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Nicholas Rivera has a great libertarian blog, The Coming Realignment. He contends a TV comedy favorite may actually be a libertarian.
Jon Stewart . . . libertarian?
By Nicholas Rivera
I came across a Daily Show clip on Crooks and Liars (an interesting but extremely liberal video weblog). It featured a debate (or a good conversation, as Stewart put it) between Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard and himself. Naturally, the War in Iraq dominated much of discussion, and as one would expect, they didn’t see eye to eye on this issue (Bill Kristol, to his credit, has become somewhat of a recurring guest on the Daily Show over the last few years). What’s interesting is that, having spent the first half of the interview talking mostly about Iraq, they returned from a commercial break and quickly veered off into a discussion about political ideology:
STEWART: Festivus. It’s Festivus.
KRISTOL: For you. It’s Hanukkah for me. But that’s why I’m a Bush voter and you’re a–
STEWART: (interrupting) –whatever I am.
KRISTOL: (interrupting) upper westside liberal of some . . . sort–Festivus? Is that what it is?
STEWART: Now–(correcting Kristol) downtown libertarian. I think you’re the upper westside–wait a minute!
KRISTOL: I am. It’s true. It’s–
STEWART: (interrupting) Neoconservatism–
KRISTOL: (interrupting) I–I cover that up–
STEWART: (interrupting) Neoconservatism is just liberalism . . . with old guys! It’s the transformational power of liberty. It’s “I’ve got magic beans! Iraq will grow and flower!”
KRISTOL: It’s liberalism grown up style–
STEWART: (interrupting) “Once they realize they’re free, they’ll love us!”
Okay, so it’s a bit of a stretch to call Jon Stewart a libertarian (he’s made some comments in the past regarding health care that definitely are not libertarian). But how many well-known “liberals” go on television and say that neoconservatism is just a subset of liberalism? Is he criticizing neoconvervatism or liberalism? It seems to me that he’s criticizing both. Stewart has always displayed a healthy degree of cynicism regarding the government, which may be why he has quite a few libertarian fans (former Libertarian Presidential Candidate Harry Browne often cited the Daily Show as one of his favorite shows, arguing that virtually every show includes actual clips of politicians being hypocritical, contradictory, or just plain stupid).
However, I think the best example of where Jon Stewart took a decidedly libertarian tone was in his interview with Senator Charles Schumer, in which the Democratic Senator tried to argue that the problem with Republicans is that they “hate government.” Mystified by the Senator’s response, Stewart replied:
But it almost seems like, I mean, in a sense of–It’s not that they hate government. It’s that they hate government they’re not controlling. Because clearly their plans have been: They’ve nation built . . . They’ve increasing federal spending. It seems like, they’re almost steroidal Democrats . . . I mean, it–it took you forty years of control to become corrupt. They’ve done it in five.
Jon Stewart might be not be a libertarian, but on occasion, he certainly sounds like one.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.