Category Archives: Libertarianism

An Upstate political candidate is responding to allegations he's not eligible to run for office. Derrick Quarles is one of two candidates in the runoff for the Democratic nomination to represent South Carolina's 25th District in the state house. He placed second in voting last week by 28 votes and will face Wendell Jones next Tuesday for the nomination. "I decided to run this race because there are people in this community who need an advocate, who need someone to champion issues every single day," said Quarles.But two other candidates for that seat Libertarian Jack Logan and Democrat Bruce Wilson, who did not get into the runoff, said Quarles isn't eligible to run. They allege that since his 2004 felony conviction for grand larceny ended in June 2008, he cannot file to run for office until June 2023. State law requires candidates convicted of a felony wait 15 years. Quarrels said he has been pardoned. "I've been dealing with the Democratic Party on this issue for several months and it's only become an issue in the last couple days since I'm in the runoff," Quarles said.He also said he's been properly vetted by the South Carolina Democratic Party. "To my knowledge, every charge that was supposed to be pardoned to make me eligible was pardoned and (the grand larceny) charge was a charge that I acquired when I was a juvenile and so assuming that juvenile charge will not affect me as an adult," he said. "I think I'm eligible to run."Quarles said he is running on criminal justice reform and does not believe mistakes from his past should influence what he is working on now. "While I do have a stain in my past, I don't believe those things should hold me back," he said. "And so I would say to anybody that's looking at something I did 15, 16 or maybe 20 years ago, just think about the things that you've done and ask yourself would you want what you did 20 years ago to impact your life tomorrow?"Quarles said he believes there is time to get a pardon if he does need another pardon, but he said believes he is eligible to run for the seat.WYFF News 4 reached out to the South Carolina Democratic Party Monday. As of Monday evening, we have not yet heard back.

An Upstate political candidate is responding to allegations he's not eligible to run for office.

Derrick Quarles is one of two candidates in the runoff for the Democratic nomination to represent South Carolina's 25th District in the state house. He placed second in voting last week by 28 votes and will face Wendell Jones next Tuesday for the nomination.

"I decided to run this race because there are people in this community who need an advocate, who need someone to champion issues every single day," said Quarles.

But two other candidates for that seat Libertarian Jack Logan and Democrat Bruce Wilson, who did not get into the runoff, said Quarles isn't eligible to run.

They allege that since his 2004 felony conviction for grand larceny ended in June 2008, he cannot file to run for office until June 2023. State law requires candidates convicted of a felony wait 15 years. Quarrels said he has been pardoned.

"I've been dealing with the Democratic Party on this issue for several months and it's only become an issue in the last couple days since I'm in the runoff," Quarles said.

He also said he's been properly vetted by the South Carolina Democratic Party.

"To my knowledge, every charge that was supposed to be pardoned to make me eligible was pardoned and (the grand larceny) charge was a charge that I acquired when I was a juvenile and so assuming that juvenile charge will not affect me as an adult," he said. "I think I'm eligible to run."

Quarles said he is running on criminal justice reform and does not believe mistakes from his past should influence what he is working on now.

"While I do have a stain in my past, I don't believe those things should hold me back," he said. "And so I would say to anybody that's looking at something I did 15, 16 or maybe 20 years ago, just think about the things that you've done and ask yourself would you want what you did 20 years ago to impact your life tomorrow?"

Quarles said he believes there is time to get a pardon if he does need another pardon, but he said believes he is eligible to run for the seat.

WYFF News 4 reached out to the South Carolina Democratic Party Monday. As of Monday evening, we have not yet heard back.

Read more here:
Upstate political candidate responds to allegations he isn't eligible for office - WYFF4 Greenville

"I think that the [Libertarian Party's] emphasis should be on getting us back to our roots as a country," says Justin Amash. "What this country is about is liberalism in the classical sense, the idea that people should be freeto make their own decisions about their lives, and government to the extent possible should just stay out of it."

Amash was a Republican congressman from Michigan once described by Politico as the House's "new Ron Paul" because of his willingness to buck party-line votes on principle. He switched his party affiliation to Libertarian in his fifth and final term, making him the party's highest officeholder since its founding in 1971. He explored a run for the Libertarian Party presidential nomination in 2020 before changing his mind, paving the way for a run by longtime Libertarian Party member Jo Jorgensen.

Amash was in Reno, Nevada, during the Mises Caucus takeover of the Libertarian Party. He is not a member of the caucus but plans to remain in the party.

Reason's Nick Gillespiesat down with Amash in Reno to ask him about his views of the Mises Caucus, his vision for the future of the party, and his political ambitions for 2024 and beyond.

Produced by Nick Gillespie and Zach Weissmueller; edited by Adam Czarnecki and Danielle Thompson; camera by James Marsh and Weissmueller; sound editing by John Osterhoudt; additional graphics by Regan Taylor and Isaac Reese.

View post:
'We Believe in Human Cooperation:' Justin Amash's Vision for the Libertarian Party - Reason

Most videos seen every day on social media are usually shocking and explosive. The BUMMER machine, in Jaron Laniers words, feeds off of shock which in turn produces rage. The preponderance of drag queen videos has been one of the latest reasons for shock and anger, and the reactions that include disbelief and anger are not unreasonable. Were not only witnessing drag queens performing what appears to be a striptease but all of this is happening before childrens eyes.

In addition, the sphere of drag queen performances has seeped into innocent and creative activities such as a story hour, during which traditionally a teacher or a librarian is reading a classic story to children. Its an activity meant to induce and encourage imagination, and the juxtaposition of a moral and imaginative formation of children with a man dressed as a woman is absurd.

What belongs in a performative sphere has crossed over into an ethical sphere of family unit. But even if we evaluate these performances from an aesthetical point of view, theyre boring and unimaginative. A drag queen gyrating in front of kids in a club or some restaurant is awkward. Some of them look drunk, and while this is happening, the audience is awkwardly smiling, not knowing whether they should participate in the charade or not.

Its one thing to have a social and moral reaction to something thats deviant. Its another to try to remedy the problem with law. Lately, thats the go-to way of dealing with problems, such as prohibiting minors from entering the drag clubs with their parents. I completely understand the impetus to do something about it but law isnt the path we should take in this case. (Some on social media have even suggested banning drag queen shows and clubs altogether!)

Im generally not in favor of regulation, especially when it comes to social behavior. I find it puzzling that any parent would take their child to a drag queen show or a Pride Parade that has nothing to do with actual gay rights but its merely a display of sadomasochistic fetishes. There is something wrong with that. But taking away their rights (unless theyre clearly physically abusing them) opens up a possibility of subjectivity within law-making. (For example, I find children beauty pageants or reality shows that include children far more psychologically damaging because children are actually exploited.)

Some parents think that exposing their children to such things gives them an opportunity to experience a diversity of people. Just read the New York Post article about parents in New York City who fully agree with the pedagogical system of some of New York schools, which invite drag queens regularly as part of their curriculum. Childrens reactions tell all: toddlers cry at the sight of a drag queen reading a story about transgender matters, and slightly older kids are bored by the event.

A huge problem in the case of the New York schools is that hundreds of thousands of dollars of tax payers money funded the programs. (This is according to the New York Post article.) The fact that people have no say in this is definitely troubling.

Yet I still find myself concluding that involving law and more regulation isnt the path to take in this case. Pure freedom doesnt exist. William F. Buckley, Jr. made an excellent point in his description of libertarianism: a perfectly consistent, schematic libertarianism would give you an easy answerlet anybody do anything. Including cocaine vending machines. In todays case, think of a safe way of disposing of heroin needles or having a safe place to inject yourself with this toxic substance.

Buckley continues, libertarianism written without reference to social universals isnt terribly useful. We do have social mores and taboos and they exist for a reason. Ideally, the rejection of disorder comes from a community that agrees theres something ontologically wrong with certain behaviors. As Buckley says, A society that abandons all of its taboos abandons reverence. Our culture right now is sick (sicker than during Buckleys time) but I still think that some ailments can be addressed only by pushing against absurdity from a cultural and social point of view, and not legal.

Read this article:
Shock and Awe - Splice Today

The term neoliberalism is ubiquitous in political debate across the West. It commonly serves as a political affront, a synonym for capitalism red in tooth and claw. But since at least 2018, and the publication of Quinn Slobodians Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism, historians have countered this habit; they remind us that the word was coined in the 1930s by intellectuals precisely to signal their break with 19th-century traditions of liberalism no less than with contemporary libertarianism.

The American historian Gary Gerstle belongs to neither camp. In The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era, his recent book and self-declared history of our times, Gerstle employs the term neoliberal to designate a particular American political order. Order here is a term of art; Gerstle defines it as a constellation of ideologies, policies, and constituencies that shape American politics in ways that endure beyond the two-, four- and six-year election cycles. This is far from elegant, but the basic notion is clear enough: Republicans and Democrats take turns in governing, but the parties do so within overarching frameworks of what constitutes legitimate government conduct, which can outlast multiple presidencies.

A sign of an established political order is that the party initially resisting this orders core ideas eventually caves in and implements policies similar to those of the ideological victors. Franklin Roosevelt inaugurated the New Deal order in the early 1930s, but its crucial consolidation happened two decades later under a Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower (whose inaugural address was hailed by Lyndon Johnson as a very good statement of Democratic programmes of the last 20 years).In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan proved the ideological architect of neoliberalism, but Bill Clinton, writes Gerstle, played the role of key facilitator the Eisenhower of the centre left, acquiescing in the neoliberal order.

[see also: Britains pass neoliberalism could leave it at a permanent disadvantage]

Gerstle rightly stresses that a political order what others have called a regime and what the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci famously named cultural hegemony cannot be established without an appeal to moral ideals. It is a mistake to view the past 40 years or so as a triumph for what is often misleadingly called market fundamentalism.

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The resistance to the New Deal (and varieties of social democracy in Europe) was justified in the name of morality, not material well-being. Economics are the method, Margaret Thatcher declared in 1981, the object is to change the soul. Her denial of there being such a thing as society is usually misinterpreted: she was not making the case for selfish individualism; rather, Thatcher was calling for people to be responsible for themselves, with the help of strong families and the living tapestry of something like civil society (rather than relying on the state). The fierce lay Methodist preacher turned prime minister wanted her flock to be morally, and practically, disciplined. Had Thatchers (and Reagans) doctrine simply come down to Gordon Gekkos greed is good, it is hard to see how neoliberalism could ever have become the regnant doctrine of our age.

Gerstle shrewdly observes that ideological coherence is overrated. A political order will always contain tensions or even outright contradictions, which can be sources of strength: different outlooks will attract different constituencies. Neoliberalism had a distinctly neo-Victorian strand stressing family values neoconservatism plus the morals Thatcher had in mind when she sought to change British souls. But another strand, Gerstle writes, was a form of cosmopolitanism more akin to libertarianism: a supposedly deeply egalitarian and pluralistic belief in open borders and diversity resulting from different people freely mixing. It took both the stern moralistic mistress Thatcher and the easy-going, formerly dope-smoking sax player Clinton (plus Cool Britannia Blair) to make neoliberalism truly dominant in the Western world.

[ See also: Download the brand new NS App ]

But the danger is that if an order can contain everything and its opposite, the concept loses force in explaining historical outcomes; while, politically, it might seem that resistance to it was futile all along. Gerstle struggles to make good on the claim that the New Left should be seen as part of the neoliberal ascendancy. Although there is a way to get from Haight Ashbury in San Francisco one birthplace of the Sixties countercultural movement to Silicon Valley, its a rather tortuous one, and you have to leave plenty of left-wing ideals by the wayside: corporate Americas selective appropriation of creativity and all its talk of diversity does not prove that left-wing radicals inadvertently helped establish the neoliberal order. True, as Gerstle points out, both neoliberals and the leftist Ralph Nader, whose Naders Raiders public interest advocates and watchdogs played roles in the Carter administration, and both cared about consumers more than the fate of workers. But the former celebrated supposedly free choice as consumer sovereignty, whereas the latter sought to use government to protect consumers after all, unlike Hobbess sovereign, the consumer is not immortal when car manufacturers neglect safety for profit, as Naders famous 1965 book, Unsafe at Any Speed, argued.

Gerstles ecumenical perspective on what can count as a source of neoliberalism is the result of stressing broad continuities between 19th-century liberal ideals of autonomy and individuality and contemporary neoliberalism. Representatives of liberalism added the neo, Gerstle claims, because by the 1930s progressives and social democrats had stolen the term liberal for their state programmes. But those who added the neo did not show a particular concern with what Gerstle calls one of historys great terminological heists. They felt instead that 19th-century-style laissez-faire had been at least partly responsible for the political and economic catastrophes they were witnessing. They wanted a strong state which actively curated competitive markets and made sure that individual citizens through religion, family values, and so on remained morally robust characters ready to face daily struggles under capitalism. It is true that 19th-century liberals hadnt called for the abolition of government either; but their nightwatchman state was rather more restrained than the neoliberal policeman-preacher state which would actively discipline both markets and people.

In any case, who stole which term from whom is not so obvious: social democrats in the early 20th century including some New Liberals such as Leonard Hobhouse in Britain argued that socialism was the legitimate heir of liberalism. Liberals had failed to understand the socio-economic preconditions of freedom; precisely because they prioritised freedom, rather than equality, socialists would now build welfare states that provided the security needed for the unfolding and flourishing of individuality. In their own minds, social democrats were fulfilling what Gerstle calls the original liberal promise of emancipation.

If neoliberalism was less about freedom than about discipline, the image of Clinton and Tony Blair as converts to market competition and cosmopolitanism but somehow still hip-ish at heart becomes more complicated. After all, Clinton also presided over mass incarceration and workfare programmes designed to discipline supposedly lazy folks; meanwhile, Blairs authoritarian streak manifested in ever more surveillance of British society and policy innovations such as the Asbo and attempts to introduce ID cards.

[see also: Hillary Clinton: I dont think the media is doing its job]

While Clinton and Blair were cheerleaders for technology and globalisation, it is harder to see that their stances really amounted to cosmopolitanism in any meaningful sense: borders might have become more porous, but hardly open; these Third Way leaders celebrated diversity, but did not push for global equality in the sense of anything like worldwide redistribution of resources. Here, the dangers of writing the history of ones own time become apparent: what looks like an even-handed analysis of left and right in fact adopts some of the ideological frames of todays populist right (which relentlessly accuses liberals of being rootless cosmopolitans sneering at poor somewheres).

In other respects, Gerstle reminds us of recent forgotten history that continues to shape our world. He details how under Reagan, TV and radio were liberated from regulations meant to give voice to a variety of political positions; the results were the right-wing talk radio hosts and Fox News, who today are closer to steering the Republican Party, rather than merely serving as its propaganda wing. Clinton acquiesced, not even trying to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine Reaganites had abolished. Gerstle also shows how the political arch-enemies of the 1990s Clinton and House speaker Newt Gingrich worked together behind the public scenes of political and personal invective to give Silicon Valley the lax internet legislation it craved.

The financial crisis of 2008 is the obvious moment analogous to the stagflation of the 1970s with which to begin the story of the neoliberal orders decline and fall. But other failures early this century also undermined confidence in freedom-as-deregulation, especially the foreign disasters caused by George W Bush & Co, who assumed, with capitalism unleashed, Iraq would flourish overnight. The notion that one need not plan or pay much attention to policy details because government never worked well anyway was propounded by Reagan, but the former Hollywood actor actually relied on experienced Republican bureaucrats to restructure the American state; the triumphalist Bushies, by contrast, had started to believe their own propaganda.

The two most surprising political careers of the past decade are Gerstles main proof that the neoliberal order is falling apart: he avoids the facile symmetry in portraying Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders as a right-wing and left-wing populist respectively. True, both attacked free-trade orthodoxies. But one has been a mortal danger to democracy; the other, while attacking Wall Street, is still a politically moderate figure by the standards of, for example, 1970s Scandinavia. The ways they benefited from the specifics of the Obama presidency the last real neoliberal in power also differed drastically: Trump promised to restore white supremacy; Sanders thundered that the Obama administration, still dominated by Nineties neoliberals like Larry Summers, had been soft on finance after 2008.

Is neoliberalism dying? It is remarkable that terms such as oligarchy are no longer seen as evidence of un-American sectarianism in Democratic primary debates. At the same time, if Gerstle is right, and the path to every new order is created by countless activists and intellectuals, it seems a stretch to claim that socialists are taking over the Democratic Party. Trump did brag about factories relocating to the US but working-class conservatism remains a chimera, both intellectually and politically: it lacks coherent policies no less than an actual vehicle to achieve power (the current Republican Party isnt it). Meanwhile, what Gerstle calls Trumps ethno-nationalism he could have used a less polite term was not as much of a break with the Reagan formula than often suggested; after all, Reagan combined white supremacy (but softened by charm and Hollywood-honed humour) with paeans to the market and the military.

Gerstle stresses the importance of the communist threat in legitimating the New Deal and Republican acquiescence to it: the US had to offer workers something to blunt the Soviets critique of capitalism. By implication, the discrediting of communism by the 1970s (if not before) was a boon for neoliberals, who then also a point Gerstle underplays used international institutions such as the World Trade Organisation to entrench their beliefs in a global order. But Chinas Leninist version of capitalism does not provide a real alternative; and while Covid may have re-legitimated certain forms of state action, it would be a mistake to think that the anti-libertarian lessons of the pandemic are self-explanatory: plenty of people assumed 2008 would automatically help the left; the political force that benefited most from it turned out to be the Tea Party.

A somewhat similar theory of political time and long-term trends in American politics, by the political scientist Stephen Skowronek, suggests that a new regime (Skowroneks term for Gerstles order) will only be established after a decisive repudiation of the existing one. In 1980, Reagan won 44 out of 50 states; in 1984 he carried all but one. Some had expected Biden to achieve something similar after Trumps shambolic presidency, which never mind the ethno-nationalism produced no real legislative success other than yet another massive tax break for the wealthiest. But the repudiation failed to materialise. We might have to live in the ruins of the old order for quite some time, without anything new being constructed. And as Gramsci pointed out, a political interregnum gives birth to monsters.

The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market EraGary GerstleOxford University Press, 272pp, 21.99

Read the original post:
Out with the old: is neoliberalism really dying? - The New Statesman

Video games eh? What a lovely, open-minded, welcoming community that deals with differences of opinion in a safe, constructive and supportive manner.

LOL.

Yeah, turns out the 21st century's defining hobby inspires a lot of the 21st century's other defining hobbies: Bitching, moaning and most of all, arguing.

It can be about anything, from the minutiae of League of Legends lore and whether Smash Bros is an E-Sport, to if VR gaming will ever take off and which games are worth pre-ordering, along with everything in between.

Now, if any industry is worth this level of scrutiny, it's gaming. God knows there's more than enough shady practises to go around and a consumer base this switched on and opinionated could be an asset to it.

The problem is a number of the most well-worn video game arguments have more or less been ended already. And yet on they go, droning, stumbling and thrashing like a zombie with added "well actually".

Well, call me Jill Valentine, because I'm about to mow these arguments down. Not with a weapon, but with a top ten list. And I always double tap.

This is an argument that has been thrown around since the very birth of the medium. And I do mean the very beginning!

The first video games weren't just Pong and Space Invaders - text-based role playing games were asking serious questions of their players way back in the late seventies.

Today, mainstream, multi-million dollar franchises like Mass Effect ask its players to think about what constitutes humanity. Bioshock builds entire worlds to examine extreme libertarianism and extreme communitarianism. Untitled Goose Game lets you be a horrible goose.

And people question the artistic validity of the medium?!

Seriously though, at their best, video games offer an artistic experience like no other: The ability to examine yourself through choice.

When playing Dishonoured, is your first instinct to kill your enemies or sneak past? In Fallout, who do you ally with and who do you oppose? What does Harry Du Bois become in your hands, in Disco Elysium?

If that doesn't make gaming an art form to you, perhaps you should think about what *does* constitute an art form.

Here is the original post:
10 Popular Video Game Debates That Need To Die - WhatCulture

Philosophical interactions

Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism has been and continues to be a major influence on the right-libertarian movement, particularly libertarianism in the United States. Many right-libertarians justify their political views using aspects of Objectivism.[1]

Some right-libertarians, including Murray Rothbard and Walter Block, hold the view that the non-aggression principle is an irreducible concept: it is not the logical result of any given ethical philosophy, but rather is self-evident as any other axiom is. Rand argued that liberty was a precondition of virtuous conduct,[2] but that her non-aggression principle itself derived from a complex set of previous knowledge and values. For this reason, Objectivists refer to the non-aggression principle as such while libertarians who agree with Rothbard's argument call it "the non-aggression axiom".

Rothbard and other anarcho-capitalists hold that government requires non-voluntary taxation to function and that in all known historical cases, the state was established by force rather than social contract.[3] Thus, they consider the establishment and maintenance of the night-watchman state supported by Objectivists to be in violation of the non-aggression principle. On the other hand, Rand believed that government can in principle be funded through voluntary means.[4] Voluntary financing notwithstanding, some libertarians consider that a government would by definition still violate individual rights (commit aggression) by enforcing a monopoly over a given territory.[5]

In her biography Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, Jennifer Burns notes how Rand's position that "Native Americans were savages" and that as a result "European colonists had a right to seize their land because native tribes did not recognize individual rights" was one of the views that "particularly outraged libertarians".[6] Burns also notes how Rand's position that "Palestinians had no rights and that it was moral to support Israel, the sole outpost of civilization in a region ruled by barbarism" was also a controversial position amongst libertarians, who at the time were a large portion of Rand's fan base.[6]

Libertarians and Objectivists have disagreed about matters of foreign policy. Following the Arab-Israeli War of 1973, Rand denounced Arabs as "primitive" and "one of the least developed cultures" who "are practically nomads". She said Arab resentment for Israel was a result of the Jewish state being "the sole beachhead of modern science and civilization on their continent" and referred to the Israelis as "civilized men fighting savages". Later Objectivists, such as Leonard Peikoff, David Kelley, and Yaron Brook, have continued to hold pro-Israel positions since Rand's death.[6][7][8]

Most scholars of the right-libertarian Cato Institute have opposed military intervention against Iran,[9] while the Objectivist Ayn Rand Institute has supported forceful intervention in Iran.[10][11]

United States Libertarian Party's first candidate for President John Hospers credited Rand as a major force in shaping his own political beliefs.[12] David Boaz, executive vice president of the Cato Institute, an American libertarian think tank, described Rand's work as "squarely within the libertarian tradition" and that some libertarians are put off by "the starkness of her presentation and by her cult following".[13] Milton Friedman described Rand as "an utterly intolerant and dogmatic person who did a great deal of good".[14] One Rand biographer quoted Murray Rothbard as saying that he was "in agreement basically with all [Rand's] philosophy" and that it was Rand who had "convinced him of the theory of natural rights".[15] Rothbard would later become a particularly harsh critic of Rand, writing in The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult:

The major lesson of the history of the [Objectivist] movement to libertarians is that It Can Happen Here, that libertarians, despite explicit devotion to reason and individuality, are not exempt from the mystical and totalitarian cultism that pervades other ideological as well as religious movements. Hopefully, libertarians, once bitten by the virus, may now prove immune.[16]

Some Objectivists have argued that Objectivism is not limited to Rand's own positions on philosophical issues and are willing to work with and identify with the libertarian movement. This stance is most clearly identified with David Kelley (who separated from the Ayn Rand Institute because of disagreements over the relationship between Objectivists and libertarians), Chris Sciabarra, Barbara Branden (Nathaniel Branden's former wife) and others. Kelley's Atlas Society has focused on building a closer relationship between "open Objectivists" and the libertarian movement.[17]

Rand condemned libertarianism as being a greater threat to freedom and capitalism than both modern liberalism and conservatism.[18] Rand regarded Objectivism as an integrated philosophical system. In contrast, libertarianism is a political philosophy which confines its attention to matters of public policy. For example, Objectivism argues positions in metaphysics, epistemology and ethics whereas libertarianism does not address such questions. Rand believed that political advocacy could not succeed without addressing what she saw as its methodological prerequisites. Rand rejected any affiliation with the libertarian movement and many other Objectivists have done so as well.[19]

Of libertarians, Rand said:

They're not defenders of capitalism. They're a group of publicity seekers. [...] Most of them are my enemies. [...] I've read nothing by Libertarians (when I read them, in the early years) that wasn't my ideas badly mishandledi.e., the teeth pulled out of themwith no credit given.[18]

In a 1981 interview, Rand described libertarians as "a monstrous, disgusting bunch of people" who "plagiarize my ideas when that fits their purpose".[18]

Responding to a question about the Libertarian Party of the United States in 1976, Rand said:

The trouble with the world today is philosophical: only the right philosophy can save us. But this party plagiarizes some of my ideas, mixes them with the exact oppositewith religionists, anarchists and every intellectual misfit and scum they can findand call themselves libertarians and run for office.[20]

Ayn Rand Institute board member John Allison spoke at the Cato Club 200 Retreat in September 2012,[21] contributed "The Real Causes of the Financial Crisis" to Cato's Letter[22] and spoke at Cato's Monetary Conference in November 2011.[23]

On June 25, 2012, the Cato Institute announced that Allison would become its next president.[24] In Cato's public announcement, Allison was described as a "revered libertarian". In communication to Cato employees, he wrote: "I believe almost all the name calling between libertarians and objectivists is irrational. I have come to appreciate that all objectivists are libertarians, but not all libertarians are objectivists".[25]

On October 15, 2012, Brook explained the changes to The American Conservative:

I dont think theres been a significant change in terms of our attitude towards libertarians. Two things have happened. Weve grown, and weve gotten to a size where we dont just do educational programs, we do a lot more outreach and a lot more policy and working with other organizations. I also believe the libertarian movement has changed. Its become less influenced by Rothbard, less influenced by the anarchist, crazy for lack of a better word, wing of libertarianism. As a consequence, because were bigger and doing more things and because libertarianism has become more reasonable, we are doing more work with them than we have in the past. But I dont think ideologically anything of substance has changed at the Institute.[26]

Read more from the original source:
Objectivism and libertarianism - Wikipedia

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Some believe that humans have free will; others that each of our actions and choices is caused byprior events. Compatibilism is the theory that we can be both caused and free. It is advocatedby many modern philosophers, including the prolific and influential Daniel Dennett. But compatibilismis nothing new.

Hobbes famously said that man was as free as an unimpeded river. A river that flows down a hill necessarilyfollows a channel, but it is also at liberty to flow within the channel. The voluntary actions of peopleare similar. They are free because their actions follow from their will; but the actions arealso necessary because they spring from chains of causes and effects which could in principlebe traced back to the first mover of the universe, generally called God. So on this view, to be at libertyis merely to not be physically restrained rather than to be uncaused. For Hobbes, to be free is to actas we will, and to be un-free is to be coerced by others.

Hume was also a compatibilist. He said that we conclude that nature is full of necessity, in thatwe infer that one thing follows another from necessity. We also know that people have a nature, and thattheir actions follow from their nature. We act in the world from motives such as ambition or friendship,and history teaches us that this was always so. If peoples motives were not understandable, ourexperience would not help us in our dealings with them. People are fairly similar and we can also cometo understand the nuances of the characters of particular people. It can be difficult to see why someonedid something, but then it can also be difficult to see why a machine stopped working. This does notmean that there was no reason. We accept that carriages are mechanisms, but if anything the drivers aremore reliable than the carriages. Sometimes the carriages break down but the drivers always wish to bepaid.

Of course as individuals when we undertake an action from some motive we imagine that in the exactlythe same circumstances we could have chosen to do something else. We do not think we act of necessity.But, as Hume notes, if we try to prove our absolute liberty by doing something unpredictable thenwe are still acting from a straightforward motive: our motive is the desire not to be seen to be actingfrom predictable motives. When we look at other people and fail to predict their behaviour, particularlysomeone we know well, then we assume that we are ignorant about some fact, and that their behaviour isin principle intelligible and predictable, rather than that the person has suddenly become incomprehensible.For Hume and other compatibilists, liberty means being free to act as we will, but this does not meanthat our actions come from nowhere: our passions, motives and desires provide us with the impulse whichour reason (prudence) tries to satisfy. To be at liberty cannot mean acting without a motive, becausethats the definition of madness.

Dennett defends this broad thesis of motivated freedom with a range of interesting arguments. Considerfor example the difference between a human being and the Sphex wasp. If this wasp is repeatedlydisturbed during its egg laying it will simply continue its instinctive behaviour, apparently unawareof the source of the interruption or the likely futility of continuing with the egg laying. Yet humanscan respond flexibly and imaginatively to equivalent difficulties, which indicates that we have a kindof freedom that a simple creature like the wasp does not have.

For Dennett there is also a meaningful distinction between determinism and inevitability. The Earth,for example, has undergone a recent explosion of evitability. Once it might have been in evitablethat the Earth should be struck by an asteroid. But the planet has, perhaps deterministically, evolvedhuman beings, who may conceivably destroy an incoming rock. It is no longer inevitable, so it is evitable.In the same way it is not inevitable that those disposed to heart disease will go on to develop it. Wehave, perhaps deterministically, produced an understanding of the causes of heart disease, and we canmodify our behaviour on this basis. Again, what was once inevitable is no longer so.

So we may not have what Dennett calls behavioural choice,the absolute and unimpededGod-like ability to choose out of nothing but we can flexibly respond to and change our environment,an environment that among other things contains knowledge of how other people have acted and thought.

There are some major difficulties in compatibilism, which I think damage it irreparably.

Take Hobbes claim, largely accepted by Hume, that freedom is to act at will while coercionis to be compelled to act by others. This does not give us a sure reason to choose this freedom.

Imagine that you were a free-floating spirit, equal to God in your capacity to choose. God gives youthe unwelcome news that shortly you are to be placed on Earth, and that you will be endowed with a rangeof fundamental passions, chosen entirely at the caprice of God. Would you choose to be free, in Hobbessenseof acting at will, or might you consent to being coerced?

It is very far from clear that you would automatically choose to be free. Much would depend on thenature of the coercion. If you did not know what your fundamental desires were going to be, you mightwell decide to hedge your bets and back the field. It might be far better to be coerced by others (perhapsmost people are good) than to be free to pursue un-chosen but possibly dubious desires. A free-floatingethically-minded spirit that feared an imminent endowment of psychopathic desires would certainly wishfor an alert constabulary and swift incarceration: this spirit would wish to be coerced.

This thought experiment makes it clear why coercion by others might be morally preferable to beingcaused to act upon ones desires. It seems very odd, though, that we might have good reasons tochoose what compatibilists define as coercion, and reject what they claim to be freedom.

Nor is it obvious that if we were on Earth with a range of un-chosen passions, we would choose tohave the intellectual ability which Dennett thinks characterises human freedom, as opposed to the mindlessbehaviour of the Sphex wasp for instance. Imagine that, rather than for laying eggs, one had a dispositionfor random acts of extreme violence. Is one better off by having the wit to see that the .357 Magnumis overrated and that the 9mm is similarly effective, but with more shots? If one had the murderous impulsesof an Eichmann or a Himmler, is ones situation necessarily improved by being able to flexiblyrespond to the logistical problems of machine-gunning large numbers of people? Is the murderous intelligenceinvolved in industrialising genocide ever a gain? Similarly, if we knew that we were going to have passionsthat we have not chosen, is it obvious that we would ask for the ability to pursue these passions flexiblyand imaginatively? Perhaps if we knew that we were to have unknown passions and be held responsible forour actions, we would choose to be incompetent. Perhaps the priority would be first to do no harm: onecould not risk being good at being bad.

It is not obvious then that we would choose to be caused by our own desires rather than coerced byothers; and nor is it obvious that we would choose to be able to successfully pursue our desires if wedid not know what those desires were to be.

It is interesting to note that a compatibilist would presumably have to accept that the Terminatoras played by Arnold Schwarzenegger is free, in that it has a desire (to kill John Connor) which it pursueswith flexibility, insight and intelligence. It is certainly hard to see why the Terminator is un-freesimply because it was given its (programmed) passion by an identifiable individual, as opposed to takingpot luck from God or genetics.

As to Dennetts claim that the planet has evolved evitability, it seems obviousthat if strict determinism is true then human evolution is also one event after another, and the destructionof asteroids by humans follows inevitably from cause and effect, given the first composition of the universe.If we destroy an asteroid, for the strict determinist it was inevitable that we would. Indeed it is quiteconceivable that humans are minor characters in a game played by the gods, involving striking planetswith asteroids. Perhaps one of the moves in the game is to seed a target planet with humans to preventyour opponent successfully striking it with his asteroid. It is hard to think of an absolute reason whydeterminism might not be our lot. There seems to be no meaningful distinction to be drawn between whathappens and what might have happened, on which we can hang some third theory of human existence to sitalongside determinism and libertarianism.

It seems that we are either caused, and our actions are caused events, or we are free. The middle,compatibilism, is excluded.

Dr Craig Ross 2007

Craig Ross teaches at Langside College in Glasgow.

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Compatibilism | Issue 62 | Philosophy Now

How many readers of this column have read the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder or watched the television series that was based on the books either when the episodes first premiered or through reruns? If you have, then you may not realize that you have read a book series or watched a television series that has a strong connection to the American Libertarian movement.

How can a beloved book and television series be connected to Libertarianism? That answer is very simple. It all has to do with one particular relative of Laura Ingalls Wilder: her own daughter, Rose Wilder Lane. Like her mother, Lane was a writer, but she was also a journalist and a political theorist. She was even said to have helped her mother edit the Little House books after the rough original manuscript of Pioneer Girl, the original autobiography about her mothers life, was rejected numerous times.

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Nolan Schmidt is an independent filmmaker, and serves as Vice Chair for the Guadalupe County Libertarian Party.

The rest is here:
Schmidt: Little House connected to Libertarianisms start

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) Greg Baldwin wants more options on his election ballots.

The state chairman of the South Dakota Libertarian Party is happy his political party, officially recognized by the Secretary of States office, will be able to give voters another option.

Libertarian candidates will be on the November ballot for statewide races U.S. Senate, U.S. House, governor, secretary of state and state auditor. In the case of the U.S. House race, Libertarian candidate Collin Duprel is the only candidate challenging Republican incumbent Dusty Johnson.

It seems were in desperate need of more voices, more choices on the ballot, Baldwin told KELOLAND News. Competition breeds innovation. Steel sharpens steel. The more people you have on the ballot, the better. Youre going to get debates and youre going to get people talking about the issues.

Baldwin admitted hes rather new to South Dakota politics, only getting involved with the Libertarian Party when it became officially recognized by the state in 2016. Baldwin said the Libertarian Party has existed in the state for 30 years dating back to 1992, but the party continued to lose ballot access and then lose registered voters.

A lengthy lawsuit won by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Libertarian Party and the Constitution Party helped ease the path for the partys candidates to qualify for the ballot. In 2018, a federal judge ruled South Dakotas ballot access laws were too restrictive for newly-qualifying parties.

Part of the argument was new parties didnt have enough time to gather the required amount of signatures in the time frame allowed (Jan. 1 to the final Tuesday in March).

The legislature had to go back and write a subsequent law, which ended up being South Dakota codified law 12-5-25, Baldwin said. That allows us to nominate candidates at our annual state convention.

Baldwin said if the Libertarian Party had multiple candidates, it would hold a primary similar to the elections involving many Republicans on Tuesday. He noted independents are not part of any official political party and are left out of primary elections. Baldwin said independent candidates also face a tough road for ballot access because theyre not an official political party.

They dont get the same protections or benefits that the other political parties do. So their signature thresholds can actually be higher, Baldwin said. Our Libertarian party has opened the doors. Were willing to work with people. If we can agree on eight out of 10 issues, we can work with them. We hope South Dakota voters listen to what our candidates have to say.

According to the secretary of states office, Independent candidates would need to gather 3,393 signatures for U.S. Senate, U.S. House or governor. Thats far more than the 1,730 for Republicans or 1,615 for Democrats for the same spots.

The breakdown of registered voters in the most recent election in South Dakota was 286,331 Republicans, 150,933 Democrats, 141,076 independents, 2,651 Libertarians and 1,380 listed as other.

From May to June, Baldwin said he noticed a dip in the number of registered Libertarian candidates.

I couldnt help but wonder, did those few people decide they wanted to vote in the Republican primary, Baldwin suggested. On my ballot, there was nothing to vote on other than Constitutional Amendment C.

Registered Democrat and independent voters also decreased from May 1 to June 1 ahead of the primary election. Democrats lost 677 registered voters and independents lost 118 registered voters. Registered Republican voters increased by 2,715 in the same month.

Baldwin said with more than 140,000 South Dakotans deciding not to call themselves a Republican or Democrat, there needs to be ballot options.

Im in favor of more options, more independents. I wish the Constitution Party still had ballot access, Baldwin said. Theres so many seats running unopposed and we need more options. Thats just the bottom line.

For the 105 seats in South Dakotas Legislature, Baldwin pointed out how many are already automatically given to Republican candidates because of a lack of opposition.

In the Senate, 21 Republican candidates only had primary opponents or were unopposed. In the House, there are 18 seats with Republican-only candidates.

Will these 39 people go out and do some sort of campaigning this summer, even though they dont have an election? Will they go out and talk to voters? Baldwin asked. We desperately need more candidates and cant rely on the Democrats to field all the (other) candidates. So I would have loved to see a lot more candidates come out of the Libertarian Party. If we can double our numbers and start filling some of these gaps, I think itll be great.

Republicans held a 94-11 advantage in Pierre the past two years.

The South Dakota Democratic Party has said it would have liked to have more candidates. Officials also told KELOLAND News the party also wanted to target newly created districts from the redistricting process.

With Duprel being the only other candidate running against Johnson, Baldwin said the Libertarian Party will continue to get great exposure in the voting booth. In 2020, Johnson had to beat Libertarian Randy Uriah Luallin 81% to 19%. Baldwin said the Libertarian Party is taking pride in being the only party challenging Johnson.

And despite only having just more than 2,600 registered members, Baldwin bragged about the growing numbers of the Libertarian Party.

In six years, weve managed to about double the size of the party, Baldwin said. Its not near enough and not fast enough for our liking, but were a small party. Theres so many people that dont know who or what the Libertarian Party in South Dakota is.

Baldwin encouraged interested people to visit the partys website lpsouthdakota.org and visit Libertarian Party candidate websites ahead of the November election.

As a goal, Baldwin said the party is really aiming to get a legislator elected. He pointed to Nebraska where state Senator Laura Ebke switched parties to Libertarian and 12,000 registered voters followed suit.

If we could do something like that in South Dakota, prove that were viable and prove that we can get people elected, the people will follow, Baldwin said. It scares me when you have super majorities. They can do whatever they want.

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SD Libertarian Party wants to give voters options - KELOLAND.com

The situation in Argentina is nothing short of desperate. No other country in the world has suffered such a steep economic decline over the last 100 years. At the beginning of the 20th century, Argentinas GDP per capita was among the highest in the world. The expression riche comme un argentin rich as an Argentinian was a commonly heard expression at the time.

A comparison of economic data for 1913 and 2018 shows that real GDP per capita has hardly increased. In fact, Argentina has the worst figures of all countries for which data are available for both years. Inflation is particularly alarming.

I visited Buenos Aires and other Argentine cities last month, talking to economists, politicians, representatives of think tanks, journalists and young people. Heres what I discovered.

Soaring inflation and the Blue Dollar

I realise what inflation actually means when I pay my hotel bill. I dont want to pay with my Visa card, because your credit card payment is based on the official exchange rate from the peso to the dollar or euro. You get twice as many pesos for a dollar on the free market which is illegal but tolerated by the authorities. This unofficial rate is known as the blue dollar, the parallel exchange rate of the US dollar in Argentina, which represents the cost of buying and selling a physical dollar bill on the black (or blue) market. In reality, my hosts explain, it is much more complicated than that because there are at least four different dollar variants.

The authorities tolerate the existence of so-called cuevos (literally, caves), where you can go to exchange dollars or euros into local currency. On the street you are frequently approached by people known as arbolitos (Spanish for little trees), who show you the way to one of the manycuevos. Officially, these are pawn shops or places where you can buy and sell jewellery or gold, but in fact they are clandestine Blue Dollar trading houses.

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Argentinians use thesecuevosto exchange pesos in the hope of getting even more pesos for their dollars a few weeks or months later. In a country with such rampant inflation, money has lost its function as a store of value and only serves as a means of payment. However, this is not always easy. You cant always get large denomination bills in thecuevos. Only about a fifth of the 250,000 pesos that my interpreter and I have to pay for four days at the Sheraton in Buenos Aires are in thousands. The rest comes in small banknotes. At the hotel, it takes more than two hours to pay. I ask why they dont use their bill counting machine. I realise its because they first have to check the authenticity of every single banknote with a pen and count the money by hand. Once they are finished with the lengthy process of counting the bills by hand, they eventually run the money through the bill counter.

For Argentinians, inflation is nothing unusual. I meet Fausto Spotorno, chief economist of the Centro de Estudios Econmicos of the consultancy OJF. He presents impressive statistics confirming that since 1945 Argentina has almost always had at least double-digit inflation with the exception of the 1990s, when Carlos Menem pegged the currency to the US dollar, which eliminated inflation for a decade but had a negative impact on exports as Argentinian goods were no longer competitive.

Anarcho-capitalist Javier Milei

Inflation also happens to be the main theme of the libertarian movement around Javier Milei. The 51-year-old, who describes himself as an anarcho-capitalist, used to be the goalkeeper for the Chacarita Juniors soccer club, went on to study economics and then became a chief economist at private financial consulting firms and a government advisor.

In 2021, Milei was elected to represent the city of Buenos Aires in the Cmara de Diputados de la Nacin Argentina after gaining 17per cent of the vote for the La Libertad Avanza party. Everyone expects him to be a candidate in the 2023 presidential election.

I talked to the libertarian activist and vice-president of Mileis party, Lilia Lemoine. This extremely attractive 41-year-old, who I would have guessed to be 30 at most, is a cosplayer, model and actress and major social media figure with hundreds of thousands of followers. Her website features a photo, wearing a top emblazoned with a fist and the wordsLibre Mercado (free market economy).

Lemoine is full of enthusiasm for Milei, who is formally the partys honorary chairman. She is famous all over Argentina, and when we go to eat, the waiter immediately asks if he can take a selfie with her. Mileis supporters are mostly young, poor and male, she says. She explains that the belief that poor people dont want to work and have become accustomed to state benefits, which we often hear here, is a lie: That is only true for very few. Most of them would very much like to work, but the state, by imposing such high taxes and regulations, does not give them a real chance. These poor people are desperate, especially because of inflation. They have pinned their hopes on our libertarian movement.

That is what is special about Argentina: desperate poor people in other countries are often more in favor of socialism and bigger government or else right-wing extremists. There are not many other countries where you will find poor people who want more capitalism.

Milei has attracted a lot of attention by launching a lottery. Anyone who signs up on social media is entered into a lottery to win Mileis monthly salary as a deputy of the Cmara de Diputados. In May 2022, that was 350,000 pesos, or about $1,800. Considering that the income of an average Argentinian is roughly 60,000 pesos, this is an attractive sum. In the first three months alone, Lemoine says, two million Argentinians have taken part in the lottery, with which Milei wants to show: I didnt get into politics for the money. Each participant has to provide an email address and phone number, and at first I think this is a very cheap way to get peoples contact details for campaign advertising. Lemoine, meanwhile, assures me that the data will only be used for the lottery. Either way, it is a very effective marketing method.

I meet the congressman Ricardo Lpez Murphy. He too hopes for a free-market turnaround, but is not as radical as Milei, who wants to abolish the central bank, for example. Lpez Murphy, who cooperates also with the German Naumann Foundation, is an economist and was Minister of Defense and Economics during Fernando de la Ras presidency. Since 2021, he has been the leader of the Republicanos Unidos party, which he founded in 2020 and which is part of the JTC Juntos por el Cambio (Cambiemos) alliance. He is also regarded as a potential presidential candidate. What would he do if he were in charge in Argentina? Above all, he would fight protectionism, cut red tape and regulations (e.g. in the labour market) and radically reduce taxes. Currently, companies with at least 200 employees are forced to sell a certain percentage of their products at prices set by the state. A major problem he and others are addressing: Because of the high tax burden, the informal economy, i.e. undeclared work, is extremely important, he explains. It is estimated that more people are working illegally today than are in official employment, says Lpez Murphy.

We need a capitalist revolution

Lpez Murphy is one of the figureheads of Argentinas free market movement. Another is Jos Luis Espert. Like Milei and Lpez Murphy, Espert is also an economist and is convinced that more capitalism is the solution for Argentina. He has been a deputy in Buenos Aires province for the Avanza Libertad coalition since 2021. We need a capitalist revolution, he tells me. And he is optimistic: Libertarian ideas are really taking off in Argentina, says Espert. Milei, incidentally, used to be a member of Esperts party before he founded his own party. What would Espert change in Argentina if he could? First of all, he mentions the issue of trade freedom, i.e. the fight against protectionism and excessive taxation and for more deregulation. He also thinks that several corrupt trade union leaders should be put in jail to deter others.

I was surprised when I meet three young women in Buenos Aires. They belong to LOLA, Ladies for Libertad. Valentina is 21 years old, speaks fluent English and seems very self-confident. She comes from the city of Mendoza, started her own recycling business at the age of 13 and made it official at 18. But the first few years were really hard: Every day, robbers came to my company to steal from me. I called the police, who even put the thieves in jail once, but only for a few hours before releasing them again. The police do not protect me. And the state takes almost everything I earn with its extreme taxation. And she doesnt like the mentality of many compatriots who prefer to live off the state rather than work themselves: Its so hard to find employees, she complains.

Thats why she became a libertarian. At 17, she joined the Students for Liberty. At 19, she founded her own libertarian group. The group grew quickly, attracting many members who opposed the governments Corona measures: We had a seven-month curfew, you were only allowed out of the house for three hours on certain days to go shopping. These measures led more and more members to their group.

They meet in apartments and restaurants and compare, for example, MarxsCommunist Manifestowith HayeksRoad to Serfdom. It is a group for women who describe themselves as liberal feminists, in distinction to traditional feminists who according to Valentina are mostly Marxists. Their hero is Javier Milei.

Adrina is 27 years old. She fled Venezuela because she was sentenced to prison after joining the protests against the socialist regime. She studied law in Venezuela, but in Buenos Aires she works as an IT programmer. She got involved in politics when her sister and brother-in-law were sent to prison after protesting against the socialist dictatorship. Her parents fled to Peru to escape the economic catastrophe. Adrina now lives in Buenos Aires and is involved with LOLA. I realise: just as it is considered cool for many young people in western countries to be left-wing, it is cool here to be libertarian. Even in Tucumn, a provincial town in the north where there is little to see apart from crumbling houses and poverty, I give a lecture to 70 young people who attend courses at a libertarian think tank. They are against the establishment, against the over-reaching state and live firmly in the hope that more capitalism will solve their problems.

Dr Rainer Zitelmann isa Berlin-based historian and sociologist.His book, The Power ofCapitalism, was released in 2019.

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Desperate Argentinians pin their hopes on more capitalism - Reaction