This is the first edition of what we hope will be a regular opinion feature on Cub Pub, the Pub Brawl, where we send out a prompt to various student groups on campus and get their reactions. Today, we present the final response from the CU Libertarians; the CU College Republicans declined to respond. This round's prompt was:

What is your opinion of the first couple of months of the Obama administration? To be more specific, how do you think the president has fared in negotiating between ideology and pragmatism? Do you feel the new president is a genuine pragmatist, indifferent to the ideological whims of either party, or is he biding his time for an effort to roll out a new era of unabashed liberalism? In which of these directions do you think he should move the country?

Find the CU Libertarians' response after the jump.

“If Washington were serious about honest tax relief in this country, we'd see an effort to reduce our national debt by returning to responsible fiscal policies.”

That was Senator Barack Obama addressing the U.S. Senate in 2006. If only he could apply that advice to his existing actions as head honcho in Washington D.C. The fiscal irresponsibility with which Obama and the federal government are currently operating is beyond belief. Our present national debt is over $11 trillion--a staggering fiscal nightmare. That means every American, including every school child, has a share of approximately $37,000 of U.S. debt. We are running a bigger-than-gigantic-government budget at the same time as a large tax break, continuing the same behavior Bush was vilified for.

And where are tax dollars flowing to? They've become life support for bankrupt corporations, insolvent automobile companies, the pockets of crony CEOs and a volley of make-work programs to come. The Obama campaign ran on a platform that prided the now popular monikers of “yes we can”, “change” and “hope”. However, the first few months of Obama's administration seem to be no different from the previous one. Spending hasn't decreased from the reckless levels of the Bush administration; it has gone up, astronomically! Our military interventionism hasn't decreased; and by all signs it will continue to shoot upwards with a perpetual military presence overseas, with over 20,000 U.S. Marines shipped out to Afghanistan in the next six months, and military spending projected to increase. When bailout programs like TARP, miserably fail at their intended purpose, instead of getting abolished, they receive more funding. With political parties like ours, unabashed “liberalism” has been around way before 2009.

Obama appears to be neither pragmatic nor ideological, but an adept player in the traditional political game. There aren't substantial differences between elected Republicans and Democrats; besides a few singular exceptions, both agree on higher levels of government spending and foreign action abroad. Both reserve the right to seize assets and power away from citizens, and use it as they not the people see fit. Both break their own promises, and violate principles they claim to hold for the sake of winning elections and staying in office. Libertarianism is neither right nor left wing and so there isn't much of a distinction between policies pursued by "Republicrats”, “liberals” and Obama.

- J. David Fernández & Columbia University Libertarians