Hot Christie disappoints

By A.J. DiCintio

Search the net for "Chris Christie hot" and you'll be bombarded with so many hits that to read them all you'd have to live longer than Methuselah, spending every one of those years working at the task full-time.

That's good for the governor's presidential ambitions, but all the better is this:

When voters associate the word "hot" with Chris Christie, they do so far beyond the definition of "popular," a reality revealed more than two years ago by a town hall attendee who rose to say this to him:

"I think having a governor that is smart and that has the perseverance to do what's right is hot and sexy."

How well the woman captured a truth for the ages when she spoke of wisdom and courageous resolve in the pursuit of what is right as essential in defining an admirable leader.

And how well it bodes for the nation that a public tired and sick of duplicitous, power loving politicians who ask us to hope they'll fight for common sense change toward an honest government truly of, for, and by the people agrees with her.

Yes, as the days roll on toward the next presidential campaign season, it is a good thing the public finds plenty to like about Governor Christie's achievements and his refreshing old school persona.

All of which makes his superficial comments about the "dangerous strain of libertarianism" running through the contemporary Republican Party all the more disappointing.

Actually, all the more frightfully disappointing, for if it's treacherous even to question not just a spy program representing the most enormous instance of Big Brotherism ever conceived but one administered by the virulently ideological, venomously politicized, "In Big Government We Trust" Obama presidency, then it's not a faction within the Republican Party that's dangerous but the entirety of the American Experiment.

However, the people who laid the foundation for what would become the United States of America, those who breathed the nation into life with the Spirit of '76, and those who since have employed their genius and their sweat to make it the envy of the world know that adhering to the principles set forth in the Declaration and the Constitution make a person anything but dangerous.

Therefore, owning up to a mistake that risks having the public come to view him as an extremist who mindlessly spews the slime of "wacko birds" to mock critics of what Reason magazine's Nick Gillespie calls "the surveillance state," Governor Christie ought not simply invoke Ronald Reagan's comment that libertarianism is "the very heart and soul of conservatism" but speak passionately about the admirably realistic, common sense nature of its uniquely American iteration.

For instance, he can educate the public about Roger Williams, the man Gillespie calls America's seventeenth century "proto-libertarian."

He is, of course, the Roger Williams who risked his freedom, perhaps his life, when he rejected the authoritarianism and intolerance of the theocracy conjured up by the Puritan leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony to found, in 1636, the free colony called Providence, later Rhode Island.

And he is the same Roger Williams who in 1655 wrote "A Letter to the Town of Providence," which, in the name of improving the "Liberties" as well as maintaining the "Peace and Welfare of the Town and Colony," forcefully and without apology attacked the colony's de facto anarchists, who believed there ought to be "no Laws, nor Orders, no Corrections, nor Punishments."

Christie can do the same with respect to the fact that the brave, idealistic, doggedly practical Farmer-Tradesmen-Soldier-Patriots who gave birth to a democratic republic on this continent insisted it be a fundamentally libertarian nation founded on the idea that the Creator endows each individual with "certain unalienable Rights," among which are "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

He can speak glowingly of the wise, freedom loving Jeffersonians, who, having agreed to replace the Articles of Confederation with a stronger law for the nation, led the charge for a fiercely libertarian Bill of Rights whose Preamble explicitly states that "to prevent misconstruction or abuse of [powers granted to the federal government]. . .further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added [to the Constitution]."

Governor Christie can also remind the nation that the libertarian Henry David Thoreau, the iconic individualist, philosopher, and carpenter/mason/roofer who built his own cabin with his own hands, absolutely separated himself from those who are too weak and cowardly to accept the realities of human nature, as evidenced when he wrote this:

"Unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government."

Finally but not last, the governor can introduce or reintroduce the public to Walt Whitman, the great, beloved libertarian poet and resident of Camden, New Jersey, who fully understood that humans are part of a multitude of relationships but chose to focus his immense talent not on the vast, uniform-appearing grassland that is humanity but the singular "leaves of grass," that is, every unique, free human being, whose "varied carols" he heard across the American landscape, "Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else."

Morality and intellectuality demand that in his own way, Republican Governor Chris Christie sing the praises of the uniquely American tradition of libertarianism that has played an indispensable role in making this nation the wonder it is.

So does political reality; for if he should get the opportunity to use his intellect as well as his "perseverance to do what's right" to bring true, honest, fair reform to the thoroughly corrupt federal government, he'll find libertarian politicians bravely in harmony with his tune while discovering that not just dogmatically collectivist, power loving liberals but Big Business/Big Finance/Big World Order Republicans sing an utterly different song.

© A.J. DiCintio