Don\u2019t fall in love with a candidate.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s ok to love his ideas, or how he presents them.\u00a0 It\u2019s even ok to fall in love with policies, although those are \u2013 fortunately \u2013 rarely as pure as the ideas.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s even ok to decide, after a long, successful term of governance, that one has become attached, and to love an officer-holder for what they have done.<\/p>\n

But don\u2019t fall in love with candidates.\u00a0 That\u2019s when they\u2019re ambitious, egotistical, manipulative.\u00a0 They want to win an election, to hold an office.\u00a0 They may believe what they say, and you may like how they say it, but never forget that a candidate is, above all, trying to get something from you.\u00a0 Your vote.\u00a0 For office.\u00a0 For them.<\/p>\n

If you love them, they probably don\u2019t even know who you are.<\/p>\n

Candidates are, like the rest of us, flawed human beings, with sins in their pasts and compromises to be made in their futures.\u00a0 They will have to trade away X to get Y and it may well be that X is the single most important thing to you in the platform.\u00a0 Nothing personal, just business.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why, when you judge a candidate you do so based on cold calculation of whether or not supporting them advances the political cause.\u00a0 What will they do once in office?\u00a0 Do you trust their judgment, especially under pressure? Can they win?\u00a0 If they can\u2019t win, does it matter, and what can they achieve in the course of losing?<\/p>\n

But above all, not<\/em>, do I love them?<\/p>\n

As it is with candidate, whose business is politics, all the more so with a company or CEO, whose business is business, but who gets involved in politics.<\/p>\n

Consider the news from Apple today that it will oppose an FBI request to develop a version of its iOS to allow the government to bypass security<\/a> on confiscated phones.<\/p>\n

Some libertarians are cheering Apple as a friend of liberty, a champion of freedom.<\/p>\n

I strongly suspect that, to some extent their willingness to fall in love with Apple over this issue is strongly related to their having fallen in love with Steve Jobs\u2019s products, but I can\u2019t readily prove that.\u00a0 Nevertheless, fallen in love they have, at least for the moment.<\/p>\n

Tim Cook is no Champion of Liberty.\u00a0 He\u2019s a lefty with a libertarian streak when it comes to his company\u2019s products.\u00a0 He supports gay marriage, which libertarians like, but opposes individual, private freedom of conscience<\/a> not to participate in those ceremonies, which ought to give libertarians the willies.<\/p>\n

He has committed Apple to get 100% of its power from highly expensive, heavily publicly-subsidized \u201crenewable\u201d energy, and refused to disclose to shareholders<\/a> how much this will cost them.<\/p>\n

Cook may or may not be on the right side of the privacy issue.\u00a0 (I tend to think he\u2019s correct in general, but wildly wrong in thinking that two dead mass murderers have privacy rights worth respecting.)\u00a0 But on the whole, Cook is a typical New Oligarch<\/a>, fond of using the government to tell other people how to live, while chafing at those restrictions himself.<\/p>\n

In short, no friend of liberty.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t fall in love with a company.
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