Category Archives: Libertarianism

Gov. Greg Abbotts campaign announced yesterday he had accepted an invitation by Nexstar Media Group to participate in a gubernatorial debate at the University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley in Edinburg. In a statement, Abbott said he would be willing to debate on September 30th, though Abbotts Democratic Party challenger, Beto ORourke, has not confirmed his participation in the debate. Instead, ORourkes campaign has suggested a series of town-hall style debates.

According to Nexstar, Abbott and ORourke were the only two candidates invited. Other candidates on the ballot include Libertarian Party nominee Mark Tippetts, Green Party Candidate Delilah Barrios, and independents Jorge Alberto Franco and Deirdre Gilbert. According to Nexstar, both of the following requirements must be met for a candidate to receive an invitation:

The candidate must have received at least 10% in an established, professionally conducted nonpartisan poll without taking the surveys margin of error into account

The campaign must have received at least $50,000 in monetary, as opposed to in-kind, campaign contributions, at least 25 percent of which must be raised from in-state constituents.

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Libertarian, Green, and Independent Candidates not Invited to Gubernatorial Debate The Amarillo Pioneer - The Amarillo Pioneer

Aug. 13Early voting begins Thursday for the Aug. 23 runoff elections.

The top two candidates who did not have more than 50 percent of their June primary votes are back on the ballot.

Republican have a few more options than Democrats and Independents. The only race on Payne County Democrats' and Independents' ballots is the Senate runoff between Jason Bollinger and Madison Horn. The winner of that race will face incumbent Republican Sen. James Lankford, Libertarian Kenneth Blevins and Independent Michael Delaney.

Oklahoma Republicans will have the unexpired-term Senate race runoff between T.W. Shannon and Markwayne Mullin. The winner will face Democrat Kendra Horn, Libertarian Robert Murphy and Independent Ray Woods.

Locally, westside Payne County Republicans will be choosing a new District 3 commissioner in a runoff between Rhonda Markum and Sheryl Arthur Lacy. There is no November challenger in that race.

There were no other challengers to several people who filed unopposed for county elected offices.

Republicans who live in Stillwater proper will choose between newcomers Michael Baughman and Andrew Muchmore for the District 34 State House of Representatives. The winner will face incumbent Democrat Rep. Trish Ranson.

Here is the breakdown for Republican runoffs in statewide offices:

State Superintendent

Ryan Walters vs. April Grace

Winner face Democrat Jena Nelson in November

State Treasurer

Clark Jolley and Todd Russ, will face Democrat Charles de Coune and Libertarian Greg Sadler

Labor Commissioner

Leslie Kathryn Osborn vs. Sean Roberts

Winner will face Democrat Jack Henderson and Libertarian Will Daugherty

Corporation Commissioner

Todd Thomsen vs. Kim David

Winner will face Democrat Warigia Margaret Bowman and Independent Don Underwood

The deadline has already been crossed to request an absentee ballot. Early in-person voting is 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday and Friday and 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday at the Payne County Election Board. Polls open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. the following Tuesday at local polling places. You can find your polling location and check out sample ballots at okvoterportal.okelections.us/.

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Runoffs to decide final nominations begins with early voting next week - Yahoo News

In this week's TheReason Roundtable, editors Matt Welch, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Peter Suderman, and Nick Gillespie huddle on last week's FBI raid of former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate.

2:01: The FBI raid of Trump's home

26:18: Weekly Listener Question:

The U.S. federal government, since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, has monopsonized COVID vaccines and therapies. Yet, I haven't heard any complaints from Reason-ers about this expansion of government into health care long after I think all of us would agree that the "emergency" should be over. And the government's performance has actually kind of sort of been OK in the last 18 months. What gives? There are now those who are using this experience as an argument that we should make ALL of health care single-payer. How would you respond to Dr. Topol and others like him who say, "This proves single-payer works, we should adopt it for everything"? And then, more broadly, while I believe our health care economic system is broken, I don't see a viable political path toward implementing more market-based reforms to introduce competition, incentivize innovation, and bring down prices. Would it make sense for (small-"L") libertarians to basically give up on health care and "make a deal with the devil," compromising on single-payer health care in exchange for liberalization of other areas of the economy that otherwise wouldn't see liberalization?

35:13: The attack on Salman Rushdie and free speech

Mentioned in this podcast:

"Donald Trump's Handling of Classified Material Looks Worse Than Hillary Clinton's," by Jacob Sullum

"Free to Offend," by Robert Poole

"The Truth Hurts," by Jonathan Rauch

"Why We're Having an Everybody Draw Mohammed Contest on Thursday May 20," by Nick Gillespie

"Salman Rushdie and the Cult of Offense," by Graeme Wood

Send your questions to roundtable@reason.com. Be sure to include your social media handle and the correct pronunciation of your name.

Today's sponsor:

Audio production by Ian Keyser

Assistant production by Hunt Beaty

Music: "Angeline," by The Brothers Steve

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Podcast: Muddling Through the Mar-a-Lago Mess - Reason

The HBO docuseries The Anarchists opens with a roaring beachside bonfire. Shirtless children squeal happily as they rip pages from books and toss them into the flames. A hyped-up middle-aged man holds a textbook up to the camera and yells Fuck you! as his young son looks on attentively. Bitch! another kid yells, throwing crumpled papers into the blaze. Its a wild, repellent scene. Who are these people?

The textbook-destroying ringleader, we learn, is Nathan Freeman, a hard-partying software designer who had recently moved his family from the middle-America suburbs to Acapulco, Mexico, to help run a new conference called Anarchapulco. Along with his wide-eyed wife Lisa, Freeman hoped to build a community devoted to a strain of libertarian thinking known as anarcho-capitalism. The bonfire straight out of Fahrenheit 451? Typical community-building exercise, of course. And, as it turns out, it took place during a relatively peaceful moment within this debaucherous, squabbling group of tax-hating libertines. Book-burning was just a prelude to far more serious chaos.

When Todd Schramke started filming in Acapulco in 2015, he thought he was cobbling together an exploration of an eccentric countercultural group that might work as a digital short. Instead, he kept his cameras rolling for six wildly eventful years, witnessing the group rapidly expand and spectacularly fracture. He followed a colorful, frequently belligerent cast of characters, including the Freemans, conspiracy-theory-spouting Anarchapulco founder Jeff Berwick, and a charismatic fugitive couple known by the aliases John Galton and Lily Forester, as they attempted to live out their ideological convictionsdown with governments, up with free marketsin their cobbled-together expat cadre in Mexico.

Since they dreamt of a stateless existence, the group enthusiastically boosted the use of cryptocurrencies, and found themselves flush with money after Bitcoins price spiked in 2017. (Also, so no one yells at me: If you ask actual anarchists, theyll tell you anarcho-capitalism has nothing to do with traditional anarchismwhich is anti-capitalist and left-leaningmaking the title of this docu-series a misnomer. The Hedonistic Libertarians wouldve probably been more accurate, but oh well!) Along the way, fortunes were gained and lost, and several of Schramkes principle characters ended up dying, sometimes violently.

WIRED talked with the director about the filmmaking process, anarchist web forums, and how to roll with unexpected real-life plot twists.

This conversation contains spoilers and has been edited for clarity and length.

WIRED: I want to hear the origin story of The Anarchists. What first drew you to Anarachapulco?

Todd Schramke: I came across the concept of anarchism during my own development as a young punk rock musician. Some of the bands that were associated with that world had an interest in more classical anarchism, which is actually emergent out of a 19th-century labor rights movementwhich has very little to do with what was going on at Anarchapulco. That desensitized me to the concepts of anarchy and anarchism, and when I came of voting age, I started exploring some of these ideas.

Excerpt from:
The Story Behind the Wrenching Finale of 'The Anarchists' - WIRED

We must of course remain vigilant that laws not be used to harass or destroy political opponents. A Wall Street Journal editorial of this morning says as much. But this is not a reason for rulers or former rulers to be above the law like dictators.

The fear of Leviathanthe all-powerful state modeled by Thomas Hobbesand a certain mistrust of those in power are inseparable of the classical liberal and libertarian tradition. A rule of law developed that is supposed to apply equally to government rulers. The constitutional structure is meant to prevent statocrats from treating the res publica as their private thing. (Res publica, which means public thing in the sense of public affairs in Latin, ultimately gave the word Republic.) Countervailing powers and institutions provide incentives to statocrats not to pursue authoritarian temptations. We have good reasons to think that controls over government have become much too weak. (Nobel economist F.A. Hayek has done important work in that area.)

The strongest argument against the stateall levels and branches of governmentis that there is no way to prevent even liberal rulers from nurturing the democratic Leviathan, which will become impossible to control. (See Anthony de Jasay, The State.) As the Latin poet asked,Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

When we live under a state, the truly dangerous abuse of power does not come from the constraints imposed on rulers and their agents. It dos not show in the search of the house of a former ruler who is apparently suspected of stealing public documents related to his tenure at the res publica. It is instead the sort of abuse of power targeting ordinary citizens, who have come to be engulfed in a net of minute and complex laws and regulations. Looking at the federal government only, the number of restrictions and obligations (estimated by the number of the words shall, must, may not, required, or prohibited) contained in the Code of Federal Regulations has gone from less than 500,000 in 1970 (the first year the data is available) to more than 1.3 million in 2021 (according to the latest version of RegData developed by Patrick McLaughlin at George Mason Universitys Mercatus Center). Some 8% of American adults have a felony record, which means they remain convicted felons for their whole lives (Sarah K.S. Shannon et al., The Growth, Scope, and Spatial Distribution of People with Felony Records in the United States, 1948-2010, Demography, vol. 54 [2017]).

Note that none of the recent presidents and very few politicians have done anything, or even indicated any intention of doing anything, about this evolution. Even the law and order types, overt of covert, target their toughness towards the groups of citizens they dont like, not against the holders of power.

It is mainly rulers and government agents who need to be surveilled and controlled, including the Department of Justice and the FBI, as well as presidents for what they do (or did) during their tenure.

As I was putting the last hand on this post, the Wall Street Journal reveals that Mr. Trump has just pleaded the Fifth Amendmentprobably repeatedly as his acolytes have often done in other proceedingsin an unrelated affair of fraud investigated by the New York Attorney General. Afterwards, Trump made a remarkable declaration (Trump Invokes Fifth Amendment Rights in Deposition for New York AG James Civil Investigation, Fox News, August 19, 2022):

I once asked, If youre innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment? Now I know the answer to that question.

Better late than never, but this guy was the president of the United States! Let us hope that the American institutions meant to protect individual liberty can withstand the 2016 election of Donald Trump.

Read more:
The Search of Trumps House + the 5th Amendment - Econlib

You can see in the polling that everybody kind of hates the two major parties and increasingly dont like where the country is going, said Ryan Graham, the Libertarian candidate for lieutenant governor and a former party chairman. We are giving voice to an underrepresented voting bloc in America.

Brett Larson, from left, Nathan Wilson, executive director of the Libertarian Party of Georgia, and Libertarian U.S. Senate candidate Allen Buckley watch election results on a computer during a Libertarian watch party in November 2016 at the Mellow Mushroom in Atlanta. (BRANDEN CAMP/SPECIAL)

Credit: Branden Camp

Brett Larson, from left, Nathan Wilson, executive director of the Libertarian Party of Georgia, and Libertarian U.S. Senate candidate Allen Buckley watch election results on a computer during a Libertarian watch party in November 2016 at the Mellow Mushroom in Atlanta. (BRANDEN CAMP/SPECIAL)

Credit: Branden Camp

Credit: Branden Camp

There are 10 Libertarians on the ballot this November in statewide races, including for the U.S. Senate, governor and secretary of state.

But voters wont have a Libertarian choice in any congressional and legislative races because of Georgias ballot access laws, which are among the strictest in the nation. No third-party candidates have ever been able to run for the U.S. House under a 1943 state law that requires them to gather signatures from 5% of registered voters.

One of those Libertarian candidates, Angela Pence, tried to challenge Republican U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene in a solidly conservative northwest Georgia district. Pence fell far short of the 25,000 signatures she needed, gathering about 6,000.

I could have shook things up, but instead were going to have Marjorie again for another two years, Pence said. A Democrat isnt going to win in this district, but a Libertarian could have given her a run for her money. Its going to take enough people or the system getting so bad that theyre finally willing to change it.

The two big political parties have stymied Libertarians chances to field more candidates, leaving state law unchanged.

Libertarian challenges have also fallen short in court. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in January reversed a ruling that would have lowered the number of signatures needed for a third-party candidate to get on the ballot. The Libertarian Party of Georgia appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court this week.

Both major-party candidates for governor, Republican Brian Kemp and Democrat Stacey Abrams, plan to try to get Libertarians to vote for them.

The stakes in this election could not be higher, Kemp campaign spokesman Tate Mitchell said. Gov. Kemp will continue reaching out to voters in every community and on every side of the aisle.

Abrams campaign spokesman Alex Floyd said, She understands how voters are frustrated with the current political status quo in Georgia and has spent her career advocating for Georgians right to participate in our democratic process so they can make their voices heard regardless of the candidate they support.

Stacey Abrams is focused on reaching out to voters all across our state to talk about how her plans work for them.

Neither candidate has announced plans to expand ballot access to third parties if elected.

Under Georgia law, third parties can nominate candidates for statewide offices as long as at least one of their candidates received votes from more than 1% of registered voters in the previous general election. But candidates for district races must meet the states 5% signature requirement.

Republicans and Democrats often shy away from proposals that could weaken their duopoly control of Georgia politics.

You dont want my opinion on it because Id probably get thrown out of the Republican Party, said state Rep. Steve Tarvin, a Republican from Chickamauga and chairman of the House Interstate Cooperation Committee. I would say we need easier ballot access, but I dont think just anybody can get on the ballot. I dont know what the answer is, but I dont think its 25,000 signatures.

House Minority Leader James Beverly said hed consider bills expanding ballot access if Democrats took over a majority of seats in the House, which is unlikely to happen this year.

Everyone who wishes to vote should be able to vote, and you should choose a candidate who best represents your interests. Having a third party isnt bad, said Beverly, a Democrat from Macon. I suspect Libertarians will be more inclined to vote for Democrats now because their basic philosophy upholds liberty as a core value.

Libertarian candidates know they dont stand much of a chance of winning this year, but they hope to make their case to voters and grow their base for the future.

The AJC poll showed 3% of likely voters support Libertarian U.S. Senate candidate Chase Oliver and less than 1% backed gubernatorial candidate Shane Hazel. The highest-polling Libertarian candidates were Graham for lieutenant governor and Ted Metz for secretary of state, both at about 7%.

The poll of 902 likely voters was conducted July 14-22 and has a margin of error of 3.3 percentage points. It was conducted by the University of Georgias School of Public and International Affairs.

Support for Libertarians tends to decline by the time elections arrive. In 2020, Libertarian candidates received between 1% and 3% of the vote.

But that can be enough in a tight race between Republicans and Democrats to throw the election into a runoff, as has happened several times in the past 30 years.

When you have third parties, those two major parties know that if you dont keep your promises, you do have options, said Elizabeth Melton Gallimore, executive director for the Libertarian Party of Georgia.

Libertarian candidates 2022

U.S. Senate: Chase Oliver

Governor: Shane Hazel

Lieutenant governor: Ryan Graham

Secretary of state: Ted Metz

Attorney General: Martin Cowen

Agriculture Commissioner: David Raudabaugh

Labor Commissioner: Emily Anderson

Public Service Commission District 2: Colin McKinney

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Libertarians see opening to gain ground in Georgia 2022 elections - The Atlanta Journal Constitution

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IrelandUruguay, Eastern Republic ofUzbekistanVanuatuVenezuela, Bolivarian Republic ofViet Nam, Socialist Republic ofWallis and Futuna IslandsWestern SaharaYemenZambia, Republic ofZimbabwe

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State Libertarian Party asks for 'relief from oppressive ballot laws' - The Albany Herald

(The Center Square) Michigans state primaries are in the rearview, but voters wont know the full slate of candidates for Nov. 8 for another few weeks.

Candidates for three of the states highest-ranking offices attorney general, lieutenant governor, and secretary of state are not determined by state primaries. Instead, candidates for these offices are determined by party conventions.

Additionally, candidates for Supreme Court, and the boards of Michigan State University, Wayne State University, the University of Michigan, and the state Board of Education are nominated at conventions.

The two major party conventions will be held later this month, with the Democrats meeting Aug. 20-21, and Republicans convening Aug. 27. The Libertarian Partys convention was held July 10.

According to Ballotpedia, Michigan is one of 43 states to elect an attorney general whereas seven states either allow appointment by the governor or legislature.

Incumbent AG Dana Nessel is running unopposed by other Democrat candidates. Joe McHugh was selected as the Libertarian Partys candidate at the partys convention last month. Three Republican candidates are vying to unseat Nessel: State Rep. Ryan Berman; attorney Matthew DePerno; and former state Rep. Tom Leonard, who squared off against Nessel in 2018.

The attorney general serves a term of four years with no term limits. For example, Frank Kelly was nicknamed the Eternal General because he served from 1961 to 1999, making him both the youngest elected at 36 and the oldest at 74.

The lieutenant governor field includes Democratic incumbent Garlin Gilchrist, Libertarian Brian Ellison and Green Party candidate Destiny Clayton. A Republican contender for the office has yet to be determined.

Incumbent Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, will be challenged by one of the four Republican candidates: Cindy Berry; Kristina Karamo; state Rep. Beau LaFave; or Cathleen Postmus. Additional challengers are Libertarian Gregory Stempfle and Green Party candidate Larry Hutchinson Jr.

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Election 2022: Primaries clear Michigan fields; more will come at conventions - The Center Square

It is often argued by the classical liberal thinkers that ideas of individual liberty were the driving force behind the Industrial Revolution. Intellectuals like Steven Pinker and Deirdre McCloskey see the revolution in a very linear fashion. They argue that people lived in pitiful conditions before the great industrial revolution came as a knight in shining armor to lift them up. However, the Industrial Revolution also provided newer tools which acted as catalyst for the exponential growth of colonialism, which curtailed individual liberty across the continents. Can we then, as classical liberals/libertarians, claim the credit of the Industrial Revolution, but choose to overlook the loss of liberty in the colonies established by the newly industrialized nations?

It is time for the libertarians of the 21st century to acknowledge the elephant in the room: colonialism. Its essential because many argue that the Industrial Revolution or even the ideas of Libertythat Pinker and McCloskey cherishwere the causal forces behind colonialism. I am not suggesting that these people are correct; however, their point resonates favorably among a sizable population group, even beyond the former colonies.

If the history of enlightenment and Industrial Revolution has to be seen in a linear fashion, what should we make of colonialism? A part of the linear transformation towards the Liberal world order? If liberty should be valued for its consequences, why should postcolonial thinkers go down the path? History, as some argue, perhaps, is the history of discourse and discourse, in itself, is a game of articulation. If we as libertarians lose the game of discourse and articulation, what lies ahead for the movement?

When the Britishwho kick-started the Industrial Revolutionbecame better-off and moved to distant lands for more opportunities to trade, they forgot the values of liberty. In my country, India, they stole over 45 trillion dollars over the years of their rule. Not only that, they went on to acquire the forests by alienating local communities and forest dwellers, who lived there for centuries. Throughout, they acted as if the notion of property rights was not relevant in colonial India. Lets not forget that property rights are intrinsic to the ideas of liberty. Libertarian thinkers like Murray Rothbard consider property rights as the sine qua non of Human Rights.

There may be an argument that the ideas of liberty helped in the development of countries which went through the industrial revolution. As per McCloskey, the ideas of liberty allowed the English people for the first time to experiment, to have a go, and, especially, to talk to each other in an open-source fashion about their experiments and their goings, rather than hiding them in posthumously decoded mirror writing out of fear of theological and political disapproval. Furthermore, others argue that the Industrial Revolution could very well have happened in China, but it didnt, because the rulers there did not support innovators and in fact restrictive on them when they started attaining success.

China did not have an Industrial Revolution and the British did. However, we must note that Chinaat that pointdid not go on to take away resources of people across the globe, but the British did. Business is not a zero-sum game of resources, but a positive-sum game instead. While exploring the newer lands for business opportunities, had the British adhered to their liberal principles, the British would still have grown, and so would have been the other countries.

Liberty, we must remember, is not relative. If the ability to choose is violated, even for a single human being, there is no liberty. It is still not late. Libertarians of the 21st century should stop resting on the laurels of the Industrial Revolution, and look into the degeneration of newly industrialized nations into illiberal colonial powers. We should do some soul-searching and try to understand these ideas of the Enlightenment- what was their soul, what went wrong, and why it went wrong. This will help us to present a strong narrative about a world based on the soul and principles of liberty for all.

Adnan Abbasi is currently pursuing Bachelor of Arts (Hons.) degree majoring in Social and Political Science from Ahmedabad University. He is a Writing Fellow at Students for Libertys Fellowship for Freedom in India.

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The Industrial Revolution and the Colonial Conundrum - Econlib

The governments corner on the education market is a common enemy among liberty lovers. Throughout the country, government-funded public school systems are outdated and broken. They push values and ideologies that make parents uncomfortable, they systematically waste taxpayer dollars, and, worst of all, they fail to equip future generations with the tools they need to succeed in the wider world. Even basic literacy has been declining for decades, and children who are behind in reading by third grade may never catch up.

For these reasons, its easy to see why free marketeers such as Clemson professor C. Bradley Thompson, libertarian activist Jacob Hornberger, and Fox Newss Kennedy Montgomery have publicly embraced the idea that public schools should simply be abolished all at once.

But the chances of that happening are slim to none. Every state has a compulsory schooling statute, and eliminating these statutes would be arduous, especially when most parents are satisfied with their childrens education. Believe it or not, parental satisfaction in public schools has remained above 67% over the past two decades, and public school is still the first choice for 41% of parents today.

In short, it isnt politically viable to pursue an agenda of abolishing public education in our current moment (and it may never be so). If free marketeers wish to make a real impact on education in America, theyd do better to embrace educational freedom of all kinds.

Advocating incremental change to improve our K-12 education system by empowering parents with educational choices is a much more popular and effective strategy for freeing students from the failing government schooling apparatus. For example, education savings accounts, which let families use their childs education funds on private education expenses, including tutoring, special needs therapies, and private school tuition, poll at about 75% favorability among parents of various backgrounds.

Yet some libertarians make perfect the enemy of the good by opposing school choice since it does not meet their standards of market competition. Students dont have time for libertarian pipe dreams no matter how just and right they may be. Children and their families dont care that education savings accounts arent the perfect market solution. Theyll settle for the boosts to test scores, civic values, and educational attainment that all stem from the opportunity to choose an academic environment that suits them best.

Furthermore, free marketeers who oppose school choice havent looked deeply enough into their own philosophy. Adam Smith himself observed in The Wealth of Nations that for a very small [expense] the [public] can facilitate, can encourage, and can even impose upon almost the whole body of the people, the necessity of acquiring those most essential parts of education [to read, write, and account].

In essence, Smith believed that universal education was of the utmost importance, as it would offset the harmful effects of the division of labor. It was the responsibility of any prosperous society to ensure that workers and elites alike had access to at least some form of learning.

However, Smith was careful to note that education should be a partnership between public authorities and the market because if [the teacher] was wholly, or even principally paid by [the government], he would soon learn to neglect his business. Smith wasnt alone either. Other classical liberal or free market theorists such as Thomas Paine, John Stuart Mill, Milton Friedman, David Friedman, and James Buchanan recognized the positive role government financing can play in promoting parental choice in education.

Liberty is rarely expanded in one fell swoop. It is a long march that takes time, effort, and persistence. Libertarians should continue to follow these theorists lead and unite with a public thats open to reforming a broken system. Libertarians could help students and their families by embracing incremental educational choice reform. The future of American education requires innovation, and educational freedom can improve the educational system immediately while also upholding free market ideals.

Garion Frankel (@FrankelGarion) is a graduate student at Texas A&M Universitys Bush School of Government and Public Service and a Young Voices contributor. Cooper Conway (@CooperConway1) is a national voices fellow at 50CAN and a Young Voices contributor.

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School choice is the free market solution to failing public schools - Washington Examiner