Hannan endorses Gary Johnson.

Image: Daniel Hannan, courtesy The Telegraph.

It is not unusual for a Presidential candidate to get overseas endorsements. Last election, apart from the usual raft of home grown endorsers for the Democratic candidate, - Tony Rezko, Reverend Wright, Billy Boom Boom Ayers, and so on there were also foreign leaders such as Castro and Gadaffi.

Gary Johnson has achieved the endorsement of British MEP Daniel Hannan, who calls him the most libertarian candidate ever to seek the US Presidency. Hannan is celebrated in libertarian circles worldwide, gaining rock star status for his “Devalued Prime Minister of a devalued government,” speech.

Referring to Johnson as incorruptible who is surely the most anti-government candidate ever to have sought the GOP presidential nomination, he goes on to list his achievements, including two terms as New Mexico Governor:

Gary Johnson’s philosophy is easily summarized. He thinks the state is far too big. He wants to balance the federal budget – not 20 years from now, but immediately – and has identified the requisite spending cuts. He understands that an adventurist foreign policy, as well as being expensive, diminishes domestic liberty: that there is a contradiction, in Russell Kirk’s phrase, between an American Republic and an American Empire. Accordingly, he was against the attacks on Iraq and Libya and, though he supported the overthrow of the Taliban, he opposed the elaboration and prolongation of the US mission in Afghanistan.

Gary Johnson is a libertarian on social issues, grasping that the American constitution rests tacitly on tolerance, privacy and equality before the law (see above clip). He was unusual among Republicans in strenuously resisting the various erosions of civil liberties carried out under the guise of anti-terrorism legislation. He sees the “war on drugs” as a misapplication of state power. In short, he believes in personal freedom, states’ rights and the US Constitution.

The Rest is here.