Common Sense for the Common Good: Libertarianism As the End of Two-Party Tyranny

By Gary E. Johnson

With the contentious 2016 U.S. presidential election cycle spinning into its final phases, only one thing seems clear: the American people are less than satisfied with the two major political parties’ candidates.

Gary Johnson, Libertarian Party candidate for president and former two-term Republican governor of New Mexico, stakes his claim to the very center of the political spectrum. His new e-pamphlet Common Sense for the Common Good offers his approach to how a member of a third party, acting as the Chief Arbiter of the U.S., can restore sanity and functionality to the highest office in the land.

Johnson succinctly shares his views on how the two-party system is dysfunctional. How its binary approach to issues doesn’t reflect the multiplicity of viewpoints inherent in our contemporary society. How the nasty divisiveness that rules public and private discourse is endemic to this flawed and outdated system.

He offers his alternative to the dualistic electoral process—and why he believes the on/off, black/white, I’m right/you’re wrong thinking—cripples our minds and grinds government to a halt.

He takes on the challenge of explaining Libertarianism as a philosophy that espouses:

• Freedom of choice
• Limited government intrusion into our personal lives
• Free market capitalism
• Equalizing opportunity for all

This e-pamphlet sets the stage for Johnson’s forthcoming book, which is part memoir and part manifesto. In just 50 pages he describes his own personal and political evolution. He firmly believes that, if the rigged electoral polling and debate processes were fair, the vast majority of Americans would come to understand that their beliefs and values are best represented by the Libertarian Party.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Sep 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9780062669414

Gary E. Johnson

Gary Johnson is the 2016 Libertarian Party Presidential nominee. A successful businessman before seeking elected office, Gary Johnson started a door-to-door handyman business to help pay his way through college. Twenty years later, he had grown that business into one of the largest construction companies in New Mexico, with more than 1,000 employees. In 1994, Johnson was elected Governor of New Mexico, running as a Republican in an overwhelmingly Democratic state. Johnson financed his primary election campaign with his own funds, won the nomination, and was elected. He was reelected in 1998.  An avid skier, adventurer and bicyclist, he has scaled the highest peak on each of the seven continents, including Mt. Everest. Governor Johnson has two grown children --  a daughter, Seah, and a son Erik, and recently became a grandfather. He currently resides in a house he built himself in Taos, New Mexico.

Book preview

title page

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Contents

Preface

Part I: The Crisis of the Two-Party System

Part II: Hello, My Name Is Gary Johnson, and I’m a Libertarian

Part III: The Case for, and the Necessity of, Third-Party Candidates

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Credits

Copyright

About the Publisher

Preface

At the risk of adding fuel to the fire Donald Trump ignited by using songs from the legendary recording artists Queen, Neil Young, REM, and Adele without permission, I have to say this. If the American people had their way, the theme song playing in the background of their rally for a reimagining of the electoral process would be the Rolling Stones’ (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction. While Hillary Clinton got approval from the singer Rachel Platten to use Fight Song, the Democrat did opt for the combative in choosing it as her official anthem. She’s come under fire in social and traditional media for not selecting a Katy Perry tune.

Regardless of the two major party candidates’ taste in music, few Americans would be singing Clinton or Trump’s praises anyway. They’d be trying to shout them down, stifling them like an unwanted child at a rally. On top of that, the headlines seem to be screaming at us with regularity as polling data comes in. Voter Satisfaction with Presidential Candidates Lowest in Decades, reads the label on a June 2016 Pew Research Center report’s graphic. And if we’re to believe other polling data, it’s not just the two candidates themselves who have voters on edge. Those polled (and there were 6,000 of them, more than five times the typical poll sample size) feel that their identity and well-being are in jeopardy. Nora Kelly’s article on voter dissatisfaction in the April 2016 issue of the Atlantic ran with this intro line: A new Quinnipiac survey shows most Americans believe the country has lost it way. Kelly goes on to cite specifically how a majority of Americans believe that the country has lost its identity, that their values and beliefs are under attack, and that they are falling further and further behind economically, among other complaints.

So that pulsing bass line you hear beneath the doom-and-gloom melody and lyrics does offer hope that your desire to see things improve will be met. You can hear it if you manage to filter out the rest of the noise. Sixty-four percent of those who participated in the Quinnipiac survey indicated that they were in favor of radical change. Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders’s most ardent supporters believe that their guy was leading a movement, and not just a campaign. Radical change and movement sounds like a revolution doesn’t it?

I’m here to tell you that Trump and Sanders don’t display the kind of radical thinking that the majority of Americans find palatable. In Sanders’s case that doesn’t really matter anymore; he is no longer a candidate. Trump’s volatility has him and his people now actively engaged in walking back his talking back. In the meantime, Mrs. Clinton has to fend off name-calling from her Republican costar: she’s a liar, she’s the devil, she’s a cofounder of ISIS. In my mind I can hear someone putting those lyrics to a catchy tune.

I have some sympathy for her, even though she didn’t take the high road and called out (deservedly so) Trump as a racist. I guess that when you’ve been in the political game as long as she has, patience can be in short supply.

At times, when I turn on the news and the election coverage, I wonder if I’m mistakenly getting a recap of a Mexican telenovela.

I probably shouldn’t make light of the situation like this. Except, like many of you, I need to do something to get rid of the angst that afflicts these times and threatens to invade my psyche.

Back to that glimmer of hope I mentioned. That call for radical change is something that I’d like to see brought about. And not just at some point in my lifetime, but now. If it hasn’t been made clear to all of us before, it has become apparent today. The two-party system is broken. Many, including me, are sounding the death knell of the Republican Party. Our representative democracy appears to be in shambles. If a supporter of one party is putting a best foot forward, it’s only to trip up a member of the opposition.

I apologize. The epic dysfunctionality we’re witnessing isn’t really funny; it’s sad.

And forgive me in advance if I’m preaching to the choir. A September 25, 2015, Gallup poll (the most recent available on this question) showed that 60 percent of Americans believe that a third major political party is needed because Republicans and Democrats do such a poor job of representing the interests of the American people. This trend in favor of a third party began in 2003, but the percentage of those in favor of them is the highest it’s ever been. That’s more than a decade of growing desire.

Isn’t it time someone did something to bring about this major change?

The time to take the next big step is now.

Attaining major party status is a difficult task. It will take an enormous amount of resources and likely a large amount of time. That said, we can all take action today. We can get behind one of the third-party candidates in this year’s election.

These parties may not have attained major-party status, but some have ideas that are reflective of what most Americans believe and will put into practice what most Americans want.

I believe that the Libertarian Party best fits that description. A group that has the right ideas and the right practices that represent most Americans?

Sounds like a major party to me.

This level of disillusionment, distrust, and dysfunction hasn’t happened overnight. When I served as the Republican governor of New Mexico from 1994 to 2002, I saw firsthand some elements of it. I soldiered on and made some real changes in how our government went about its business. From