Editor’s Note: This article was submitted to Glibs on May 14.
Inviting Trump to headline the national convention of an organization that claims to be champions for liberty, is the latest bad decision in a long line of terrible decision-making. I’m not even a Libertarian, or a libertarian, and I find this… sad.
It’s like your uncle who goes to prison for diddling kids. He gets out, sober, God-fearing, and is a self-declared “new man.” A week later he plows his car into the package store and the police find a 12-year-old in the trunk.
That’s the Libertarian party. Even for non-Libertarians, at some point we all just want them to stop and get some help. It is becoming a burden even being tangentially associated with the drunk, fuck-up Uncle LP.
I want to be fair, so for the record, the party invited all three major candidates to the convention; Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and RFK Jr.. (I’m putting two periods there so you grammatical pedants will boost my comment count by at least 100).
Big T and the scratchy voice man both accepted the invitation while Suave’s biggest fan appears to be a no. For context, this move comes after the Mises Caucus (MiCauc) takeover of the party: A takeover which promised to deliver results to a party that has found itself stuck in a perpetual state of irrelevance.
Two Big Problems for The Party
I’m far from the first to highlight the problems in the LP. I’ll condense those issues to two major categories:
1. The Lack of Cohesive Principles
Libertarians and libertarians have long struggled over what they even are. The party and the platform is the OG of LGBTQIA+. Are you a man who wants to screw men? Are you a woman with a penis who likes dudes sans dick? Do you want a border wall ran up your ass? How about a free-flowing train of immigrants delivering a constant golden shower to your thirsty, gaping maw? Fill that bladder in the Rio Grande you cucks!
To their credit this was a problem MiCauc intended to solve with their LP takeover. When the Cauc came to power they brought with them a defined platform.
2. Lack of Brand Recognition
I spent some time pondering over the title for the second category. The LP needs publicity, just as many have claimed, but publicity alone is not sufficient.
The party must be widely known but also correctly associated with the cohesive set of principles defined in the first category. If the party is popularly known, but associated with things it is not aligned to, that’s not going to attract a cohesive and loyal base.
Further, potential recruits to the LP must have some basic level of understanding of how those values align with their personal values or desired end-states. That takes more than 5 minutes of fame. The LP needs to build its brand and fiercely associate core values with that brand.
How many people know what the Libertarian Party stands for? I’ve been watching them for many, many years, and I have trouble figuring it out!
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
I have no beef with Dave Smith, but unfortunately, he is the latest practitioner of the hallowed Libertarian tradition of strategic incompetence paired with unmitigated arrogance and delusion.
Strategy must be moored to Earth to be effective. Dave is floating through the toxic gaseous vapor of Jupiter.
Strategy Genius
Many Libertarians suffer from myopia. They are unable to understand that people who are not them do not spend the same amount of time that they do consuming news, studying the sacred texts, thinking about libertarian policy, or keeping up with the latest party gossip. Pollsters and pundits alike refer to these folks as low-information voters, and there are a lot of them.
There is no doubt quite a number of liberty-leaning low information voters who the LP would benefit from bringing into their tent. These types may catch a brief headline that proclaims, “Trump’s Libertarian Convention Speech a ‘Head Scratcher.’” But they don’t have the time or interest to concern themselves beyond the headlines.
From that moment forward the low-info types will remain perplexed by the association between the Libertarian Party and Mr. Pfizer, the lockdown king. For many if not most, perception is reality. Truth may as well not exist. The LP and MiCauc would do well to understand this.
Ever since their play to take control of the LP, the Mises Caucus has faced accusations of being rabid Trump supporters intent on turning the LP into a pro-Trump auxiliary. I never found the accusation very credible personally, but I must admit, the optics are terrible. When your enemies are accusing you of being shills for Trump, you invite the Donster to your convention!? Even worse if Biden doesn’t show, those low info LP members who were unaware of the Biden invite are going to think only Trump and RFK were invited, validating the accusations of a far-right coup, orchestrated by the caucus.
Why is the Mises Caucus giving their enemies free ammunition?
If the LP goal is to promote LP candidates, why would you use your very scarce resources to elevate far more popular and electable candidates from other parties? Wouldn’t the convention be a really important time to highlight Libertarian ideas to the world? A chance to highlight the shitshow the two-party system has created, and the solutions offered by Libertarians?
But maybe I’m a fool. Maybe the Libertarian party should just become a showcase of viable Presidential candidates. “We suck so much we’re not even going to highlight our own ideas. Look at these electable candidates instead.” After a few more election cycles perhaps the LP can become the new CNN and host a debate for candidates that people will vote for.
I don’t know what the defenders of this idea expect to happen. A Trump supporter tunes in to watch Trump’s speech at the LP convention, then tune out when his speech is over. When election day arrives, they vote for Trump on the Republican ticket. The same with RFK heads. Why would a fan of one of the three major candidates suddenly take in interest in the LP, just because the LP is hosting that candidate?
If anything, these partisan supporters will feel validated: “Hey, even the Libertarians are backing us and the establishment now.” What an endorsement!
And it’s worth asking why did President Warp Speed and the BPA-free lawyer agree to show up? It’s not difficult to imagine: They expect to use the platform for exposure, and they believe that exposure will translate into more votes for them. Where are those extra votes coming from?
Libertarians.
Who has it right here? Is the ridiculously circuitous ploy by the LP to use their enemies to boost their membership going to work, or are the campaigns who are pulling numbers the LP can never touch, more in tune with reality? Or maybe there’s some weird 4d chess explanation for how both can happen simultaneously while not cannibalizing each other?
As a fan of Bayes and prior probability, I wouldn’t bet on the LP.
What’s more puzzling is, there is no shortage of Liberty-loving speakers who can passionately discuss things that matter to libertarians. Just a few off the top of my head: Tom Woods, Michael Malice, Jeff Deist, CJ Kilmer, Gene Epstein, Ron Paul, Rand Paul, Thomas Massie, and Jeffrey Tucker.
Now, I understand that more people will watch the festivities if you invite Trump and RFK; but inviting Criss Angel to a mining industry conference to make a bulldozer disappear up his ass, probably isn’t the right way to attract a bunch of mining experts and execs.
The extra eyes must be converted into members, voters, participants: What are the logistics for how this would happen?
If the LP just wants more attention, just MK Ultra Thaddeus Russell to blow himself up on stage while yelling, “I always loved the children!”
You must expose people to something that attracts them to take the next step: Sign up to volunteer; become a party member; become an LP candidate; vote for LP candidates…
Exposure alone doesn’t cut it; this is marketing 110. How do you convert unqualified leads to something valuable to the organization?
Additionally, now the LP must contend with alienation of existing LP members. This already happened when the Mises Caucus took over the LP, so the smart money would use the convention to play to Libertarian and libertarian unity against an out-of-control tyrannical government. Hell, why not invite some of the year’s biggest victims of government ass-fuckery on stage to share their stories? It is easy to unite people against a common enemy.
Gay Jay and the Heartbreakers
Gary Johnson ran for President on the LP ticket in 2016. His campaign is a case study of the pitfalls that come with more exposure. While Libertarians have spent most of their existence begging for media attention, in 2016, they got it. For once the big L’s were swamped with media requests. Gay Jay went on a media blitz including being interviewed on major network news channels.
It didn’t go well.
Gary was bombarded with the usual libertarian gotcha questions, and instead of handling it like someone who spent more than 5 minutes preparing for media appearances, he fumbled and bumbled his way along. The pinnacle was during an MSNBC interview where he was asked “What would you do if you were elected about Aleppo?” Gay Jay responded, “What is Aleppo?” Apparently ignorant of the major Syrian city that was often highlighted in news of the emerging Syrian civil war.
Quickly the Jay turned Blue and spent significant time on the campaign trail apologizing to his supporters and lamenting the media gotcha questions that every libertarian who has used the internet already has a canned response for.
His running mate, Vice Presidential Candidate Bill Weld, was happy to fill the media void by calling the AR-15 “a weapon of mass destruction,” advocating for expansions in federal law enforcement and intelligence to crack down on domestic terrorism, and the use of terrorism watch lists to prevent gun ownership.
Bill was an innovator, give him that much.
The campaign received the biggest popular vote in LP history, 3.3%… a light year away from a single electoral vote.
Rather than learning from the Blue Jay’s mistakes, it seems the Mises Caucus-guided LP is belligerently repeating them. I will be surprised if the 2024 LP Presidential candidate can beat Gay Jay in the popular vote.
If/when failure comes, will the new LP leadership and the Mises Caucus own up to their mistakes, or will they boldly declare victory in the face of overwhelming defeat? “We reached out to new voters. We codified party values. We brought relevance and media attention to the LP!”
Or maybe at least they’ll concede, “Well at least we did something!!!!”
Is the Libertarian Party just a Marxist psy-op?
Bravo for a brilliant turn of phrase!
I concur with your suggestion that the LP invite Rand Paul to speak instead of The Donald. I believe I’ve heard multiple people say that as tempting as it would be to ask Rand to be the LP’s presidential nominee, he is needed more – and may be being more effective – in the Senate. That suggests to me that the LP even putting up a nominee for prez may be a waste of time & energy. They might do better to focus on actually getting Big L’s elected to Congress.
(And bravo for the bio, too! ::applause::)
Yeah, the kid writes purty, don’t he?
Yeah but he just set a real high bar for his future contributions.
LP is still operating in 2016 mode in another way. They’re trying to appeal to the “culture war doesn’t matter” snobs in a time when such people are hard to find.
We’re I to consider voting for the LP (which I’m not… because the LP is not a viable vote, because I’ve drifted from libertarian values in many ways, because I’m not voting while the electoral system is so messed up, etc), I’d be immediately turned off by the candidate’s social platform, and many of their other domestic policies. The LP is just as much of a compromise vote for me as the GOP is, just with less viability.
Your point about capitalizing on exposure is an important one. Gay Jay is a good example, but the problem is much bigger than that. Any LP function or event is populated by two groups of people who are off-putting to normies. The clowns and the petulant teenagers (no matter their age). To your point about a platform, until and unless a candidate can say “here are the incremental steps I would take to improve [drug liberty or currency supply or education]” without having naked dudes swinging their junk around in the intermission or having 1000 LP members cry out like thr blue hairs, the LP will be irrelevant. Normies don’t want to be associated with a party of weirdos and crybabies.
“Normies don’t want to be associated with a party of weirdos and crybabies.”
Seems to work out for the Dems. *shrug*
My thought as well.
A smaller overall percentage, perhaps
The Dems have a monopoly on that strategy. The LP is trying to do the skinsuiting without the long march through the institutions.
Team Blue has the media running interference for them.
Teams Blue and Red don’t care about that – it’s all a big fucking social to them, the Great Cocktail Party in DC. And they are perfectly content with that.
‘Normies’ are the worst.
That is sorta the redeeming quality to the LP IMHO.
The LP is just as much of a compromise vote for me as the GOP is, just with less viability.
I mean really, what else needs to be said?
“Normies don’t want to be associated with a party of weirdos and crybabies.”
True. Well-said.
I also suspect that there are people in the various LPs who are there just to discredit the movement. Remember that we are a threat to both the major parties, or to the uniparty if you believe in that.
“I want to be left alone” is somehow abnormal.
“I’ve never met you, but I want to use the Stats to bully you” is considered totally normal.
“State”, not “Stats”, although my models are absolutely correct.
To most people, those two concepts are quite muddied. To be fair, I can’t fault the low info normies for feeling that way. They live and let live, and the next thing they know, their 6 year old is giving lapdances to a dude in a tutu. They’re not paying enough attention to see the path from A to Z, and they just want it to go away.
The muddling is what drives me crazy about so many voters. You’re right Trashy. That’s why I think the LP ought to focus on local and state races.
I read the article. 👏👏
Even here, the Glibs vary widely, each of us, some more than others, have enough quirky behavior and idiosyncrasy that it would tough to line up and elect a leader. We have been taught/learned through our years that we are all individuals and want nothing more than to be left alone.
Hardly the making of a political party. Compromise is halfway between two bad ideas.
Yup, our leadership works because they chose to do it, and the rest of us are either smart or dumb enough to let well alone.
Thanks for posting that. I liked it and it explains a lot.
So. No libertarian moment?
Did Trump get booed at the convention? What’s the skinny on that?
Shouldn’t the LP focus on local politics as opposed to doing it at the Federal level? Ground game. Built it up?
Rufus!!! Don’t you Canuckistanis work today??
We never work. Or sleep.
We just is.
“Shouldn’t the LP focus on local politics as opposed to doing it at the Federal level? Ground game. Built it up?”
The answer is “it’s complicated.” I forget the specifics but something about running national candidates makes it easier to preserve ballot access at the state level. I assume that every LP presidential candidate knows he’s not going to win but is going through the motions of running a campaign to preserve that ballot access. Taking one for the team, as it were.
Then there’s the problem of which local/state candidates should the national LP support? Let’s say you’re an LP member/donor in a deep blue state. The national party knows it’s a waste of money to support candidates in your state, and spends their money in other places where they have an actual chance of winning with a plurality. Those blue state donors start asking why they never get anything for their donations…
I really think the most productive place to build the movement is in the state legislatures, and with the state LPs. But that assumes competent LPs that actually want to win elections.
I forget the specifics but something about running national candidates makes it easier to preserve ballot access at the state level.
Ballot access rules for automatic access vary by state. There are none that base automatic access solely on a national candidate’s vote percentages, though national candidates can be a factor. Some don’t even use vote percentages, they use registered voters.
I really think the most productive place to build the movement is in the state legislatures, and with the state LPs. But that assumes competent LPs that actually want to win elections.
The state, county, and local levels are the places where the action is, though you might have to register as a Republican – see NH.
Yes. And it can be done. Jeff Hewitt successfully ran for my county’s Board of Supervisors. He didn’t make it to higher office but he offered a glimmer of hope local control is possible.
He did. What I’ve seen (outside of MSDNC links Youtube tries to push on me when I’m just trying to watch naval history vids) is that he handled it well — snarking back at them (“Hey, if you want to keep getting 3%, stay the course!”) but generally staying polite and possibly winning some over.
I agree that the LP conceptually should focus on its own candidates… but at the same time, I think opening the forum to all comers is a very small-l libertarian thing to do (free ideas and free markets! and all). Too bad OMB is the only one who deigned to show up to even talk with folks who didn’t agree.
And I also agree with the article that getting OMB out of his rally bubble can’t hurt him either.
Great write-up.
But… the LP will always be irrelevant. Why? Because the overwhelming majority of humans (be it 60, 75, 90%) all want the same damned thing. They want the boot of government on someone else’s neck forcing them to do their bidding. Is that majority of tyrants seriously divided? Of course it is. One half is mentally ill and wanting you to accept pedophilia as normal, meanwhile the other half wants to jail you for such things as using non-prescription drugs. Either way, personal freedom and self reliance are right out.
Who the hell is Chase Oliver?
Stinky is referring to the guy who the LP nominated as their presidential candidate.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/libertarians-select-chase-oliver-presidential-nominee-little-support-shown-trump-rfk-jr
A long winded way to say it, but
Libertarianism is an ideology, not a political movement.
I read the whole thing.
Amish Mafia?
LP missed their chance. A member, constitutionally eligible, should have legally changed his name to “None Of Them” and been chosen as the LP candidate. I bet the electors pledged to None Of Them would have made a good showing in a lot of states.
Dave’s owning the loss.
I also own the formatting L…
https://twitter.com/ComicDaveSmith/status/1795079327731855476
He doesn’t represent me and my camp or the things we stand for.
This is the foundation of a viable political party, right here.
/s
Right?!
I wonder where, exactly, they differ. (I don’t follow this inside baseball stuff.)
Once you dig into Chase Oliver slightly it should be obvious where they differ.
Since CPA is being a little tease again, I’ll do everyone a solid and link to an article that explains the problems with Chase Oliver. Particularly see the Nick Sortor tweet which I can’t figure out how to directly link to. Oliver is apparently a former Obama supporter whose anti-war sensibilities caused him to break with the Dems.
https://redstate.com/bonchie/2024/05/27/the-libertarian-party-shows-why-trump-was-right-to-dunk-on-them-to-their-faces-n2174714
That article is pretty savage.
Let me offer some unsolicited advice to the Libertarian Party that they aren’t going to want to hear. If your entire idea of “freedom” revolves around legalized cocaine, transitioning children, and open borders (which means the property rights of others being violated), you deserve to languish in obscurity.
Pot, Mexicans, and Ass Sex has turned into Coke, Military-age Chinese, and Pedophilia.
Thus why I distance myself from the libertarian name. That and I’ve had some serious misgivings about an ideology that is feckless in the face of a dishonorable adversary.
🙁 we can all use a search engine.
That redstate article is decent short summary. If it is still TLDR: Chase Oliver is a woke “libertarian.”
Concur, trshy. Although I might go with Fentanyl rather than Coke. The whole cosmotarian thing was an obvious dead end from the get-go, the March through the Institutions only in the libertarian movement.
The trap, I think, was that yeah, at 30,000 foot level pot and ass-sex, at least, were things that libertarians didn’t want the government involved in. But for the lefties that they were coalitioning with, they were things the government should promote and/or profit from. Oopsie. Pot has gone from black-to-gray market to a government profit center. Ass-sex has gone from “nobody much cares, really” to “we’re going to train your toddler”.
And the way coalitions work is, I help you with your thing, and you help me with mine. What, exactly, were the lefties in the coalition going to do to promote anything else libertarians wanted? Instead, the left got a win, the libertarians got, what, exactly? A little lube on the slippery slope to drag queen story hour?
The Cosmotarian/Yokeltarian split is the nation writ large. Thus it wont end until it ends at a national level.
Warty speaks:
Philosophical coexistence isn’t required to be a viable political party and it never has been. The GOP doesn’t have any problems integrating the blue-collar workers and the Chamber of Commerce country-club types, and the Democrats certainly don’t have issues providing a big tent for both the deep environmentalists and the public-assistance welfare statists.
Big deal. The level of infighting is insane. The major party candidates are cruel to each other but then stump for the nominee. Dave Smith won’t even vote for Oliver. This isn’t a party. It’s a purity test.
First off, thanks for your writing, and good job. I wish I could get it together enough to do the same and submit an article.
I’m not a capital-L guy, so I don’t really keep up with any of the inside baseball. So it’s hard for me to feel like I’m responding intelligently, since I’m really a very arm’s length observer of the LP stuff. But as a very-much small-l type (yokel-flavored), the way I’ve explained the LP to friends really starts with a comparison to an M. C. Escher drawing – it can’t really EXIST. Those drawings look like normal ones, and have stairs and columns and they’re kinda architecturally neat, and would blend right in with lots of others that can be rationalized, but the Escher one just can’t by its very nature.
Or put another way, you can make a mattress out of feathers, or out of air, or out of springs and foam. All kinda work, all exist, and folks will be able to debate the comparative merits of them. But if you try to make one out of rocks, it just CAN’T BE. The rocks can insist they’re being a mattress, but nobody will believe them. And the bigger and rockier of a rock they are, the worse they are at it. Best approximation is for the rocks to be really, really small (sand). Then it will at least be kinda credible for mattressing, but virtually nobody would choose it because it’s barely an improvement over sleeping on the floor. The LP, by nature, attracts big rocks. So it’s gonna suck at being what it’s trying to be.
Heh… I suppose “Where would be the fun in that?” would be their response. Performance artists, the lot of them is what they look like to me on the sidelines.
Weird… I swear I hit “Reply” by Tonio’s comment above (that’s a quote from the RedState article I found amusing). Sorry for the misthread.
Absolutely. Each vying to be (whatever they consider) The One True Libertarian.
We are stuck with voting ‘least bad’ or not voting…like it or not. I am not a joiner or good team player so I dont vote party….I vote policy. Like FA says, watching the L’s for a long time and have no idea what their core values, platform or planned policies are. That doesnt fall into the category of ‘least bad’. It falls into the category of feckless, which GayJay was the personification of.
Face it, vote Trump or have a tantrum and stay home.
I find the current leftist radicals in power completely unacceptable. If we dont get rid of them we will see the collapse of our nation and worse, our culture.
If we dont get rid of them we will see the collapse of our nation and worse, our culture.
I quibble with the tense of your verb. The collapse is underway. It may not turn into some Mad Max apocalyptic hellscape, but we’re not going to be “returning to sanity” any time soon. That “sanity” was attached to principles that are no longer held or even recognized.
As foretold in the prophecies, after the Great Plague comes the Crazy Years.
And after the Crazy Years comes the Burning Times.
It’s always about the money. We are floundering in debt, there is no coherent path out. We’re like a juggler with the plates, keeping adding, until…
I cant disagree with you trashy. Victor Davis Hanson had a good bit on that Saturday night.
When it is happening people dont perceive it. He said collapse is like Hemingway’s bankruptcy, gradually and then suddenly. The suddenness of it catches us offguard.
In such a short time we have gone from some sensibility to a generation that cant tell the difference between man and woman. It is stunning. It is remarkable to me how easily the evil have been able to dispense with people’s ability to perceive reality.
To touch on ontology what they have done is convince people that real entities that exist in the world (people, animals, objects) do not have inherent attributes we discover but rather arbitrary attributes that we assign to them in the same way we can arbitrarily assign attributes to entities that exist only in our heads (institutions). The end game is that inalienable rights are not inherent in humans. A twofer really…people that cant make sense of anything cant solve problems. People that cant solve problems cannot defend themselves.
Face it, vote Trump or have a tantrum and stay home.
I’m not voting for president.
I’ll vote for places where I can have an effect, like state legislative elections.
Good stuff, FA.
I think the LP’s fundamental error is blowing its wad on the Presidential race. Sure, have a candidate, but focus your limited resources on local and state races. But that may just shift the problem of ideological incoherence and organizational incompetence to a different level.
The real, fundamental problem is that Americans just don’t want a smaller government. Across both Team Red and Team Blue, they elect and re-elect people who relentlessly support the expansion of the Total State. At some point, you gotta recognize the revealed preference.
“The real, fundamental problem is that Americans just don’t want a smaller government.”
This is, indeed, the problem. What can be done about it, well, that is an entirely different question. And one that the Libertarian Party gets completely wrong, as you point out RE presidential races.
I read the article, and listened to Trump’s speech. The media headlines are that he got booed. There were a bunch of noises from the audience, but whatever booing occurred didn’t stand out in particular. Trump’s speech was very libertarian.
I think it’s both good that he was invited, and good that he showed up. Like I wrote yesterday, this is the first time the LP convention made headlines. Those headlines that Trump got booed probably are not good for Trump, but they are good for the LP and spreading libertarian ideas.
Also, there were a massive amount of FREE ROSS signs. While I agree he should be freed, it’s not a major issue for most people.
this is the first time the LP convention made headlines
I beg to differ: https://www.cnn.com/2016/05/30/politics/james-weeks-libertarian-convention/index.html
I don’t recall that story making headlines.
It certainly wasn’t the leading story, but I remember a lot of non-libertarians talking about it.
Yes, it was in the news. I don’t think I heard about until I saw it on Gutfeld, and I didn’t even learn the guy’s name.
Otoh, Trump is one of the most famous people in the world. If the LP got Taylor Swift to show up, that would be good too.
T-Swizzle should show up, she’s all about the write in ballots, after all.
(She has a blank space… and she’ll write your name!)
Thanks for the write up, FA, thorough.
However, I agree with Tater (and dave smith, for once); I think it was a good idea to invite all the other parties candidates as a lead up to selecting your candidate. The LP is not in the position of the other parties to focus only internally at their convention. The problem was treating your guests like crap. Or, being respectful to the pro-gun control guy and the guy who said it’s too bad we can’t put climate ‘deniers’ in prison but not so respectful to a guy who’s really no worse – better on some things, worse on others (TFB, maybe Kennedy has backed off some of that, but I’m not sure I trust him either). Be respectful to your guests and especially, from the political perspective, the one that is much more likely to be in a position to appoint people closer to your claimed principles, and even claimed he would. Now there’s not much reason to trust him, but there’s no harm in being respectful, clear on your disagreements and objections to his policy, but willing to work to advance your purported policy positions, even if incrementally by maintaining a potential working relationship; LP could learn from Rand Paul.
I mean I’ve already decided I’m not voting for Trump long ago – while he wasn’t the worst on Covid, he wasn’t good. He failed with Asange and Snowden. He doesn’t seem to have a solid personal set of principles. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea to listen to him and see where you can make progress with him.
And the LP nominates… that guy. I wish I was a member so I could cancel my membership. You have the audacity to tread your guest like that while nominating this guy? It’s pretty clear the LP doesn’t represent small-l me. Maybe I should switch registration to independent.
Not sure the LP is in a position to crap over Trumps’ covid response. Four years ago the Libertarian Party was completely silent in the face of the largest assault on human rights, dignity and maybe civilization itself in recent memory. They could have recruited Jeffrey Tucker as their presidential candidate. Instead they nominated a woke anti-white nobody whose only position on the covid tyranny was to de-regulate production of ventilators. Yes, those ventilators that were used to kill unfortunate patients in hospitals who tested positive for coronavirus in the first weeks of the pandemic.
LP is sadly not in a position to crap on anything these days
Good point. I had forgotten about the party’s silence.
She wouldn’t even condemn the riots. The Mises Caucus is a vast improvement to the party in terms of standing on principles.
PutridMeat might remember this, I think he and were sitting next to each other when it happened.
When Jorgensen spoke at FreedomFest 2021, she went significantly over time. Like, a lot over time. Dave Smith and the FreedomFest staff tried to get her attention to get her to stop. Eventually, she did. She ate into a lot of the next speaker’s time.
The next speaker? John McWhorter. A black man.
I don’t remember where I heard this. FredomFest? Some Mises Caucus folks in NH? I can’t remember now. Sorry.
Some bigwigs on the LNC at the time plus some at folks at CATO were pro-lockdown.
That’s why many libertarian organizations were silent on lockdowns.
The folks on the LNC were pushed out or neutered when the Mises Caucus took over.
So, I’m seeing that the prosecution in the NYC Trump trial has so utterly botched their case that there might be a hung jury and a mistrial. In a perfect example of “the process is the punishment”, this serves the leftist lawfare campaign against Trump as well as a conviction.
Because he will, of course, be immediately brought to trial again, very likely before the same judge (I think this is typical after a mistrial), and be ankle-braceleted to Manhattan for two more months, while the same salacious crap is paraded before the public again.
Now, the truly astonishing thing about this is, the lawfare campaign is actually helping Trump, so the smart thing to do may be to let it go. But I just can’t see the Dems doing that, so the circus will go on if there’s a mistrial.
I think this trial has done as much as all the media freakoutery during 2016 did for Trump.
He has been in the news cycle every day. He as acted quite well in court, considering all the bullshit that has been handed to him, which has also been in the news everyday. It let him focus on that Bronx rally, which was a complete success for him.
I think they briar patched him.
Absolutely. And it has partly stopped him from going out and saying stupid things that distracted from Biden’s self-immolation. Trump is the winner by being on trial.
I wasn’t going to vote this year, but if Trump is convicted in this show trial, I will probably vote for him.
At the very least, he has a personal reason to elevate civil rights and the evil of lawfare as an issue.
What about the money? Can you make a living as a professional Libertarian Party political consultant? Is that what people are doing? I suppose it might be better than selling hamburgers, all things considered.
I would think some folks would relish the opportunity, yes. Assuming they can cut the mustard.
They have a long way to go to ketchup with the consultants working the two main parties.
I’m playing ketchup now.
I mayo my, I know someone who will gaze at that comment in a narrow way.
Why,? We have no beef with him.
Can you make a living as a professional Libertarian Party political consultant – if you know how to sling crypto and MREs sure.
Not sure the LP is in a position to crap over Trumps’ covid response. Four years ago the Libertarian Party was completely silent in the face of the largest assault on human rights, dignity and maybe civilization itself in recent memory.
Shhhh.
I quibble with the tense of your verb. The collapse is underway. It may not turn into some Mad Max apocalyptic hellscape, but we’re not going to be “returning to sanity” any time soon. That “sanity” was attached to principles that are no longer held or even recognized.
The more I look around, the more I see this grand rotting edifice collapsing under its own weight. Maybe we really have passed our expiration date.
The real, fundamental problem is that Americans just don’t want a smaller government.
I read a couple of articles about Trump’s rally in Brooklyn, or the Bronx, or wherever it was. Several black people were quoted as saying they liked Trump because he sent them stimulus checks.
Is it?
Why do we support these candidates? Are we doing it just to get a wee bit of the spoils, or is to increase Liberty?
I would argue that it is the latter, and fighting for candidates who are guaranteed to lose is just falling into the trap of the D’s and R’s, who clearly don’t have any guiding principles at this point, only a struggle for power with massive armies. So, as a rump party, should we squander our power (what little we haven’t pissed away with JoJo etc.) or should we use those two armies for our benefit, seek concessions from the ones in power who are Libertarian Curious? Who are bendable to our point of view?
No. We let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
I’m putting two periods there so you grammatical pedants will boost my comment count by at least 100
🙂
Right? I mean doesn’t this ass-hat know that it’s not two periods, bu two spaces after the period? That’s where it’s AT!
👍👍
Hey! Poor punctuation is my Schtick. .
“Many Libertarians suffer from myopia. They are unable to understand that people who are not them do not spend the same amount of time that they do consuming news, studying the sacred texts, thinking about libertarian policy, or keeping up with the latest party gossip”
Second this. Also libertarians preach to the coir and do not know how to make their basic worldview convincing. But I would add most people also never have an independent thought of their own their entire life.
do not know how to make their basic worldview convincing
You mean most people aren’t convinced by stubborn assholes engaged in pointless purity spirals about heroin vending machines and economic arcana?
I do mean that. I remember a Romanian libertarian economist saying something like “people are worried immigrants will lower their wage, but a lower wage makes you more competitive” or some stupid shit like that. But I also wrote a piece a while back about instinctual libertarians don’t know how to make arguments for people to whom libertarianism does not come naturally.
but hey maybe autistically screechy zero takes will work at some point.
I misspelled the shit out of that
screeching zero taxes
The “autistically screechy zero” takes work for the Left.
“do not know how to make their basic worldview convincing. ”
Don’t we all wish that? But who really has, in the 20th century? Rand, Milton Friedman, Hayek have had some success but it’s like making elegant mud pies and trying to sell them to customers who want delicious pizza pies.
More like, “making delicious custom pizzas, when what people really want Tony’s frozen pizza, warmed over”
“If the LP goal is to promote LP candidates, why would you use your very scarce resources to elevate far more popular and electable candidates from other parties? Wouldn’t the convention be a really important time to highlight Libertarian ideas to the world?”
It would not be since no one would not it goes on.
Is the Libertarian Party just a Marxist psy-op? – everything these days might be. But hey at least we still have wine and whisky
Open season
At least 29 people have been shot, five fatally, in Memorial Day weekend gun violence across Chicago, police said.
If only we had some sort of regulatory framework dealing with ownership and use of guns.
If only we had some sort of regulatory framework dealing with ownership and use of guns. – that is not enough, the cause is also systemic racism especially microagressions and unconscious bias. We need mandatory DEI training for all the whiteys in America and most of the Asians plus a constitutional ban on mean speech.
Here’s a breakdown if you’re interested
https://heyjackass.com/
G-d bless that guy for maintaining his site.
We ought to thank Chicago for repeatedly demonstrating the ineffectiveness of gun control.
We need a world libertarian convention to generate a unified libertarian doctrine.
World wide libertarian movement moment…
Communitarianism: the art of passing off trivial clichés as profound wisdoms
https://iea.org.uk/communitarianism-the-art-of-passing-off-trivial-cliches-as-profound-wisdoms/
“What is communitarianism? Communitarians would probably define themselves as people who recognise the importance of community and social relations, but that is a bit like saying that environmentalists are people who care about the environment, or that feminists are people who believe in gender equality. Defining a political outlook in motherhood-and-apple-pie terms, so that you could not disagree with it without coming across like a complete psychopath, is not particularly useful. Apart from Britain’s four or five Randians, everybody recognises the importance of community and social relations. (And presumably, Britain’s four or five Randians tacitly recognise it too.)
In practice, communitarianism is little else but a knee-jerk anti-liberalism. Communitarians define themselves in opposition to an imaginary hyper-materialistic, hyper-individualistic liberal, who sees life as no more than a long string of financial transactions, and society as no more than a bunch of isolated individuals who happen to live side by side. Communitarians never identify any specific person who actually holds that view, which is not too surprising, because, apart from Britain’s aforementioned four or five Randians (who, on a bad day, might come a little bit close to that caricature), no such person exists.”
Hey maybe England will go libertarian
“What is communitarianism?”
Communism in sheep’s clothing.
Sanctity of democracy
Asked if they’ve personally been threatened since the 2020 presidential election, each secretary of state said they had been.
“It impacted all of us,” Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said, adding: “One of the ways that I have been looking at this and addressing this is telling the really hard truth. And that is this: Threats against elections officials in the United States of America is domestic terrorism.”
Schmidt agreed, telling Welker, “The point of these threats is really to terrorize and is to intimidate and to try to keep any of us and our election officials at the county level and at the precinct level from doing or not doing something that is their responsibility, which is such a core foundation of our system of government.”
Brave and noble servants of the public trust. Questioning their methods is treason.
Brave and noble servants of the public trust. Questioning their methods is treason. – if you have authority you should be able to exercise it with impunity otherwise whats even the point
You dishonest, tyrannical cuntes should be thanking your lucky stars that the population is passive to the extent that you have not found yourselves a date with a lamp post.
So how bout an OT…
The woman who sold time – and the man who tried to stop her
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4nn7gew9zxo
For more than a century a member of the Belville family would visit the Royal Observatory at Greenwich at least three times a week. He or she would set the time on a watch and head across London to sell that information to their clients.
When the last of the Belville time sellers, Ruth, died in 1943, she had clocked up more than half a century collecting the time and passing it on.
But a competitor, St John Wynne, had tried to scupper the company.
It backfired – in t
Defend the damn Cathedral
The Biden administration is setting up new tripwires for Donald Trump at America’s premier health research agency to safeguard against political interference if Trump wins in November.
The White House fears Trump could try to advance an ideological agenda at the National Institutes of Health, like the ones he’s suggested on everything from vaccines to diversity policies.
In an effort to Trump-proof, NIH has designated an official to identify political meddling in the agency’s work and is tasking a soon-to-be-established scientific integrity council with reviewing those cases. The White House knows Trump could still cast those plans aside but is calculating that doing so will set off alarms with the media, Congress and the public. The Biden administration likely hopes GOP lawmakers, even those who think the NIH needs an overhaul, will temper Trump’s moves.
“Interfering and manipulating science to hit a partisan agenda is inappropriate and is what we’re working to wall against,” Lyric Jorgenson, NIH’s designated scientific integrity official, said in an interview. She added: The plan to protect the agency’s independence is critical because the public needs to be able to rely on NIH to “generate rigorous, trusted evidence to inform public health.”
We will fight to the death to save our blessed virgin, Science.
We cannot permit our sacred texts to be misinterpreted in service of the infidel nincompoops.
“safeguard against political interference if Trump wins”
The president isn’t allowed to president?
“manipulating science to hit a partisan agenda”
That’s the lefts job.
One president is not allowed to president. As we have already seen.
Hawaiian judges are standing by!
“NIH has designated an official to identify political meddling in the agency’s work and is tasking a soon-to-be-established scientific integrity council with reviewing those cases”
What happened to Our Democracy(tm)?
We are the priests,
Of the temples,
Of Syrinx
So you’re saying that you’re on the Trump Train.
As president, Trump threatened to fire a top agency official, Anthony Fauci, and prompted another to quit after Trump pitched hydroxychloroquine as a Covid-19 treatment. Scientific organizations that work with NIH now worry Trump’s potential return to the White House, inflamed by GOP anger over the public health bureaucracy’s pandemic advice, might bring more concerted attempts to influence the agency’s decisions.
In addition to assigning Jorgenson as the NIH’s watchdog, the White House has directed other health agencies that got caught up in the Covid wars, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration, to strengthen their scientific integrity plans, both to ensure that research is rigorous, bias-free, transparent and reliable — and that nonpartisan civil servants are making the research decisions.
We deem it so. Now go away.
I say fire everyone and disband the crackpot alphabet soup agencies as they have no constitutional basis for existing in the first place.
“If the LP goal is to promote LP candidates, why would you use your very scarce resources to elevate far more popular and electable candidates from other parties?”
The way I’ve heard Dave Smith explain it, the goal isn’t to promote LP candidates, it’s to promote liberty. RFK Jr and Trump both thought it was worthwhile to speak at a third party convention that typically gets 3%ish of the national vote. There’s a better chance that Trump or RFK enacts some liberty minded policy because they came to the LPNC than there is of the LP candidate winning, so I’m cool with them coming.
This is my stance.
Mine too. The LP isn’t going to accomplish anything on its own.
“ From that moment forward the low-info types will remain perplexed by the association between the Libertarian Party and Mr. Pfizer, the lockdown king.”
And their 2024 elected presidential candidate supported lockdowns.
The only exposure the LP gets to normies is with their presidential candidate every 4 years and they chose a leftist culture warrior dipshit, a walking lolbert meme, sullying the libertarian name even further. Somehow calling myself an anarchist has less of a negative connotation.
Having Trump speak was the only decent decision these retarded twats made this year. At least they got attention from that and not some fat slovenly weirdo stripping on stage.
What has the LP accomplished for the liberty movement? Name one. For fucks sake, Fetterlump has done more.
https://x.com/senfettermanpa/status/1794034663683395987?s=46
I just read a few things about Chase Oliver. He doesn’t sound bad.
As a matter of principle I am going to disagree.
OK, so what position does he hold that’s so terrible?
Vax and mask madates, for starters.
I can’t tell if he is a top or a power bottom.
“Vax and mask madates, for starters.”
I didn’t see that, but those aren’t current issues.
I read he is for trans kids and males in girls sports. Which is bad, but there is no mention of trans stuff on his platform.
I read he is for “open borders”. Which is bad, but his platform seems to contradict that.
Even all those things are true, he’s still 90% good.
“those aren’t current issues”
No, but they tell you his attitude toward liberty. There’s no way I can say someone who supported them is 90% good on the size and powers of the state.
those aren’t current issues
This will get lost in the ded thread I’m sure, but ?!??!??!?!!!
The only reason I give a inch to Trump on Covid is he once said “we have a constitution, I can’t do that” when pressed by the propaganda arm of the state to impose more draconian measures.
I’m almost a single issue voter – if you are for gun control, you’re not getting my vote. I say almost, because this – defending vax, mask, lockdown etc. mandates has come pretty close to displacing it. If taking those positions doesn’t disqualify you from the Libertarian nomination, then the Libertarian party is completely useless. Which was already sort of obvious over the last couple of cycles anyway I guess.
Males in women’s sports is another one. Bad? More than bad, downright malevolent or so naive/dumb as to be disqualifying for any position of authority.
“Chase Oliver” sounds like a minor character from Caddyshack.
I thought he was a minor character in a Jeff Stryker film.
The president isn’t allowed to president?
Just because he is *nominally* the head of these agencies, don’t be fooled into thinking he should have authority over them.
Biden supporters all shudder at the thought of Trump actually having that power, just as we all shudder at the thought of Biden having that power.
Except Biden does have that power, because the media and the lifers at those agencies all want him to.
Confluence of interests is a different thing that control over.
At NIH, Trump repeatedly hinted that he wanted to fire Fauci over his handling of the pandemic.
“The previous administration used debunked reports and misleading data to justify policies that put the health and well-being of all Americans at risk,” a White House spokesperson told POLITICO in a statement. “The Biden-Harris Administration has prioritized evidence-based decisions and policy informed by robust research and unimpeded by political interference.”
We asked everybody who agreed with us, and they said we were right.
Just a few off the top of my head
None of whom pass my personal liberty purity test! /std LP standard-bearer
<em.The NIH’s scientific integrity plan calls for an agency environment that’s “safe, equitable, fair, just, impartial, honest, and inclusive,” and it says “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility are integral components of the entire scientific process.”
There is no right. There is no wrong. That’s what science teaches us.
Actually, that is what science teaches us. Or should.
Morals come from an entirely different source.
Morals come from an entirely different source.
“right” = “demonstrably correct”
No.
Right and wrong are moral absolutes. There is better and worse, defined by circumstance.
LP conflating libertarianism and libertinism.
That’s why I call myself a minarchist, if anyone asks (nobody does, which is fine because hardly anyone even knows what it means). I would also be comfortable with anti-government.
The LP is worthless. No, worse than worthless, because it gives people a negative impression of libertarianism in general.
This times 10000000
Seems like there is one thing we all can agree on and that is we can’t agree on much at all.
That’s not true.
You’re both wrong.
Speaking of getting along….
4X20…I have been feeding my bees. A week ago I noticed a bumble bee shouldering up with the honeybees at the trough. Neither the honeybees nor the bumble bee seemed to mind each other’s presence.
Bumble bees must have similar communication skills to the honeybees because now around 100 bumblebees are there every day, the whole hive I presume. Each species seems to be just fine with the other and the bumblebees behavior and disposition seems identical to the honeybees, at least regarding me.
Broadly I categorize animals into two groups: social and non-social animals.
For social animals I split them into intraspecies social behavior and intersocial behavior. For intersocial species they also appear to recognize individuals.
If the bee’s food or water runs short they will seek me out and nag the shit out of me. God, they are worse than stray dogs. If I am outside with another person the bees come to me and nag me while they ignore the other person. I guess they know me as the guy that puts out the food. They light all over me, kiss on me and tell me they love me. I am not fooled. They just want food.
Now the damned bumblebees have started doing the same thing. It is a bit surprising to me.
How much do you know about bumblebee behavior?
Extremist
The vote is a test of investors’ continued faith in Musk, who has become an increasingly polarizing public figure especially because of his extreme views, including on immigration and transgender issues. One of the world’s wealthiest people, he maintains a base of loyal fans.
Don’t forget hate speech absolutist.