues. Israel refuses a pause. Ten thousand dead, many of them children.

It’s Israel’s history, Palestinians the Other, not seen as fellow human beings having legitimate grievances.

In the ongoing invasion of Gaza by Israel’s military, two aerial attacks, two days in a row, were launched on Jabaliya, a camp sheltering 116,000 refugees squeezed into a 1.4 square kilometer area, and one of eight refugee camps in Gaza.

Collectively, they shelter displaced families and their descendants from the 1948 war that gave rise to the state of Israel. Expelled, they’ve been denied resettlement in their native land.

Jabaliya features a high number of UN facilities, including 26 schools, a food distribution center, two health centers, a library, a sanitation facility, and seven wells. It didn’t stop the Israelis. They struck in day light, mothers pursuing their laundry, children playing soccer, men at their jobs.

Bombs meant for Hamas tunnels left deep-seated craters, collapsed buildings, smoking rubble, dismembered limbs, scattered flesh, the screams of the wounded, some buried beneath the rubble.

Israeli bombs took out the Al-Fakhoura School, used as a shelter for thousands of homeless Palestinians in the camp, all of this part of incessant bombing that struck still another school in Northern Gaza, air attacks in the vicinity of three hospitals, and on two ambulances.

Even before the invasion, the camp had periodically suffered electricity outages and 90% water contamination.

According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, run by Hamas, 195 died and 777 were injured in the two attacks. We may not trust Hamas on the figures, but other authorities think the total death toll may be even higher when bodies are fully recovered.

It’s senseless to go after suspected Hamas tunnels underlying the camp’s infrastructure, as no crater can penetrate deep enough to take out tunnels reenforced with concrete some 200 feet below.

Overall, Gaza has seen its death toll exceed 10,000 dead, many of them women and children, as a consequence of indiscriminate bombings of the civilian infrastructure.

As I write, Israel continues to resist mounting international calls, including those of the US, for a ceasefire. They demand hostages be released first.

Amid its carnage, Israel has held back on humanitarian aid, cut off food supplies, energy and water.

Consequently, Palestinians face the near certainty of widespread famine, disease, and death.

This isn’t the first time Israel bombed the camp with deadly result. During the Gaza War (2014), it bombed a UN school in the camp, killing 20 people.

More recently, unreported in US media, six earlier attacks on the camp occurred before the two major deadly attacks. They include attacks on October 10, 12, 19, and 21.

All of this becomes eerily reminiscent of the Sabra and Shatila massacres of 1982 during Lebanon’s Civil War when up to 3,500 civilians—mostly Palestinians and Lebanese—were slaughtered in 24 hours by Christian Phalangist military aligned with Israel.

Sabra was a neighborhood of Palestinian settlement; Shatila, a refugee camp. The Israel Defense Forces, surrounding Shatila , ordered its allies to clear out the PLO. Though they were receiving reports of the massacres, they didn’t intervene.

A subsequent inquiry under UN auspices concluded in February 1983 that the IDF forces, as the major occupying element, had responsibility for preventing the massacres of Sabra and Shatila. It termed it “a form of genocide.”

An Israeli investigation came to a similar conclusion, holding the IDF responsible for knowing the massacres were taking place, but not intervening. This forced the resignation of Defense Minister Ariel Sharon

For too long, successive Israeli governments have ignored the legitimate rights of Palestinians to a sovereign state, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

The United States has abetted Israeli intransigence with massive funding and weaponry, much of it being used in the present conflict.

In short, it’s complicit in the excesses being committed.

While Hamas committed abominable acts against Israeli civilians, resulting in 1400 deaths with its incursion of October 7, it doesn’t justify Israel’s disproportionate response, nor ongoing West Bank settler violence against Palestinian civilians, more than 100 of them recently killed.

Yes, Gaza elected Hamas in 2006 to represent them, but there haven’t been any elections since. Do all Gazans support Hamas? Probably not, given the suffering Hamas has inflicted on Gazans.

All of this carnage is rooted in Britain’s Balfour Declaration of 1917, sanctioning a homeland for Israel. Did anyone ask its Ottoman citizenry, the vast majority, Turk and Arab? Few Jews lived in the area that would become Israel.

In 1948, 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homeland and forbidden a return, a vengeful response of incalculable cruelty.

The irony is that many Jews, who themselves have suffered historical displacement and genocide, have become perpetrators of its reiteration.

I would remind dissenters that attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure are violations of international humanitarian and human rights law. In short, they are war crimes.

–rj

The Truth Must be Told: The Tragedy of Gaza


As we all know, several thousand Gaza Hamas fighters bulldozed their way through an Israeli security fence on October 7, 2023, and committed some of the most barbaric crimes against humanity not seen since Cambodia, Rwanda, and the Holocaust.

More than 1400 Israelis died, most of them civilians, some slaughtered in nearby fields while celebrating the ending of Sukkot, an annual fall event in the Jewish calendar; others, in their beds on nearby kibbutzim. Reports are that Hamas insurgents raped, pillaged, and slaughtered even children, including babies. More than 200 civilians and soldiers were taken hostage, including citizens of other countries. Israeli wounded stands at 4600.

The Israeli response has been unceasingly withering in Gaza, Prime Minister Netanyahu declaring war on Hamas, calling up 300,000 reservists, bombing Gaza’s civilian infrastructure daily, and ordering one million Gaza civilians to evacuate to southern Gaza.

A land invasion of Gaza by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is anticipated. They will face up to 50,000 Hamas fighters, dispersed in a labyrinthian tunnel weave, threatening a Stalingrad consequence of casualties in house-to-house fighting. American pressure has slowed any launching of an immediate invasion, but not halted the daily bombing, killing 700 civilians in the last twenty-four hours, half of them women and children.

Hezbollah, to the north in Lebanon, have been firing rockets into nearby Israeli border towns, forcing their evacuation and possibly opening a second front in a dangerously escalating Middle East conflict. Iran has pledged to intervene if Israel launches a land invasion of Gaza.

In the meantime, the death toll of Gaza civilians now exceeds 5,000, including more than 2000 children, the cut off of food, water, and energy to Gaza, the forestalling of shipments of humanitarian aid from Egypt, which threatens the closure of hospitals treating thousands of wounded civilians. Mass starvation and disease looms as an aftermath, Israel insisting that hostages be released, despite international calls for restraint and observance of humanitarian values.

Recently, a Christian hospital in Gaza came under rocket attack, killing 500 people among those taking shelter. International intelligence indicates it was an errant Hamas rocket that caused this tragedy. Nonetheless, the World Health Organization has documented 171 Israeli attacks on health care in the occupied Palestinian territory,” killing 473 health workers.

As I write, unrest continues on the West Bank, with some 100 Arab protestors killed. A pending historic security alliance has been withdrawn by the Saudis and Israel’s peaceful relationship with Jordan has been strained. Settler crimes against West Bank farmers have been chronicled over the years, with killing of livestock, destruction of olive groves, and slaying of those who resist.

The U.S. response has been typical, Biden ordering two aircraft carriers into the gulf and threatening to intervene should Hezbollah open a second front.
It has called for a two state settlement for many years, yet overlooked Israeli intransigence. It gives $3 billion in aid annually to Israel and recently concluded a $37 billion loan agreement in military aid. Israel will have access to the F-35, the world’s most advanced fighter jet.

At home, dissenters are regaled as antisemitic. Many, including Democrats, have called for disbandment of Palestinian student campus organizations and denounced the growing Leftist faction in the Democratic Party that includes Bernie Sanders. Frenzied Republicans, increasingly resistant to continuing aid to Ukraine, have no difficulty supporting huge expenditures to Israel. Lindsey Graham says, “Do whatever the hell you have to do to defend yourself. Level the place!”

There is, in short, a context for Arab and Palestinian resentment and outburst.
We seem to have learned nothing from the rage that lay behind the 9/11 horror. We began two long wars, fought by America’s poor White and Blacks. We lost both. Did Vietnam teach us nothing?

Do we lust for another war? Have we forgotten George Washington’s warning to avoid “entangling alliances”? “The nation which indulges toward another an habitual hatred or an habitual fondness is in some degree a slave” (Farewell Address).

UN secretary-general António Guterres speaks for me: “Hamas did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.” He likewise condemned Hamas: “No injustice to the Palestinians justifies the appalling attacks by Hamas.”

The Israeli response to Guterres? “Due to his remarks we will refuse to issue visas to UN representatives” (Gilad Erdan, Israel ambassador to the UN). “The time has come to teach them a lesson. Guterres should resign.”

Hamas was elected to power in 2006. There have been no elections since. Does “Israel’s right to defend itself” (Biden) justify its war on Gaza civilians, half of whom are children?

Ultimately an apartheid Israel will reap its own folly. Israel’s growing Arab population will soon outnumber Israelis. It will become a South Africa before Nelson Mandela’s victorious crusade for a liberated biracial nation enjoying equity.

-rj

I Want an America Better Than This


We normally think of gurus in connection with individuals claiming transcendental wisdom, often as emissaries of the Divine. I needn’t recite a roll call of their prodigious presence, past and present, in American life, drawing into their loop numerous devotees, hanging on their every word, willing to drink the Kool-Aid.

But gurus can be political, too, like Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. I see danger in my beloved America in the likes of Trump and DeSantis and their “true believer” followers, bent on banning books, subverting free inquiry, racial justice, a woman’s right to choose; its ubiquitous gay-bashing, xenophobia, restricting voter access, and denial of climate change. Unhinged, some are willing to employ violence to achieve their ends.

I want a better America than this. I want America to live up to its promise as a bastion of hope and guardian of liberty. I think you want that too. Indifference won’t win out. We must advocate. We must resist. The liberty you defend is your own. —rj

Trump’s Pending Indictment: Reflections

Donald Trump may be indicted as early as this week by a Manhattan grand jury for alleged $130,000 hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels.

Trump has indicated its likelihood and urged massive protests, recalling his incendiary efforts to impugn the 2020 election results when he tweeted on December 19, 2020 that his followers march to the Capitol on January 6, when Congress would meet to certify the election results: “Be there. Will be wild.”

It will be difficult to achieve a conviction in a subsequent trial, given the notoriety of the key witnesses, Daniels and convicted felon, Michael Cohen, and the gathering instigation by GOP House leadership of a presiding judge weaponizing his office against the former president. It shouldn’t be presumed that the grand jury will unanimously agree to an indictment. Even more so in an actual trial, creating a loophole for Trump, salvaged by legal expertise.

Regardless of what happens in New York, 22 other court cases or investigations into alleged Trump misdoings are pending in several jurisdictions (justicesecurity.org).

In spite of all of this, current polls indicate Trump’s the widely preferred GOP choice to face Biden once again. I lament that so many are willing, after all his charades, to drink the Kool-Aid once again. —rj

Update: Protests Continue in Iran

Update:

At least 83 protestors, including women and children, have now been killed in Iran since the beating death of Mahsa Amini by the regime’s morality police. The protests, led by women, continue and will be joined world-wide on Saturday.

The Biden administration would do well not to renew the nuclear treaty with this brutal regime, releasing billions of frozen funds as a payoff for Iran’s signing the treaty. Doing such only advances Iranian repression and exporting of terrorism abroad.

While protests do matter, what hurts regimes like Iran most are freezing their assets and sanctioning trade.

Please support the valiant women of Iran!

A Revived Treaty’s Hidden Menace: Iran’s Growing Missile Arsenal

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

Up to 50 Iranian protesters, largely female, have now been killed since the beating death of Mahsa Amini on September 21 by Iran’s moral police for improperly wearing her hijab.

Iran is a thoughly brutal Islamic theocracy that may soon develop nuclear capability. At present, the Biden administration, in its precipitous rush to revive the former nuclear treaty before the mid-terms, hasn’t insisted on including reining-in Iran’s growing ballistic and cruise missile prowess, with Tel Aviv now easily within targeting range.

Despite Iranian denials, U.S. and Saudi Arabian governments believe Iran’s supplying Yemen’s Houthi rebels with missiles lay behind the devastating attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities in 2019. Subsequently, Houthis have launched missile attacks on Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates, and fired supplied drones at Dubai.

In January 2019, the largest base housing U.S. troops sustained a prolonged attack, employing 11 missiles, that resulted in an estimated 100 service personnel suffering Traumatic Brain Injury.

Ominously, Iran has equipped Syria and Lebanon’s Hezbollah with missiles, while opening underground factories for their storage and local manufacture.

Presently, our intelligence sources estimate Iran now has a minimal 3,000 ballistic missiles, potentially capable of carrying nuclear warheads, not including land attack cruise missiles.

Despite concerted Israeli lobbying in Washington to address Iran’s missile program under a revived deal, the Biden administration hasn’t done so.

Rushing the treaty into finalization without addressing the missile threat will leave Israel little alternative, but to launch a massive attack on Iran’s offensive arsenal, leading to a much wider conflict with devastating fallout for everyone.

—rj

The Inflation Reduction Act: Fossil Fuels Become Law

WASHINGTON, DC – JULY 21: Sen. Joe Manchin(D-WV) faces reporters as he arrives at a hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee at the Dirksen S.O.B. at the U.S. Capitol, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

The so-called Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 promises much, but better read the fine print in this massive 700 page proposal.

A patchwork compromise with coal baron Senator Joe Manchin, its motivation is the Democratic Party leadership’s desperate need for a legislative victory in addressing escalating inflation, the primary concern of American voters, as the mid-term elections loom. Thus the bill’s name. (The previous version was called Build Back Better).

With close analysis, you’ll discover it isn’t up to the hype. While an unprecedented $369bn is dedicated to mitigating climate change, it locks in reliance on fossil fuel expansion by hamstringing the Interior Department: no renewable energy development on public lands unless drilling leases are also offered to oil and gas entities.

As such, this bill is pure political charade. Fossil fuels cause climate change, yet they’re locked into the bill’s provisions. There is no mechanism to phase them out.

What we get is the loosening of regulations regarding environmental review and, horribly, mandated drilling leases in Alaska’s Cook Inlet and the Gulf of Mexico. The result? More pipelines, oil leaks, methane leaks, wilderness lost, species endangered, and continuing temperature rise. In 2016, the U.S. averaged one crude oil spill every other day (undark.org).

There are no caps on carbon admissions!

While the legislation features tax credits for carbon capture and sequestration, the fallout is that this could extend the life of polluting coal plants, exposing the public to toxic fumes, and making it difficult to achieve clean power goals.

Not talked about is an ominous separate agreement to move a bill in September that could potentially weaken protections under the Environmental Policy Act, which grants communities a say in what happens to their local environment. This is subterfuge, pure and simple.

You’re told the legislation will reduce greenhouse gas admissions 40% by 2030 (Rhodium Group, rpg.com). Considering the pressing problems we have with securing energy resources, it’s dangerously possible that fossil fuels will gain the upper hand over renewables, upsetting any trajectory of even-handedness. As is, the Biden administration in early July held its first onshore lease auction, releasing a proposed plan for off shore drilling, despite Biden’s campaign pledge to cease new oil and gas development on federal lands and waters (insideclimatenews.org).

In short, the Inflation Reduction Act takes back what it gives out, a Faustian wager that forfeits the future for a short-sighted political shell game in the present.

I’m not saying there aren’t good things in the bill. And, yes, there are groups like Nature Conservancy, the Sierra Club, and Earth Justice, urging speedy passage of the legislation. They may be willing to drink the Kool-Aid, but not me, nor should you.

I go by the late E. O. Wilson, “Darwin’s heir,” my icon in environmental matters, who repeatedly denounced such organizations for their compromises, perpetuating environmental demise. They’ve thrown in the towel, their credo, Nature is already gone. We live in the Anthropocene. Wilderness must serve human needs (Wilson, Half–Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life).

This is a climate suicide pact,” comments Brett Hartl, government affairs director for the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD). “It’s self-defeating to handcuff renewable energy development to massive new oil and gas extraction.”

–rj

The 10th Amendment: Roe vs Wade

The 10th Amendment is used by right to life advocates to justify the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning Roe vs Wade. Implying two distinct legislative spheres, it reads, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

This is the same Amendment that was used by SCOTUS to justfy the infamous Dred Scott decision (1857), defining slave/free state boundaries. Lincoln intuited its liabilities, leading to the Emancipation Proclamation (1863).

Its history is complex, Jefferson supporting it; Hamilton, opposed. It has been cited by local jurisdictions opposing federal Covid mandates.

I believe it needs revision, our founding Fathers not foreseeing the complexities of our present times. The Constitution must always give precedence to public welfare, not factional interest, whether left or right. How else could the government have rescinded segregation in the Little Rock school integration crisis of 1957, ending with Republican Dwight Eisenhower’s employment of federal troops?

I vigorously support John Stuart Mill’s principle of “disinterested benevolence,” i.e., the right of government to advocate policy conducive to society’s welfare, not factional interest: its right to impose environmental laws, construct highways, mandate taxes, allow unions, sanction military drafts, regulate commerce, provide medical access, govern immigration, ensure the liberties of marginalized entities, etc. The list is long.

Government’s true role is to ensure not only traditional freedoms, but to promote progressive policy implementation enhancing the citizenry’s collective well-being.

Simplistic, the 10th Amendment has historically proven an impediment across many fronts, seen again in the abrogation of a woman’s right to sovereignty over her own body. Contraception access may be next.

—rj

Roe vs. Wade: The How of its Pending Overturn

We will not bear more!

As the late Christopher Hitchens said, “Religion poisons everything.”

We see it firsthand with SCOTUS about to overturn Roe vs. Wade, a devastating turnaround that will impact people of color and marginal financial resources the most.

We see religion’s trespass behind the daily atrocities of fundamentalists in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iraq, India and Pakistan.

We have the witness of history in the Crusader wars waged against Muslims, the bloody conflicts between Catholics and Protestants, the Inquisition, Bartholomew massacre, witchcraft trials in my birthplace, Salem, MA, Al-Quaeda’s 911 attack, ISIS and Boko Haram.

Not on the same scale, religious despotism exists right now in America, its constituency supporters of Trump. They’ve become the virus that’s brought shame to the party of Lincoln and division to our nation.

SCOTUS needs a new look, not simply by adding people of color. Six of its nine members are Roman Catholics, four of them conservative: Alito, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and Thomas.

The two liberal Catholics are Roberts and Sotomeyer. Another, Gorsuch, a former Catholic and conservative, now attends Episcopal services. Three justices, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and Gorsuch, were appointed by Trump.

Catholicism isn’t really the issue. It’s when faith embraces an intolerant conservatism. Evangelicals, Hindu nationalists, Muslim fundamentalists and, yes, Israeli settlers, all bear responsibility for attempting to impose their agendas on others.

My family, French Canadian and Irish, was devoutly Catholic. When my maternal grandmother deserted the Catholic church, my other grandmother, the Irish one, cut off all communication. My father was buried with the rites of the Church.

I think we’ve made progress since the election of John Kennedy, our first Catholic president, and a good one. I remember the bigotry existing at the time, compelling Kennedy to pledge his independence of the Vatican. Religion thankfully didn’t raise its ugly head in the election of Joe Biden, a church-going Catholic, and just second Catholic in our nation’s history.

Unfortunately, he’s been pursued not by Protestants, but by conservative Catholic bishops, who want to deny him communion. Sadly, the Catholic church, despite liberal reform efforts, remains a medieval institution in need of reform. Hierarchical and dominated by elderly white males, it allows no female priests, opposes homosexuality, gay marriage and, of course, not only abortion, but contraception.

Thankfully, the vast majority of American Catholics, like Biden and Pelosi, don’t subscribe to its parochialism. They are not the enemy.

On the other hand, that four of our justices embrace Catholic conservative values troubles me. One in particular, Amy Coney Barrett, has long ties with People of Praise, a charismatic group in South Bend. It holds traditional beliefs about gender and sexuality and its officers are males. Meetings are gender segregated. She served as “handmaid.”

Barrett sent three of her children to its Trinity School campus in South Bend and sat on its board for nearly three years. It also has campuses in Falls Church, Virginia, and in Eagan, Minnesota.

In 2006, along with hundreds, she signed an anti-abortion letter that accompanied a January 2006 ad in the South Bend Tribune calling for “an end to the barbaric legacy of Roe v. Wade” (southbendtribune.com).

The danger lurks when both religion and politics converge into concerted imposition of their views upon the public. As the NPR has pointed out, “Conservative catholics are the new evangelicals” (npr.org, Apr 20, 2020): “‘It was the Catholic vote that won those states for Donald Trump,’ according to Tim Huelskamp, a former Republican congressman from Kansas now serving as an adviser to the Catholics for Trump movement” (NPR).

In 2016, Trump prevailed in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, traditionally Democrat bastions, where Catholics significantly outnumber Evangelicals, securing Trump’s victory, despite losing the popular vote nationally. In 2020, half of Catholics voters opted for Trump over Biden.

Recent polls indicate a majority of Catholics now favor Biden over Trump in a hypothetical matchup. Still, an activist conservative faction exists, sharing with Evangelicals a vehement opposition to abortion and gay rights.

Conservative Catholic media include EWTN News, the National Catholic Register and Church Militant, and CatholicVote.org.

Unfortunately, four conservative Catholic justices are on the supreme court, two of them nominated by Trump; the third, Gorsuch, is now Episcopalian, as I mentioned.

If SCOTUS enacts its reputed decision, it will have widened America’s cavernous divide, with states pitted against each other, something not seen since the Civil War.

–rj

Is Musk Libertarian?

My post on Elon Musk yesterday elicited one of the largest Brimmings audiences in its twelve year history. I endeavored to be fair to all sides in assessing this polarizing man.

But I need to do a postscript that may help clarify what lies behind his thinking and purchase of one of the world’s leading media platforms and, notably, his resistance to censorship, whether of Left or Right. As he’s told us, he’ll not please either.

You see, I view him as essentially a libertarian, not conservative. Unfortunately, many conflate the terms. Libertarians agree with conservatives in opposing government interference with free enterprise, curtailing deficit spending, mandated protocols and alleged incursions on free speech.

They also agree with conservatives on a strong miliitary, capable of responding to threats to the nation’s security, gun ownership rights, etc.

On the other hand, libertarians believe abortion is a free choice option, a huge difference indeed. They support same sex marriage, judicial reform, and ending capital punishment. While they support a capable military, they eschew bloated spending and policies of overseas intervention that have led to Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. They describe the Bush administration’s incursion in Iraq as “an obscene, depraved act of naked aggression”(libertarian.org).

Libertarians believe we need to follow George Washington’s counsel in his Farewell Address to avoid foreign intervention and alliances. We are not the world’s police or its savior.

Libertarians, unlike many conservatives, are hugely supportive of the environment: “We support a clean and healthy environment and sensible use of our natural resources. Private landowners and conservation groups have a vested interest in maintaining natural resources. Pollution and misuse of resources cause damage to our ecosystem. Governments, unlike private businesses, are unaccountable for such damage done to our environment and have a terrible track record when it comes to environmental protection…..We realize that our planet’s climate is constantly changing, but environmental advocates and social pressure are the most effective means of changing public behavior” (ontheissues.org).

On immigration, there is much that even Progressives could like: “We welcome all refugees to our country. Furthermore, immigration must not be restricted for reasons of race, religion, political creed, age, or sexual preference. We therefore call for the elimination of all restrictions on immigration, the abolition of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Border Patrol, and a declaration of full amnesty for all people who have entered the country illegally” (ontheissues.org).

Presently, Libertarians have grown to be the nation’s third largest party. In 2020, they took 20% of the vote in Virginia; surprisingly, 9.4% of the vote in my native Massachusetts.

As the libertarian label suggests, they advocate a live-and-let live approach with priority on personal liberty and limited government.

Musk is an enigma when it comes to his politics. He says he’s half Democrat, half-Republican; in short, a moderate. Despite his avowal, he exhibits a strong libertarian streak, emphasizing citizen polity over government imposition.

Revealingly, our space-minded mogul has hinted at what a Mars government might look like, or oriented along libertarian lines with people voting directly on issues: “I think that’s probably better, because the potential for corruption is substantially diminished in a direct versus a representative democracy” (metro.co.uk).

We know his friend and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel is decidedly libertarian, as Musk admits: “I’m somewhat libertarian, but Peter’s extremely libertarian” (newyorker.com).

In January he tweeted “True national debt, including unfunded entitlements, is at least $60 trillion – roughly three times the size of the entire US economy. Something has got to give” (nationalinterest.com). Libertarians, ardent critics of social security, would hardly disagree.

A libertarian mindsets goes far in contextually explaining his vociferous resistance to censorship and government interference. As a visionary, he outdistances conservatives with his free-wielding views on needful social reforms ranging from judicial, military, environment, abortion and free trade.

Like libertarians, he exhibits affinity with Victorian Britain’s liberals, vociferous advocates of limited government, non-censorship and social reform (e.g., Bentham, Mill, Gladstone).

It may be limiting to label protean Elon a libertarian, but as American poet James Whitcomb Riley (1849–1916) famously put it, “When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.”

–rj