Hi, this is Richard Fields with this week's Report From the Fields. Angela McCardle, the Chair of the Libertarian National Committee is doing victory laps. She claims that Donald J Trump has fulfilled the promises he made to Libertarians at their national convention last spring by appointing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be Secretary of Health and Human Services and by pardoning Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the Silk Road website.
Not so fast. RFK Jr. demonstrated that he can talk the libertarian talk when he spoke to last spring's LP convention. But, walk the walk? Not so much. He spent most of his adult life as an activist lawyer pursuing ultra-green environmental goals which are sometimes antithetical to property rights and other libertarian priorities. And it's one thing to call out as unwarranted a government mandate on an experimental vaccine. It's another, and potentially dangerous to your health, thing to call out all vaccines as bad things. I, for one, am glad to have taken my childhood polio shots.
And, while most libertarians would agree that a pardon of the Dread Pirate Roberts should occur, his worthiness to be pardoned pales in comparison to, say Edward Snowden. Ulbricht's website facilitated the sale of illegal narcotics and services. Drugs and services between willing buyers and sellers should not be illegal. Changing the laws that make them illegal seems to me to have better optics than thumbing your nose at those bad laws. It kind of reinforces the cynical criticism of libertarians as just conservatives who like to get high.
Edward Snowden, on the other hand, single handedly, and at great personal risk, exposed massive lawbreaking on the part of our national intelligence apparatus and their subcontractors. It is because of Snowden's whistle-blowing that we know of the massive data vacuum of personal information, that our nation's intelligence agencies have the ability to focus on any one of us. When Snowden saw the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, lie under oath to Congress he decided to release what he knew, to trustworthy journalists. He escaped to Russia of all places and ultimately was given asylum and eventually citizenship there. He's the guy that the Libertarian Party should have suggested Trump pardon.
It's not too late. Trump has hinted that he is open to brokering an end of hostilities between Ukraine and Russia. It's not inconceivable that a pardon for Snowden could be part of that negotiation. Ulbricht was a website operator who facilitated dealing in narcotics. Like all drug dealers and other criminals who have no unwilling victims, he should be pardoned. Snowden laid bare that our own government has been, and continues, to illegally spy on American citizens without warrant or cause. He's a national hero. He should not only be pardoned but also awarded the Medal of Freedom.I'm Richard Fields and that's this week's Report From the Fields. See you again next week.