Category Archives: Libertarian

Cubas newly-formed Libertarian Party has already experienced the brute force and tyranny of the Castro regime, simply for havingliberty-minded ideas.

All of the present activists at Cubas Libertarian Party HQ were arrested late Wednesday evening for illicit association. Cuban law states that anyone belonging to an unregistered association can be fined or imprisoned for between one and three months.

Cubas personalist, communist regime has thwarted any attempt at freedom of political thought among its citizens.

The formation of a Libertarian Party in Cuba immediately caught the eye of Raul Castros regime and resulted in forceful actions intended at halting the partys growth. In a correspondence between our Managing Editor Dillon Eliassen and Libertarian Party of Cubas spokesman Nelson Rodriguez Chartrand, Nelson details the recent arrests, along with the governments persistent tyrannical quashing of thought and association:

Dillon Eliassen:Please describe what happened, the arrest, and what the Cuban police told you.

NelsonRodriguez Chartrand:At 11:00am [on Wednesday, May 31st], three members of the State Security Forces arrived at the Benjamin Franklin Libertarian Library, which is also the headquarters for the Cuban Libertarian Party.They threatened and accused us of public disorder, which is untrue from a strict perspective, because we were inside the house, completely quiet, and we were within our own private property. They said we could not leave the house nor let anyone inside. We were surrounded.

45 minutes later, more or less, a group of 15 agents specialized in murder, from the special brigade, entered our headquarters violently and attacked us while they ravished the house. Caridad (President), Heriberto (Vice-President) and Eduardo (party member) were transported to Vivac Detention, and Miguel and I were sent to Cotorro Detention Center. Written warnings were issued to each us for illicit association, which is a crime according to the criminal code. They know we are part of a political party, which is illegal. In Cuba, only the Communist Party is legal.

Caridad, Miguel and I were forced to leave barefoot.

After numerous threats, we were released at 2:00 am. Caridad and Heriberto arrived after 3:00, so did Eduardo.

Miguel and I were released 30 kilometers away from the library where we were captured. We had been fasting for four days in a row. We arrived at the party headquarters barefoot and exhausted at around 5:00.

Dillon: Has this happened before? What other examples are there of the Cuban government clamping down on your activities?

Nelson:Of course. Before we even had a library or a political party, security forces entered the house and emptied an entire bookshelf. That happens everyday with total impunity. I have participated in several complaints, but they always remain unsolved.

Dillon: Please provide some basic info about your organization. How many members, the mission statement, progress of the movement, etc.

Nelson: There is the Benjamin Franklin Libertarian Library, specializingin libertarian affairs and nothing more. This library aims to disseminate the ideas of freedom on the basis of the logic of individualistic thinking. We want to extend it to the full width and length of the country.

This library is the source of knowledge which nourishes the Jose Marti Cuban Libertarian Party. This party aims to carry out a program of demands and proposals so the state can adopt a social structure that guarantees freedom to all its citizens.

We provide conferences, debates, rounds of conversations, etc. every month.

We consist of 16 members, so far.

[The government] demands we leave the party, they will not allow it to prosper. Warnings were issued, although they were not signed by any of the libertarians, for them it have legal effect.

UPDATE: This story has taken a turn into absurdity; what was an example of a tyrannical government suppressing free speech and other civil liberties has devolved into something resembling a chapter from Catch-22. From one of our sources that has direct contact with the Cuban Libertarian Party:

The team received an indictment last night. Since 2 are on a hunger strike (the ones who were sent back walking), our president and vicepresident are paramedics, so they are being indicted for abandonment for not nourishing the hungry

They have to go to court today at 11:00am. We hope they dont get detained. Those on hunger strike, in solidarity with our members illegaly imprisoned, offered to stop the strike tomorrow to avoid legal actions against the party itself

You dont even have the right to fast in Cuba. In Cuba, dissidents cant work legally, hence they dont receive money. So they literally starve. The problem arises when you CHOOSE to starve, let alone choose to do it in solidarity with imprisoned dissidents

Check back for more updates on this story.

Photo credit: Partido Libertario Cubano

This post was written by Nicholas Amato.

The views expressed here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect our views and opinions.

Nicholas Amato is the News Editor at Being Libertarian. Hes an undergraduate student at San Jose State University, majoring in political science and minoring in journalism.

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Castro Regime Arrests Cuban Libertarian Party Members - Being Libertarian

This discussion has come up quite a bit recently and its just the question to ask for the future of the liberty movement.

Should the Libertarian Party (LP) bother to continue whatever it is they do?

In 2016, they had the best ticket by far in their history. Two people who were actually credible were at the top of the ticket, but despite national attention and more, they flopped.

Hell, even the LP primary had a blogger (who has been on the news before) bragging about how often he was getting laid on the campaign and a wanted murder suspect.

It made the primary something to note, but still brought in only a whopping 3%.

Looking at LP history, despite them having been in every race since 1976, they have bombed in every one.

Theyve bombed despite having a Koch and a Paul on former tickets. Theyve nominated for president, people who were wanted in several states, and had at least one guy hoping for a presidential bid who was living in a car.

With every decent name who offers to join in, they have about two dozen total nut cases, and the decent names tend to just be self promoters whose mouths water at the thought of running for congress so it can get them on local TV, or a Wikipedia page.

Looking at the future of the LP, things dont really get much better.

The best option for 2020 is Justin Amash, who cant win.

After that, the field fills with people such as Adam Kokesh, Larry Sharpe and others who, if given the nomination, are so bad that Im stuck thinking Why even bother.

Im just wondering if the LP will even continue to be a thing. I think the answer to that is yes, and no.

The LP should remain an entity, but the focus of just nominating people needs to die.

If you are running in the LP, you just dont win. The focus needs to be changing politics to actually win.

For that, the future is ranked voting, similar to what is being done in Maine.

Having the line I dont want to waste my vote be meaningless is ideal. So, the LP should take their time to get ranked voting ballot initiatives, to get the half of the country where its feasible to do so and bring the LP to life.

After that, market the LP as a path to obtaining a place on the final voting ballot, without the major party primary hell, and the LP will see a sea of better candidates.

Unless a major voting reform is done, the LP will never become a thing unless someone like Mark Cuban or Jeff Bezos ran as a Libertarian, in which case I doubt the party would even nominate them to begin with.

What should the liberty movement do in the meantime?

The key is a man named Neel Kashkari.

For those who dont know him, Neel Kashkari is a well spoken Republican who ran for governor against Jerry Brown in 2014. He ran as a fiscal conservative who was liberal on social issues, he also mentioned he hated the Iraq War.

If Kashkari ran in Texas, he would never get to be the pro-pot, pro-abortion and pro-gay republican he was.

So what does this all mean?

Libertarians should run for the nominations of the second largest parties in their state. The reason is the Republican partys in states such as Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Hawaii etc., are just as dead as the Democrats in Texas, Kansas, and pretty much any place Ruby Tuesdays is called fine dining.

So what do those platforms look like?

Libertarians running in the GOP

For this, be like Bill Weld. Be the pro-choice and pro-gay republican in a liberal state which cant be called a racist.

Talk about real economic reform which involves free markets, but promise a stronger social safety net.

However, try to one up the democrat on issues a liberal likes. Be more anti war, more for criminal justice reform and more likely to go out and talk about negative externalities to help the environment.

Libertarians running in the Democratic Party

For this, be a democrat who isnt an idiot on economics.

Show a more free market plan and brag about stances such as support for gun rights.

Also, talk about an issue such as the Federal Reserve or corporate subsidies, and use that as a friendly way to reach Republicans while maintaining a Democrat base of support.

This is a model for conquering the Democratic Party and GOP in dead states.

The next part is the moderate states like Ohio, Florida, and New Hampshire etc.

I would say the liberty movement should likely just handle it on a candidate by candidate basis and select their representatives based on incumbents.

An example being how, in 2014, John Kasich was impossible to beat. A libertarian Democrat would be very strong moving forward. Another would be Marco Rubio in 2016, who easily won reelection, but having a more centrist type democrat might have pulled the election away from him.

Conclusion

Yes, be part of the Libertarian Party and encourage them.

Also make it so every state has ranked voting and the two-party system gets destroyed.

That way, strong candidates can run easily on libertarian ideals without bowing to the right or left.

However, run as Republicans or Democrats when the race means something.

This post was written by Charles Peralo.

The views expressed here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect our views and opinions.

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Should the Libertarian Party Even Bother Existing Anymore? - Being Libertarian (satire)

Can a third party in Florida ever elbow aside Republicans and Democrats? When the Florida Libertarian Party held its annual convention last month in Cocoa Beach, it vowed to try, and it has its work cut out: Objectively speaking, 2016 was the Libertarian Party's best year ever. It was also a savage disappointment. That was the verdict of Reason Magazine on the partys presidential candidate Gary Johnson, who won only 2.2 percent of the vote in Florida. As Libertarians look to the future, whats the state of the national party and in Florida? For a Libertarians answer, the Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board sought out Marcos Miralles, 23, newly elected state party chair.

Q: What are the lessons for the Libertarian Party from the loss of its presidential candidate Gary Johnson in 2016?

A: We need better organization from the first to the last step. Johnson never had a chance in the Sunshine State because our grass-roots game remained weak. Ultimately, the Libertarian National Committee is likely to focus more on smaller states, like Montana and South Dakota, so we need to realize that we will be on our own in 2020. Well need to set up field offices throughout the state, well need a much stronger outreach to the Hispanic community, well need to start an actual absentee ballot plan, and well need to put our volunteers to work. Thousands of individuals signed up in Florida to volunteer in 2016, and the great majority of them were never to be seen. It all comes down to organization.

Q: Libertarian members have been described as split between pragmatist converts vs. stalwart radicals. How would you describe the partys core philosophy?

A: If you look deeply into our philosophy, youll see that Libertarians have a rational and unwavering distrust of all government actions, and we will always look for free-market solutions to each problem in society. But our message resonates with both liberals and conservatives to some extent, and given our considerable support from independent voters last year, we have the potential of being the real middle-of-the-aisle party that dissatisfied voters can come to.

Q: What would Libertarians have concentrated on in the first 100 days of the Trump presidency, if they had representation in Congress?

A: If we had Libertarians in Congress, we would have focused on tax reform. Its clear that President Trump is en route to clash with Libertarians every week of his presidency, but in some occasions, we could work together. Nobody from the Republican establishment dared to touch tax reform in the first 100 days, and this is where we would have come in.

Q: Does the party have a national database of members, or those who contribute financially?

A: Yes, and yes. That database grew exponentially thanks to the 2016 presidential campaign.

Q: How does party membership in Florida and nationally stack up against figures before the 2016 vote?

A: Our membership numbers are just a fraction of what we could have if all 2016 Libertarian voters registered with our party. Although we barely cover 0.1 percent of statewide registered voters, we could be a major party by 2020 if all those who voted for our nominees registered with the Libertarian Party. And that needs to be our first and foremost focus by the end of the 2018 mid-term season.

Q: Libertarians seem to focus on the national level. What is the party doing to recruit candidates on the state and local level?

A: Weve actually just launched Operation: First Step, which focuses on recruiting candidates in each county of Florida to run for community development districts, soil and water boards, and other similar special districts. Weve focused for a long time on large elections, but if we want to be realists and be successful, we need to start from the bottom and involve ourselves in the smallest level of government. Only then can we create leaders within our society who with time, rapport and a good understanding of their community will one day step up to win those seats at the national level.

Q: What are the partys top policy goals for Florida?

A: Ideally, we would love to see an end to the war on drugs, work toward the demilitarization of police, a complete end to civil asset forfeiture, and budget trimming and severe tax cuts. However, there is only so much that Libertarians can accomplish without any presence in Tallahassee. So well need to first focus on policies that can help the party become an established presence. We want to see a change in the states determination of what constitutes a major party. Now, that doesnt mean were giving up on other potential reforms. Just this year, our team introduced, thanks to the collaboration of state senator and currently a candidate for Congress, Jose Javier Rodriguez (D-Coral Gables), SB 1750, a bill to reform special taxing districts and to give residents the power to abolish them.

Q: Without any Libertarians in the Legislature or in statewide offices in Florida, how does the party stay relevant?

A: Its a humbling realization to see how much work we can accomplish regardless of having no elected officials in the Legislature. Ultimately, all politics is local. Nebraska, Nevada and New Hampshire all have state legislators. Our turn will come. Meanwhile, were confident we can show Floridians what Libertarians can do with our multitude of local elected officials that we currently have and will add on by November 2018.

Q: Who is jockeying to be the partys presidential nominee in 2020?

A: Ill let the potential candidates to their own bidding for now. But what I can guarantee you is that whoever the Libertarian delegates pick in 2020, that candidate will have a better result than Gary Johnson had in 2016 and will have a real chance at unseating the current president.

Read more from the original source:

Libertarians plot a ground game in Florida - Orlando Sentinel

The environment isnt very popular with libertarians. My suspicion is that support for the environment is viewed as a vessel for regulation and taxes (specifically a carbon tax) an anathema to liberation. There are, however, very libertarian considerations when it comes to environmental pollution.

The first and most serious is the violation of the non-aggression principle. Polluters emit poisonous gas into the air. Chemical runoff from fertilizers, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, chlorofluorocarbons, and nitrogen oxides all negatively impact society. Producers of goods that cause air, soil, and water pollution profit while other individuals suffer the consequences; this is hardly a non-aggression ideal.

To further establish fossil fuels anti-liberty credentials, they do this with government assistance.

The Overseas Development Institute, and Oil Change International, commissioned a study which concluded that global subsidies for fossil fuel producers stood at $775 billion, while green energy subsidies received a humbler $101 billion.

Fossil fuels receive an unfair competitive advantage. Libertarians desperately need to stop pretending this is a free market it is big government.

Environmentalism ought not to be a platform for the left. There is no stronger empirical argument for liberty than the horrifying reality of governments actually stealing our money and giving it to people to poison the air we breathe and destroy the life-permitting chemical balance of our atmosphere. Big government interfering with the free market system is the height of corruption.

Ronald Reagan famously quipped that government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem. When it comes to the environment, truer words were never spoken.

Free market environmentalists advocate internalizing the costs of production. If there is a cost of producing a product then this should be factored into the cost of production rather than it being paid by a bystanding individual.

There is no shortage of arguments libertarians have ready to dispense (if the topic of environmentalism is brought up) regarding anthropogenic causes to our planets warming; some are more intelligent than others.

I would like to remind all true libertarians that none of these serve as sufficient justifications for overlooking the violation of the non-aggression principle with poisonous air or the big government-style subsidies that individuals have to pay.

On the opposite end of the political spectrum, we find leftists who urge me on to the conclusion that government is necessary for the protection of our environment. The empirical evidence suggests that governments are not only unlikely to be able to accomplish this but are even more likely to be an accomplice for the opposite.

Leftists urge me to support a system thats statistically, and therefore empirically, likely to oppose environmentalism due to the enormous politicking power of the fossil fuel industry.

The only pragmatic solution to human-caused degradation of our environment is the idealism of liberty.

Only through the elimination of subsidies can we create a fair market for green energy. Only through the non-aggression principle can we reasonably argue for additional costs imposed on fossil fuel production in the absence of that, its mere capriciousness.

At the heart of environmentalism is liberty; not a big government with all its corruption-potential, but liberty for the individual and justice for society.

This post was written by Brandon Kirby.

The views expressed here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect our views and opinions.

Brandon Kirby is a philosopher, financial adviser, a founder of a local investment club, and he hosts regular symposiums in philosophy. He is also a member of Canadas Libertarian Party.

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Freedom Philosophy: Free Market Environmentalism - Being Libertarian

As I write this, the value of Bitcoin has risen to over $2,500, and the value of Ethereum has come up to nearly $200. There are also the other various cryptocurrencies that have experienced dramatic rises in the past couple of weeks. Its a sort of crypto-mania right now. There seems to be many unprecedented things going on here, and like the all new paradigms these alt currencies are creating, these valuations seem to be breaking all kinds of rules and traditional trading rationale. The valuations dont seem to be following the sorts of trends and measures that usually offer indicators on securities or commodities. Neither do they seem to follow traditional indicators on currencies. So, this isnt an article about the potential direction of these valuations. These mechanisms of how these currencies are valued seem to elude me. Rather, this is an article about the likelihood of common usage of cryptocurrencies.

Like the majority of libertarians, I watch these cryptocurrencies with interest and cheer on climbing valuations in hopes that it might mean broad acceptance of these currencies, at some point, as a replacement to traditional currencies. I see the benefits of a decentralized currency far outside the control of any one person or group of people. These are currencies for which no government can rest control away from the people. And, while the notion of the usage of such currencies is enticing, it isnt very practical in terms of wide usage at this time. Using cryptocurrencies is clunky, at best.

To use one of these cryptocurrencies, I have to open a wallet out of thin air, then I have do something that feels like sending off my money to a distressed prince in desperate, but profitable circumstances in my email inbox. I have to send my money off into a dark cyber world that is unfamiliar and contains operations with which I have no experience whatsoever, and I am not sure whether it will exist only in my mind or I will someday be able to retrieve it. While logically, I assume that there will be no problems, it is hard to trust such an unfamiliar process. There are also limited options for the use of the cryptocurrencies, primarily limited to private transactions with other people I might have a hard time finding or with a handful of online marketplaces with a very limited stock of merchandise.

While it is certain that options for using cryptocurrencies will increase over time, I believe it is going to take more time than most crypto-optimists realize. I believe that cryptocurrencies overtaking the currencies we all now know is inevitable at some point, but it is going to be quite some time before it happens. I dont like being such a pessimist, but there are enormous hurdles to these things, the chief of which is the governments and the central banking systems that have cornered the market on currencies. They arent just going to throw all that power away because weve decided we like decentralized authority better. Neither are people ready to accept an entirely new way of thinking about their money that changes the very foundations of their understandings of how they live from day to day.

As a practical example, Oklahoma passed a law making gold legal tender three years ago, meaning that people can use gold to buy and sell things without any trouble from government. However, having operated a business in all that time in Oklahoma, I have never had anyone offer up gold to buy anything. I would love it if they would, but theres just never been any talk of it. I have a little bit of gold myself, but I still dont view it as money. To me, its still a way to guard against inflation and poses an alternative investment. People really just dont feel pressed to use gold as currency, even though it has become legal here.

As another practical example, I once began offering to sell my goods for Bitcoin, trying to do something different and offer a service competitors werent offering. About a year and a half later, there had been only one customer that even so much as mentioned it, and said he was shopping at my store solely because I offered to transact in Bitcoin, but he paid with old fashioned American dollars. My credit and debit card processor suddenly halted all activity on my merchant account while holding several days worth of transactions, because they had discovered my acceptance of Bitcoin. They were refusing to pay the deposits I had due until I removed any sign of accepting Bitcoin and sign a statement stating such refusal. I had no choice but to do so, or face losing an enormous amount of money that I could not afford to lose. When I inquired as to why and what business it was of theirs what currencies I accept, they replied that they did not want to be anywhere near businesses transacting in cryptocurrencies out of fear of being accused by the government of money laundering. There was no way I could afford to stand on principles and lose such a large quantity of money, so I caved to their demands.

Government agencies around the world use the banking systems to keep tabs on people and to follow cash to spot criminal activity and to make sure nobody is hiding income from taxation. If you take money out of that system, especially in any noticeable way, these government agencies become highly suspicious and assume you must be a criminal yourself. There are very negative consequences, up to as negative as the seizing of property and potential prison time. With hammering threats like this, nobody wants to risk legitimate transactions being taken for criminal ones.

Full acceptance of cryptocurrencies also means the end of banks as we know them. There is no need for a bank, in the current way they exist, to store your cryptocurrencies. This means undoing a means of transacting business and borrowing money that has become so entrenched into society for hundreds of years that it has become a symbol of what creates a civil society in the minds of the vast majority of people. The banking system has been at the very center of every major improvement in society for the past few hundred years. Want to see true civil unrest and panic? Just put closed for business signs on your local banks and see how quickly people freak out at the thought of losing access to capital, even if their money could be obtained through different means.

It took hard currency millennia to develop into the way we know and use it, and the banking system took several centuries to become entrenched into the fabric of society. All of that doesnt change in the blink of an eye. While I will continue to cheer on the rise in crypto valuations, I am not going to assume that these cryptocurrencies will be in full use any time soon. I love the idea of them. I want their full usage, but I am enough of a realist not to bank on it.

This post was written by Danny Chabino.

The views expressed here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect our views and opinions.

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The Red Dirt Liberty Report: Cryptomania - Being Libertarian

They came in a U-Haul.

Colorado, the birthplace of the national Libertarian Party, is now something else: host of the partys trove of physical archives since its founding in 1971 in Colorado Springs.

Or was the party founded in Westminster?

Thats a friendly dispute among some Libertarians who debate whether the official formation of the small government individual freedom party, which took place in the Springs, supersedes where its ideas were hashed out around party founder David Nolans Westminster dining room table.

Regardless, Colorado, a state with about 1 percent of its registered voting population claiming membership in the party, has always had an outsized role in Libertarian history. Now, just this spring, the partys physical history relocated from a storage facility in Alexandria, Virginia, to Parker, Colorado.

Leading the effort to bring those records to the partys birthplace was Caryn Ann Harlos of Castle Rock, the state partys pink-haired spokeswoman who serves as the national partys representative for nine western states. On a December trip to the East Coast on party business, she asked to see archives many thought were destroyed in a flood when they were housed in the basement of the famous Watergate building. Instead, Harlos found a room of records largely intact. Boxes of newsletters, convention material, even contents from the desks of former party officials.

I got a burr under my saddle and was like This stuff needs to be preserved, she said over the phone recently.

The national party set up a committee and formulated a $10,000 budget to make it happen. Party people packed the archives in a U-Haul and a staffer drove it west.

For the past several weeks, Harlos, a paralegal with two decades of document management experience, has, in her own words, been becoming one with the records.

There are tape recordings of old conventions, there are video tapes of old TV spots, there are bumper stickers, there are buttons, theres a lot of handbills and fliers and stuff from older presidential campaigns, she says about whats inside. She found handwritten 1974 convention minutes on the back of an old press release.

Her goal is to organize and digitize the documents, and then upload them to the online crowdsourced Libertarian history site Lpedia.

She stresses it is not a public Libertarian Party museum or anything, but anyone who wants to take a look can make an appointment with her.

There are people very passionate about the history, she says. I have people planning weeklong vacations to come and work on these records in Colorado.

Call it Libertarian tourism in Colorado.

Says Harlos: Being the birthplace is really [a]big thing and weve always taken great pride in that.

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The national Libertarian Party's archives now live in Colorado - The Colorado Independent

When I recently spoke with the Libertarian Partys chairman, Nicholas Sarwark, about his organizations unique perspective onthe presidency of Donald Trump, he highlighted a very important issue: the war on drugs.

Sarwark also argued that Congress needs tosay, Look, these penalties that we have for people having drugs or selling drugs or using drugs they need to be brought down into the area of reality. And stop locking people up for decades oversubstances people voluntarily consume and ingest.

Indeed many people onthe left might agree: What right does the government have to tell people what they can do with their bodies? Not to mention the fact thatsuch a crusade should be denounced for its racism,expenseand mass incarceration. Yet while those problems are horrific, the war on drugs could theoretically be reformed withoutdoing away with it altogether.

To me, though, the last part of Sarwarksphrasing perfectly captures whythe war on drugscannot be justified: Stop locking people up for decades over substances people voluntarily consume and ingest.

Do you want to claim that people who use drugs are more likely to commit crimes? Perhaps, but then outlaw the crimes themselves, not the substances that may make them more likely.

Sarwarksaid that anti-drug laws need to be brought down into the area of reality.

In my view, they shouldnt exist at all.

Watch our conversationto better understand libertarians argument aboutour governments drug policies.

See the rest here:

WATCH: Libertarian Party chair on the war on drugs: Stop locking people up - Salon

In the wake of Maxime Berniers loss to Andrew Scheer in the federal Conservative leadership race, another party has offered the Quebec MP its leadership: the Libertarian Party of Canada.

The Libertarian Partys current leader, Tim Moen, posted a video to YouTube Sunday promising to immediately step aside and nominate Bernier as leader should he accept the offer. The party also plans to adopt Berniers platform whether or not he joins them, Moen said.

I know Max and I know hes a solid libertarian, Moen said in an interview with the National Post. He hopes Berniers supporters shift their allegiance to the Libertarians, which he says will force the Conservative Party to consider adopting libertarian policies.

He could take a lot of political market-share away from the Conservative Party, he said. I think they need to be disciplined by the market.

Bernier finished a close second to Andrew Scheer in the Conservative leadership race, taking roughly 49 per cent of the available points toScheers almost 51 per cent. He campaigned on a platform that included lowering corporate taxes from 15 to 10 per cent, eliminating the capital gains tax and abolishing Canadas supply management system for dairy, eggs and poultry.

Moen said the popularity of Berniers platform shows that voters are interested in taking baby steps towards libertarian policies.

Maxs platform offers people something that is realistic and something that a libertarian can live with and embrace, he said. Itll show that were serious about winning some votes here.

Berniers office did not respond to a request for comment before deadline Monday.

The Libertarian Party of Canada was founded in 1973 with the mission of reducing the responsibilities and expenses of the Canadian government, according to the partys website. The party today has roughly 10,000 members, according to Moen.

The partys current platform which Moen says takes a more philosophically purist approach than Berniers plan includes proposals to establish a maximum federal income tax of 15 per cent, withdraw Canadian forces from all international conflicts and repeal the Canada Health Act to make healthcare a purely provincial responsibility.

Moen, who works as a firefighter and paramedic in Fort McMurray, has been leader of the Libertarian Party since 2014. He says hes reached out to Bernier (I sent him a text, he said) and he and Bernier will speak about the invitation this week.

Hes not sure if Bernier is at all interested, but said he felt he would be remiss not to provide the option.

I hope he takes me up on the offer, but Im not holding my breath.

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A second chance for Mad Max? Libertarian Party leader offers to step aside for Bernier - National Post

It wasn't ultimately surprising that a Republican candidate facing assault charges for allegedly bodyslamming a reporter the day before the election won his House race in Montana anyway. But Greg Gianforte's 6 percent win over Democrat Rob Quist was far lower than most assessments of Montana's relative preference for Republicans would indicate. And Gianforte's winning margin was exactly matched by the unprecedented 6 percent total for a Montana House race for the Libertarian Party's candidate, Mark Wicks.

Wicks for CongressWicks, a rancher and mailman in Inverness, Montana, thinks the key to his unusually good results for the L.P., for a campaign that could not afford any print, TV, or radio ads and only a few signs, was that the L.P. helped pressure the hosts of a televised debate to include Wicks along with his major party competitors.

"When people saw how I handled myself, especially compared to the other two," Wicks said in a phone interview the day after the election, it helped him nearly double the last L.P. House candidate's 3.3 percent. (In Liberty County, next door to his home county, where Wicks says he likely personally known one-quarter of the voters, he pulled 16 percent.)

He credits his good showing in the debate not so much to ideology, but to the fact that he was able "to answer questions in a straightforward and honest way. My answers were consistent but [voters] could tell they weren't memorized. I would answer the question asked and not just pivot to a talking point."

Wicks expects he'll run for office again, though not sure exactly what office or when. He'd like to have more money, sooner whenever that happens. He's like to be in a better position to hit the ground running with a decent cash pile the way major party candidates usually can.

The Libertarian National Committee (LNC) did give him a rare donation of $5,000, but it came too late in the process to do much good, Wicks says. Wicks sees the LNC faced a chicken and egg dilemma--he understands their reluctance to hand over a pile of cash to an untried candidate until after the debate showed he could comport himself well and make a decent run of it, but getting the money within the last couple of weeks before the election gave him no chance to have it serve as seed money for outreach that could have lead to more money.

His campaign was able to spend "a couple thousand" on Facebook advertising, he says, but his jobs and the vast sprawl of Montana's one-district state made in-person appearances before crowds of voters also impossible. He lives about 300 miles from any major Montana city.

Most of his volunteer support came via the Feldman Foundation, a national organization dedicated to finding and helping liberty-oriented candidates (named after Marc Feldman, a deceased former Libertarian Party activist and presidential aspirant). Wicks credits them with a "tremendous job, it took so much weight off my back." They managed his press releases and phone banks, for which he recalls one activist personally made 3,000 calls.

"I've always been a very conservative Republican, very freedom oriented," Wicks says. But "I felt the Republican Party just left me. The Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, their budgets...they run on cutting spending and don't cut spending." He won the L.P.'s nomination against seven other candidates at a state Party convention. He knows that many in the Party "are upset that I'm not hardcore libertarian enough for them. But we have to realize we have to start in increments. We can't start with hardcore libertarianism."

At least some voters thinking about him, he says, would "read the L.P. platform and decide they didn't want to vote for me because it goes too far, a little too much freedom in it for their comfort." For example, he stresses that while he campaigned on marijuana legalization, he does not support the legalization of harder drugs. "Legalizing all the drugs is not going to fly in Montana."

Wicks also thinks it's likely he got votes based on what he found as a widespread hate for Gianforte and Quist partisans attacks on each other. Given the overlap on constitutional and free-market rhetoric between Republicans and Libertarians, it's usually the GOP who insists the L.P. is "stealing" their vote. But Wicks says Democrat Quist's fans were messaging him accusing him of having stolen votes from Quist. Wicks thinks it's more likely that a would-be Libertarian voter was scared toward Gianforte for a greater fear of the Democrat winning.

What lessons does he see for the L.P. in his result? He thinks more, and more active, county affiliates are important for candidate services such as setting up events. And he thinks the Party should aim its resources and attention in general more at state or local races and less on the "pie in the sky" of national presidential runs. "That money could be put to a lot better use for other candidates."

He reminds the L.P., and himself, that given that this was a special election and another House race looms in 2018, that "we're nine months away from having to start waving signs around again, and it's hard to build up a Party in that amount of time."

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Montana Libertarian Mark Wicks, Who Got 6 Percent Against the GOP's Gianforte, Believes the LP Must Focus More on ... - Reason (blog)

While the Libertarian Party doesnt have much political power in the United States, the libertarian philosophy is alive and well within the Republican Party when it comes to certain issues. When you listen to the most conservative Republicans denounce health care programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Obamacare, their language is remarkably similar to that used by libertarians. Take Nicholas Sarwark, the chairman of the Libertarian Party. When I interviewedhim for Salon earlier thismonth about how a strictly free market approach to health care wouldaffect Americasmost vulnerable and cited real examples of a diabetic person, a severely depressed individualand someonewith unspecific lower back pain, Sarwark started out with a valid critique of the Affordable Care Actand then turned to more abstract issues. Sarwark began by describing a libertarian congressional candidate with diabetes, Andy Craig of Wisconsin, who he saiddesperately wants to be able to just buy the insulin he needs from a provider and use it. Right? Its the same stuff every day. He cant right now due to government regulation, both in making insulin a prescription-only product in his state even though its safe and effective and could be sold over the counter so its more expensive, and in requiring him to pay for health insurance, which is not really insurance if its something you already know youre going to buy.

This is a valid point, but it doesntdiscredit the conceptof government-run health care. To me, if anything, Sarwarkmakes a strong case for a government-run health care system, which would allow diabetics to receive the medications they need without having to worry about thecost. Of course, thiswould be anathema to a libertarian like Sarwark, which is why the second half of his response railed against the very notion of government-funded insurance:

We dont have car insurance that covers gas and oil changes because thats insane, Sarwarksaid. Youre insuring against a risk of something happening that you dont know if its going to happen. A chronic condition is not insurable. Theres a cost sharing that can be done; there are discounts that can be done. But the first step in having a real discussion about this is recognizing the difference between insurable risks, whichyou know onthe drive to work I get in a car accident and break both of my legs. Thats a risk that is insurable.

That is all well and good. But it doesnt address the issues of the individuals I cited, all employed in full-time jobs and making nowhere near enough money to be able to afford insurance for their medical conditions without the ACA to protect them.

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WATCH: On health care, does the Libertarian Party's plan sound like ... - Salon