This is the Man Mallard Fillmore Wants for President

Why, oh why, oh why should I care if the comic strip Mallard Fillmore is urging Walter Williams to run for President? If author Bruce Tinsley wants indulge in foolish fantasies, who does he hurt? The proper answers are, "no reason" and "nobody." However, after being bombarded with this nonsense for two weeks, it becomes annoying, so I will go ahead and venture a response.

Tinsley, presumably alarmed at Barack Obama's promising showing as a Democratic candidate for President, feels the need to propose a black Repubican candidate to show he is not racist. This is, after all, a sign of progress. There was a time when the usual response to a black candidate was to make veiled racists attacks ("too radical," "soft on crime.") Now, instead, Republicans feel the need to counter a black candidate by running one of their own to show they are not racist. But haven't we been through this already during Obama's Senate election, when the Republicans ran a black candidate, Alan Keyes, against him, just to prove they were not racist. Only one problem; Keyes was a right-wing lunatic who ran around alienating everyone and lost by a landslide. Democrats did not choose Obama to prove they were not racist; they chose him because he was the best candidate. If Republicans had stood by their opposition to affirmative action and chosen the best candidate regardless of race, their chances of winning would have been better.

So who is Walter Williams? Walter E. Williams is a libertarian economist who chairs the economics department at George Mason University. He shares the usual government bad/private sector good view of libertarians. He even roots for the Confederacy during the Civil War, dismissing slavery as a minor matter compared to states rights. Tinsley is subtly implying that anyone who opposes Walter Williams for President must be racist. Nonsense! As a libertarian economist, Williams holds numerous extreme views that would make him unelectable regardless of his race. By rooting for the Confederacy (thus ignoring slavery as a pervasive system of government-subsidized coercion), he proves himself no true libertarian, but a neo-Confederate psuedo-libertarian. And, as a black neo-Confederate, Williams is a race traitor. Doubtless Tinsley, Williams and others like them would respond by callling me a patronizing white liberal who dares dictate what African Americans should think. Sorry, but I regard any black person who roots for the Confederacy as a race traitor. If that makes me a patronizing white liberal, so be it.

But I have one other reason for believing that Williams is (1) no true libertarian, (2) nuts, and (3) no one I would want near the Presidency. Courtesy of Glenn Greenwald, consider this recent column by Walter Williams:

Does the United States have the power to eliminate terrorists and the states that support them? In terms of capacity, as opposed to will, the answer is a clear yes.

Think about it. Currently, the U.S. has an arsenal of 18 Ohio class submarines. Just one submarine is loaded with 24 Trident nuclear missiles. Each Trident missile has eight nuclear warheads capable of being independently targeted. That means the U.S. alone has the capacity to wipe out Iran, Syria or any other state that supports terrorist groups or engages in terrorism -- without risking the life of a single soldier.

Terrorist supporters know we have this capacity, but because of worldwide public opinion, which often appears to be on their side, coupled with our weak will, we'll never use it. Today's Americans are vastly different from those of my generation who fought the life-and-death struggle of World War II. Any attempt to annihilate our Middle East enemies would create all sorts of handwringing about the innocent lives lost, so-called collateral damage.

Such an argument would have fallen on deaf ears during World War II when we firebombed cities in Germany and Japan. The loss of lives through saturation bombing far exceeded those lost through the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

. . . . .

Our adversaries in the Middle East have advantages that the axis powers didn't have -- the Western press and public opinion. We've seen widespread condemnation of alleged atrocities and prisoner mistreatment by the U.S., but how much media condemnation have you seen of beheadings and other gross atrocities by Islamists?

. . . . .

I'm not suggesting that we rush to use our nuclear capacity to crush states that support terrorism. I'm sure there are other less drastic military options. What I am suggesting is that I know of no instances where appeasement, such as the current Western modus operandi, has borne fruit.

This is the man Tinsley wants for President!