An article in the online version of the Financial Times, “The tide is rising for America’s libertarians” by Edward Luce provides some valuable insight in that younger Americans, coming of age in the era of the abject failure of big government to do anything but subsidize Wall Street casinos, wage war and spy on everyone are turning away from the corrupt two party system. The system, now past any reasonable expectation of ever being fixed and getting worse by the minute cannot be fixed and while things are bleak for those of us who are currently entrapped by it the future belongs to the young libertarians. The “Millennials” are faced with the dismal prospects in terms of finding satisfactory employment due to the failure of the preceding generations to ensure that the economic might of a post-war America, once the envy of the world would be preserved.

Yet the system was hijacked by a self-centered political class, unethical corporate and financial interests and a bloated military that should be cut down to size but never has been due to the failure to heed President Eisenhower’s warning of the dangers of the military industrial complex. So here we are at the brink of collapse, millions of well-paying jobs offshored to third world countries for their low labor costs, an economy that has never recovered from the Wall Street triggered 2008 implosion and Janet Yellen moving into the Marriner S. Eccles Building to accelerate Chairman Ben Bernanke’s printing presses and a looming catastrophic war with Iran thanks to a pack of treasonous renegades in the Senate. It is no wonder then  that the young are turning away from the two-party criminal syndicate that supports only the interests of a small and very powerful oligarchy.

Unfortunately the article itself is behind a pay wall but a limited number of articles are available if you happen to actually sign up (no guarantee that GCHQ won’t grab your ip address though ) for the most baic package. While respecting the FT as a valuable news source I feel that in the service of a greater good I am going to excerpt some pieces of what is a fairly short article at length here starting with the opening:

Robert Nozick, the late US libertarian, smoked pot while he was writing Anarchy, State and Utopia. He would applaud the growth of libertarianism among today’s young Americans. Whether it is their enthusiasm for legalised marijuana and gay marriage – both spreading across the US at remarkable speed – or their scepticism of government, US millennials no longer follow President Barack Obama’s cue. Most of America’s youth revile the Tea Party, particularly its south-dominated nativist core. But they are not big-government activists either. If there is a new spirit in America’s rising climate of anti-politics, it is libertarian.

The right to smoke pot (which should not be illegal) is an individual one and the prohibition against it is yet one more example of rampant government and societal hypocrisy. Alcohol which is probably the most damaging drug that exists in terms of addiction, health and family problems is both legal and widely available. There stands to be much money lost (campaign contributions) if there were to be a national legalization of marijuana. Such a thing would adversely affect alcohol sales as well as the budgets and profits of two of the greatest blights on 21st century America: the failed and costly war on drugs as well as the for profit prison gulag system, one so vast that it would put anything that Stalin ever had to shame. Regarding gay rights and gay marriage the government has zero business in what consenting adults do in their own bedrooms and this is an area where far too often political pandering to intolerant zealots and narrow-minded bigots deprives a group of Americans of their Constitutional rights.

Fortunately the young are much more tolerant than their forebears who will be dropping like flies with each passing electoral cycle. There has also been an interesting trend where the young are becoming less religious, rejecting the judgmental hatred that has infiltrated and destroyed the Christian church in America. This is a very good thing because religion is one of the most potent tools that the state is able to wield in order to justify their ongoing Middle Eastern wars of aggression. Notable is the popularity of the books of Ayn Rand and the adoption of her philosophy of individualism. While I personally have little use for Rand andAtlas Shrugged, a boring tome that is  a bit too versed in a cruel form of Social Darwinism I do admire her rejection of religious dogma. What is rarely if ever suggested is that a large part of her allure is that it seems to be a gateway to questioning of the existing religious belief systems. Her most admirable trait is that she was an unrepentant atheist and as such she offers a bit of a gateway or an alternate belief system that is not based upon the primitive superstition that has been bastardized for centuries by kings and popes for their own needs to seize or cling to power and wage wars against the interest of the larger population. It is also impossible to economically compete in a modern global world of emerging high technology with the millstone of religion tied around our necks. Religion promotes subservience and a surrender of the individuality as well as the enslavement of one’s mind and it is encouraging to see this trend towards reason.

The FT piece particularly points out the extremist religious right that has for too long had inordinate control over the Republican party and particularly references Rick Santorum (man on dog sex) and the Texas Zamboni Ted Cruz, a very dangerous man with a snake handler for a father. The GOP, particularly the Karl Rove establishment has long nurtured the irrational beliefs and festering hatred of the religious right demographic and it effectively hijacked the libertarian lead tea party movement that once was largely populated by Ron Paul supporters, turning it into a political arm and effectively poisoning the brand. But while the young may be turning away from the radical clerics and their ultimate goal of having their hands on the NSA apparatus to go after their ample list of enemies it is also Obama who has badly lost the young.  I excerpt the following:

What does it mean for the Democrats? In terms of social values, libertarians are almost identical to liberals. Smoking pot and same-sex marriage both meet with big approval. The same is not necessarily true of guns. In spite of recent school massacres, 40 US states now have “concealed weapons” laws – many passed in the past 12 months. Again, millennials are surprisingly sceptical of gun control, say the polls. But it is on economic policy where they really part company with liberals. The Great Depression helped forge a generation of solid Democrats. The same does not appear to be true of the Great Recession. Franklin Roosevelt helped dig people out of misery in the 1930s by providing direct public employment. Mr Obama, on the other hand, has stuck largely to economic orthodoxy. He may have missed a golden opportunity to mould a generation of social democrats.

He has also inadvertently fuelled scepticism about the role of government. Mr Obama came to power in 2008 on a surge of voluntarism. He did so in part by appealing to youthful idealism about public service. That now feels like a long time ago. Distrust in public institutions has continued to rise during his presidency – most strongly among the youngest generation. The share of voters who identify as independents, rather than Democrats or Republicans, recently hit an all-time high of 42 per cent, according to Gallup. This is bad news for established figures in either party – and, indeed, in any walk of life. Hillary Clinton should beware. So should Jeb Bush.

Or Chris Christie now exposed as a foul and despotic type who more resembles Tony Soprano than a man who can be entrusted as a leader who won’t make things even worse than the current occupant of the White House. On Obama and the youthful voters I can recall in 2008 when a friend of mine who is a good deal younger than myself bought into the public relations campaign of Obama, one of the greatest frauds in American political history to the degree that it won a series of awards as well as the Nobel Peace Prize for the first President who has authorized the extrajudicial murder of an American citizen. In year five of the Obama era it is pretty safe to say that the man is a phony, a product professionally packaged and sold to the gullible just like toothpaste, tortilla chips, beer or dog food. He squandered a historical opportunity to end the wars, reign in the out of control surveillance state and bring the irresponsible gamblers in Wall Street under control, not preside over a system that subsidized these failed and corrupt institutions to the tune of 85 billion dollars a month. Rather than reign in moral hazard and allow capitalism to function properly by letting poorly run businesses fail Barry has only accelerated the collapse. The Millennials who were conned into supporting the narcissist elitist Obama have much reason to be turned off and to feel the bitter sting of betrayal but a rejection of the existing big con of two-party politics puts them light years ahead of their parents and grand parents who bought into it all and now at the time when they are most helpless have been utterly betrayed by a government gone rogue.

While this all isn’t much help in the short term perhaps the coming generations will be able to right the ship, that is if there is anything left of it.