John Perry Barlow is a former lyricist for the Grateful Dead, and now a former "bohemian libertarian" who, while showing a lukewarm support for John Kerry, is terrified of four more years of the Bush administration. (Aren't we all?)
From an interview at ReasonOnline (by way of Lessig Blog)...
I have grave misgivings about John Kerry, but I certainly don’t have misgivings about Kerry that equal the terror I have about another four years of Bush. What he’s done to aspects of the Constitution that are there to assure individual rights is breathtakingly bad.
So I’m becoming an active Democrat. I wasn’t one until just a few months ago, because I felt there was more room for libertarian thought inside the Republican Party. I never found the Libertarian Party was a credible political institution. It holds a pure line, and I’m glad there’s somebody out there defining that point of view, but in terms of actually having power, making a difference... There are libertarian wings in both the Democratic and Republican parties, and in the past I found it most effective to be inside the Republican Party acting as a libertarian. But I’ve switched.
[...]
Kerry isn’t perfect, but the alternative is just completely....I hate to keep carping on this, but within the libertarian movement we’re gonna have to actually sit down and talk about where we stand on the two variants, because one of them is actually part of the problem at this point. I used to think of myself as both kinds of libertarian, but I have pretty well parted company with [D.C.-based leader of libertarian-leaning conservatives] Grover Norquist at this point. I don’t see anything particularly free about a plutocracy.
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