An Idea Before Its Time, or a Guy Who's Fresh Out of Ideas?

Thing One:

Even among devotees of third party politics, "Robert Milnes" is probably not a very familiar name. He's a guy from New Jersey who's been riding a hobby horse -- the "Progressive-Libertarian Alliance Strategy" -- since about 2004 or so.

For a guy advocating a progressive-libertarian alliance, his ideas seem to be very much at odds with both schools of thought. For example, he suggests (or at least at one time suggested) paying all dark-skinned Americans to move "back" to Africa, and genetically engineering all light-skinned Americans to become Comanches, Sioux and Paiutes. And he thinks that Teddy Roosevelt was a libertarian (hint: Teddy Roosevelt was not a libertarian).

So anyway, Robert Milnes ran for the presidential nominations of the Libertarian and Green parties in 2008 and 2012, and one of his platform planks ran something like this:

I would construct a "smart fence" on both the northern and southern borders. Clearly delineate the border; fencing & nasty barbed wire would become superfluous. Webcams, infrared, motion & vibration (tunnel) detectors, surveillance (radar,drone, satellite) etc. Any intrusion could be promptly addressed. This should have been done long ago.

Thing Two:

Even among devotees of third party politics, "Wayne Allyn Root" is also only a mildly familiar name. After a career conning sports gamblers, driving sports gambling firms into insolvency and writing the autobiography Millionaire Republican, he showed up at the Libertarian Party's door seeking their 2008 presidential nomination (shortly after endorsing a McCain/Lieberman ticket for the GOP). A few years later he left the LP and went back to the Republicans, announcing that it was absolutely imperative to American freedom to elect Mitt Romney to the White House. These days he's one of those minor "hanging on by the skin of his teeth" Republican pundits. I look in on Wayne to see what he's up to every now and then, and I was surprised to see that what he's up to this week is ... channeling Robert Milnes!

This is 2014. We don't need to build a real wall. You can create a VIRTUAL WALL with high tech surveillance.

All we need is drones and cameras. Not one person could cross a border protected by drones -- with border patrol, or National Guard, or U.S. military positioned to swoop in the moment anyone reaches the border.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I bet Wayne thinks that Teddy Roosevelt was a libertarian, too.