I’ve received many emails, comments, and questions about my endorsement of Romney and Ryan—too many to answer each one individually. So, as time permits, I’m going to address some of the recurring themes and questions here on TOS Blog.
The most common question I’ve received is, “Why do you call for actively campaigning for Romney and Ryan rather than just reluctantly voting for them?”
The reason I call for actively campaigning for them involves a few related points, and to see why they add up to grounds for a strong endorsement, you must view them together, as an integrated whole. I indicated these points in my original endorsement, but this is an important and highly complex issue, so I’m happy to elaborate.
The first thing to note is that either Romney and Ryan are going to win the election, or the Nihilist in Chief and his Band of Destroyers are going to remain in DC for another four years. I regard unprincipled religionists who have at least some respect for businessmen, technology, moneymaking, property rights, and freedom as substantially less dangerous than principled leftists, who loathe all of these things and actively seek to destroy them.
Although Romney and Ryan are statists, they aim to violate rights at a slower rate and in less immediately destructive ways than do Obama and company. Granted, the ways in which Romney and Ryan seek to violate rights are very dangerous (e.g., outlawing abortion), but the ways in which and the extent to which the Nihilists seek to violate rights—from trampling the First Amendment to aiding Islamist regimes to crushing or nationalizing entire industries—is substantially more dangerous, at least in the short term.
We need time to educate people about the moral foundations of capitalism. Such education is a prerequisite of major and lasting political change. And a Romney-Ryan administration would afford us more time to educate people than would the alternative. . . .