Category Archives: Libertarianism

Within the past week, Ive had a drastic and sudden change of heart regarding my political ideology. For years, I considered myself a Thoreauvian Minarchist, a term I made up to reflect the influence Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau had on my libertarianism. My ideology, until my recent conversion, can be summed up as a melding of the Founding Fathers rationale for the formulation of government, as can be found in The Federalist Papers, with the self-reliance and spirituality of Transcendentalism.

As Emerson and Thoreau would say, I am still following my own genius, but it has led me into a new ideological realm: modern progressivism.

First, a little background. In my extended family, my grandparents and most of my aunts and uncles are conservatives, whereas my cousins are mostly liberals. My mother is not very political, but she could be described as right-of-center, and my father is a Reagan Republican. My extended family is quite large, and we would often discuss politics at reunions. I pride myself in understanding and appreciating both left and right sides of an issue, though I typically agreed with the more conservative side; I was more or less a conservative for a long time, but became disillusioned when the size of government never shrunk when the GOP held the reins of government and studied, and then embraced, libertarianism.

However, I am jumping ship yet again. The recent political strife over repealing and replacing Obamacare has enlightened me to a fact heretofore unknown to me. In 2010, I was very much against the imposition of Obamacare, but in recent weeks Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren has warned that if Obamacare is repealed, people will die.

I took a few philosophy classes in college, one of which centered on logic. By applying a critical lens to what Warren has claimed, I realized that if Obamacare is not repealed, people will not die. I may be an outlier, but I do not want to die. I eat healthy, exercise regularly, and am risk-adverse to the point of not engaging in any sport or activity that requires a helmet, I dont attend Scottish soccer matches, and I drive well below the speed limit, often with my four-ways flashing.

There is nothing wrong with changing a position upon the availability of new information. I was very critical of Obamacare upon its passage and implementation, but upon learning that Obamacare is a source of immortality, I am now one of its staunchest supporters.

***

When I first started seeing all these ads and interviews about people dying, I thought, Im pretty sure everyone dies eventually. Sadly, Im not as eloquent as one of my favorite writers.

Ernest Hemingway has a few good quotes about death. From A Farewell to Arms, his novel about a double-amputee: The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry. But you will receive good treatment if cared for by doctors subsidized by the state.

From his essay titled, Notes on the Next War: They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for ones country. But in modern war there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason. But if you do not die on the battlefield, rest assured Veterans Affairs will neglect you and you will perish in a waiting room from an infection caused by a routine hip replacement.

Another from a letter he wrote to his family when he was 19: And how much better to die in all the happy period of undisillusioned youth, to go out in a blaze of light, than to have your body worn out and old and illusions shattered. And it is most preferable for death to come while protesting on a college campus some conservative bastards right to free speech.

The one I relate to the most is from my favorite short story Hem wrote, Indian Camp:

***

Democrats/liberals/progressives/hippy douchebags, whatever you want to call them, fancy themselves as fighting for the vulnerable. To them, everyone who isnt part of the 1% are the unwashed masses littering 19th century Parisian streets. They act as though they are champions of the poor and destitute, protecting them from the indifferent landed gentry riding in their horse drawn coaches trampling beggars underfoot. And yes, I will confirm for those of you suspecting, that I just watched Les Misrables, which stars Wolverine, Jor-El, and Catwoman.

Democrats fancy themselves pro-science (jurys still out on that one), but they are definitely not pro-math, and I daresay they are not pro-reality. They piss and moan that if Trumpcare passes and envelopes Obamacare, proposed Medicaid cuts (which are just reductions in projected annual increases) would lead to poor and middle class Americans dying in the streets.

Forgive me for changing metaphors midstream, but if you desired to keep a vulnerable people afloat, as well as add to their numbers, and were capable of logic, you might try to renovate the ship so it could accommodate more passengers, or design and build a new and improved ship. You wouldnt put more passengers aboard an already sinking ship, would you?

National Review writers state, Medicaid is really the low-hanging fruit of the entitlement wars. If Congress cant reform Medicaid, how can it ever be expected to make changes to Social Security and Medicare, which have wider and more powerful constituencies? & Arkansas is taking significant steps toward reversing Obamacares devastating impact. Other expansion states should take note. Mises.org ran an article stating, Believe it or not, the data suggest that if anything, ObamaCare actually caused more Americans to die and at the Federalist, [R]esearch has shown that being on Medicaid produces no better health outcomes than being uninsured.

I never would have allowed him to treat me if he wasnt also suffering from cancer, dear old dad said. How could I trust him to know how to properly provide treatment? From years and years of medical school and practice? Are you nuts?!

***

And thats the way it is, as far as you know.

Image: Fox News

This post was written by Dillon Eliassen.

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

Dillon Eliassen is the Managing Editor of Being Libertarian. Dillon works in the sales department of a privately owned small company. He holds a BA in Journalism & Creative Writing from Lyndon State College, and needs only to complete his thesis for his Masters of English from Montclair State University (something which his accomplished and beautiful wife, Alice, is continually pestering him about). He is the author of The Apathetic, available at Amazon.com. He is a self-described Thoreauvian Minarchist.

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Shortcuts & Delusions: We're All Gonna Die! - Being Libertarian (satire)

Gage Skidmore, FlickrIn an exclusive interview with Reason, Austin Petersen, the second-place [*] finisher (to Gary Johnson and John McAfee) in the Libertarian Party's presidential primary, explains why he is running for the U.S. Senate in his home state of Missourias a Republican.

The controversial 37-year-old former Fox Business producer tells Nick Gillespie:

I've pounded the pavement, metaphorically speaking. I called thousands and thousands of people, and you can bet that majority of them are registered Libertarians and I asked them all the same honest question "Which party do you think that I should run under?" And they all, 98% or more, said "Run as a Republican because we need some people to get in there and to support people like Rand Paul, and Mike Lee, and others in the short term while they go out and build up the Libertarian party."...

You know, Libertarians I think, especially my supporters, they want to win. They don't want to sit back and be footnotes to history, they want to be a part of history and they kind of see me right now as a little bit of a repository for their hopes and dreams, at least in the short term so I hope to make them proud and I hope to represent our ideas well, and to give the establishment hell, and hopefully get in there and start doing what we Libertarians say we really want to do, which is to cut the size and scope of government. That's what I want, that's what my people want.

While he may have switched parties, Petersen's platform is exactly the same one he put forth while making his run at the LP nomination: He is staunchly anti-war and is calling for an audit of the Pentagon; favors school choice, drug legalization, and gay marriage; wants to simplify and reduce taxes while cutting overall spending; pushes criminal justice reform, an end to regulations large and small. He remains opposed to abortion, which is a minority position among libertarians, but calls for strong religious liberty and a total repeal of Obamacare/Trumpcare. (Go here to read Petersen's farewell letter to the Libertarian Party.)

Missouri is an open primary state, meaning that voters don't need to be members of a party to vote in its primary (August 2 in Missouri), and Petersen hopes to turn out LP members and independents for the GOP contest. The incumbent, Democrat Claire McCaskill, is widely regarded as one of the most vulnerable sitting senators in the country and no high-profile Republicans have publicly entered the race. In fact, Republican Rep. Ann Wagner, widely touted as a likely challenger, has ended speculation that she would run. So Petersen's lack of experience in elected office may be less of a handicap than it would be otherwise.

[*]: The original story mistakenly reported Petersen was the third-place finisher in the LP vote.

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This is a rush transcriptcheck all quotes against the audio for accuracy.

Nick Gillespie: Hi, I'm Nick Gillespie is this is the Reason podcast. Please subscribe to us at iTunes and rate and review us while you're there. Today I'm talking with Austin Petersen, who ran for the Libertarian Party's presidential nomination in 2016 and has a big announcement to make right now.

Austin, thanks for talking to us, let's get right to it. What news are you breaking on this day, the Fourth of July?

Austin Petersen: Well, on Independence Day I am announcing that I am seeking the Republican Party of Missouri's nomination for the United States Senate seat, so I can beat Claire McCaskill.

Gillespie: Okay, so we've got a lot to chew on there and we'll go through it step by step, but first is you're running for Senate against Claire McCaskill, and you are leaving the Libertarian Party in order to run as a Republican. First, let's talk about the case against the sitting Senator, Democrat Claire McCaskill. She is generally regarding as one of the most beatable Democrats in the mid-term elections. What is your case against her?

Petersen: Well, there's the easy case, of course, she was the very first person to endorse Hillary Clinton on Capitol Hill. Hillary Clinton is obviously not very popular here in the State of Missouri, I think she lost to Donald Trump by somewhere around 19 points. So I think she's, you know, obviously she's very beatable. It'd be good to have a more Libertarian Republican in her place to vote on the issues that we are about.

She's not good on the issues that her base is good on, things like criminal justice reform, she's been a bit more of the drug warrior on things and so I think that someone who can come in and not only win all of the Republican votes, but some Democrat votes as well has got a really good shot to beat her.

She's very moderate in many ways and so I think given that I would be a different kind of Republican, I think that that would really make the case for me to take her out.

Gillespie: So what are your key issues, because ... Just answer that. What are your key issues in running for Senate?

Petersen: Good question. So I'm focusing on some big issues. Obviously, I want to talk about jobs, I want to talk about spending, I want to talk about debt, I want to talk about taxes, I want to talk about health care. You know, I make the joke, and we've all heard it before, but Republicans often run like Libertarians and then once they get elected they govern like Democrats. So we haven't seen a repeal of Obamacare even though President Trump has signaled that he's so exasperated, that we should just get a clean repeal, which I'm kind of excited about. I hope that happens.

I'm a victim of that legislation, my health insurance plan was canceled. I like hearing from people like Rand Paul who was a vision doctor who talks about how the free market has brought down the cost of health care, that's a big issue. I think government really gets in the way of job growth, I don't think government creates jobs. I think we need to talk about how to reduce regulations.

Gillespie: Yeah, talk ... If I can interrupt because this is, it's clear's like every poll everywhere at every level shows that, with virtually no exceptions, that jobs and the economy are the most important thing that voters care about. But from a Libertarian point of view, as you were saying, the government doesn't create jobs, the private sectors does, so what are the policies that you would actually outline that will say to people, "Hey, you know what, we're gonna do this and we're gonna get more jobs as a result," as opposed to, you know, Trump did this ... Trump and Republicans do this all the time, as well as Democrats, where they say, "Hey, look, that air conditioning plant left and they went to Mexico or they're making it in China now, I'm gonna pass laws to make sure they can't leave and they have to keep paying new jobs."

You don't subscribe to that kind of thinking, so what, from a Libertarian point of view, what are the policies that would push that would actually help the economy to create jobs?

Petersen: Yeah, well, I'd like to talk about things like occupational licensing. Obviously, I've been a big fan of a lot of the work that the Institute for Justice has done. There are a lot of areas where regulations are really hurting the little guy who's trying to get into the marketplace to do things like braid hair. I mean, how silly is it that you have to have a license to do something as simple as braid hair? And of course you had the issue with the D.C. food trucks. You know, those are local issues, but in a national campaign you can highlight those because they definitely come ... They hurt people on the local level.

But to me I think that occupational licensing is one of the big issues of the day, we need to talk about that, and it is about an overall philosophy, Nick, I mean, you know it, you've been in this for a long time because, you know, I think simple anecdotes to get the American people to kind of understand the way the government works is gonna be the best way to go. I mean, I was frequently criticized for talking in bumper stickers, but I think sometimes there was really the way that Trump with alacrity was able to describe some of the problems that we had and to address them in simple phrases or statements that, you know, maybe he could be accused of jingoism, but certainly if you say something like, if you say, "I want to live in a world where gay married couples can defend their marijuana fields with fully automatic machine guns," I mean, that statement, while hilarious, is also true and it allows you to talk ... sort of disarm people's hesitancy to discuss these topics.

Probably the cleanest, clearest, simplest way that I can describe the job-killing exercise here with the US government is the Grover Norquist story. You know, when you have a pool of water and you take a bucket and you dip it in one end and then you walk it around to the other end and you dump it back in have you created more volume in the pool? No you've not, but that's what government does when it taxes us first and then it says "Well we're going to create jobs over on the other end." Because in order to tax it must first destroy? Or, in order for it to create a job it has to destroy first right?

So, that's really how I'm going to picture this for the American people.

Gillespie: What are the other key issues particularly that will speak to voters in Missouri? Which, in a lot of ways, is a bellwether State. It's a microcosm of many issues and problems, and actually positive developments in America. So what are the other issues?

Petersen: Well tax is a big one. Cigarette taxes are meant to discourage people from smoking, what are income taxes supposed to stop people from doing? In an ideal world I'd like to get rid of the income tax. In the short term, as we transition that way, I was a big fan of the flat tax. 15% across the board. Get rid of all the special treatment; the handouts, the subsidies for the rich and powerful, and that's really what I'd like to do. Make it so that it's a simple flat tax.

Spending is a big issue. We have 100 trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities that we have to pay. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, these are big issues obviously that Reason covers frequently.

But on the different kind of Republican pack I'd like to talk about criminal justice reform.

Gillespie: Wait, before we get off spending and we'll go to criminal justice reform in a second.

Petersen: Yeah.

Gillespie: But let me ask you this because that of course is sweet music to my ears, and I think to all Libertarians, but is Missouri a State where they're going to be like "Oh that's great. Let's get rid of Social Security." Or "Let's get rid of Medicare." Or "Lets start unwinding this and giving people the freedom from the taxes that pay for this stuff, or the deficit spending, so they can start funding their own retirement and their own healthcare." What are the vested interests in Missouri that you'll have to convince?

Petersen: Probably not. I think that when it comes to Social Security a perfect example is if you want to introduce a moderate reform, obviously the government stole our money from us in the first place so they ought to pay it back. I mean, I think that's a reasonable position to take, but when it comes to how we might reform it I like the idea that if you're 18 years old you ought to be able to get an option to opt out. Let the young people opt out.

So that's definitely going to be a centerpiece in my campaign when it comes to reforming things like Social Security, I mean Medicare and Medicaid, they're bankrupting us so if there is not going to be some form of reform then you're going to have to vote for Claire McCaskill in some States because I'm promising to reform these programs and these entitlements.

Obviously I don't agree with these programs, but we're going to have to find some way to balance our checkbook here. Quite frankly I would much rather spend it on Welfare than I would on the overwhelming National Security State, which I think abrogates our civil liberties.

Gillespie: Is that a tough sell in Missouri?

Petersen: Yeah.

Gillespie: To say defense spending, because we'll get to law enforcement in a second, but is Missouri a pro-military State? I mean obviously the government's been doing this for a long time and they've put Army bases and military operations everywhere.

Petersen: Absolutely. We've got an NSA center in St. Louis actually. It absolutely is an issue and quite frankly many of those people do vote Democrat for that reason. I mean, St. Louis, Kansas City, Springfield, these urban areas, they tend to be hubs of military activity and there's a lot of people who they work for. You know, Booz Allen Hamilton, and Lockheed Martin, and Boeing, and those are people who I'll have to interact with in the State.

Gillespie: What's your pitch to them to say "Hey, I'm all for economic growth and I'm all for limited government and that means you're going to be probably out of a job."?

Petersen: No actually, because you know why? Because here's the thing. We've got a step that we have to take before we really can look at substantial cuts here and this is something that's kind of flown under the radar for a little while, but why not an audit of the Pentagon? Every soldier that I have spoken, every marine, every airmen, every single person to the coast guard that I have spoken with has said there is plenty of waste, fraud, and abuse at the department of defense so if we could get an audit passed, at a minimum, we could start putting cuts where it actually matters and start cutting down on some of these private contractors where we're way overpaying. You know, there's so many no bid contracts.

So, I think that that is a sellable message here in Missouri because it doesn't strike at the heart of actual National Security and nobody disagrees that there is waste, and fraud, and abuse that is going on. So, at the minimum I can say "Well listen, why don't we pass an audit at the Pentagon then we can take a look at where the unnecessary spending is happening before I start attacking things like creating the next F15 fighter, or the F35, or upgrading that" which I think is a boondoggle, but at a minimum if we had an audit then I think we could start looking at reasonable cuts.

Gillespie: Talk about civil liberties and law enforcement and whatnot, obviously Missouri, Ferguson was there and that really touched off this latest very serious round of looking at criminal justice reform, as well as the ways in which, I mean it's mostly municipalities, gouge relatively poor people through an interlocking series of fines and petty tickets to raise revenue. Where are you there?

Petersen: Absolutely.

Well, it's funny, I went to a Jackson County Republican Party meeting. This is the county that Kansas City is in, my home county, and a very urban area and there was one black Republican, a gentleman who was there, and he said "How are we going to reach out to voters here in this district?" So I started talking about things like criminal justice reform. I started talking about things like civil liberties and he was like "That's it! That's the first time we've heard a Republican talk about this. This is the key to me getting these votes here in the inner city." He wants to get Republican votes in places like Kansas City and St. Louis where his friends, and his family, and his neighbors, and his church say "We can't vote for a Republican because they don't agree with us on any of the issues."

But, if we want to penetrate into some of these blue counties here in Missouri then we're going to have to start talking about these issues. Things like mandatory minimums. Obviously that's an issue where we have gotten away from original intent. You know, we're taking the power away from the judiciary and we're giving it to the legislative branch. In essence we're saying we don't trust judges right? So I think from a Conservative point of view the Conservatives are going to like that because you're saying, essentially, that you're talking about original intent, you're talking about checks and balances.

So, I think that that could sellable message because you can not win this Senate seat here in Missouri without some support from the urban areas. So a traditional Republican it might be more challenging, but for a Libertarian Republican, like myself Nick, there might be an opportunity here.

Gillespie: What about school choice? Does that play well throughout Missouri because I've noticed, and I'm talking to you from I live part time in Oxford, Ohio. Ohio and Missouri, you know, there's differences but they're kind of Mid-Western States and one of the things that I've always found kind of interesting is that a lot of Republicans, at least in Ohio, are big government Republicans. They don't want to see the schools have to compete for students. They're happy with them the way they are.

Petersen: It's popular here. Missouri Senators actually approved an education proposal in April that would allow tax credit education savings accounts for some students. They would allow them to transfer away from low performing districts and schools. We've had a major failed experiment with Magnet Schools here in the city of Kansas City. It was a huge experiment. I remember when I was a kid, actually, my parents were talking about sending me to these Magnet Schools and they had all these special busing programs where they would come all the way out to the suburbs and bus all these kids and it just failed spectacularly, because again, it was a centrally planned experiment.

So, in Missouri actually they are looking at these kinds of programs so I think that it is palatable here. Missouri is kind of a funny State because it's a red State, but the Democrats here are pro-gun and they're much more blue dogs. They're more Conservatives. They're Conservative from a social standpoint, in many ways right?

Conservatism here is a major factor in both parties and the Democrats that I speak to tend to be very moderate so there's a very rare opportunity here in the state of Missouri because when you look at school choice and things like that they actually got a lot of Democrat votes too because it was like a 20 to 12 vote so there were several Democrats who were brought on board under that.

Gillespie: How do things match up in other kind of traditional culture war issues? Things like abortion, and gay marriage. I know you were among the Libertarian Party Presidential candidates, if not the only, you were certainly the most outspoken pro-life candidate. How does that play in Missouri, and then what about things like gay marriage and drug legalization?

Petersen: Okay, so I have to tackle each one of these individually.

Gillespie: Yeah.

Petersen: So when it comes to abortion, no question does it increase my support tenfold. Missouri, again, is a very traditional Conservative State and out of the 4,000 or so phone calls that I've made in the last eight weeks I've spoken to many voters in Missouri, including some progressive Democrats. I mean, I actually met a full blown Socialist at a Black Lives Matter rally here a few weeks ago. He said he would have voted for me because he was Catholic. He's like "I'm a Socialist because I'm Catholic, but I like you because you're pro-life."

I'm like "Okay, well that's an interesting little situation there." But, Missouri voters having a tag line where I say "I'm pro-life, pro-liberty, pro-Constitution." I think it instantly galvanizes their support in many ways. We don't get too often into the nitty gritty details, I was at a Republican meeting in rural districts a few weeks ago and abortion was a big issue and they were talking about what the Missouri legislature is attempting to do with trying to make it so that you can refuse to sell land to Planned Parenthood where before it was an issue where if you are making a public sale of land then you couldn't discriminate so they're trying to change that on the State level.

So, it is a big issue here in Missouri and one that resonates, and quite frankly I believe that human life ought to be protected, that is a human life, and I can make that argument from secular viewpoint, which I actually think a lot of Conservatives really appreciate because they've been harangued by the secular left as if abortion was a question of religion, when to me I think it's just a simple straightforward of whether or not it is human child and whether or not all human children deserve the same rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

You know, we could talk about that for an hour, but moving on to the next issue ... You had like three questions there Nick and I want to address them. What was the second one on the social side?

Gillespie: Drug war?

Petersen: Gay marriage!

Gillespie: Or gay marriage

Petersen: I think you said gay marriage.

Gillespie: And drug legalization.

Petersen: You know what I said the other night was, I was at a Republican meeting and I said "I like to describe myself as fiscally conservative, and socially it's none of the governments damn business." And that got a huge applause because I think innately the Republicans here in Missouri don't want the government involved in their personal lives.

Now, sometimes there's a bit of cognitive dissonance where they may say "Well we totally disapprove of gay marriage." But, when I propose the Libertarian solution to marriage, when I say "I think that the government ought to be out of the marriage business entirely." I mean, overwhelming support.

Gillespie: But.

Petersen: Yeah, go ahead.

Gillespie: But the government is not going to be out of the marriage business. So, in the context of until it is, should gay individuals, gay and lesbians, be able to get married?

Petersen: Yeah. Absolutely.

Gillespie: Yeah.

Petersen: I'm not going to back away from who I am or what I believe.

Gillespie: No, but do Republicans dig that or are they kind of like "Oh yeah, that's why I hate Libertarians."?

Petersen: No, the only time that I have seen some push back ... I think the gay marriage thing is just over. I think that they have accepted the Supreme Courts decision. I mean I think that the drug issue is going to be harder. That is when they're like "Oh yeah, there goes 'What is Aleppo?' You guys just want to legalize weed. That's all you care about. You're going to lose because of this issue." Blah, blah, blah, blah.

Well the truth is Nick, because what's right isn't always what's popular and what's popular isn't always what's right. You're not going to get reform in this country if you vote for the same old, same old. You know, a good friend of mine just died three weeks ago because you took some drugs and, yes, she was personally responsible but she took something that was laced with some counterfeit material and now she's dead because the prohibition makes these drugs more dangerous.

I mean, prohibition has done nothing but create ... Its been a war on our own people. Its been a costly, blood war, and its done nothing but divide this country up. If you want to talk about hatred, if you want to talk about why this country is divided, it's because people see this war on drugs as a war on our own people. Its hollowed out our urban communities and now they're hyping the next thread, which is the opiod epidemic. You know, my State is going after opiod manufacturers and I'm sitting here saying "Okay, well then you're going to have to go after the gun manufacturers next because they're the ones precipitating the gun crisis."

I think there are some ways, some palatable ways, to make these connections, but at the end of the day Nick I'm running as myself and what I believe and that won't change.

Gillespie: So, you are running as a Republican. Talk about why the shift into the Republican Party after a strong showing in your first shot at getting the LP Presidential nomination. Why a Republican?

Petersen: Well, there wasn't violent resistance to my candidacy, but there was a strenuous resistance to my candidacy and some for what could be perceived absolutely as legitimate reasons. You know, your first time around, fairly pretentious, I completely understand that. I did believe that Gary was not the strongest candidate so I thought he deserved a little bit of competition, which I think is healthy.

But, in terms of why I'm doing this, why I made this decision, quite frankly, I sat down for two months Nick and I've pounded the pavement, metaphorically speaking. I called thousands and thousands of people, and you can bet that majority of them are registered Libertarians and I asked them all the same honest question "Which party do you think that I should run under?" And they all, 98% or more, said "Run as a Republican because we need some people to get in there and to support people like Rand Paul, and Mike Lee, and others in the short term while they go out and build up the Libertarian party."

I'd like to see a healthy, thriving Libertarian Party. I've spoke to the Libertarian Party of Missouri, I spoke to an official here, I guess he's a former official, he stepped down just recently, and I asked him what my options were. We seriously considered running in the Libertarian Party here. We very seriously considered it. Well, what our options would be, and the Missouri Libertarian Party explicitly stated they had no resources, not get out the vote resources, no capability to offer us to have any sort of a structural campaign in order for us to bring anything resembling a Libertarian victory here in the State of Missouri. I think the best case scenario would have been 11%, which would have been a monster blowout in Libertarian terms but still a major loss.

You know, Libertarians I think, especially my supporters, they want to win. They don't want to sit back and be footnotes to history, they want to be a part of history and they kind of see me right now as a little bit of a repository for their hopes and dreams, at least in the short term so I hope to make them proud and I hope to represent our ideas well, and to give the establishment hell, and hopefully get in there and start doing what we Libertarians say we really want to do, which is to cut the size and scope of government. That's what I want, that's what my people want.

Gillespie: So, reducing the size and scope of government is a pretty good shorthand of what Libertarian governance is about, and you talked about being "fiscally conservative and socially it's none of your damn business." Those are pretty good definitions of Libertarianism. How will work to move the GOP in Missouri and possibly further, you know, both through your campaign and then if you win. How do you move that more in Libertarian direction?

Petersen: Well, without playing my hand too much here Nick, what I can tell you is that Rand Paul Republicans played an important role here in the State of Missouri actually. If you kind of go back and look at the nitty gritty there were some Rand Paul sweeps in many of the primaries out here in Missouri. As a matter of fact I've met many elected county officials here in the State of Missouri who specifically got their positions because they were pushing for Rand Paul in 2008 and 2012.

And Ted Cruz, actually a traditional conservative did pretty well. He almost beat Donald Trump in the primary here, so there is a strong streak of true traditional, I guess I wouldn't necessarily Burkean Conservatism, but I mean it's definitely a traditional conservatism of the Rand Paul, Ted Cruz bent.

So, it's actually not a tough sell. I've been getting emails from dozens and dozens of Rand Pauler's who are in their party officials, there actually have been Libertarian Republicans who have been elected on the State level. I spoke to a person who is in the State legislature who has told me that he was going to endorse me if I had won the Libertarian Parties nomination, so there are actually quite a bit more of us than I even expected because as soon as it was rumored I started getting pounded from all these State Counties, from all these officials, and we may even get an endorsement from a high level official here in the State of Missouri.

Gillespie: Who would that be?

Petersen: I'm afraid I can't say because ... I know, I would love to break news for you.

Gillespie: I don't know, I feel like you're stringing like me along. Well who are your likely opponents for the GOP bid? I mean I know Representative Ann Wagner is talked about a lot. She's a Congresswoman from Missouri, and then people are floating names like the former NASCAR driver Chris Edwards. Who are your opponents and how are you going to handle them before you get to the big show?

Petersen: Well, I'm a little shocked to report Nick that it looks as if Ann Wagner has dropped out. This is, I mean by the time the listeners are hearing this it will be everywhere, but Ann Wagner appears to not want to lose her seat in St Louis, and I've also heard that perhaps Josh Holly might not run as well. It seems Carl Edwards, I've heard that he might be going back to NASCAR.

Gillespie: Oh, Carl Edwards, yeah. Okay, so you are scaring everybody out of the race?

Petersen: That's what we believe, yeah.

Gillespie: They're getting out of the pool? Okay.

Read more:
Exclusive: Libertarian Activist Austin Petersen Is Running for US Senate...as a Republican! [Reason Podcast] - Reason (blog)

Viking, AmazonAs its title suggests, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America, by Duke historian Nancy MacLean, is filled with all sorts of melodramatic flourishes and revelations of supposed conspiracies. Chains, deep history, radicals, stealthis this nonfiction or an Oliver Stone film? Even the cover depicts a smoke-filled room filled with ample-chinned, shadowy figures! This book, virtually every page announces, isn't simply about the Nobel laureate economist James Buchanan and his "public choice" theory, which holds in part that public-sector actors are bound by the same self-interest and desire to grow their "market share" as private-sector actors are.

No, MacLean is after much-bigger, more-sinister game, documenting what she believes is

the utterly chilling story of the ideological origins of the single most powerful and least understood threat to democracy today: the attempt by the billionaire-backed radical right to undo democratic governance...[and] a stealth bid to reverse-engineer all of America, at both the state and the national levels, back to the political economy and oligarchic governance of midcentury Virginia, minus the segregation.

The billionaires in question, of course, are Koch brothers Charles and David, who have reached a level of villainy in public discourse last rivaled by Sacco and Vanzetti. (David Koch is a trustee of Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes this website; Reason also receives funding from the Charles Koch Foundation.) Along the way, MacLean advances many sub-arguments, such as the notion that the odious, hypocritical, and archly anti-capitalistic 19th-century slavery apologist John C. Calhoun is the spirit animal of contemporary libertarianism. In fact, Buchanan and the rest of us all are nothing less than "Calhoun's modern understudies."

Such unconvincing claims ("the Marx of the Master Class," as Calhoun was dubbed by Richard Hofstadter, was openly hostile to the industrialism, wage labor, and urbanization that James Buchanan took for granted) are hard to keep track of, partly because of all the rhetorical smoke bombs MacLean is constantly lobbing. In a characteristic example, MacLean early on suggests that libertarianism isn't "merely a social movement" but "the story of something quite different, something never before seen in American history":

Could it beand I use these words quite hesitantly and carefullya fifth-column assault on American democratic governance?

Calling attention to the term's origins to describe Franco's covert, anti-modern allies in the Spanish Civil War, MacLean writes

the term "fifth column" has been applied to stealth supporters of an enemy who assist by engaging in propaganda and even sabotage to prepare the way for its conquest. It is a fraught term among scholars, not least because the specter of a secretive, infiltrative fifth column has been used in instrumental ways by the powerful such as in the Red Scare of the Cold War era to conjure fear and lead citizens and government to close ranks against dissent, with grave costs for civil liberties. That, obviously, is not my intent in using the term....

And yet it's the only term up for MacLean's job, since "the concept of a fifth column does seem to be the best one available for capturing what is distinctive in a few key dimensions about this quest to ensure the supremacy of capital." Sure, "fifth column" is a dirty, lowdown, suspect term among historians because using it trades in hysteria at the service of the ruling class rather than rational analysis intended to help the downtrodden. But come on, people, we're in a twilight struggle here, with a movement whose goals have included, among other things, ending censorship; opening the borders to goods and people from around the world; abolishing the draft and reducing militarism; legalizing abortion, drugs, and alternative lifestyles; reforming criminal justice and sentencing; focusing on how existing government operations, especially K-12 schools, have hurt poor and minority Americans; and doing away with occupational licensing and other barriers to entry for business owners, among other things. So much for hesitation on MacLean's part. Fifth column it is! As for carefulness, it's worth noting in passing that MacLean identifies former Attorney General Ed Meese and foreign-policy hawk Bill Kristol as libertarians, which must be as much of a shock to them as it is to, well, actual libertarians.

Clearly this sort of book, published by a major house (Viking) and written by an eminent historian (MacLean is a chaired professor at Duke and author of highly regarded books), is ideological catnip to people who dislike libertarianism and its growing influence in politics and culture. At the increasingly hard-left New Republic, Alex Shephard introduces an interview with MacLean by writing that Democracy in Chains "exposes the frightening intellectual roots of the radical right, as well as its ultimate ambition: to erode American democracy." At NPR, novelist Genevieve Valentine writes

As MacLean lays out in their own words, these men developed a strategy of misinformation and lying about outcomes until they had enough power that the public couldn't retaliate against policies libertarians knew were destructive. (Look no further than Flint, MacLean says, where the Koch-funded Mackinac Center was behind policies that led to the water crisis.)

Let's leave aside the fact that Flint's water supply contamination was due to decades of local mismanagement and a stimulus project gone wrong, hardly the sort of thing that mustache-twirling libertarians espouse. And let's ignore the shibboleth Koch-funded for the time being (go here for a realistic appraisal of the Kochs' influence on the modern libertarian movement). Democracy in Chains is chicken soup for the souls of liberals, progressives, and members of the "resistance" who want to believe that libertarians don't just want to destroy or reform ineffective and inefficient public-sector agencies and institutions, but actually want to kill people or destroy them irreparably. Because really, how else can you make a buck in a free market, right?

If liberals and leftists are uncritically celebrating MacLean's attack, scholars and writers with specific and general knowledge of Buchanan's work and libertarianism are taking a more jaundiced view. Reason will be publishing a review-essay in the coming weeks but in the interim, here's a survey of some of the sharpest rejoinders to date.

Historian Phillip W. Magness, trained at Buchanan's former perch of George Mason University, takes particular issue with MacLean's linking of Buchanan to characters such as Calhoun and the poet Donald Davidson, the leader of the self-styled Fugitives and Agrarians in the 20th-century South. Like Calhoun, the Agrarians treated capitalism and modernity with contempt, as a sort of mirror image of an equally soulless and totalitarian communism. MacLean asserts that Davidson, who railed against an increasingly centralized "Leviathan" state, was central to Buchanan's worldview. But Magness notes that Buchanan never studied with him nor ever quoted him in his collected works. As with her non-hesitant, careless use of "fifth column," MacLean's real purpose in linking Buchanan with Davidson is to smear the former. Writes Magness:

MacLean has a very specific reason for making this claim, and she returns to it at multiple points in her book. The Agrarians, in addition to spawning a southern literary revival (the novelist Robert Penn Warren was one of their members), were also segregationists. By connecting them to Buchanan, she bolsters one of the primary charges of her book: an attempt to link Buchanan's economic theories to a claimed resentment over Brown v. Board and the subsequent defeat of racial segregation in 1960s Virginia.

In another post, Magness notes when MacLean tries to link Buchanan to Calhoun, she instead starts citing work by Murray Rothbard, who actually was harshly critical of Buchanan. This sort of slippery maneuver permeates Democracy in Chains, as Case Western's Jonathan Adler documents at the Volokh Conspiracy blog in The Washington Post. At Medium, Russ Roberts writes about MacLean's treatment of George Mason economist Tyler Cowen, who also directs the Koch-funded Mercatus Center. MacLean suggests that Cowen welcomes the weakening of governmental checks and balances because doing so supports her thesis that libertarians want to take over the government by "stealth." As Roberts points out, MacLean is guilty of intellectual malpractice:

MacLean left out the word "While" that begins Cowen's sentence. Then she left off the key qualifier that completes the sentencethe point that the downside risk of weakening checks and balances is substantial. There is nothing here suggesting Cowen is in favor of weakening democracy or the Constitution. By quoting only a piece of Cowen's sentence, MacLean reverses his meaning.

Unfortunately, MacLean does not just quote Cowen out of context. She ignores anything in Cowen's essay that conflicts with her portrayal of Cowen as a sinister enemy of American institutions and democracy.

MacLean's Duke colleague, the political scientist Michael Munger, has authored the most exhaustive and harshly critical review of Democracy in Chains to date. Writing for the Independent Institute, Munger damningly characterizes the book as

a work of speculative historical fiction. There is considerable research underpinning the speculation, and since MacLean is careful about footnoting only things that actually did happen she cannot be charged with fabricating facts. But most of the book, and all of its substantive conclusions, are idiosyncratic interpretations of the facts that she selects from a much larger record, as is common in the speculative-history genre. There is nothing wrong about speculation, of course, but there is nothing persuasive about it either, in terms of drawing reliable conclusions about history.

The entire essay comes as close to required reading as any libertarian would decree. Munger is not simply scoring points or picking apart the argument made by someone from a different tribe or camp; he's actually laying bare how ideologically motivated texts paper over gaps in evidence and logic by focusing on small details to the exclusion of actually giving an accurate view of the larger picture. In the grip of a thesis she wants to be true, MacLean simply sifts through huge amounts of data and evidence, keeping only small chips of bones and fossils that she can use to construct a skeleton with which to scare people who already agree with her.

The contribution of Democracy in Chains...is to do two things...: Identify James Buchanan as the focal point of the revolution, and identify the content of Public Choice research and teaching as anti-Constitutional and anti-democratic.... Buchanan did not believe in unlimited majority rule. But then, as Buchanan often rightly said, nobody believes in unlimited majority rule. Democracy is and must be a balancing of, on the one hand, the rights of minorities, and, on the other, the ability of the majority to have its way within the domain established as "political" by the constitution. That's another thing that is remarkable about Democracy in Chains: MacLean does not assign Buchanan a straw man position. She (correctly) gives Buchanan's position as being the mainstream view, the one that everyone actually agrees with. And then she tries to defend the straw man position, the one that no one actually believes. Remarkable. The position she assigns Buchanan is this: He thought that democracy should be limited, to protect minorities. Um...okay. Yes, that's right. We all believe that.

Which isn't to say that Munger finds no value in the book:

Democracy in Chains is well-written, and the research it contains is both interesting and in many cases illuminating. But as an actual history, as a reliable account of the centrality of the work of James Buchanan in a gigantic conspiracy designed to end democracy in America, it turns far away from its mark. It is the story of an alternative past that never actually happened.

Despite its central failings, I too found the book interesting, if mostly as a way of understanding the ways in which libertarian thought is considered by those hostile to it. Ultimately, Democracy in Chains reveals less about a not-so-shadowy group of people who, as a t-shirt puts it, are "diligently plotting to take over the World and leave you alone" and more about progressives and liberals who choose to live in a dream world.

Other takes worth a read include ones by Jonah Goldberg, David Bernstein, David Henderson, Steve Horwitz, and Jason Brennan.

Continued here:
Is Libertarianism a 'Stealth Plan' To Destroy America? - Reason (blog)

In Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid theres that great bit about the super-posse that chases the outlaws. Theyre led by a legendary law man, Joe Lefors, and an Indian Scout (Lord Baltimore), who can follow horse tracks over rock and water.

I mention this because if I were Nancy MacLean, Id much rather have Lefors and Lord Baltimore coming after me than to have Don Boudreaux, Steve Horwitz, Jonathan Adler, Russ Roberts, and the rest of the libertarian super-posse on my ass.

You may have missed the story. The short version is that historian Nancy MacLean has written a book, apparently with some government funding, in which she argues that Nobel Prizewinning economist James Buchanan was part of a Kochtopussian Kabal of Konfederates who were direct intellectual descendants of the Southern Agrarians and the champion of slavery, John C. Calhoun.

I first heard about the book almost two weeks ago, and my immediate response was to roll my eyes (figuratively speaking). I figured the book would vanish from the radar because it all sounded so silly. David Bernstein had a similar reaction:

When I first came across this book and interviews with its author, I was immediately skeptical. For one thing, Ive been traveling in libertarian intellectual circles for about three decades, and my strong impression is that Buchanan, while a giant in economics, is something of a marginal figure in the broader libertarian and free-market movements.

Now, I am at best a fellow traveler in those circles, but Ive been writing about and, on occasion, arguing with, libertarians for a couple decades. And while Buchanans name came up every now and then, I had never once heard even the suggestion that he was a kind of intellectual lodestar for political libertarianism never mind that he was part of some reactionary Confederate tradition. He was that brilliant public-choice-theory guy. (As Bernstein notes, Buchanan gets a few respectful cameos in Brian Dohertys exhaustive history of libertarianism and thats about it).

MacLean has gotten herself into hot water because its already clear she cut a lot of corners, quoting people out of context, asserting intellectual lineages that do not exist, and other misdeeds. Russ Roberts, who is a kind of libertarian Gandhi strictly adhering to a policy of rhetorical non-violence started things off with his defense of Tyler Cowen, who MacLean essentially defamed. Worse, Don Boudreaux, the brilliant and tenacious libertarian scholar and cheeky letter writer, is now coming after her and her enablers like a spider monkey.

As my friend Steve Horwitz writes:

Finding examples of misleading, incorrect, and outright butcheredquotes and citations in Nancy MacLeans new book about James Buchanan, Democracy in Chains, has become the academic version of Pokemon Go this week.

Im all for fact checking her footnotes and outrageously misleading quotations. Every time I see a new one, I link to it on Twitter with the prediction, There will be more. And there will be. There will be for the simple reason that MacLean takes Buchanans life and libertarianism, generally out of context in order to argue that libertarianism is against democracy and that sinister libertarians have been scheming to tear it all down. In other words, you have to take quotes and facts out of context if you start with a premise that takes Buchanan out of context.

To be sure, theres an anti-democratic element in some corners of libertarianism, but as far as I can tell, that is true of every single political philosophy save pure majoritarianism. And, unlike pure majoritarians, libertarians are far more concerned with freedom and equality because they understand unrestrained majorities tend to treat minorities very poorly, particularly the minority of the individual.

Indeed, this is all downstream of the century-old effort to turn Herbert Spencer into some kind of monster because he opposed governmental social engineering. The idea seems to be that because the statists are good, anyone who opposes them must be evil.

The contemporary liberal obsession with claiming that their ideological opponents must be somehow in league with, or modern-day reincarnations of, Klansmen and slavers is just another manifestation of this old, self-indulgent smear. Its a bit like MacLean set out to reach that destination. When she realized she couldnt get there by conventional navigation, she put a magnet marked Calhoun! or Slavery! next to her compass, and that did the trick.

Conservatives are bit more accustomed to this sort of thing. Ramesh and I beat back a similar attempt to claim that modern conservatism is a Calhoun cult a few years ago.

But I think the assumption behind both efforts is very much the same: Anyone who disagrees with us must not simply be wrong, they must be evil. And taking shortcuts to expose evil is no vice.

View original post here:
Nancy MacLean's Ideologically Motivated Shortcuts - National Review

Fabio Ostermanns office in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre boasts a bookshelf with rows dedicated to Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises. On top sits a copy of the American Declaration of Independence, a ukulele and a cartoon blow-up doll of Brazils former president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, dressed in the black-and-white stripes of a prison uniform, sporting an inmates number.

Over the former presidents mouth, it reads Menos Marx, mais Mises less Marx, more Mises, the latter referring to libertarian pioneer Ludwig von Mises.

Ostermann, 32, is a key player in Brazils growing libertarian movement, which has risen against a backdrop of the countrys collapsing left. Hes led youth groups on college campuses, co-organized some of the countrys largest-ever protests which may have helped impeach the countrys leftist president, Dilma Rousseff. Now, hes the president of the Social Liberty Party in his home state, which he is reforming to defend classical libertarian ideals.

He ran and lost for mayor of his hometown of Porto Alegre, but now has his eye on a lower house seat in 2018 and on launching a larger campaign in next years presidential and congressional elections to occupy the political vacuum created by the lefts disintegration with a rebranded, youthful, American-influenced libertarianism. Ostermanns brand of libertarianism calls for widespread privatizations, deregulation of the economy and open trade markets. Hes pro marijuana legalization and favors gay marriage. Sound familiar? For Americans, it should: Ostermann was trained by the United States most influential libertarian organizations the Cato Institute, the Atlas Network and the Charles Koch Foundation. The latter, a grant-distributing organization, was founded by Charles Koch, one of the famous Koch brothers, who own the second-largest privately held company in the U.S. and are best known for using their vast fortune to support right-wing political causes.

It Americanizes our political debate.

Camila Rocha, Ph.D. student studying the emergence of libertarian think tanks in Brazil

Ostermann, once a left-leaning law student (like many young people at the time, as he puts it), found his way into the D.C. think tank scene, as he says, after finishing university in Brazil. He took a course on libertarian theory with Cato and earned a Koch summer fellowship to work at the Atlas Network. Newly evangelized, Ostermann returned to Brazil in 2009, where he co-founded Estudantes pela Liberdade the Brazilian chapter of Students for Liberty, another U.S.-based libertarian group.

The organization had matured in time for 2013s mass protests over increasing bus fares, dissatisfaction with government services and Rousseffs reelection. We saw an opportunity, he says. From that came the Free Brazil Movement. They started rallying hard to impeach Rousseff. On March 15, 2015, Free Brazil and other organizations mobilized 3 million people to protest in 229 cities across the country the largest protest since the fall of the military dictatorship in 1985. The rest is history. Free Brazil remains controversial, in part for protesting Rousseff so heavily without levying the same criticisms against right-wing President Michel Temer. Ostermann has since left. The group has splintered, and he reflects that the group became too partisan, with some of its leaders cozying up to traditional political parties.

This makes Ostermann part of an increasing number of Brazilians who are coming of age in the image of American libertarian think tankers. Atlas, for instance, holds an increasing presence in Brazil, where it offers several online and in-person seminars in Portuguese. Skeptics see the ideological cultural exchange as nothing new. I think its just continuing a tradition; Americans have always manipulated us, says Juremir Machado da Silva, a columnist and radio show host, citing the U.S. alignment with Brazils military dictatorship.

Camila Rocha, a Ph.D. student at the University of So Paulo whos studying the emergence of U.S.-style libertarian think tanks in Brazil and Latin America, says Atlas teaches young Brazilians how to found think tanks, manage libertarian organizations, develop an internet presence and, crucially, become what she calls a polemista (a polemic figure) via op-eds and media appearances. Between Atlas and Cato, theyve trained many of the leaders of Brazils new right wing. It Americanizes our political debate; it brings those proposals to the Brazilian context, Rocha says. Libertarianism itself is something that never even existed in Brazil, this ultra-individualist vision. She cites the calls for privatization sans regulation. And they call for privatizations of sectors in Brazil that have always had the consensus they should be public and free, like education and health care.

But American-imported or not, Ostermann speaks about policy in his national context. If elected, Ostermanns first policy order of business would be the mass privatization of Brazils $70 billion-plus social safety net. He supports voucher systems for private schools and health care. I dont think the government has the competence or capacity to manage these services in a country as chaotic as Brazil, he says, though hes happy to let the government spend on sanitation, security and basic infrastructure. (That doesnt include soccer stadiums, he adds, in sardonic reference to some $25 billion spent on the World Cup and the Olympics in 2014 and 2016 though that number is frequently contested in Brazil.)

When talking marijuana legalization, he situates his pro stance in response to Brazils bloody drug landscape, where drug crime causes near-constant violence in urban centers. In 2015, Brazil had more than 56,000 homicides, landing it the worlds highest murder rate in terms of absolute numbers, which in large part is due to drug-related crimes. In turn, Brazil also has the worlds fourth-largest prison population. To leave drug traffickers and cartels to have a monopoly over marijuana is a crime against society and an ineffective way to spend taxpayer money, he says.

Ostermann defends this latter stance despite the fact that it may have lost him his race last year. Its his obsession with ideological purity that might keep him and his party from finding success. I think Brazil isnt prepared for this Brazilian politics is very polarized right now. Its black and white, right or left, says da Silva. To voters, I think he comes across as too in the middle; he wants to be both at the same time this discourse in Brazil doesnt stick.

Excerpt from:
Brazil's Rand Paul: Can Libertarianism Fix Crime and Corruption? - OZY

ReasonGary Johnson's back! (To the political advocacy game, anyway.) So, are libertarians greeting the two-time former Libertarian Party nominee for president with open arms? Not unanimously, no.

Over at Rare, the always-interesting Jack Hunter, who is close to Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), has a scathing piece headlined "Please, Gary Johnson, stay the hell away from politics." Excerpt:

[W]hen Reason reported on Thursday that Johnson was returning to politics, I did not rejoiceI recoiled.

Johnson had his chance, the biggest chance the Libertarian Party will likely ever have in our lifetimes, and his campaign did more to diminish liberty than promote it. Johnson's simple 2016 task was two-fold: First, present libertarianism coherently, and hopefully, attractively. Second, don't look like an idiot.

He failed on both.

Hunter mostly leans on the "Aleppo moment" and related flubs, and while those errors were almost all self-inflicted, highlighting the candidate's self-acknowledged limitations as a public speaker (a real hindrance when public speaking is about your only campaign weapon), I am convinced that even the most smooth-tongued of L.P. candidates (Larry Sharpe, anyone?) would have been excoriated as a gaffe-making weirdo or dunce in September 2016. Why? Because the presidential race was tightening (boy was it ever), debate season was imminent, Johnson's poll numbers at that point had failed to experience the usual third-party summertime fade, newspapers were starting the make their general election endorsements (including for the Libertarian), and the journalistic Left was throwing everything it could think of at a guy they feared was wooing too many impressionable young'uns.

Tom Steyer would have spilled tens of millions in swing states that autumn against any Libertarian candidate polling at 9 percent, and that money would have been converted into attack pieces on any John, Austin, or Darryl. (Speaking of which, do we really think that the L.P. alternatives would have polled or media-accessed anywhere near TeamGov?) Donald Trump had several more egregious foreign policy brainfarts than "Aleppo," and Hillary Clinton's actual (and unapologetic) policy record helped produce the very chaos that Johnson was being criticized for not understanding, but the media didn't care about any of that: September 2016 was Libertarian-killing season, and unfortunately Johnson offered the world a loaded gun.

That's not to say that Hunter's wrong about Johnson squandering the election overall; I still don't know how best to assess that question. (Check out the Brian Doherty/Matt Welch post-election co-production "Did the Libertarian Party Blow it in 2016?" for our most educated guesses.) As that piece states in the opening, and as the intervening months have only underlined, "Objectively speaking, 2016 was the Libertarian Party's best year ever. It was also a savage disappointment." Libertarians will be arguing about this stuff for years.

Austin PetersenSpeaking of intra-Libertarian arguments, Charles Peralo over at Being Libertarian has a long defense of the Johnson campaign against criticism that has been leveled against it from the John McAfee/Judd Weiss ticket. In the Orlando Sentinel, State L.P. Chair Marcos Miralles gives an interesting interview, mostly about local party-building stuff, that ends on a spectacularly optimistic note: "But what I can guarantee you is that whoever the Libertarian delegates pick in 2020, that candidate will have a better result than Gary Johnson had in 2016 and will have a real chance at unseating the current president." Meanwhile, 2016 L.P. presidential runner-up Austin Petersen has formed an exploratory committee to run for U.S. Senate from Missouri, and is promising a "special announcement" on July 4.

And in one of my favorite recent pieces of local journalism, The Free Press of Fernie, British Columbia, caught up with Gary Johnson in the middle of his epic Tour Divide bike race, spent several paragraphs detailing how he "may well be the fittest U.S. presidential candidate of all time," before plunging the knife in paragraph nine:

The man can clearly take care of himself. He is a self-made millionaire and ultra-fit, so of course he would run for a party that endorses the survival of the fittest. If you're wealthy and fit, Libertarianism works but if you are not, it doesn't.

Then follows a Guernica-style hellscape of local horrors that would be unleashed should Libertarians ever come close to smelling power ("Their plan to cut regulations in transportation, accommodation and other sectors to cause the sharing economyto destroy traditional businesses. Hotels and taxi companies would go bust, thousands would be left unemployed," etc.). It's a reminder, one that Jack Hunter's old boss Rand Paul knows all too well, that for wide swaths of the public, libertarians will suffer from the Weird Man's Burden, probed relentlessly for every policy taboo, and held to a standard of conduct that standard Democrats and Republicans rarely have to answer for.

Below re-live my shaky-cam video of Johnson flipping out at a reporter asking about Aleppo, moments before the first presidential debate last September:

Read this article:
Libertarians Still Arguing About Gary Johnson's 2016 Campaign - Reason (blog)

Ever since William F. Buckleys death, commentators spanning the political spectrum have searched for someone to succeed the conservative intellectual leader and National Review founder.

Most recently, Washington Post columnist George Will decried the scowling primitives who populate the conservative intelligentsia and pined for a Buckley figure someone who can, with vigor and high spirits, fashion conservative thought into coherent ideology.

Will is right that conservatism needs a intellectual leader in Buckleys mold, but not for the reasons political writers often advance. I especially want to separate my motivation from the mass of left-of-center writers who are suckers for Buckley.

Many liberals bemoan the loss of educated, well-spoken conservatives and the rise of unsophisticated rage-mongers. They claim that if the GOP only had more intellectual heft, it would be compassionate and measured. Many center-left folks admire Buckley for cosmetic reasons: Because he defended conservative ideology with eloquence and literary charm, he deserves our esteem.

This is silly. Conservatism doesnt need a Buckley figure because Buckley used big words. And heaps of evidence undermine the claim that intelligence inspires virtue just look at Mitch McConnell! When it comes to the lives of Americans, it doesnt matter whether the leader of the conservative intellectual movement has the vocabulary of President Trump or William Shakespeare.

No, conservatism needs an intellectual leader because, without one, it will be dominated by white identity politics. Within the conservative movement, there has always been a tension between free-market devotion and the defense of white identity. For many decades, the Republican party was the party of small government and libertarian economics. But beneath the surface was a torrent of racial resentment and fear; its no accident that the GOP won back the South after Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act.

Buckley created a free-market orthodoxy to which conservative politicians adhered for years. In the inaugural issue of National Review, Buckley wrote, The competitive price system is indispensable to liberty and material progress. From Barry Goldwater to Paul Ryan, Republican leaders were forced to praise the wisdom of markets and criticize progressive government projects.

This devotion to markets restrained the worst impulses of white identity politics. To be sure, racism and libertarian economics sometimes work in tandem, such as in Reaganite attacks on Welfare Queens.

But the most destructive forms of white supremacy rely on state intervention in the economy. In his classic piece for The Atlantic, The Case for Reparations, Ta-Nehisi Coates details how governments created housing policies that denied equal economic opportunity for black people.

Pure libertarianism despises state-sanctioned racial inequality; consequently, its role in conservative orthodoxy kept white nationalism in check. Trumps 2016 campaign revealed a conservatism without libertarianism.

In 2016, Trump campaigned without the burden of free-market ideology. He promised massive government projects to benefit his followers. He promised to seize power from urban cosmopolitan elites, and return it to the forgotten men and women of our country.

It doesnt take much imagination to see this rhetoric as welcoming a redistribution campaign: take wealth from urban minorities and give it back to white folks. Trump campaigned as Robin Hood for white people.

A big caveat: Im not claiming Buckley was innocent on race issues. He once defended segregation by arguing that the claims of civilization supersede those of universal suffrage. However, Buckley did insist on free-market orthodoxy and defend conservatism against racial loonies like Pat Buchanan. For decades, commitment to libertarian economics restrained the worst racial instincts of American conservatives.

In conservatism, the absence of free-market values attracts unabashed white nationalism. Im no libertarian, but white identity politics is the most pernicious force in American life. We should cheer anything that diminishes its clout. Whoever steps into Buckleys role Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse, libertarian economist Tyler Cowen and The Federalist publisher Ben Domenech are candidates faces a mountainous challenge. Libertarianism is on the retreat, and Trumps 21st century white nationalism has the power to devour our politics.

Read more from the original source:
A libertarian leader can save the GOP from white nationalism - The Diamondback

As of this week, New Hampshire has three sitting Libertarians in its House of Representatives. First elected in 2016 as a Republican, Brandon Phinney, representing wards 4 and 5 in the city of Rochester, announced he's joining Caleb Dyer (former Republican) and Joseph Stallcop (former Democrat) as Libertarians, giving the L.P. a three-man caucus. (In the 1990s for a period there were four sitting Libertarians in the New Hampshire House.)

Libertarian Party

"The Libertarian Party platform gives us, as legislators, the best possible framework to expand social freedoms, support a free-market economy, and ensure the checks and balances on government power are enforced," Phinney said in the Libertarian Party's press release announcing the switch.

Phinney works for the Carroll County Department of Corrections. (Being one of the 400 members of the New Hampshire House is a part-time job.) "We do what we can to rehabilitate offenders, implement new programming in the county to help addicts get treatment, and we manage inmate behavior," he described his day job in a phone interview this week after he announced his move to the Libertarian Party.

His work in corrections "has given me inspiration as far as government's role in policing" and led him to realize "we need to be ending the drug war. I know the system is broken. I know there are people in jail who don't need to be there."

Before running for office last year, Phinney had been deployed for a year to the United Arab Emirates with the New Hampshire Army National Guard working as a construction engineer.

He has also been slightly famous in atheist circles for being a rare out-and-proud atheist politician. Phinney himself doesn't like to make too much of that, and points out that it isn't his atheism per se but his atheism combined with his previous GOP membership that made it seem like news, since Republicans "have a tradition of being faith-based." (He even once sang for a metal band named Godcrusher.)

Phinney says his initial attraction toward government work came from "issues in the past with the family court system" and a desire to reform such policies in a more father-friendly direction, though he doesn't want to discuss his personal specifics and says they are not currently an active problem in his life.

The issues he likes to front and center as a legislator that he discussed in our phone interview include some that fit well with the Libertarian Party platformsuch as marijuana legalizationand some that don'tlike increasing state programs for veterans. But he describes his overarching way of judging proposed legislation as having "three criteria, which are, will [a bill] expand government growth? Will it have a burden on taxpayers? And is it in the interest of freedom?"

Like fellow L.P. convert Stallcop, the former Democrat, Phinney at first considered running as an independent but found the ballot access issues too troublesome and thought the Republicans were the major party that were "closest to what I felt." He has since realized that the Republican platform didn't "actually represent what I thought should be the role of government in our lives."

He quickly found caucusing with the GOP wearying and "stopped going" to the meetings; "every time something controversial came up they wanted the Party to vote united." Phinney didn't always want to go along with their desires but "they didn't want to hear" any dissent from the Party line.

He says his friend Dyer helped him see the way clear to the L.P. switch. He'd been thinking about it since February and knew for weeks before the official announcement he intended to do it. The only Republican he informed beforehand was Gov. Chris Sununu, during a conversation over why he, Phinney, was not going to be able to vote for the budget the Republicans proposed since it raised spending too much. The $11.7 billion budget will put state spending on an "unsustainable" course, Phinney believes. (He found Sununu "nonjudgmental, understanding of why I felt that way" about the Party switch.)

Like Dyer, Phinney is also confident many other New Hampshire House members are philosophically more compatible with the L.P. than the two major parties, but are afraid to make the switch out of fear of losing re-election, a fear he hopes he and Dyer can prove groundless in 2018. His own town of Rochester, he says, tends to "lean purple" and he hopes name recognition from retail politicking and his incumbency will make the L.P. switch irrelevant to his constituents. Even running as a Republican he says his constituents "knew I have these philosophies, they get it, no problem."

Although he has a tendency to stutter and thus found door-to-door contact with voters sometimes nerve-wracking, Phinney says it's essential to winning in New Hampshire's small districts. He won his first race with 2,323 votes, only 117 votes more than a Democrat who Phinney says didn't even campaign. He does not yet know who, if anyone, he'll be running against next year from the two major parties. He advises would-be voters to look beyond Party labels and "see how I voted. That's what actually matters. If I voted in your best interest, keep me in. If I haven't, vote me out."

Fear of a Libertarian New Hampshire

Phinney has lived in New Hampshire since the late 1990s, predating the Free State Project, which advocates the libertarian-minded moving to New Hampshire to sway its politics in a liberty direction. While Phinney thinks it's a "great idea to get people who want to minimize the scope and power of government to come to this state" he has no specific opinion about anything any given Free Stater has said or done. He is aware that some New Hampshire residents "view them in a not-so-favorable light. I personally don't have an opinion as long as they are not hurting anyone."

The FSP's existence helps draw out concerns that make political progressives unhappy with the thought of libertarians in their midst. The folks at FreeKeene, not institutionally affiliated with the FSP, recently summed up a 90-minute anti-libertarian presentation by Zandra Rice Hawkins of the group Granite State Progress.

Hawkins is trying to get her fellow citizens of New Hampshire to believe the FSP's mission involves attempted secession from the U.S. (it does not), to worry that the FSP's internal communal self-help and attempts to help their communities' food needs are just sinister cover for their radical mission of dismantling government, and to condemn them for their alleged connection to the national website CopBlock which encourages keeping an eye on and curbing the power of police to harass citizens.

Compare those fears with how Phinney expects to guide his future as a state representative, believing that all he and his fellow Libertarians are "trying to do is minimize government interference in lives and businesses and just try to keep as much money in people's pockets" as possible.

To many Americans, that sounds like common sense. To those living in quivering fear of a Libertarian New Hampshire in which people might just, to sum up some of Hawkins' worries, keep a watchful eye on police, act undignified in court, pay other people's parking meters, or advocate for legalization of drugs and prostitution, it sounds like something that requires organized opposition, including trying to keep a public record of Free State Project associates involved in New Hampshire politics. She is especially worried that some of them even fly under the Democratic Party's banner.

As the recent moves of Phinney, Dyer, and Stallcop to the Libertarian Party show, the libertarian-minded certainly can keep using major party labels if they wish. But in New Hampshire, they may not have to. The electoral success or failure of Dyer and Phinney in 2018 will tell.

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New Hampshire Now Has Third Sitting Libertarian Party Legislator - Reason (blog)

Why aren't there more female libertarians? Is it because biology dictates that ladies love the state?

These are the sorts of tedious questions women in the "liberty movement" field at far too many events. So when some of us gathered last week at "Porcfest"formally the Porcupine Freedom Festival, an annual campground conference and party put on by the Free State Projectwe used a "Women in Liberty" panel to deconstruct myths about male dominance in liberty circles, the incompatibility of libertarianism and feminism, and libertarians' ability to make "emotional arguments."

Reason's Melissa Mann, along with libertarian activist and writer Avens O'Brien, Kat Murti of the Cato Institute and Feminists for Liberty, and Free the People CEO Terry Kibbe joined in a panel I moderated. Friends in the audience took video of the hour-long panel, which I have cobbled together. My editing skills might be sub-par, but my wise and off-the-cuff co-panelists make it worth your while anyway.

Go here to see the original:
What Do 'Women in Liberty' Want? Five Female Libertarians Discuss - Reason (blog)

Having begun my life in the libertarian movement as a bit of purist myself, I have become more pragmatic over time.

For example, I have come to a greater appreciation that the libertarian movement needs to be careful and prudent. However, in recent months, it has struck me that this call for pragmatism for an emphasis on gradual changes that will not alienate the masses is being undermined by a particular group: the anarcho-capitalists.

I do not mean all anarcho-capitalists of course, but there are a considerable number committed to opposing any move towards pragmatism, seeing it as a betrayal of liberty.

This refusal to be pragmatic is deeply harmful to the cause of freedom since it pushes people away from the libertarian movement and reduces the electability of libertarian candidates without such support and such candidates, there will be fewer pro-liberty advocates in the legislatures.

The main example of how the anarcho-capitalists often alienate people is through a refusal to allow any form of taxation.

For many of this political persuasion, reducing taxation is not enough; it must be abolished outright, and for more radical advocates it must be done immediately.

Now, I sympathize with this. Given taxation is theft; it would seem moral to do away with it outright and immediately. However, to the vast majority of people, the outright abolition of taxation is an obvious absurd decision and they are not wrong.

This is not something to view in the abstract; it would trigger an economic crisis worse than the Great Depression. This is not a controversial view among economists. Iceland provides an insightful case study from recent times, though the effect on the US would be magnified due to size.

If the US were to default, there would be a nearly $20 trillion black hole in the global economy (to put that into perspective, that is more than the GDP of the whole of the European Union), this would trigger inflation (likely hyper-inflation) as the dollar would quickly depreciate, unemployment would surge, investors would flee, and a major global knock-on would occur, because the US economy is an internationalist economy.

Likewise, it would default on its public spending.

The army would cease to be, courts would shut down, police officers would be laid off, schools would close, the millions dependent on welfare would become homeless, and so on. This is inevitable because there would be no finances to pay for them. Again, the general public know this which is why they see the anarcho-capitalist proposal of the outright abolition of taxation as absurd.

No-one wants to experience a default of either kind since it would put the US on par with the Venezuela for quality of life. Couple that with other absurd ideas often entertained by anarcho-capitalists, like the abolition of drivers licenses, and you have a cocktail of ideas that will keep libertarian candidates out of political office and out of legislatures where they can make real changes. I appreciate anarcho-capitalists dislike of government, but it is the only way that one is likely to make gains for freedom at this time.

Anarcho-capitalists often retort that, after this initial devastation (which, in fact, would likely never recover to pre-crash levels under their system), a freer society could be built without tax and government. However, the public likewise see this as a delusion.

If you have no government, and you need tax for that, natural rights are in peril. You cannot have your property rights upheld because there are no police to do so. You cannot have your court case heard as there are no judges. Indeed, even if you had judges, you would have no laws for them to enforce, for in the absence of government there would be no legal codification of natural rights.

The solution often proposed is that you could privatize these functions in a free market but again, this idea is utterly unconvincing to most.

Unless a court holds power over you, it can do nothing. How would the courts get power over you in an anarcho-capitalist system?

Are they chosen by the mutual consent of the population?

If they are, you just have established government; a system whereby a majority consensus empowers certain individuals to use force against others.

If not, then they rely on the use of coercion, of force, without individual consent. As such, the existence of a fair judiciary is incompatible with anarcho-capitalism.

This is no small problem: without a fair judiciary (to which everyone is held to account) there is effectively no law, and our natural rights and liberty are at risk. There is no legal redress for the violation of those rights.

It is not my intention to write in great detail here, but the central point is clear: anarcho-capitalist purism is as idealistic as Marxist utopianism. This utopian purism completely undermines the libertarian movement.

I, as well as other libertarians, constantly find ourselves having to say Im a libertarian, but not that kind of libertarian.

The motto taxation is theft, while true, is far outside the Overton window as it is. The last thing the libertarian movement needs is for radical anarcho-capitalists to push the cause of liberty further away from it.

I have for a long time now tried a more conciliatory tone with anarcho-capitalists because I do understand where they are coming from (philosophically speaking), but there is a real need for the libertarian movement to demarcate itself from those anarcho-capitalists who refuse to unify around a pragmatic, pro-liberty agenda.

The libertarian movement is increasingly being identified with this group, and we must break away from that equivocation. If the movement cannot do that, it will be perpetually regarded as a band of lunatics, committed to ideas that most people know would never work in reality and which would if implemented cause tremendous harm and risk huge losses to liberty.

I acknowledge I will be vilified for taking this view, Statist, Commie, Sell-out, and so on, will no doubt be terms of abuse hurled at me. However, ask yourself, have I said anything unreasonable?

All I have said is that the libertarian movement needs to unify around a pragmatic, pro-liberty agenda and demarcate itself from radical anarcho-capitalists who are increasingly bringing the movement into ill-repute.

Does that make me a statist, a communist, or a sell-out? No in fact, Im following in the footsteps of most great libertarian thinkers here.

Im all for free markets, for civil liberties, and so on, but government has a (small) role, and that necessitates low taxation.

Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman supported the existence of small government. Must we call them commies too? Anarcho-capitalists need to either get on board with a pragmatic and moderate agenda that introduces pro-liberty changes at a pace that does not undermine the movement, or get off the libertarian train; because as it is, they are pulling the movement in a separate path.

Libertarianism should be about fiscally responsible government with great respect for rights and freedom thats an idea people can get behind, that can help make real gains for freedom, and we cannot let that be hijacked.

* Matthew James Norris is a history and philosophy graduate. He is currently undertaking historical research on Henry III and early modern social history.

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Anarcho-Capitalists: A Threat Within the Libertarian Movement - Being Libertarian