Pot. Kettle. Black.

Pot, Kettle, Black

I was reading a George Will article linked from Lew Rockwell's blog, and although it was, in the main, about Bob Barr, it reminded me again of the funky narcissistic quality of America. It seems stronger now, but maybe I'm just noticing it more. Justin Raimondo says that there's been a rip in the warp of space and time itself and we are now living in Bizarro World. I wouldn't be too surprised.

Anyway, American, narcissism, and that whole pot-kettle-black thing. Maybe y'all remember, Russia recently held elections. Elite opinion here in the Greatest Democracy in the History of Mankind was not, shall we say, enthusiastically supportive. It was felt that disallowing opposition parties the chance to run based on "technicalities" like the, umm, law, was somehow unfair, and evidence of a systemic bias in favor of the "officially approved parties."

OK. I'll say it so you don't have to: Pot. Kettle. Black.

Writes Will:

The party's immediate challenge is to win ballot access. Barr and Cory say the party almost certainly will be on the ballot in 48 states, and perhaps on West Virginia's, but probably not Oklahoma's. Although Libertarian candidates have been on all 50 several times, the two major parties use laws and litigation to impede ballot access.

In 1968, George Wallace's supporters, with little national organization and negligible financing, got him on all states' ballots on the American Independent Party line. California required 66,000 signatures—not a daunting total but the signatures had to be gathered in 1967, and all signatories had to fill out a two-page legal-size form to register as members of Wallace's new party. More than 100,000 did. Ohio required Wallace supporters to gather 433,000 signatures—in 10 weeks. When that total was surpassed, an Ohio court ruled that Wallace's party was "fictional" because it was a phenomenon of spontaneous combustion. Wallace stopped execrating the U.S. Supreme Court long enough to ask it—successfully—to order Ohio to put him on the ballot.

Move along, folks. Nothing to see here.