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Fourth Virtual Debate Among U.S. Transhumanist Party Presidential Candidates – September 17, 2019

Fourth Virtual Debate Among U.S. Transhumanist Party Presidential Candidates – September 17, 2019

Johannon Ben Zion
Jonathan Schattke
Matt Taylor
Moderated by Gennady Stolyarov II


During the Fourth Virtual Debate among the U.S. Transhumanist Party Presdidential Primary candidates, held on Tuesday, September 17, 2019, Johannon Ben Zion, Jonathan Schattke, and Matt Taylor, answered crowdsourced questions on character and leadership, radical life extension, health care, universal basic income, foreign policy, the U.S. federal budget, and various other matters. Watch this debate here.

This debate was moderated by U.S. Transhumanist Party Chairman Gennady Stolyarov II and co-hosted by Steele Archer of the Debt Nation show. See the original debate stream on the Debt Nation show (Part 1 and Part 2), including the pre-debate and post-debate shows held on the same day.

Please forgive the technical difficulties and the occasional audio lag arising from a weak and once-interrupted Internet connection.

Learn about the USTP candidates here.

View individual candidate profiles here:

Watch the Third Virtual Debate among Candidates Holsopple, Haywire, Forsythe, Kerecz, and Harris here.

Join the USTP for free here, no matter where you reside. Those who join by September 21, 2019, will be eligible to vote in the Electronic Primary which will begin on the next day.

Trump: The Moral Monster Beyond Hope – Post by G. Stolyarov II

Trump: The Moral Monster Beyond Hope – Post by G. Stolyarov II

The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
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Two excellent recent editorials highlight the unprecedented danger that Donald Trump poses to liberty and basic human decency in America.

Nina Khrushcheva, great-granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev, writes of how Donald Trump has brought Soviet-Style politics, particularly the sweeping use of the Big Lie, to the United States. (“Trump Through Russian Eyes”. Project Syndicate. September 27, 2016)

Khrushcheva observes,

Indeed, from my perspective, many of the nastiest and most perverse features of Russian politics now seem present in the United States as well. The Big Lie – invented in Nazi Germany, perfected in the Soviet Union, and wielded expertly by Russian President Vladimir Putin – is today a core component of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

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So far, Trump has been allowed to get away with his lies. The news media have largely been what Lenin called ‘useful idiots,’ so eager to use Trump to boost their own ratings that they did not notice or care that they were also boosting his. No surprise, then, that an emboldened Trump now delivers lies of ever more breathtaking audacity.

Harvard political theorist Danielle Allen likens Donald Trump to Gilgamesh – and not in a flattering manner. (“Donald Trump is a walking, talking example of the tyrannical soul”. The Washington Post. October 8, 2016.) In the early “Epic of Gilgamesh”, the king Gilgamesh (before he journeys on his quest to obtain eternal life) is an arbitrary, capricious tyrant with no regard for any other individuals’ rights or for basic human dignity and decency. Only when Gilgamesh realizes that death is a fundamental problem affecting everyone (him, too), is he impelled away from tyranny and toward wisdom.

But it is too much to hope that Trump would all of a sudden turn from a populist demagogue and would-be tyrant into a life-extension supporter. Instead, Trump should be recognized as completely devoid of moral character, and a completely lost cause for anyone who thought that he might somehow magically transform himself into a reasonable person.

It is time to break free from the spell of the Big Lie and universally denounce Trump for the moral monster he is. All people of good moral character must stand against Trump. Support anyone else you wish (Libertarian, Democrat, Green, Transhumanist, McMullin, none of the above) – but express the conviction that a decent, humane society should not allow such an unseemly, tyrannical brute as Trump to have any degree of power.

This post may be freely reproduced using the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike International 4.0 License, which requires that credit be given to the author, G. Stolyarov II. Find out about Mr. Stolyarov here.

Cleveland Passed the Test of Character and Statesmanship – Article by Lawrence W. Reed

Cleveland Passed the Test of Character and Statesmanship – Article by Lawrence W. Reed

The New Renaissance Hat
Lawrence W. Reed
July 31, 2012
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As usual, this year’s presidential campaign will test the popularity of two men. It will also tell us a lot about each man’s character, even if we think we already know all there is to know about them both. At this writing, some pundits are predicting a photo finish, maybe even a repeat of the 2000 Bush-Gore cliffhanger. Whatever the next few months produce, every presidential contest gets me pining for my personal favorite of the 44 men who have held the office—Grover Cleveland, America’s 22nd and 24th president.

Until 2000, the last time a close election produced a split decision in the popular vote and the Electoral College was 1888. Cleveland, the incumbent Democratic president, had been through a close one once before. In 1884 he won New York by just 1,200 votes—and with it, the presidency—but a switch of 601 votes in that one state alone would have swung the election to Republican James G. Blaine. Four years later Cleveland bested Benjamin Harrison by about 100,000 votes out of 11 million cast nationwide but he lost in the Electoral College 233–168. Because the contest was tight in a number of states, a slight shift in the popular vote plurality would have easily won it all for Cleveland.

Alyn Brodsky, in a biography entitled Grover Cleveland: A Study in Character, records that when reporters asked to what he ascribed his defeat, Cleveland smiled and said, “It was mainly because the other party had the most votes.” He did not equivocate. He did not whine and fret that he won more popular votes than Harrison. The “votes” to which he referred were the ones that really matter under the rules of the Constitution—Electoral College votes.

Cleveland handled his defeat with dignity. No recounts, no lawsuits, no spin, no acrimony. His grace in defeat was all the more remarkable considering that the loss meant he had to relinquish power he already possessed, not merely accept failure to attain it. He would not tolerate his political allies making an issue of the discrepancy between the popular and Electoral tallies. There was nary a hint of a “constitutional crisis” because the Constitution was Cleveland’s “controlling legal authority.” Cleveland retired to private life until he ran again in 1892, when he beat Harrison decisively, becoming the only American president to serve two nonconsecutive terms.

One reason the American people accepted the 1888 outcome in stride was that the federal government of that era just didn’t matter like the one of today does. Cleveland famously vetoed a bill to send federal money to drought-stricken farmers in Texas with the admonition, “Though the people support the government, it is not the duty of the government to support the people.”

In Cleveland’s day chronic budget surpluses at the federal level of government animated many a political contest, in stark contrast to the massive and endless deficits of today. While some people thought a surplus should be spent, Cleveland thought it was evidence that taxes were too high: “When more of the people’s sustenance is exacted through the form of taxation than is necessary to meet the just obligations of government, such exaction becomes ruthless extortion and a violation of the fundamental principles of a free government.”

Adjusted for inflation, the Obama administration spends more in one day than the first Cleveland administration spent in an entire year. Washington claims more than a quarter of national income now; in 1888, it managed to get by on about 3 percent. The two sides that will slug it out in the fall know that control of a gargantuan apparatus of money and power is at stake, and the temptations to pull out all the stops to win will be immense.

Even more emphatically, it was the character of Grover Cleveland that made the 1888 outcome a virtual nonevent. In so many ways he was a political oddity even for the Victorian times in which he served. Time and again he refused to do the politically expedient. For example, as a mayor, governor, and president, he rejected the spoils of victory and appointed the best people he could find—often earning the wrath of friends and party bigwigs because they didn’t get the nod. As biographer Brodsky puts it, “Here, indeed, was that rarest of political animals: one who believed his ultimate allegiance was to the nation, not to the party.”

Cleveland never lusted for public office. A prominent New York newspaper endorsed Cleveland for president in 1884 by declaring “three reasons” for voting for him: “1. He is an honest man. 2. He is an honest man. 3. He is an honest man.” He was, by all accounts, as utterly incorruptible when he left office as he was when he first assumed it. “Public office is a public trust” was an original Cleveland maxim.

Cleveland didn’t schmooze and slither his way through smoky backrooms to political power; nor did he exercise power as if he loved it for its own sake. He did the public’s business honestly and frugally and otherwise left us alone. It would not have occurred to him to so covet power as to fear private life. Trashing either the system or a good man’s character to obtain or hold on to public office was, to Grover Cleveland, unthinkable.

Every statesman is also a politician but not every politician is a statesman. Cleveland was so quintessentially statesmanlike that it hardly seems appropriate to note that he was also a politician. He certainly didn’t seek office for the thrill of it or for the power and notoriety it brings. Politics was not the meat grinder of principles for Cleveland that it is for so many others.

The Statesman

What qualities define a statesman? He or she doesn’t seek public office for personal gain or because it’s the only job he or she knows how to do. Like ancient Rome’s Cincinnatus or America’s own George Washington, the statesman takes time out from a life of accomplishment to serve the general welfare. He stands for a principled vision, not for what he thinks citizens will fall for. He is well informed about the vicissitudes of human nature, the lessons of history, the role of ideas, and the economics of the marketplace.

The statesman is a truth-seeker, which means he is more likely to do what’s right than what may be politically popular at the moment. You know where he stands because he says what he means and means what he says. He elevates public discussion because he knows what he’s talking about. He does not engage in class warfare or in other divisive or partisan tactics that pull people apart. He does not cynically buy votes with the money his taxes take from others. He may even judge his success in office as much by how many laws he repealed or vetoed as by how many he passed. (Cleveland vetoed more bills than all his predecessors combined.)

Grover Cleveland is my model candidate and model president. I’m betting that this fall’s campaign will only make me miss him all the more.

Lawrence Reed is the president of the Foundation for Economic Education.

This article was published by The Foundation for Economic Education and may be freely distributed, subject to a Creative Commons Attribution United States License, which requires that credit be given to the author.