Congressman Justin Amash is running to be the presidential nominee on the Libertarian Party ticket. Amash was originally elected to Congress in 2010 when he was just 30 years old.  He was elected as a Republican, but he has been known as having a libertarian outlook.

In 2019, Amash left the Republican Party and became an independent.  Amash had taken a hard stance against Donald Trump. He would have been the only Republican member of Congress to publicly advocate for the impeachment of Trump, but Amash saw the writing on the wall and left the party.

Amash joined the Libertarian Party (LP) just before announcing his run for the presidency recently.  This practice of joining the LP just before running for president or vice president has not been uncommon in the 21^stcentury.

It is still not clear why Amash took such a hard stand against Donald Trump.  His defenders will say he did it on principle, and I can’t completely discount that possibility.  Many of his critics saw it as an opportunity for him to gain favor with the press, to gain notoriety, and to launch him into his current presidential bid.  I can’t completely discount that possibility either.

There is one thing I do know.  Amash, in taking this opposition to Trump, was essentially siding with the establishment.  You can call it the deep state too, but establishment is accurate enough.

Amash was supposedly against Trump because of Russian collusion.  He was against Trump for supposedly withholding foreign aid to Ukraine in order to get the Ukrainian government to investigate Joe Biden and his son.

If Amash had favored impeachment against Trump for placing sanctions on Iran, that would have been great.  If he had favored impeachment against Trump for continuing the bombing of countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, that would have been great.

But Amash publicly supported the impeachment of Trump based on the narrative put forth by the deep state and the Democratic hacks in Congress.  Amash sided with Schiff and Pelosi.  He sided with the intelligence agencies (the CIA, FBI, NSA).  He sided with the war hawks.  He sided with the deep state.  He contributed to the stoking of tensions with Russia.

When Amash spoke about Russian collusion (a hoax) and Trump’s phone call with the Ukrainian president, he did not sound much different than a typical establishment Democrat in Washington DC.  For this alone, it would be hard for me to ever support this man for president.

If Amash rolls over for the deep state when he is a sitting member of Congress, you can just imagine how easy it will be for him to roll over for the deep state if he were actually president.

Voting Record and Rhetoric

Amash’s voting record has been very good over the years, relatively speaking.  I don’t think he has been nearly as good when compared to Ron Paul’s time in office.  I will certainly concede that if there were more Justin Amashes in Congress, we would probably be better off.

In terms of just looking at voting records and the promotion of liberty, I would certainly put Amash in the top five for members of Congress over the last decade.

From a libertarian standpoint, Amash has been on the wrong side on some issues.  For example, in 2017, Amash voted against an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act to prohibit taxpayer money being used to provide gender transition support to the military.  He could have supported this amendment with a different rationale than his fellow Republicans in Congress.

I can nitpick on his voting record over the last 10 years, and maybe I will look at more of these specific issues at another time.  But you really just have to look at his recent stances on certain issues that should not give a warm and fuzzy feeling to principled libertarians.

Congress just recently rammed through what was perhaps the biggest government domestic spending bill in the country’s history.  It was the over $2 trillion CARES Act, which provided massive company bailouts, crazy unemployment benefits, and checks to nearly every adult American. Thomas Massie was the only member of Congress who publicly questioned this legislation, and he called for a recorded vote.  Massie took a ton of heat for this, including from Trump and his own party.  Where was Amash on this?

Amash can be critical of parts of the bill now that it is over, but he didn’t have Massie’s back when it counted.

In a recent interview with Reason, Amash talked about climate change.  He stated the following:

“And I believe climate change is happening.  I want to be clear about that because you sometimes hear from elected officials and it’s not clear where they stand on that.  I believe there is climate change.  I believe it’s very important.  I believe that humans do affect it, and that we should take action with respect to climate change.  But we have to be smart about the actions we take.  And some of the things we can do, for example, would be to look into further nuclear power, and finding ways to get nuclear power in this country because it is a relatively safe form of production and very low emissions compared to other forms of energy.”

Who does Amash mean when he says “we”?  Is he talking about himself personally, or is he talking about the federal government?  I could say that, we, as a society, need to do more about heart disease.  But I wouldn’t be saying that when running for political office, unless it involved repealing regulations and spending that could actually contribute to heart disease.

Later in the interview, Amash says that the federal government has an important role in remedying discrimination.  Amash talks about the importance of the 14^thAmendment.  I wonder if Amash takes the Gary Johnson position that a baker should be forced to sell a cake, but he doesn’t have to decorate it.

I have seen some of Amash’s appearances on the establishment media, such as his interviews on MSNBC and NBC (Meet the Press).  I am not impressed.  I don’t want Amash being the spokesperson for Libertarians or libertarians.

This is his opportunity to sell the message of liberty.  Instead, we get a bunch of slogans that could be said by most politicians. Amash just has the luxury of throwing in that we don’t need to support the same two parties.

Amash has said that he favors some kind of universal basic income in the wake of the government (state and city) shutdowns.  Meanwhile, he seems to offer no opinion on the lockdowns themselves, even though I would agree that it is not up to the federal government.

But even if you take out all of the things in which I disagree with Amash, he still falls short.  He has an opportunity to attack the state, and he doesn’t take it.  He should be hitting hard against the issue of war and interventionism, and he doesn’t do it.  He should be hitting hard against the intelligence agencies.  He should be hitting hard against the Federal Reserve.  He should be hitting hard against massive government spending that has severely hurt the American middle class.  Yet, Amash has done little of this.  And when he does discuss these things, he doesn’t do it boldly.

At this point, I don’t even know if Amash will be any better than Gary Johnson in terms of promoting a libertarian message.  If Amash is folding over this quickly when he hasn’t even received the LP nomination, what will he be saying three months from now?

I don’t think Amash is Bill Weld, but that isn’t saying much.  However, there is something to be said for the fact that Amash just joined the LP.  He thinks he can just enter the race at this late stage and get the nomination. He may be right, but it doesn’t make it right.  Meanwhile, someone like Jacob Hornberger has been working within the LP and for libertarianism for decades.

I will not support Justin Amash in his bid for the presidency.  I will not vote for him in the general election if he is the LP nominee.  There are too many positions he holds that are contrary to libertarianism.  And for the positions he takes which I believe are correct, he puts no emphasis behind them.  It is not completely unlike Bernie Sanders and his foreign policy views.

In the same way I wouldn’t have trusted Sanders to enact his foreign policy views as president, I have the same concern with Amash.  Even if Amash were to miraculously win the presidency, I don’t believe he could stand up to the deep state effectively.  Amash already sided with the deep state in its attempted coup against Trump.

I will only support a Libertarian Party candidate for president if the person is advancing the cause for liberty.  The LP nominee should use the platform as an educational opportunity. Getting millions of votes means very little unless you are actually converting people towards libertarianism. At this point, I don’t think Amash is a good spokesperson for the libertarian message.