Bob Barr’s interview with Reason’s Dave Weigel, which appeared in print in the November issue, is now available online.
Here, Barr describes his philosophy:
reason: How would you characterize your philosophy? You’ve described yourself as a Randian. Unpack that.
Bob Barr: I don’t know that anybody is a perfect Randian. I have a very high regard for Ayn Rand, her philosophy, her writings, and the ideas that continue to resonate surprisingly well in our society more than 50 years after Atlas Shrugged and 65 years after The Fountainhead was published. To me the philosophy that is at the core of Ayn Rand, that is at the core of the Libertarian Party, and that is at the core of my philosophy of what government should be doing, is that the government should exercise those powers that are clearly delineated to it and, in addition to that, are essential to allow the citizens to operate with the maximum amount of freedom in our society. In other words, scaling back tremendously, for example, that scope of federal criminal laws.
Even if Bob Barr were president or another Libertarian were president, none of these changes would be accomplished dramatically and instantaneously. But if we don’t commit ourselves very consciously to the process, to start unraveling the power of the federal government in particular, I fear the notion that the federal government is able to and should be the supreme authority in a whole range of domestic behavior will be so entrenched, so established, so systematized, that it will from a practical standpoint be impossible to unravel. In that sense, I think this current cycle and the next few years are the sort of the last best hope, as Reagan said, to unravel the oppressive statism that has grown up in our society.
And it’s the result not just of these social issues. It’s the result, I think, also very much of the power of the government to regulate in the economic sphere. Government regulates so much of what goes on in business and in our economy at all levels, from the personal through the state to the federal level, that it has acclimated people to think of the federal government as not just the last but the first resort to solve problems that people perceive in this society. That is not the job of the federal government.
And, he does something that neither Barack Obama nor John McCain will do, he names specific government departments he would eliminate entirely:
Bob Barr: I would certainly start with the Department of Education. There is, to me, no legitimate basis whatsoever to have the federal government involved in education, period, and certainly to the extent of having a multibillion-dollar federal agency setting the standard for schools in our country.
The Department of Energy to me has no broad legitimate function. If there are some legitimate purposes for having the federal government involved, for example, in assuring the security of atomic materials, that is a very limited function that can and should be more properly handled by the Department of Defense. It does not require a Department of Energy.
The Department of Commerce, to my mind, has no legitimate Cabinet-level function. If there are legitimate functions of the federal government in the commerce area to assure free interstate commerce under the Commerce Clause, that could be handled either through the Department of Justice, assuring that the laws against infringing interstate commerce are appropriately enforced, or maybe by having a very much smaller Commerce Office.
There’ s much more, including an extensive discussion by Barr about how he’s changed on issues ranging from the War on Drugs, to the Patriot Act, to federal prosecutions of so-called obscenity since his days in Congress.
Go check it out.
