I have a confession to make. Some of our readers won’t like it. In other quarters, it might lose me friends. But even though I didn’t vote for Donald Trump — in fact, I argued in these pages for a Libertarian vote — I’m glad he won.
On election day, I was downcast. All the self-proclaimed experts predicted a big win for Hillary Clinton. Under the current and blessedly soon-to-be-past Democratic administration, my financial prospects lurched from bad to worse. I wasn’t sure where I’d be after four to eight years of the Queen Presumptive’s rule.
Then came that rollercoaster evening of election returns. As more and more of the mainstream media’s pundits beat their breasts and wept, my mourning turned to gladness. Or, at the very least, to relief. The lesser of two evils may indeed, as the maxim says, still be an evil. But unlike the evil of a Hillary Clinton presidency, this one is unlikely to destroy our country.
On Facebook, I am happy to have many libertarian friends. Some, like me, are happy that Trump will be the next president. Others thunder that they warned us not to sully ourselves by voting, and that even rooting from the sidelines for either of the contending “Republicrats” gave aid and comfort to aggression. That being a thing to which any good libertarian must, by ironclad principle, stand opposed.
Well, I frankly disagree. In fact, I think these folks would do well to reexamine our cherished nonaggression principle in the cold light of present reality. Certainly it opposes the initiation of force against others. But it accords us every right to self-defense.
Do I want thugs to break into my house and brutalize and rob me? That’s what the Democrats have done for the past eight years. It’s what they would undoubtedly have continued to do, if the coronation of Hillary Clinton had gone on according to plan.
By every sane interpretation of the nonaggression principle, if I am sitting peacefully in my living room recliner, and thugs break through my door, I have every right to grab my gun. Now, my weapon of choice happens to be a Lady Smith .357 Magnum. But that particular Lady didn’t happen to run for president this year.
The weapon that ran, and won, is more of a blunderbuss. Donald Trump is noisy, crude, and uncouth. His buckshot singes the whiskers of everybody near him — friend as well as foe. When he takes aim, though he usually hits his target, it’s seldom with great precision. But in a pinch, when our backs are against the wall and our enemies are closing in, a blunderbuss is a mighty good thing to have handy.
