Category Archives: Libertarianism

Nearly three dozen independent candidates have filed to run for Congress in New Jersey, the most since 67 independents ran in 1992.

The total 34 could go up by one if Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-Ringoes) wins an upcoming legal battle to overturn the states ban on fusion voting as the candidate of both the Democratic and Moderate parties.

The Libertarian Party has fielded a full slate of twelve candidates for Congress in New Jersey, the first time any minor party has done so since the Libertarians ran candidates for all 13 House seats in 1992.

While candidates typically need 200 signatures to get on the ballot as a congressional candidate in a primary or general election, an obscure 1948 statute allows independents running only in a congressional redistricting year to file with just 50 signatures.

The law came at a time when there was a mad rush to get on the ballot in redistricting years between the approval of the congressional map and the filing deadline. In those days, the deadline for independent candidates was the same as for those running in the primary. That was changed about 25 years ago,after minor parties filed a lawsuit.

The 2022 independent candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives, with the slogans:

1st District: Allen Cannon (Cannon Fire); Patricia Kline (For the People), Isaiah Fletcher (Libertarian). Kline was the Republican candidate for State Assembly in 2021.

2nd District: Michael Gall (Libertarian); Anthony Parisi Sanchez (Not for Sale). Sanchez ran against Jeff Van Drew for State Senate in 2017 and Congress in 2018.

3rd District: Gregory Sobocinski (God Save America); Christopher Russomanno (Libertarian); Lawrence Hatez (Returning Your Rights).

4th District: Jason Cullen (Libertarian); Hank Schroeder (No Slogan); Pam Daniels (Progress with Pam); and David Schmidt (We The People). Cullen was the Libertarian candidate for governor in 2009 and finished sixth in a field of 12 candidates with 2,869 votes statewide. Schroeder has lost seven races in nine years: governor in 2013, U.S. Senate in 2014 and 2018; State Assembly in the 30th district in 2015 and 2019; and Congress in 2016 and 2020.

5th District: Louis Vellucci (American Values); Jeremy Marcus (Libertarian); David Abrams (Stop Israel Boycotts); Trevor James Ferrigno (Together We Stand).

6th District: Tara Fisher (Libertarian); Eric Antisell (Move Everyone Forward); Inder Jit Soni (New Jersey First).

7th District: Clayton Pajunas (Libertarian); Veronica Fernandez (Of, By, For). Fernandez ran for U.S. Senate in 2020 and won 32,290 votes, less than one percent.

8th District: Pablo Olivera (Labors Party); Dan Delaney (Libertarian); David Cook (The Mediator/People Over Parties/Vote Real Change); Joanne Kuniansky (Socialist Workers Party); and John Salierno (Truth and Merit). Kuniansky was her partys candidate for governor in 2021. Olivera has lost his twelve previous campaigns: State Senate in the 29th district in 2003, 2013 and 2017; Newark City Council in the North Ward in 2010, 2014 and 2018; Essex County Freeholder in 2011; U.S. Senate in 2013; and State Assembly in 2015; and Congress in 2012, 2014 and 2016.

9th District: Sean Armstrong (Libertarian); Lea Sherman (Socialist Workers Party).

10th District: Cynthia Johnson (Jobs and Justice); Kendal Ludden (Libertarian); Rev. Clenard J. Childress, Jr. (The Mahali Party); and Dorothy Jane Humphries (Together We Can). Childress has lost nine races for State Assembly in the 34th district.

11th District: Joseph Biasco (Libertarian).

12th District: Lynn Genrich (Libertarian).

Of the 34 independent congressional candidates, 20 of them filed with under 100 signatures something that makes them susceptible to a petition challenge and only one, Genrich in NJ-12, filed with 200 signatures or more. Two candidates, Hatez (NJ-3) and Humphries (NJ-10), filed with exactly 50 signatures.

The deadline to repair technical deficiencies on petitions is 4 PM today; candidates may not add additional signatures past the June 7 filing deadline

The deadline to challenge the petitions of independent candidates is 4 PM on June 13. Administrative Law judges move quickly; the deadline to decide challenges to the petitions is June 16.

In 2012, 29 independent candidates filed, the same as in 2016. There were 24 independent House candidates in 2014 and 2018, and 15 in 2020.

No independent candidate has been viewed as a spoiler in a New Jersey congressional race since 2000, when Rep. Rush Holt (D-Hopewell) won re-election to a second term by just 651 votes against former Rep. Richard Zimmer (R-Delaware). In that race, 8,269 votes went to three independent candidates: Carl Mayer, a former Princeton Township Committeeman running on the Green Party ticket, received 5,811 votes, while NJ Conservative Party nominee John Desmond took 1,233 votes and 1,225 went to Worth Winslow, the Libertarian candidate.

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34 independent candidates file to run for Congress in New Jersey, most in 30 years - New Jersey Globe | New Jersey Politics

Last week, a federal district judge struck down Louisianas new congressional map on the grounds that it amounted to a racial gerrymander and ruled that it must be redrawn. In a related redistricting case, the Supreme Court issued a provisional stay in February regarding Alabamas newly drawn congressional map, overturning a lower court ruling that had invalidated the map. Utahs new congressional map is also being challenged in the courts.

This political process comes like clockwork every 10 years: States redo their congressional and state legislative maps following a census. A round of boisterous political theater follows, in which incumbents fret about their future and whether theyll relocate to another district or engage in a full-scale primary or general election war with another incumbent. And then come the inevitable litany of lawsuits. These are brought by a variety of groups, including political outfits such as the National Republican Redistricting Trust and the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, putative civil liberties groups such as the ACLU and NAACP, and, occasionally, the federal government, all complaining that the new congressional maps are unfair.

The process of redistricting, in which congressional maps are redrawn and adopted by state legislatures determined by partisan political majority, has become derisively and inextricably linked with the idea of gerrymandering. The term originated in 1812 from a Boston Gazette political cartoon suggesting that a nascent district resembled a salamander. The map was signed by Massachusetts Gov. (and later vice president) Elbridge Gerry, hence the name gerrymander. Gerry and the Democratic Republicans got what they wanted from the new maps: success at the ballot box. Albeit, that win did come at Gerrys expense, as he lost statewide election the next year.

Gerrymandering has since become the belle of the redistricting ball. Political parties use it to ensconce and harden their power, which lasts right up until a states electorate shifts enough to benefit the other major party. Geographical commonsense takes a back seat to this mission, and salamanders are among the more diffuse shapes to be concocted to serve political purposes. Democratic California Rep. Phillip Burton famously called his gerrymandered congressional maps of the early 1980s my contribution to modern art. Fellow Democratic congressman Howard Berman told the Christian Science Monitor in 1982 that the gerrymandering system was imperfect but still preferable to the alternatives because at least the politicians drawing the districts can be held accountable on Election Day.

History shows that Bermans defense of gerrymandering is based on a lie. These gerrymanders for Congressional purposes are in most cases buttressed by a gerrymander of the legislative districts, wrote President Benjamin Harrison to Congress in his 1891 State of the Union, explaining that a layer of unaccountable action serves as a barrier between the gerrymander and the voters, thus making it impossible for a majority of the legal voters of the State to correct the apportionment and equalize the Congressional districts. A minority rule is established that only a political convulsion can overthrow.

Harrisons solution to the gerrymandering problem involved a federal commission put together by the Supreme Court. Nonpartisan in its membership and composed of patriotic, wise, and impartial men, to whom a consideration of the question of the evils connected with our election system and methods might be committed with a good prospect of securing unanimity in some plan for removing or mitigating those evils, he said to Congress. This commission should be charged with the duty of inquiring into the whole subject of the law of elections as related to the choice of officers of the National Government, with a view to securing to every elector a free and unmolested exercise of the suffrage and as near an approach to an equality of value in each ballot cast as is attainable.

The plan, like most of Harrisons civil rights proposals, went nowhere.

Individual states picked up Harrisons proposal almost a century later. Colorado started using a somewhat partisan commission to put together its state legislative districts in the 1970s. It moved to a more nonpartisan redistricting commission in 2021.

I think sort of philosophically partisan folks are more likely to support commissions when they're not certain that they're gonna have all the votes, said Julia Jackson, redistricting analyst for Colorados Independent Redistricting Commissions, when asked about the 2018 ballot initiative creating the redistricting commission. She said Coloradans were tired of state courts drawing up maps instead of the elected legislature doing so. We are now a state where one party controls the legislature and the governor and most of the statewide offices, but that hasnt historically been the case. So, I think both sides had reason to think, We don't know for sure that well win in a partisan mapmaking process.

Colorados commission features four Republicans, four Democrats, and four nonaffiliated members. A supermajority is required for passage that includes two nonaffiliated commissioners. Jackson believes this increases bipartisanship. You either have to cross parties, or you have to get all four of the unaffiliated on your side, too, to pass something, she said. So, I think that really sort of shaped the discussions, knowing right from the start that if only one party likes the map, youre probably not gonna get it through.

Not everyone was pleased with Colorados redistricting process. The Libertarian and Green parties of Colorado felt that they were excluded because no third-party members were on the commission. Green Party co-chair Andrea Merida Cuellar told Reason in 2018 that the ballot initiatives were a desperate attempt for the status quo for relevance in Colorados political landscape. The Libertarian Party unsuccessfully argued that third parties should get at least one commissioner seat should they reach 5% registration in the state. Their membership would increase to two seats if they reached 10% and three seats at 20%, meaning the 12-member panel would be split four ways.

Jackson is unconvinced. The numbers of third-party voters are like under 4% total, she said, commenting that 40% of Colorado voters are unaffiliated, while Democrats and Republicans enjoy an estimated 30% enrollment each. I think the argument against including them was just that it would give extra representation to a very small portion of the electorate.

The congressional map remains similar to the map approved in the last decade, albeit with the newly established 8th Congressional District. That could be extremely competitive this fall even though the winner will likely be a Republican or a Democrat instead of an independent or third-party candidate. Its a disappointment for the Libertarian and Green parties. Colorados new maps will be tested this November.

Marylands redistricting attempt didnt have the same success as Colorado. Republican Gov. Larry Hogan put together the nine-member Maryland Citizens Redistricting Commission in 2021. It included three registered Republicans, three registered Democrats, and three unaffiliated voters.

[The independents] were kind of a token of the fact that if anyone did feel partisan, they werent going to have anyone near majority anyway, observed commission co-chair Walter Olson over the phone. Hes a registered Republican in Frederick County but works for the libertarian Cato Institute. Its yet another disincentive to being partisan, is that you try to be partisan, and the independents are still going to make sure that youre not close to a majority.

Olson suggested that excluding elected officials on the commission reduced polarization. He believed that elected officials tend to push the individual partys agenda, an issue that throttled both the Ohio and Virginia redistricting commissions. The Maryland commission kept things congenial, even when disagreements popped up. On the issue of multimember districts, that was as close as we got to polarization because the Democrats did all favor the multimember district, while the Republicans did all have sympathy for single member districts, which kind of faithfully reflects the testimony we were hearing and the opinions from our different parts of the state, he said. The commissions compromise involved giving urban areas multimember districts, while rural areas received single-member districts.

Everything seemed to be going swimmingly. Commissioners unanimously approved the state Senate and delegate maps, while the congressional maps received an 8-1 vote. It was in the Maryland legislature where things fell apart. Democrats approved their own congressional maps, rejecting the commissions compromise boundaries. Princetons Gerrymandering Project gave the maps an F grade (the commissions map received an A) before a federal judge called them unconstitutional.

The legislature eventually came up with a new map deemed fairer by Hogan, who signed it into law. Fair Maps Maryland, which is co-chaired by Democrat James Brochin and Republican Doug Riley, called the map extreme gerrymandering and blatant voter suppression. Politics appeared to ruin everything.

Commissions arent necessarily the universal redistricting solution. New Yorks so-called Independent Redistricting Commission collapsed into partisan bickering and produced two separate maps. The New York Legislature passed its own maps that were thrown out by the courts due to gerrymandering. Ohios redistricting commission approved maps later rejected by the Ohio Supreme Court. A federal court rescued those maps last month. Theres evidence that California House Democrats worked with the national Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to taint the redistricting commissions independence.

Its worth noting, however, that maps drawn by independent commissions tend to face fewer court challenges. Of the 25 redistricting lawsuits currently being fought, only six involve redistricting commissions, according to the Brennan Center. Independent commissions appear to be a step in the right direction, as long as they truly remain nonpartisan and encourage more competitive races.

Taylor Millard is a freelance journalist.

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The map wars - Washington Examiner

opinion

Charles W. Milliken| The Daily Telegram

From time immemorial, human societies have been run by elites.Someone has to decide who does what, with whichand to whom. Exactly how these elites evolve is lost in the mists of time, but evolve they did, and have been with us ever since.

Presumablyelites represented the smarter, stronger, more ambitious elements of a given band.The basic deal then, and now, is that the non-elites will turn over a disproportionate share of the production of society in return for elites running society reasonably competently.In other words, as long as I get the basics, you can have the surplus.If matters proceed like that, stability reigns.

Problems arise, however, when the elite class loses its competence.History is full of examples of what happens when those on the bottom no longer feel those on the top deserve to be there.Revolutions and rebellions and general unrest are frequent occurrences, ending even the longest periods of stability.

The underlying cause is the problem of succession.Elites, just as the rest of us, are mortal.As has been said, graveyards are full of indispensable individuals.For most of history, the great bulk of elites are succeeded by birth.Boys succeed their fathers (history is sexist and patriarchal, alas). What guarantee is there that the boy will grow into the man his father was? None, obviously.

Dynasties rose and fell on the strength, or weakness, of inheritance, to be overthrown by new dynasties that exhibited greater intelligence, strengthor cunning. A classic example was the Merovingian kings of France being overthrown by the high official who functioned as the officer who actually ran the show.His son was Charlemagne, who ended up ruling most of Europewho, in turn, sired a collection of incompetents, who mostly lost it all.Suleiman the Magnificent, a contemporary of Henry VIII, was arguably the last competent ruler of the now defunct Ottoman empire.

So, if inheritance becomes a DNA crapshoot, and sooner or later the dice lose, how are elites to be chosen? There must always be elites, anarchists and extreme libertarians notwithstanding. A tried-and-true method has been the emergence, especially in recent history, of dictators. When enough discontent is present, men emerge (always men, although I see no reason why a woman cant be a dictator) who distill the discontent and recruit sufficient followers to replace the existing elites. Think Napoleon. Lenin. Hitler. Mao.Castro.

In the United States we have tried a different method of choosing elites, a method still evolving.George Washington could have become a dictator a king but had the character to choose otherwiseand with our currently much-derided Founding Fathers thought limited self-government would be a better option, with elites emerging not by birth or not from the saddle of a white horse, but by merit. Those who would be elites had to place themselves before their fellow citizens and stand for office.

But, dont you just know it, elections dont guarantee competence.So, starting about a 120 years ago, with the dawn of the Progressive Era, elites decided to divorce themselves from the whims and vagaries of the electorate and relied instead on self-selection by appointment. Experts with the right credentials, from the right schools, and often from the right families (inheritance isnt obsolete yet), and of course with the right Progressive beliefs, began to fill the proliferating agencies, boards, departments and the whole bureaucratic apparatus almost all of whom being insulated from the populace they rule.

Is this method also reaching the end of its tether? Consider the current baby formula mess. How hard can it be to disinfect a factory? How hard can it be to see that shutting down 20% of an absolutely necessary item is going to cause serious problems?

Considering all the messes America is currently suffering, you dont have to look far to see the elites at the heart of all of them. Maybe it is time to try a different selection method.

Charles Milliken is a professor emeritus after 22 years of teaching economics and related subjects at Siena Heights University. He can be reached at milliken.charles@gmail.com.

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Societies always have been run by the elite class - Monroe Evening News

Kelcey Patrick-Ferree and Shannon Patrick| Press-Citizen opinion writers

A mans taxes are what he pays for the protection of his life and property, and for the conditions of public prosperity in which he shares. He ought to pay his just portion of the expense of government. To endeavor to avoid this, and to throw the burden upon others is unjust and mean. Joseph Alden, "Christian Ethics"

This sentiment, that taxes are a public good that bring civilization, prosperityand glory for ones state or country, was common in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Taxes were a responsibility of citizenship, and shirking them was shameful, not something to flaunt.

People who did better were expected to contribute more to their communities. The highest earners contributed the most to paying for schools, roadsand other common goods. Our tax system reflected those expectations: we had many tax brackets and top marginal tax rates up to 92% even at the peak of the anti-Communist "Red Scare."

That civic commitment stands in stark contrast to our governors signature legislative achievement this year: cutting tax brackets and chopping the top rate.

What are tax brackets? They are like a series of buckets.

The first bucket holds the first money you make. Lets say it holds $10,000 and is taxed at 1%.

The second bucket might hold your next $10,000 of income and be taxed at a higher rate, 2%.

As you make more money, you fill more buckets, with each one taxed at a higher rate.

So when the top marginal tax rate was 92%, the richest people were not paying 92% of their income as taxes. Instead, it meant that those whose incomes were absurdly high ($2.6 million in 1952, which equals $28.4 million today), sent 92% of their earnings in the last bucket to our communities.

During the 1980s, the tax code was simplified by reducing the number of tax brackets. At the same time, the top marginal tax rate was reduced from 70% in 1980 to 28% in 1989.

Between the simplification and the lower rates, the U.S. revenue from taxes barely budged, when adjusted for inflation, between 1980 and 1989. At the same time, our national debt soared, and wealth inequality began to increase.

There was virtue in reducing the number of tax brackets when taxes were prepared with pencil, paperand endless tax rate charts in IRS booklets. But when most people use software to prepare their taxes, cutting taxbrackets overwhelmingly benefits only the wealthy.

And in benefiting the wealthy alone, weve lost the plot when it comes to promoting the general welfare of the United States and its citizens. With the rise of libertarianism and the myth of the self-made billionaire, weve allowed the wealthy to turn their backs on us, their fellow-citizens, on our common good, and on their just portion of the expense of government.

In Iowa, our Republican Legislature continues to mindlessly choke off our states income. Their new tax scheme rushed through so that it could be a talking point in the State of the Union rebuttal will eventually result in a tax rate of 3.9% for all Iowans.

That burden will fall far more heavily on minimum wage earners than CEOs. The cuts to state income eliminate billions that we could have invested in Iowas prosperity and ensure that our public school funding and public school ranking will continue their downward slide.

Instead of investing in our future, our Legislature has heaped tax credits on corporations like John Deere, which repay the favor by moving jobs to Mexico. Its past time we remember that our state and country are public projects: everyones benefit and everyones responsibility.

Lets elect people this November who will focus not on slavishly cutting taxes but on the fundamentals: meeting every Iowans basic needs and getting us back to supporting the public schools that support our future. Anything less would be uncivic.

Kelcey Patrick-Ferree and Shannon Patrick live in Iowa City.

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Opinion: Reynolds' 'flat tax' is just a ruse to let the rich avoid their civic duty - Iowa City Press-Citizen

Elon Musk styles himself as a character out of science fiction, posing as an ingenious inventor who will send a crewed mission to Mars by 2029 or imagining himself as Isaac Asimovs Hari Seldon, a farseeing visionary planning ahead centuries to protect the human species from existential threats. Even his geeky humor seems inspired by his love for Douglas Adamss Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

But while he may take inspiration from science fiction, as Jill Lepore has observed, hes a bad reader of the genre. He idolizes Kim Stanley Robinson and Iain M. Banks while ignoring their socialist politics, and he overlooks major speculative traditions such as feminist and Afrofuturist science fiction. Like many Silicon Valley CEOs, he primarily sees science fiction as a repository of cool inventions waiting to be created.

Musk engages with most science fiction in a superficial manner, but he is a very careful reader of one author: Robert A. Heinlein. He named Heinleins The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress from 1966 as one of his favorite novels. The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is a libertarian classic second only to Ayn Rands Atlas Shrugged in its propaganda value for neoliberal capitalism. It inspired the creation of the Heinlein Prize for Accomplishments in Commercial Space Activities, which Musk won in 2011. (Jeff Bezos is another recent winner.)

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress popularized the motto Theres no such thing as a free lunch, often used by defenders of capitalism and opponents of progressive taxation and social programs. Its about a lunar colony that frees itself, via advanced and cleverly applied technology, from the resource-sucking parasitism of Earth and its welfare dependents. In this instance, it appears that Musk correctly caught the authors drift.

Heinlein filled his fiction with loudmouthed men who claim to be accomplished polymaths. They boss everyone around, make decisions on a whim, and ignore advice regardless of the consequences. In other words, they act just like the CEO of Tesla, Inc. Likewise, Musk often attracts investors through publicity stunts rather than proven science and engineering, a self-marketing strategy that puts him, as Colby Cosh has pointed out, in the same dubious company as Heinleins space entrepreneur D. D. Harriman in his story The Man Who Sold The Moon.

But Heinlein wasnt in the business of criticizing free-market capitalism far from it. The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress depicts a moon colony forced by the centralized Lunar Authority to ship food to Earth where it goes to feed starving people in places like India. The lunar citizens, or Loonies, revolt against the state monopoly and establish a society characterized by free markets and minimal government. The Loonies welcome the Malthusian catastrophe that will follow their withdrawal of nutritional assistance from Earth because they believe population collapse will ultimately make the welfare dependents down there more efficient people and better fed in the long run.

In addition to basic libertarianism, the novel promotes what Evgeny Morozov would call technological solutionism, the belief that every social or political problem can be solved with the right technical fix. This ideologys roots go back to the 1930s technocracy movement, which, as Lepore points out, numbered Musks grandfather among its adherents. Musk has taken up this legacy, promoting the electric car as the solution to climate change. In Musks view, private innovation rather than state intervention or activist politics will save the world.

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress follows the same mindset. Although the Loonies advocate libertarian principles we learn that the most basic human right is the right to bargain in a free marketplace these prove secondary to the practical problem that Earth is draining Lunas water and other resources at a rate they predict will result in mass starvation on the Moon.

Their solution to this problem touts itself as equally scientific. In the book we learn that an insurrectionary group is no different from an electric motor: it must be designed by experts with function in mind. The Loonies revolutionary conspiracy decides that revolutions are not won by enlisting the masses. Revolution is a science only a few are competent to practice. It depends on correct organization and, above all, on communications. Acting on this principle, one of the coconspirators, Mannie the computer technician, designs their clandestine cell system like a computer diagram or neural network, mapping out how information will flow between revolutionists. They determine the best way of organizing a cadre not through democratic deliberation or practical experience but through cybernetic principles.

Mannies disinterest in the messy business of political persuasion is a strength, not a weakness, because it allows him to see people as mere nodes in the network. Indeed, Mannys narration throughout the novel uses engineering terms to describe human beings and social interactions. He describes one woman as [s]elf-correcting, like a machine with proper negative feedback. Mannie, who boasts a cyborg arm, treats others as mechanisms in need of tinkering. Musks brain-machine interface company, Neuralink, attempts to operationalize this idea.

For Mannie and his coconspirators, democratic input from the revolutions mass base is noise that can only interfere with the signals transmitted from the elite leadership outward to their interconnected web of subordinates. Even when it comes time to establish a constitution for the Luna Free State, the conspirators use clever procedural tricks to do an end run around everyone in the congress who is not a member of their clique. Smart individuals always win out over mass democracy in Heinleins fiction and thats a good thing.

The novel takes solutionism to the extreme when Mannie enlists the help of a sentient supercomputer named Mike to lead the overthrow of Earths colonial government on Luna. Anticipating the exuberance of the dot-com era, Heinlein suggests that a computer can foment change better than any movement or organization. Mikes revolutionary tactics reflect the novels obsession with communications: much of the book is devoted to the conspiracys attempts to shift public opinion against the Lunar Authority and sow confusion among the governments ranks through hacking and media campaigns. Like the keyboard warriors of our present moment the hyperonline Musk among them Heinleins revolutionary elite hope to change society by manipulating information.

When revolutionary war breaks out, Mikes technical superiority emerges as the deciding factor. Using electromagnetic catapults, the supercomputer hurls rocks at the Earth that impact with the force of atomic explosions. The Federated Nations of Earth are forced to grant their lunar colonies independence after this calculated show of force. In the end, the Loonies achieve political emancipation thanks to a gadget.

These ideas would later feed into what Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron call the Californian ideology, a combination of techno-utopianism and economic libertarianism espoused by digital artisans such as software engineers working in Silicon Valley. As Barbrook and Cameron note, the Californian ideologys evangelists in the 1990s tended to be science-fiction fans who loved Heinlein and fancied themselves countercultural rebels bringing about a golden age of freedom by building the electronic marketplace. They believed that once unleashed from physical as well as governmental constraints, the free market would produce new technologies to address every possible problem or need.

Even more fundamentally, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress reflects a prevailing dogma that promotes cybernetics as the key to understanding the universe. Under this belief system, everything from markets to ecosystems appear as information processors operating based on feedback mechanisms. Like a thermostat, they respond to changing circumstances without conscious human control. Because the economy is a self-regulating system too complex for anyone to understand let alone steer, the Californian ideologists suggest, it should be insulated from democratic interference by a global legal order developed by neoliberal experts.

Musk has immersed himself in this ideology since his involvement with PayPal in the 1990s, and so it makes sense that he would be drawn to The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. Hes so mired in this way of thinking that he entertains the idea that all of reality is a computer simulation. In many ways, Musk models himself on Mannie the computer technician, the wisecracking rebel who only wants the government to get out of his way so he can make things work. When Musk encounters traffic congestion, he doesnt see it as a failure of urban planning or a problem following from underinvestment in mass transit. Instead, he sees it as an opportunity to build a hyperloop. His solution to everything is an invention developed and marketed by rogue geniuses in the private sector. His faith in technofixes is so great that he imagines machines as potential overlords waiting to take over. There is more than a hint of Mike in his fear of an impending robot apocalypse.

Even his efforts to acquire Twitter and strip it of content restrictions seem to be motivated by the same ideology. Fred Turner argues that Musks opposition to content moderation stems from a belief that information wants to be free. When speech counts as data rather than dialogue, it becomes impossible to see why hate speech might be harmful.

Musks belief system rules out the idea that society is riven by antagonisms, least of all class struggle. He will always see problems like climate disaster as purely technical rather than derived from the profit-seeking behavior of the corporations ruining the planet. If science fiction reveals the contradictions of capitalism and encourages us to imagine alternatives, then Musks sci-fi persona is a cheap imitation. As a libertarian and a technocrat, the best he can do is fantasize about handing the revolution over to the machines.

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To Understand Elon Musk, You Have to Understand This '60s Sci-Fi Novel - Jacobin magazine

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Summer is heeeeeeere! Oh wait, you're an adult and have kids.Now you have to figure out what to do with them before you are driven to the edge of madness. What a drag!

Don't panic. We've got some great summer activity ideas for you andWhoa, you have a libertarian kid?That's even worse!

Try these libertarian themed summer activities:

1) Go to the beach: If you bring a shovel and a metal detector you can minefor bitcoin. Is that how it works? We're still not sure.

2) Start a podcast: Oh, your libertarian child already has a podcast, doesn't he? Never mind.

3) Grow a garden: Yes, for Christmas trees. Definitely nothing else.

4) Set up a lemonade stand: Make sure it doesn't take fiat currency. Precious metals are acceptable.

5) Go to the Grand Canyon: Tell everyone their view is subsidized by taxes on working-class Americans.

6) Buy a 3D Printer: For lightsaber replicas, figurines, and ghost guns.

7) Tour Europe: Just be careful not to form any foreign alliances.

8) Light summer reading: Sowell, Hayek, and Tuttle Twinswill get you started.

9) Repair the road you paved yourself: Try to avoid using public roads when you go buy the material.

10) Panning for gold: Then you can take all the gold you find and invest it in gold!

11) Storm the Federal Reserve: Just use the plan from Die Hard With a Vengeance. It worked almost perfectly!

12) Tell people to get off your land: A wholesome way to bond with your child.

NOT SATIRE: You know what wed really like to do this summer?

Fill a public school library with Tuttle Twins books, so when a LibsOfTikTok teacher shows up ready to indoctrinate her students, she unfortunately finds a library full of books that teach kids about the ideas of liberty, free speech, free markets, individual responsibility, and American history.

Will you help us send Tuttle Twins books to a public school? It costs roughly $10 to distribute one book to a school. Can you help?

Click here to help us distribute more copies of the Tuttle Twins books to schools across the country, with your tax-deductible gift of $10, $50, $100, $500, or even more.

Thank you,Connor BoyackAuthor, Tuttle Twins

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Summer Activities To Enjoy With Your Libertarian Kid - The Babylon Bee

Anyone who has children understands that one of their best qualities is their limitless trustworthiness. Children will believe any fantastically false lie you tell them until critical thinking abilities (occasionally) develop later in life, such as that a minor deity is so happy to obtain their filthy baby teeth that they leave printed American cash with the Treasury Secretarys name on it for it. Its the most ridiculous thing in the world, but I, and most likely you, have believed it for years.

Unfortunately, some people might take advantage of childrens cuteness for nefarious ends. Theres an entire genre of legendary quotes attributed to leaders of authoritarian organizations that say something along the lines of Give me the child for seven years, and Ill give you the man, implying that those formative early years may establish beliefs that last a lifetime. Similar statements are attributed to Jesuit leaders, Lenin, and others, but the concept is apparent enough regardless of the source.

But the Church and the State arent the only ones who see the usefulness in indoctrinating naive children. I recently discovered this when an unscrupulous editor of a popular leftist magazine, lets call it Present Developments, mailed me a large box of libertarian childrens literature known as the Tuttle Twins series, a series of illustrated stories and workbooks designed to teach children about the wonders of the free market. (Advertisements for it may have appeared on Facebook.) I can confirm that the unique Tuttle Twins combination pack is as horrible as you think it is after reading all 11 books in it.

Each Tuttle Twins book is based on the teachings of a notable libertarian intellectual, such as Friedrich von Hayek, Ayn Rand, or Ludwig von Mises, and includes a tribute to the figure as well as a brief biography of their work. Connor Boyack is a Utah resident, a Brigham Young University graduate, and the president/founder of Libertas Institute, a free-market think tank, which is impressive given that there are only approximately 900 of them in the United States. In that position, he argues, he has modified a considerable number of laws in favor of personal freedom and free markets, presumably when he isnt penning odious Ayn Rand propaganda for helpless children.

The Tuttle Twins Learn About the Law, the first book in the series, is based on Frederic Bastiats writings. As a teacher, I can tell you that assigning the twins to ask a wise person to teach them about something really important is an excellent instructional method. They visit their next-door neighbor Fred, who brings them to his personal library, which features an oddly lovingly depicted bookshelf with a number of recognized libertarian titles, ranging from Murray Rothbard to Ron Pauls End the Fed to, bizarrely, Jeremy Scahills Dirty Wars.

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More adventures lead the twins to the circus, where they work as guest clowns and become involved in the search for the star attraction, a strongman named Atlas, who has resigned (shrugged). The strongmans wages had been cut by the despotic ringmaster, who believes the circus can continue without him. Soon, the kids learn that being a clown was actually pretty easy, while Atlas toils away in the gym, and indeed, the entire circus enlists his help to erect tents, hang tightropes, and feed the animalsapparently, this is not a carnival without carnies.

The slacker clowns hate Atlass celebrity and benefits at work and spout nasty egalitarian lines like We all make this circus work together and Were all just as important, which are, of course, typical Marxist bullshit. These clowns must recognize that some skills are more valued than others, the children eventually learn. Atlas possesses a unique skill set that is difficult to duplicate, which makes him more valuable. The Russian organist remembers history, claiming that the clowns alluring calls for equality destroyed by Russia, which was formerly a peaceful, problem-free society.

Finally, the children persuade Atlas to return to the circus, and he saves everyone when the pillar supporting the Big Top begins to collapse, owing to the fact that it was improperly constructed without the superman on whom everything appears to rely. Everyone Learns Their Lesson after the ringmaster returns Atlas.

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Finally, choose-your-own-adventure novels are available. These books are comparable to the ones you might have read as a kid, but theyre written for teenagers, with fewer drawings, and plainly aimed at the YA market. Because of the Gummint and its Unintended Consequences, the novels arent choose your own adventure like most commercial books, but rather choose your own consequence.

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The kids in The Tuttle Twins and the Case of the Broken Window are in a high-stakes, end-of-season baseball game, probably in the Clich League, with a tying run on base. However, Emilys outstanding performance shatters a priceless window in the local church, forcing us to make a decision: Run or Come Clean. Come Clean, socialists.

The church is insured, but when Father McGillivray points us that the policy has a $5000 deductible, and our rates will go up, Boyack unwittingly reminds us of capitalisms nonsense. Wed rather not file a claim. You could argue that if something is too expensive to use, whats the sense of having an insurance market at all, but that isnt the Tuttle Way. The kids family offers to pay the deductible and have them work it off by having them intern for their Uncle Ben, who does this YouTube news broadcast thats quite popular, which is quite the pickup line.

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Tuttle Twins Controversy: The Case of The Terrible Libertarian Propaganda and The Tuttle Twins and Much More! - pelhamplus.com

Defining the broadly appealing mass-audience content found on Netflix and Disney Plus as simply too "woke" to serve their supposed silent majority of conservative and libertarian followers, Donald Trump and his media company are planning an "alternative" streaming service.

As detailed in an SEC filing from Trump Media and Technology Group, the so-called "TMTG+" will be similar in concept to Netflix and Disney Plus, but will provide a platform for conservative and/or libertarian views, and otherwise canceled content from other broadcast television and/or digital streaming platforms.

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TMTG intends to produce or acquire entertainment simply for entertainments sake. TMTGs programming will thus provide a non-woke alternative to the programs offered by streaming services that operate in an increasingly politicized environment," the company added. "TMTG will not censor the creators of entertainment for TMTG+, nor will it insist that its programming push some particular political ideology.

Also in the filing, TMTG said that it observes an acute need for quality programming that does not lecture its viewers or only present one acceptable approach to a topic. Entertainers and creators have frequently been agents for change in our society. Large media conglomerates become increasingly monolithic in their views, cancelling those who disagree with the prevailing narrative. TMTG believes that embracing diverse perspectives will differentiate TMTG+ in the current crowded media and entertainment marketplace.

TMTG, which recently launched Twitter far right alternative Truth Social, is in the process of merging with special purpose acquisition company Digital World Acquisition for the purpose of going public. It has raised around $1 billion through various private investors.

Read more from the original source:
Trump Media Company Planning 'TMTG+,' a 'Non-Woke Alternative' to 'Obi-Wan Kenobi' and 'Stranger Things' - Next TV

Yoram Hazony's book outlines the religious foundations of American conservatism.

Conservatism: A Rediscovery, by Yoram Hazony (Regnery Gateway, 2022), 256 pages.

I began reading Yoram Hazonys Conservatism: A Rediscovery with the expectation that it would be an update of sorts of Russell Kirks The Conservative Mind. There are similarities between the books that have been noted elsewhere, but in some ways, Hazonys book is more comprehensive than either Conservative Mind or Kirks Roots of the American Order.

Americans use a different taxonomy for politics than Europeans do; there is a liberalism in the American founding that can make semantics blurry. Hazony, thankfully, cuts through the confusion and boldly states historical truths that are self-evident. The United States was at its formation an Anglo-Protestant nation committed to upholding the traditional pillars of human society: religion, family, the common good, and authority.

None of this is controversial, but in the post-Trump intellectual milieu, to be a historically conscious American conservative is increasingly to be labeled an integralist or a Christian nationalist, terms so imprecise that their use amounts to slander. Ideas like nationalism, conservatism, the common good, ordered liberty, and rightful authority are not merely fever dreams of a nefarious new right out to destroy the libertarian, or neoconservative, or neoliberal paradise created by the wiser minds of the post-war era. Hazony is a practicing Orthodox Jew, so the charges that he is interested in resurrecting a medieval Roman Catholic order is ridiculous on its face.

As an Israeli, Hazonys distance from the United States contemporary political cacophony allows him to see clearly what is obvious from the historical record. George Washington and the Federalists, for example, were nationalists by most measures. Moreover, the religious disestablishments of the 1780s did not secularize society. Instead, the Christian religion and the state stopped their 1,300-year-old tendency to meddle in each others affairs and became allies in the creation of the Early Republic United States. All of this is self-evident in American history, but few recent authors have dared say so. The threat of being labeled a theocrat has cowed scholars, pastors, and laypeople of goodwill into conceding the specious historical claims of neoconservatives and neoliberals as much as outright leftists.

Religions, and more specifically Christianitys, self-evident place in the history of American political and social life takes center stage in Conservatisms narrative. Political theories in the conservative tradition, Hazony rightly notes, cannot be made to work without the God of scripture. Uncharitable readers will hear a dog whistle in his claim, but Hazonys is no different than the claim of many Western thinkers. The Judeo-Christian, or Abrahamic (Muslims rightfully have a place in the narrative of conservatism) Gods presence in political life is necessary, as the knowledge of God makes man aware of human limitation and the subsequent limits on human power.

Family joins religion as an essential pillar of sustainable conservative social and civil life. Hazony unambiguously lays out the Mosaic foundations for the traditions that allow human beings to create and sustain healthy families. Traditional families, Hazony notes, are not identical to the nuclear families of the mid-20th century. They are multigenerational and religious by nature. In his view, clans and close kinship networks are not the seeds of a future cultish society, but instead are a natural, timeless part of human life.

Since societys foundations are, in Conservatism, bound up in family and religion, it is no surprise that Hazony sees creating, maintaining, and protecting those two institutions as the essential purpose of government. Again, this is not actually controversial or historically ambiguous. The Protestant intellectuals and politicians who dominated civic and social life in the United States until the middle of the 20th century were not social libertarians, or even social progressives as that term is understood today. Franklin Roosevelt and his secretary of State, Cordell Hull, gladly claimed the mantle of Christian nationalism. So did most Republicans before World War II. The idea that the American nation owed its laws and political order to Protestantism, or at least to Christianity more broadly, was not a controversial opinion. And laws oriented towards the health and prosperity of families were always prioritized over and against an individualist paradigm.

Propositions once widely accepted have nonetheless become taboo. Centrist Evangelicals, Roman Catholics, and Jews have embraced a sacralized form of liberalism shorn of biblical commitments. Hazony proposes that the Cold War bears some responsibility for this. Family and religion, however important they might be, were hard to see as important priorities in themselves in the post-war era. They became valuable because they were institutions that were anti-Communist.

Perhaps appropriately, there is very little that is new in Hazonys conservatism. Although it is not new, it is also not easy. Hazony believes that the libertarian telos of the early 21st century has valorized freedom and only freedom. Not enough is said in our contemporary politics about sources of stability, sanity, and peace, the virtues that necessarily constrain human behavior. Conservatism, in this view, is the way to heal families, communities, tribes, and the nation. And it begins at home. Conservatism in the United States is a living and breathing tradition with a history and a purpose. That history and that purpose, Hazony shows, are good and worth defending, ours, if we can keep it.

Miles Smithis visiting assistant professor of History at Hillsdale College. His main research interests are 19th-century intellectual and religious history in the United States and in the Atlantic World. You can follow him on Twitter at@IVMiles.

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Conservatism, If You Can Keep It - The American Conservative

This would be the preference of J. Anthony Williams, chairman of the Libertarian Party of Montgomery County who said too much of the federal money is going to fund governments that dont need the money, not help the taxpayers whose money it is.

Weve got rising gas prices, rising electricity, rising food costs and were going to give government millions of dollars to build a new bridge or fix a pothole it was already going to fix, he said.

How much are local communities getting in American Rescue Plan funds? Search the data here

Some local governments around the country are doing direct cash assistance to help families with childcare costs or help low-income households with utilities, but just cutting equal checks to everyone in a city or county is likely not in line with ARPA program rules, according to Alison Goebel, executive director of the Greater Ohio Policy Center.

The intention of ARPA is to support families, individuals and communities what were disproportionally impacted by the pandemic, and that has been people with low to moderate income and often people of color, she said.

U.S. Treasury rules released in January say direct cash transfers to households are allowed only if they are proportional to the negative impact of the pandemic.

Cash transfers, like all eligible uses in the public health and negative economic impacts category, must respond to the negative economic impacts of the pandemic on a household or class of households, according to a Treasury fact sheet. Recipients may presume that low- and moderate-income households (as defined in the final rule), as well as households that experienced unemployment, food insecurity, or housing insecurity, experienced a negative economic impact due to the pandemic.

Local governments can declare up to $10 million of the ARPA money as replacing revenue lost during the pandemic. This gives them much more freedom in spending the money.

Kent Scarrett, executive director of the Ohio Municipal League, said hes not aware of any Ohio municipalities doing direct cash assistance of any kind directly to households with ARPA funds.

Williams, of the Libertarian Party, said he would prefer local governments pay residents water bills, power bills or a month of rent over funding government programs.

That would be more beneficial than whatever they end up doing with it, he said.

Local governments did provide cash assistance to small business and rent and utility assistance to households usually paid directly to the utility or landlord with CARES Act funds, but that is far less common with ARPA money, so far. Many local governments are still debating how to spend much of the money theyre getting, totaling $718.7 million across 230 local governments.

The closest thing locally was the city of Springboro in May 2021 spending $759,860 paying water, sewer and trash bills for 6,400 residences and water and sewer bills for 600 businesses in the city. The largest bill that was paid off was for another government: Springboro Schools.

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Why arent you giving us back our money? reader asks of local governments with ARPA funds - Dayton Daily News