Liberty for our friend

My bro passes along this eyebrow-raising comment from Canada regarding this year's balloting in Nevada. I can't say I'm surprised, though, that Nevada voters backed both Bush and prostitutes. It's a very intriguing state politically: a historically Red(neck) state that is getting Bluer as greater Las Vegas grows. In some ways, it's the model of Libertarianism: the people tend to favor low taxes, small government, legal drugs, gambling and hookers. They're not really into environmentalists -- "every time you dig a hole, you have to call Washington, D.C.," they say -- and they love an enormous dam that brings cheap water and power to the City of Sin.

I wonder about Libertarians. My old roommate read a lot of Libertarian literature, and she believed the philosophy was very consistent with itself, because it mixed individual and economic freedoms. (She also believed Golden Gate Park should have an entrance fee, to relieve the tax burden on those people who didn't really use the park all that much.) I hear from quite a few Republicans that deep down, they're really Libertarians, or that they're part of some nebulous "Libertarian wing" of the GOP. And of course there was much speculation prior to the election that if Bush had lost, the GOP would have to decide whether it was the party of Christian moral police or the party of small-government Libertarianism.

If we're to believe that the Christian Right -- excuse me, Evangelical Christians -- are really the ones who carried the 2004 election, it'd take a deep rift in the GOP to call attention to the Libertarians within. It may even take a divisive Nader-like candidate (or Perot-like, if you wish) to really put Libertarian ideas onto the national stage. I think much of America has been hinting for some time that people like both economic conservatism and personal freedom, but it'd still be strange to think that Nevada, of all places, might be politically ahead of the curve.