Why?

Why are people queueing around the block to vote in tonight's U.S. presidential election? Why are BBC reporters almost ejaculating with excitement about the probable victory of Obama, with their talk of the "rascist confederacy" and the "dawn of a new age in America"? Why, particularly, are we in Britain being subjected to blanket coverage of this foreign election?

What possible difference will it make to anything if either John Obama or Barack McCain wins this election?

Will American troops leave Iraq, if one of the candidates wins, despite their brutal occupation based upon a tissue of lies? No. Will American troops leave Afghanistan, despite being hated by everyone in Afghanistan outside of the ruling elite in Kabul? No. Will the oncoming depression be lessened in its intensity by government stupidity and non-productive consumption? No. Will American farmers receive less subsidies? Will hard core Muslims stop hating America? Will inflation end? Will the dollar not collapse? Will the Keynesians stop ruling the roost? Will Chicken Little be believed? Will anything at all, of any substance, be different, if one or other of the candidates gets elected?

Beats me.

So why are people queueing in car parks to vote?

I think it comes down to hope. The human condition is a hopeful condition. It always hopes that action can make a difference. It always hopes that human action can make a difference.

I applaud this spirit.

Not that it's going to make any difference at all, in this election. American foreign policy, the root of most of the world's evils, will remain the same. American domestic policy of feeding consumption through Federal Reserve inflation, will remain the same, thereby condemning the world to a protracted economic depression. Yes, Obama will tap this hope to try to win, but his presidency will make not a blind bit of difference to anything at all, except to perhaps which particular crooks get their beaks wetted first.

But hope will one day see us through this mess of the democratic God that has failed.

The trick for us libertarians is to capture this hope and to stop it being diverted into the pipe dream of democracy making a blind bit of difference. But hope still exists. Our chance lies before us. We should try to take it.

When Obama fails in two or three years, and it has all gone horribly wrong, we should take the socialists to task for their inevitable failure, despite the hope of the masses that this time someone can make socialism work.

Obama won't be able to make socialism work. No-one can. Mises proved that back in the 1920s with his economic calculation argument. The only thing that works is freedom and I hope that one day we Misesians can help people realise this. When we do, humanity will enter an Austrian golden age.

Getting back to the here and now, I especially hope that a friend of mine wins his bet that McCain will win. Not that I care a flying monkeys about McCain. It's just that I'll stand to benefit to the tune of a couple of glasses of chilled champagne, when we go round to celebrate his spread bet victory.

Hope springs eternal.