Libertarians and Black Lives Matter

Libertarians support civil rights for all human beings. Throughout American history, various groups have suffer civil rights violations on account of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and cultural background. Today, the focus has been on police mistreatment of black people.

So black people have started a movement, and there is a slogan and a hashtag that goes along with it. #BlackLivesMatter. And there is a national organization and multiple local organization by that name as well. Some of them want to disband the police altogether, which arguably makes them more libertarian than even me. And some these groups have agendas that are unrelated to racism. They want to replace capitalism with socialism.

Any political movement centered around a single issue will attract people of various ideologies. Ten years ago, the Tea Party Movement stood against government overspending. Polls were taken showing that the Tea Party was more popular than the Republican Party. The GOP lured many Tea Partiers into their big tent and manage to get them to elect Donald Trump. It should be noted that under Trump, the national debt has been growing faster than the economy.

So politics can make for strange bedfellows, and hashtags can get hijacked. (#ImWithHer) Libertarians should still take an interest in the BLM movement. Here's why:

• 1. It isn't fair that black people are disproportionately arrested for victimless crimes.
• 2. If we stand with them, they might be interested in aligning with Libertarians
  
• 3. If we don't stand with them, they are more likely to align with the Marxists who have been standing with them.
• 4. It's not like we have anything to lose.
• 5. The solution that progressives might come up with is to have police arrest 8 white people for every black person that they arrest.

Black Lives Matter. There, I said it. Racists can cry about it like Chris Cantwell.

Please vote responsibly.

On Distance Learning

Republicans have suddenly made education a higher priority issue this year. Trump thinks distance learning is terrible. Even though he spent his K-12 years in brick and mortar schools, he failed to learn proper punctuation and capitalization.

Technology is way better now than when I was in school. We would be foolish to not take advantage of that during this crisis. Imagine if 100 years ago, parents argued that school buses were not as effective at transporting kids to school as tried-and-true horse drawn carriages. Today we have something even faster and safer than school buses: wifi. Why should schools and parents place children at an unnecessary risk during a pandemic?

Even after COVID-19, distance learning has unprecedented advantages. Kids with rare, special needs can be matched with qualified educators anywhere in the country. Kids with behavior problems who need to be kept physically separate from other students can still continue their education. School districts with teacher shortages can outsource from areas with teacher surpluses. This can make it easier for schools to find teachers and easier for teachers to find jobs.

Distance learning isn't even all that new. For almost two decades, soldiers have been earning college degrees while deployed abroad in Iraq and Afghanistan. When the President dismisses distance learning as worthless, he is saying that these degrees that these brave men and women have earned are worthless.

Please vote responsibly.

End the Drug War

This is the most important election of our lives. You all hear that every 4 years. This year is different. In the past, people would threaten to leave the country if the wrong man was elected president. There is always that failsafe in the back of your mind: "Canada isn't such a bad place, maybe I could move there," you might think. But because of the pandemic, every other country has blocked all travel from the US. Nobody can leave now. This will likely be the case until there is a vaccine or COVID-19 just burns through all available victims. For better or for worse, we are stuck with each other. Since there is no where to run anymore, we need to find a way to end the escalating cycle of violence and chaos that is happening right now. We're approaching a point where not even isolated gated communities are completely safe.

For this and many other reasons, I propose that we end the War on Drugs. By repealing the Controlled Substance Act, we can dramatically reduce the violence that goes on in our cities. Gangs fight over drugs because it's an illegal product. Change the law, and they won't have anything to fight over. Our homicide rate could be as low as Western Europe.

As it stands now, the US has the most prisoners in the world. China has three times as many people as the US but still has fewer prisoners overall. One in 4 prison inmates on Planet Earth is locked away in the US. And it is not a coincidence that 1 in 4 COVID-19 cases are recorded in the US. The virus spreads so easily from inmate to inmate that prisons are practically coronafarms.

Drug addiction is a disease that is worse than any sentence that a judge will hand down in a drug case. Most diseases we can be open about: people will talk about their weight loss goals, rare congenital conditions,etc. Drug addicts have difficulty coming out in the open about their problems because they are at risk of going to jail. So they end up shunning friends and family and seek the company of other drug addicts. And yet even while in jail, addicts often find ways to get a hold of what got them there in the first place.

As it stands now, society shows more compassion to the wealthy white woman who is addicted to opiods than the black teenager with a baggie of weed in his back pocket. While we have a long road to go when it comes to racism, we can reduce it's negative effects. Racist cops can easily plant evidence without being caught by their own body cameras: simply stand with the camera facing away from the suspect vehicle, pull a baggie out of one's side pocket, toss it on the floor of the vehicle, and pretend to find it for the first time where the body camera can see it. While I have full confidence that most police are honest, hard working public servants, highly publicized accounts of police corruption gives minorities reason to believe that there is way more corruption than politicians are willing to admit. By ending the Drug War, honest cops have a better chance to win the trust that they deserve.

I'm Robert Enders, the 2020 Libertarian candidate for US House of Representatives (IN-3). I don't drink alcohol, I don't smoke, and I don't use illegal drugs. My goal is to end the War on Drugs so that I don't have to hear gunshots in my neighborhood anymore.