Just-Flipped-to-Libertarian State Representative Brandon Phinney

The Libertarian Party of New Hampshire held another press conference today announcing the awesome news that now a THIRD sitting state representative has flipped parties to the LPNH! The LPNH has already made two previous historic announcements earlier this year with state representatives Caleb Dyerof Pelham and Joseph Stallcop of Keene changing from republican and democrat respectively to the Libertarian Party of NH and then forming a Libertarian caucusin the state house for the first time in twenty years.

Representative Brandon Phinney, who was elected in 2016 as a republican, said during his official announcement at todays press conference, that the republican party leadership has been chastising their legislators for not following the leaderships demands. Phinney said in his speech that he was stifled by party leadership and that he and the other liberty minded reps were labeled terrorists! He said, What I found was that both parties were seeking to manipulate the potential legislation and the legislative process for political gainI was not elected to do the bidding of a political party at the expense of my principles. He finished his speech by saying, Integrity and a clear conscience is desperately needed in the New Hampshire house and together with representatives Dyer and Stallcop, I believe that our cause will ignite a shift in political affiliation in this state.

Phinney was joined in speaking by the chairman of the national Libertarian Party, Nicholas Sarwark, who came up from their offices in DC to help commemorate the occasion. In his speech, Sarwark delivered an invitation to legislators, politicians, and others saying, if youre tired of living a lie, if youre tired of standing up for things you dont believe in, come out of the closet. Become a libertarian. Come home. It was Sarwarks first time visiting the Live Free or Die state. Heres the full press conference from this morning in Concord:

So, now the LPNH has three sitting state representatives in the NH state house, and this has all transpired within six months! Thats three more Libertarian state reps than the rest of the 49 states have, combined! If it seems like all this success came out of nowhere, youre right. Until September of last year, the LPNH was basically a dead organization until a couple of guys who moved to NH as part of the ongoing NH Freedom Migration, Darryl W Perry and Rodger Paxton got elected to chair and vice chair of the party and proceeded to breath new life into the organization.

Can the party maintain this amazing pace? How many more reps will flip before the next election in 2018? Thanks to the diligent research of hate group Granite State Progress we know there are approximately fifteen current sitting state reps who are Free State Project participants or friends, so there are many other potential Libertarian Party of NH converts still out there in the state house.

The national Libertarian Party has NEVER had the level of success in its over four decades in existence as the NH Freedom Migration has has in about a decade. We continue to prove that concentrating activism in one geographic area is a successful strategy, and todays announcement is yet another feather in our cap. Liberty is winning here, and we can have bigger and more impactful successes if you come join us. Here are 101 reasons why you should start planning your move to New Hampshire ASAP.

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Third Sitting New Hampshire State Rep Flips to Libertarian Party! - Free Keene

CONCORD Rep. Brandon Phinney (Strafford 24-Rochester), formerly a member of the Republican Party, announced Tuesday on the State House steps he is changing his party affiliation to Libertarian.

For the third time this year, a sitting state legislator has left his party and joined the LP. Rep. Caleb Q. Dyer (Hillsborough 37) switched to Libertarian from Republican in February, and Rep. Joseph Stallcop (Cheshire 4) left the Democratic Party in May.

Darryl W. Perry, chair of the New Hampshire Libertarian Party, welcomes any others, unhappy with their party leadership, to join the LP.

When the Libertarian Party had ballot access in the 1990s, the Libertarian House Caucus had four members, Perry said. It is my hope and desire that the civil libertarians, classical liberals, and philosophical libertarians in the New Hampshire General Court will show the same courage shown by Reps. Dyer, Stallcop, and, now, Rep. Brandon Phinney, and abandon the two-party system that has for so long burdened us with taxation, regulation, and legislation that has trampled our freedoms.

Phinney will work with Dyer and Stallcop in the N.H. House Libertarian Caucus to minimize state government, lower taxes, and eliminate barriers to conducting business, and will work hard to increase individual freedom and personal liberty while protecting the rights of individuals and businesses within New Hampshire.

Phinney brings his experience serving in the New Hampshire National Guard and the states Department of Corrections to the caucus.

We were elected to the peoples house to serve their will, their interests, and limit government interference in their lives, Phinney said of his differences with the GOP. I was not elected to do the bidding of a political party at the expense of my principles. Establishment partisan politics do nothing to protect the rights of people, but instead only serve to prop up and expand government with arcane plans to irresponsibly spend our money and enact burdensome regulations on businesses, small and large alike. 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.

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Rochester Rep switches to Libertarian Party - Foster's Daily Democrat

Ordinarily, it seems, I write about topics which are slightly more controversial for this column. I believe difference of opinion is a great and wonderful thing that should be embraced. However, this week I have chosen to do something that doesnt always gain readership, but I think its important to every once in while remind ourselves of our commonalities. Unfortunately, almost all the readers of this article will be libertarian thinkers, but the message applies to all. I hope you will share these ideas with others, because they are ideas I believe people generally support.

Every person knows, deep down, that he or she is a free individual. We are born with the knowledge that we have certain inalienable rights, and those rights have not been granted, but rather are a part of simply existing as a human being. Nearly everyone recognizes that when certain rights are taken from them that it just isnt right. Among these rights are the right to live, the right to our own property, the right to pursue our own version of happiness (so long as it does not infringe on others), and the right to do with ourselves whatever we please (so long as it does no harm to others).

Whenever any of these rights are infringed, people inherently know that something isnt right. It is only when someone manages to convince them that infringing on these rights are only affecting other people and not themselves, or when it somehow serves the greater good then it is acceptable to infringe on these rights. It is truly rare when people argue that other humans have no inherent rights. At their core somewhere, nearly everyone is a libertarian.

Its about the things we learn at a very early age. Dont act out violently toward another person, dont take other peoples things without permission, if someone insists on fighting first turn the other cheek but then defend yourself, dont lie or try to trick people in a harmful way, dont cheat, dont say hurtful things (but if someone says hurtful things to you, dont act out against that person), be generous but only willingly, and keep your hands to yourself. If you are someone who teaches your children these things, Im sorry to tell you but you are teaching libertarianism at its basic level. For some, this must be a horrifying realization, but what we teach our children are things which still apply as we become adults. Thats the reason why we teach children such things to prepare them for adulthood. Maybe it sounds simplistic, but expanded out to logical conclusions, these basic principles we teach work very well for society at large.

A favorite pastime of children is making up games. Weve all done it in our youth. Someone comes up with an idea for a new game and begins laying out the rules, while others join in with their own ideas. At first, the rules are simple, and everyone seems to be enjoying themselves simply trying to somehow score points in some certain way. Then, other children begin getting ideas for new rules that they believe make things fairer, or even attempt to advantage themselves or others in some way. Before long, no one can remember all the newly invented rules. People are getting called out and they have no idea why. There are points being made that result in nothing arguments and debates about what the rules actually are. Eventually, the game just isnt fun anymore and everyone quits playing. The hopes for a new Olympic event are dashed, and everyone goes home feeling a little miffed for their troubles.

Again, its a simplistic, childish view of the way things happen, but it does still apply. The difference is that we dont get to simply quit playing the game, and the stakes are far higher. We have no choice but to continue to play or we are kicked out of society (which some people may actually prefer). The simpler rules work the best. When things are boiled down to what rules best make a society function well, they generally fall into the sort of simple things we teach our children. Its when we start adding to these simple rules that we begin to compound problems and start to try to outsmart ourselves into believing we can complicate our way into better societies.

Ive kept this article on a childish level for a reason. Because, I think its important that we sometimes all remind ourselves of our commonalities at a basic, core level. We are children at heart, and while the world always benefits from disagreement, its also good to be reminded of the common ground on which we all likely stand. My hope is that everyone reading this article will consider what you teach your children. If you teach your children these basic principles of protecting the natural rights they inherit as being human, then also please attempt to apply it to yourself as an adult. If its good enough for your kids, its good enough for you. Sure, adult life is more complicated, but somewhere at its core, the truths are basically the same. It is likely that nearly everyone believes in libertarianism to some degree. By reading this article, I hope that libertarians are reminded of where we a free, and that non-libertarians can see where they might agree with libertarians.

We libertarians arent out to get you. We just happen to believe in the same kinds of things you teach your kids.

This post was written by Danny Chabino.

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

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Red Dirt Liberty Report: Where We All Agree - Being Libertarian

In the long-run, capitalism will always triumph for one reason: It actually responds to peoples desires even the people who call themselves enemies of capitalism and want to see it torn down.

My favorite case-in-point of this phenomenon is the famous and ubiquitous Che Guevara t-shirt.

Spend some time walking down a major city street anywhere in the country, or stroll through a college campus on a summer day, and you are bound to see some guy or gal sporting the likeness of the famous communist revolutionary. Che has been an enduring symbol for leftist activists, despite his bloodthirsty record of violence and inhumanity.

Ive heard plenty of libertarians and other advocates of liberty lament the continued popularity of Ches image; they list off his atrocities and hideous social views with aplomb.

But anger at the endurance of the Che t-shirt misses a crucial point: That it represents the ultimate power of capitalism.

It is the power to transform the most potent symbols of opposition to itself, into commodities that can be bought and sold in the marketplace. In other words, capitalism has turned its foe into another product to be sold within its own system.

The market does not have feelings and does not care about what the symbol of Che represents (if it represents anything). Symbols are just signifiers, brands even, and those can be bought and sold.

Every time some armchair leftist or college brocialist dons the image of Che, they are in fact neutering the ideology they purport to believe in.

When the young people, who Che might in another time have tried to galvanize to violent rebellion, buy shirts and other paraphernalia with his visage they are tacitly buying into the capitalist system. When Che and his ilk became fashion symbols, rather than political symbols, they were utterly defeated. Better than killing them or reducing their monuments to rubble, turning them into pieces of memorabilia was the ultimate insult and final defeat.

That is the beauty of the free market: It can transform an intractable enemy into harmless kitsch.

Supporters of liberty and the free market might understandably be irritated by Americas youth running around with the image of a monomaniacal war criminal blazoned on their chests, but they should bite back their bile and instead rejoice.

As Che has become a popular image, the image of the revolutionary has lost all the symbolic power it once might have claimed.

A couple of generations ago, radical socialism was a common part of the zeitgeist of the American youth, with college campuses serving as breeding grounds for genuine radicalism and acting as the chief apologists for the totalitarian regimes of Cuba, the Soviet Union, and China.

Today, a lot of leftishness is still there, but it has been beaten into a feeble identity politics that is hopelessly incapable of achieving anything of substance.

People on the political right often rail against the liberal bastions of academia, and they are not completely wrong to do so. To be sure, the political products of the academic world, such as President Obama and Senator Elizabeth Warren, serve as cautionary tales to voters thinking about giving real power to the scions of the ivory towers. But they are nowhere near as threatening as the sorts of firebrand spokespeople produced by the hallowed halls of academia only a few decades ago.

Socialism in America, and around the world, has had to respond and adapt to the overwhelming power of the free market. In the marketplace of ideas, socialism is outdated and doomed to go out of business. In response, socialist thinking has shifted, softened, and come to accept at least parts of the capitalist system as essential to maintenance of prosperity.

We should call that a tentative victory for liberty, if not a total one. Even the most entrenched socialist parties around the world have had to accept the reality of markets.

Capitalism is the only serious game in town. Whats left of true radical leftism is just empty and deflated symbols, like t-shirts featuring half-forgotten political dissidents.

This post was written by John Engle.

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

John Engle is a merchant banker and author living in the Chicago area. His company, Almington Capital, invests in both early-stage venture capital and in public equities. His writing has been featured in a number of academic journals, as well as the blogs of the Heartland Institute, Grassroot Institute, and Tenth Amendment Center. A graduate of Trinity College Dublin, Ireland and the University of Oxford, Johns first book, Trinity Student Pranks: A History of Mischief and Mayhem, was published in September 2013.

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Why I Love Che Guevara T-Shirts - Being Libertarian

From the time we are born, we are conditioned through force and manipulation to comply with just about everything dictated by figures of authority. Is it any wonder then, why so many of us believe everything we are told by our government?

The fact is that compliance and discipline are necessary skills to survive in our society. Without knowledge of the rules and tools necessary to function successfully a person will never get the chance to become successful because the various systems of enforcement will make it impossible.

Your parents protect you against physical hazards by teaching you to avoid them. This is compliance with basic common sense. Dont put your fingers in a light socket, that makes sense. Dont eat rat poison, this too makes sense.

Soon enough youre off to school, where rules become the focus. Be on time. Do your assigned work. Be reliable. These ideas condition you to be successful at a job. If you are not timely and reliable, you will not succeed at your job, thus they are important skills, imperative to success.

But what happens when the information disseminated to you, from sources that are supposed to be trustworthy, is false or inappropriate, but you have been taught to accept the veracity of everything you hear from these sources?

What happens when your teacher spreads information that is blatantly false? If you fail to answer test questions that include this false information in the way you were taught, there is a penalty. Your grades will suffer. You may be disciplined. You eventually come to the conclusion that compliance makes your life easier and brings better results.

I suppose I was always a fighter.

As I began writing this essay, I remembered something that happened to me in the 7th grade.

My teacher created a program called IALUAC, which stood for, I am lovable, unique and courageous, sounds innocent enough.

Part of this program included a requirement to write a five paragraph essay that told the teacher about your biggest problems. Even at this young age, I felt that my problems were none of my teachers business. So I wrote the paper, making up silly meaningless problems and in the conclusion I said something to the effect of my biggest problem was coming up with problems to put in that essay.

Essentially, I said that my personal life is none of your damn business! This did not go over well. Between the repeated summons to counselors, my parents being called in to school, and what seemed like a month of harassment, I was taught not to think for myself and instead to comply.

The system was created to beat us all into compliance with authority. This is why the abuse of authority is the most unforgivable crime.

Enter President Richard M. Nixon, a prime example of the abuse of authority.

President Nixon was prosecuting a war in Vietnam, a war which was extremely unpopular. He saw that some of his harshest critics were Hippies and People of Color. Nixon clearly had a problem with being challenged, so he felt it was appropriate to attack his critics as his aide John Ehrlichman states in this 1994 quote, We knew we couldnt make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communitiesWe could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.

If we study the effects of this example of abuse of authority the trail is mind boggling and fraught with decades of carnage.

The anti-drug campaign was part of all of our lives. Millions of people still believe what they were forced to believe for Nixons personal benefit. In school, we were taught and taught again of the dangers of drugs unsanctioned by the state, while some of us took the legal equivalent of methamphetamine just to make us conform to the system.

We wrote essays, prepared skits, and so much more that parroted back the dangers of certain drugs. I did avoid the use of drugs, but that had nothing to do with school, that was due to a combination of efforts from my Mother and the fact that I really was not interested in trying them to begin with. I was not an addictive personality, so drugs were never an issue to me.

I do not make the argument that drugs cannot be harmful, but it is well known that many more people die from legal drugs under the supervision of a doctor than illegal drug abuse.

The government sanctioning of a substance does not guarantee its safety, and the illegal nature does not mean it is unsafe. I would prefer that drugs were not abused, regardless of their legal status, but this is not the world we live in.

So, as Nixon wanted, the war raged on and he won office and was re-elected. His little white lie started landing people in jail and ruining their lives, this mushroomed into what we have today millions of Americans with criminal records who harmed no one and over a trillion tax dollars spent on a War on Drugs that did not decrease usage at all; forty years of misinformation, and for what? So that a dead president that resigned in disgrace could keep his job.

This is why abuse of authority in government is far more treasonous than the actions of a person such as Edward Snowden, whose only crime was telling the American people that the NSA was violating the constitution and abusing their authority.

If you were to expose a lie from a dictator, that dictator would have you killed. If you expose a lie or violation of your government, your government will try to do the same: ask Mr. Snowden, who is exiled to Russia instead of being able live at home and receive the congratulations of the people who are grateful for the risk he took in exposing the truth.

Compliance is paramount to government. If you fail to comply with their requirements, you will pay a severe penalty.

So, how can we solve the problem of abuse of authority vs. the necessity of compliance? Comply with the realities of the world, but dont bury your head in the sand and ignore what is really going on around you. Pay attention to what is really happening. Dont let drug-war-style brainwashing blind you to certain realities that government has used to bolster their revenue, power and control over you; thus solidifying their grip on power and job security as Nixon did so long ago.

Consider a few conventional items required by government today and you may notice that these are also abuses of authority. These abuses of authority may not be as egregious and destructive as Nixons War on Drugs, but they are still violations of your rights and some are out right theft.

If you make the connection that you have been manipulated, through the system, to believe what you are told by your government, you will never make the connection that these things really do happen. They are wrong and are designed to strengthen governments grip on you. You are more likely to believe that these were done in the interests of protecting you than to see the truth:

Can the people overcome this combination of forced indoctrination of the activities of government; combined with misinformation about their abuses of authority? I fervently hope so.

What plan can I offer to allow for the discipline necessary for survival to be part of us, without the brainwashing that results in most of us not seeing reality? This is the $64,000 question.

It is a given that government controls the schools. It is a given that government controls the curriculum in those schools. It is a given that people who speak in opposition to the lessons crucial to sustenance of the power of government are punished. It is a given that the people are forced to accept lies with respect to the abuse of government authority or pay the consequences.

The media is a willing partner as well. Mass media is used for the purpose of reinforcing any lies that cover up the motivation of the abuse of authority as well. We are constantly bombarded with false and manipulative information from all angles. It appears that there is nothing we can do.

Believe it or not, the answer to this is twofold social media and the closure of the Department of Education.

The closure of the Department of Education is pretty obvious, in that the decentralization of control of education would allow for less central control of curriculum. The effect of social media is why the fake news propaganda is swirling around in Washington D.C. There is an inconvenient barrier to complete control of the news media and it resides in the first amendment to the constitution. That barrier is Freedom of the Press. The fake news campaign is a precursor to an attack on freedom of the press.

If we remain steadfast to the protections included in the Bill of Rights, which our government sees more as a hurdle than a barrier, I see the pendulum swinging back in the direction of the people.

Heres how:

While mainstream media (MSM) still reports what they are instructed to report, and while schools still disseminate the same, it is social media that allows the people to interact with each other on a large scale. The people are not happy, and while the MSM encourages them to blame another political party that actually works in concert with their own, they really do not know why the people are so unhappy. I believe that most people smell a rat and are looking for the truth that is being shielded from them.

Social media, as long as it is allowed to operate freely, is the leader in the dissemination of truth (as long as the reader has the ability to filter out the crazy stuff).

This is fact: mainstream media may indeed succumb to the misinformation provided to it by our government, but they are in business for profit. If they are forced to choose between losing money and ceasing to exist or continuing to disseminate lies, they must choose survival.

As the people learn more of the truth of the current situation and make the connection that they are being lied to, they will seek out alternative sources of information. While many people prefer to hear lies that support their views, I believe that more people want to know the truth, because the truth en masse can lead to better decisions and a better life.

As this truth is uncovered, they will make decisions to stop electing politicians who believe in mass manipulation as the way to achieve their personal goals while in office.

The people will demand truth from mainstream media at some point in time, and if they fail to provide what their customers demand, these entities will fail and their new competitors will soar.

So as wacky as social media may seem, it is a vital key to freedom.

This post was written by Steve Kerbel.

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

Steve Kerbel is a businessman, author, and former Libertarian Party candidate for President of the United States.

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An Unexpected Key to Freedom - Being Libertarian

Hello, and welcome back to this very special edition of Doth Protest Too Much, where I, David, take pot-shots at politics and hot button topics of great concern to the world as we know it.

One of these overlooked phenomena, which must be aptly addressed, is that of Australias longstanding drinking culture; which consists of drinking until you make Charlie Sheen look sober, dropping your dacks to the Eagle Rock and swigging cheap bags of cask wine (goon bags) with no repercussions.

All of this brings to mind a singular pertinent question in the minds of all libertarians: Why in the hell is this a libertarian issue?

Given the reputation of libertarians as hands-off people, unwilling to do anything for the benefit or the greater good, its time that we break down that stereotype and advance our own cause starting with this one topic in particular: How do we make societal progress in removing alcohol poisoning from the sphere of Australian culture?

The answer is incredibly simple, my friend.

The reason why the growth in sales of cask wine has boomed, and created such a thriving industry, is inherent in the tax rate, as cask wine is only taxed five cents per standard drink, which explains how four litres of white wine is readily available for the price of ten dollars.

Comparatively, a six pack of full strength beer (just under two litres) will cost $24.70 and will be subject to forty six cents of taxation on each standard drink.

Pre-mixed drinks (commonly referred to as Alcopops within Australia) are subject to a dollar and four cents of taxation for each standard drink, which makes a ten-can pack of the tangy soda, Smirnoff Ice Black, a whopping 41 dollars.

Having already established the cost/ratio difference to be considerably uneven in Australian taxes, the inner machinations of a youth looking to get tipsy seem to be common sense, although we are yet to factor in the alcohol percentage of these drinks.

The beer ($24.70 for 1.98 litres) has an alcohol percentage of 5.2%.

The pre-mixed Alcopop ($41.00 for 3.75 litres) has an alcohol percentage of 6.5%.

The cask wine ($10 for 4.0 litres) has an alcohol percentage of 9.5%.

A simple crunch of the numbers demonstrates how an uneven and faulty tax system has left exploitable loopholes for those looking for a quick and demonstrably dangerous buzz.

What can we do to curb the death-count? Should we enforce a higher taxation on cask wine?

Hell no!

The answer is to drop the tax on products with lower alcohol content and re-work the Australian identity to consume bottles designed for moderation rather than nebulous chrome blobs of morning regret.

We should protect our youth by accommodating their empty pockets rather than the governments flawed attempt at stopping rampant Australian alcoholism.

Perhaps Im completely wrong, perhaps Im right or perhaps I doth protest too much.

I need a drink.

This post was written by David McManus.

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

David McManus has an extensive background in youth politics and of advocacy with regards to the libertarian and anarcho-capitalist movements. David draws his values from the works of Stirner, Hoppe and Rothbard. He is currently a student in Australia with a passion for writing, which carries into a healthy zest for liberty-based activism. Despite an aspiring career in politics, he considers himself a writer at heart with a steady niche for freelance work.

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Doth Protest Too Much: Gooney Tunes - Being Libertarian

Skin color aside, what makes a white person? What makes a black person? If skin color magically disappeared the next morning, along with major physical differences, would you be able to determine who is white, black, Asian, and so on, based on their behavior or living conditions? You could make guesses based on generalizations and averages, but would you be one hundred percent correct? In order to better understand race and its importance, we should see whether or not it is more accurate to judge someone by their race or their individuality. Throughout this essay I shall argue that looking at people as individuals and upholding values of individuality is not only more ethical but more accurate than looking at people as merely members of a collective based upon their skin color. Is race just simply skin color, or is there a much larger picture which involves different behaviors or traits? Is race at all even relevant? In order to answer these questions, we need to establish what race is to begin with.

Definitions involving race seem to heavily emphasize physical differences with no mention of culture. For instance, Merriam-Webster defines race as any one of the groups that human beings can be divided into based on shared distinctive physical traits (Merriam-Webster). Does this definition fit what we commonly view as race? How about if it fits how we commonly view white people or black people? Are we able to identify white or black people based on their physical differences or behaviors? Oxford defines race as Each of the major divisions of humankind, having distinct physical characteristics. Again we see the same situation. Professor Ian Haney-Lpez has a somewhat different definition:

I define a race as a vast group of people loosely bound together by historically contingent, socially significant elements of their morphology and/or ancestry. I argue that race must be understood as a sui generis social phenomenon in which contested systems of meaning serve as the connections between physical features, races, and personal characteristics. In other words, social meanings connect our faces to our souls. Race is neither an essence nor an illusion, but rather an ongoing, contradictory, self-reinforcing process subject to the macro forces of social and political struggle and the micro effects of daily decisions.

Professor Lopez does note physical traits but seems to also include what he says are personal characteristics. What are these personal characteristics though? Is he just repeating himself when talking about physical features, or does Professor Lopez mean something entirely different? Is he referring to behaviors or actions? What behaviors would you describe as white? What behaviors would you describe as black? What are the characteristics of a Latino person if you excluded skin color? What makes a white or black person besides skin color? Perhaps these personal characteristics that Lopez is referring to can be found in the socially significant elements of their morphology and/or ancestry. When discussing socially significant elements were really talking about society, but is society the same globally? A black person in the United States who moves to Sri Lanka is still physically black, regardless of the different society and culture. Even if the country or geographic region were constant, society is always changing. So, will Lopezs definition hold the test of time? Imagine a utopian future where race has suddenly become irrelevant. Does Lopezs definition hold? Unfortunately not. We require a more consistent and universally applicable definition, which is why Id go with those laid out by Merriam-Webster and Oxford Dictionaries. Lopezs view of race embodies a social justice bias that has crept into his definition. We will further examine current social justice views on race as this book goes on.

So, what is race? To put it simply, it is a group of people only held together by physical differences. This is not to mention that these physical differences, which seemingly unites a group, is very diverse as well. There is no one true shade of black or white. There is pale, tan, moderately pink, light brown, dark brown, chestnut. There are large noses, short noses, medium noses, wide noses, thin noses. There are slanty eyes, wide eyes, small eyes, big eyes. Race can only tell us generally what the physical appearance of an individual is. It does not tell us anything about an individuals history, personality, work ethic, or interests.

Here we see a clear divide when it comes to an understanding on race: collectivism versus individualism, a rivalry that isnt limited to just race. Those who view people as members of collective races instead of different individuals also apply different traits and preconceptions about such members. Historically speaking, these could be those people who thought blacks were genetically inferior, and used this stance in order to justify slavery. There are also those who currently fight in the name of social justice, who champion ideas about white people being inherently privileged and people of color being members of an oppressed group. The white supremacist who thinks their race is superior to blacks uses the same lens as the social justice activist who thinks white people are privileged and people of color are oppressed. I shall refer to these people as racial collectivists.

An individual who views race as irrelevant views all races equally. There are people who look past the color of ones skin in exchange for more valuable information about an individual. Personality, intelligence, work ethic, religion, political leanings, all these are significantly more important than race to these people. Race is almost, if not completely, irrelevant. I shall refer to these people as racial individualists.

A libertarian theory on race would be a theory based upon individualism, one that takes into account the complexity and diversity of individuals. A libertarian would look past race in order to view the true beauty that is individuality. This makes libertarianism aligned with racial individualism. This is not surprising, seeing how many on the left tend to align more with the racial collectivists. The link between economics and race is present. Racial collectivism, interpreted by social justice advocates, is simply an application of Marxist class theory when applied to race. There is an oppressed class (people of color) and an oppressor class (white people). Libertarians are concerned with each individual within society, meaning an absence of one race representing oppressors and another representing the oppressed. This is all very well summed up by former libertarian congressman Ron Paul:

Racism is simply an ugly form of collectivism, the mindset that views humans strictly as members of groups rather than individuals. Racists believe that all individuals who share superficial physical characteristics are alike: as collectivists, racists think only in terms of groups. By encouraging Americans to adopt a group mentality, the advocates of so-called diversity actually perpetuate racism. Their obsession with racial group identity is inherently racist.

In order to make the case for racial individualism or a libertarian theory on race, we must first examine different issues necessary to build a foundation for the principles of individualism when applied to race. The following are different topics which I believe will help us better understand this theory.

What is racism to begin with? The answer may seem easy but the definition has been tampered with in order to fit the political agenda of racial collectivists, more specifically, social justice advocates. Social justice advocates use a definition influenced by sociologist David Wellman, who claims:

The essential feature of racism is not hostility or misperception, but rather the defense of a system from which advantage is derived on the basis of race. The manner in which the defense is articulated either with hostility or subtlety is not nearly as important as the fact that it insures the continuation of a privileged relationship. Thus it is necessary to broaden the definition of racism beyond prejudice to include sentiments that in their consequence, if not in their intent, support the racial status quo.

This definition has prompted many social justice advocates to believe that racism is prejudice plus societal power. This stands in contrast with many objective non-biased dictionary definitions that state that racism is, according to Merriam-Webster: a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race Just to prove that normal non-biased definitions show a different picture, I will provide another from Oxford: Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that ones own race is superior So, whos right, the objective unbiased definitions or the sociological definition used usually for political advocacy?

In order to see, lets consider a thought experiment.

Youre walking down the street and you see a group of rich black individuals calling a runaway, homeless white child racial slurs. The child is in tears and the wealthy black group continues to taunt him. Do you intervene? If you abide by Wellmans definition then no. According to social justice advocates, this is not racism because even if the black individuals are wealthy and dressed in nice tuxedos and ball gowns they are still members of an oppressed class. This also means the runaway, homeless white child is a member of the oppressive class. This then simply becomes an issue of the oppressed standing up to the oppressor. Does this seem right? A better way to look at the situation lies in the lens of individualism. What we then see is rude, racist individuals taunting someone because of their race, which is racism. Which makes more sense as an analysis of this incident? The argument could be made that this is a hypothetical situation and rarely happens. Is this an adequate response to the criticism against a social justice definition of racism? Absolutely not. Definitions must have universal application and if all it takes is for one individual instance for your definition not to apply then your definition is broken. We will explore this idea of rare examples more closely in the next section.

Can empiricism be used to justify the stereotyping of individuals of different races? Consider the following two interactions I partook in.

I once had a conversation with a self-proclaimed white supremacist. I asked her to try and legitimize her views, and she listed off a bunch of empirical evidence involving crime, IQ, wealth, and productivity, all leading her to the assumption that whites are superior to blacks. Before you think up your criticisms with this reasoning, please consider another interaction.

I had another conversation with a social justice advocate who claimed all white people were privileged. After asking her to legitimize her views she listed off a bunch of empirical evidence involving wealth, incarceration, police shootings, and so on.

Do you see a connection? Both of these individuals were racial collectivists and used the same methodology, yet reached very different conclusions. Many libertarians who are familiar with the Austrian School of Economics already have their critiques of empiricism, but should we be equally as skeptical when empiricism is used to justify racial collectivism?

Lets start with what empiricism can do. It can tell us generalizations and averages that can explain certain phenomena. For instance, when people say that the disproportionate amount of blacks shot by the police is due to racism, we can better understand this situation by looking at empirical evidence involving crime rates that lead to police encounters instead. This explains the situation without placing blanket statements over an entire group of individuals connected only by their race. So if someone is asking why race a is more likely to be subject to [condition] than race b, we can explain this situation by looking at empirical evidence that shows that race a does more [action] that leads to [condition] than race b. Explanations are all empirical evidence. Evidence is no good when it comes to race unless the sample size includes every single individual member of a race and results in a 100 percentage. Such a thing is impossible, so lets disregard empirical evidence except in the instance of explaining phenomena involving a percentage of members of a race.

Going back to my two encounters, does empirical evidence justify their views and the acts of stereotyping different individuals that arise out of it? Absolutely not. To do so would be both illogical and unethical. Lets consider the first case. The white supremacist listed a bunch of empirical evidence involving crime, IQ, wealth, and productivity. If her assertion that whites are superior are true, then we would have to look at all the individuals involved. Are there people of color who dont commit crimes? Are there no white people who dont commit crimes? Are there no people of color who are smart? The same goes for wealth and productivity. The fact of the matter is that there are white criminals and black criminals, wealthy whites and wealthy blacks, and while the numbers may vary, race is not a sufficient way to look at it. 100 percent of wealthy people are wealthy, what percent of whites are wealthy? Definitely not 100 percent. Same goes for the other issues brought up by the white supremacist.

The social justice advocate is the same exact case. Just because there is empirical evidence that suggests more whites are wealthier than people of color, this does not mean that all white people are wealthy or all people of color are impoverished. The same goes for victims of police shootings and racism. As weve earlier established, white people can be victims of racism. The idea that white privilege is dangerous more dangerous than the ideas of the white supremacist is because its being masqueraded around as an anti-racist term. Most white supremacists know theyre racist and are proud of it. They mostly understand their ideas are going to be hated by the majority of people they encounter. This does not apply to the concept of white privilege. Its being used by social justice advocates to fight racism when whats ironically happening is theyre furthering racism by using the same methodology and collectivist lens that their white supremacist counterparts use. Not all white people are privileged, just like not all people of color are oppressed. Empirical evidence could suggest trends, but it does not provide a substantial assessment about entire groups of individuals connected only by the color of their skin. This makes the concept of white privilege illogical, unethical, obsolete, yet still dangerous.

Culture has been used as justification that there are some inherent differences between races that are not just related to physical differences. This has led to terms such as black culture or white culture. This assumes, going off a racial collectivist analysis, that it is impossible for a white person to be integrated into black culture or that a black person would stray away from black culture. An individualist does not deny culture and its importance, but an individualist more specifically a racial individualist would recognize that cultures arent inherent to certain races.

Think about this geographically. Asians are spread all throughout the world, in North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa, Australia, and obviously Asia. Do all these Asians follow the same culture simply based on the color of their skin? To say so would be ridiculous. For starters, there are different cultures based off of specific countries. Chinese culture is very different from Japanese culture. If they have the same culture why are have the Chinese and Japanese had historical conflicts? Within the country is different cultures as well. For instance, if we were to look at China, the Jiangshu province is much different from the Qinghai province in terms of culture. I shouldnt even have to explain the cultural differences that lie within the Tibet Region and Inner Mongolia. To claim that a culture is inherent or belongs to a certain race is geographically ridiculous.

This also assumes that its impossible for a member of a race to not identify with a common culture. Is there now no such thing as outliers or outsiders? Are there absolutely no Egyptians who follow an Egyptian culture? Do these outsiders not exist? What if these outsiders come in the future? Do we have all the relevant information to accurately say that ones race must obligate them to a culture? We dont, and to say otherwise would be to claim you know every single individual personally on the planet currently, as well as every single individual who has ever lived and ever will live. Many social justice ideas fail when we consider what relevant information is necessary to validate these beliefs, but the idea that a culture is inherent to a race is just one of them.

All of this refutes the famous term used by racial collectivists known as cultural appropriation. Although this concept is used mainly in social justice circles, I will admit it has found its way into unbiased organizations as well. The Cambridge Dictionary even has a definition for it: the act of taking or using things from a culture that is not your own, especially without showing that you understand or respect this culture. So how then does one obtain a culture? Do you have to be Asian in order to eat sushi? Do you have to be Mexican in order to wear a sombrero? The fact is that no individual can own a culture, regardless of their race, and at the same time no individual can be prohibited by a force of nature from taking part in a culture regardless of their race. The concept of cultural appropriation fails because it tries to claim the impossible: that a race made up of diverse and complex individuals somehow claim ownership to a culture.

Diversity of race is something that many have strived for, but why? It would make sense ethically to strive for diversity of race if there is clear racial discrimination, but why do people strive for diversity just for the sake of being racially diverse? Consider what this means. Striving for racial diversity implies that there is something inherently different between a white person, black person, Latino person, etc. What gets accomplished with racial diversity? More representation of people of many races, sure, but what is fundamentally different about them besides skin color? The most famous attempt to force diversity is the implementation of affirmative action programs in colleges across the western world. Individuals are being either penalized or benefitted, not for any merit, but rather due to a physical feature they have absolutely no control over. All in the name of what? Many have argued that there is a point of view and story involved inherently within a race, so therefore you would in turn be supporting diversity of opinion. The problem with this is that not all people who share the same race share the same story. Suppose the argument is made that black people go through financial struggles more than white people, therefore affirmative action must be put in place in order to get that perspective included into discourse between students. What then if an odd coincidence occurs in which the only black students who were admitted to University A were wealthy and well off? Its a very rare thing to see but not impossible. Would you then claim that University A was diverse?

I believe diversity is something to strive for, just not the racial diversity that social justice advocates advocate for. Diversity of personality, thought, religion, and political ideology is all much more important than diversity of race. When we focus clearly on diversity of thought instead of diversity of race, we can better accomplish the goals of a more well-rounded, knowledgeable society. There is nothing inherently different about a white person or a black person besides skin color.

What is the beautiful infinity? Ive coined this term to highlight the complexity and diversity of individuals. There are infinite types of individuals and no one individual can fully understand them all, let alone one. There are many of these individuals who are pushing ideas in the name of social justice. These racial collectivists just use the same methodology as racial collectivists of the past, such as white supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan. What is essentially being done is lazy; instead of looking at all these complex and diverse individuals, racial collectivists are lazily grouping people together based on their skin color, a physical attribute they have zero control over. Personality, intelligence, history, geography, and psychology, all tossed aside in the name of laziness and racial collectivism by social justice advocates. Individuals do make up a beautiful infinity. You will never find two individuals who are 100% identical; there are individuals who may act the same, grow up the same, and live the same, but there will always be a difference. The human mind is complex and has led to a history full of diverse individuals, and will lead to a future of the same. To group them based on skin color and then proceed to make assumptions about them is unethical, illogical, and frankly lazy. I shall conclude with a 1973 quote by Austrian economist Friedrich A. von Hayek:

I am certain, however, that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.

* Stuart Clayton Lee is a far-right anarcho-capitalist who is currently attending college in Washington state. His favorite political philosopher is Robert Nozick, even if he disagrees with him on many issues. He finds himself most in agreement with Murray Rothbard. He is also a contributor to Liberty Hangout. He is currently studying economics and is pursuing knowledge personally in Austrian economics.

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Beautiful Infinity: A Libertarian Theory on Race - Being Libertarian

By: Caiti Anderson

There is no state quite like New York and not many election laws quite like New Yorks, either. As one example, only New York and six other states permit fusion voting. On a fusion ballot, a candidate can be listed as candidate for more than one party. Fusion voting, as noted the 1997 Supreme Court decision of Timmons v. Twin Cities Area New Party, had its heyday during the Gilded Age. Political parties, rather than governmental entities, distributed their own ballots to voters but did not affirmatively tell voters what other parties endorsed the same candidate(s) they supported. Thus, Candidate Smith could be supported by both the Granger and Republican parties, but those who voted the Granger ballot would not necessarily know from the ballot the Granger party handed them that the Republican Party also supported Smith.

All of this changed with the contentious election of 1888, when Democratic President Grover Cleveland lost to Republican Benjamin Harrison, even though Cleveland won the popular vote by 0.8%. Harrison carried Indiana, his home state, but only through ballot chicanery: the Republican Party passed out its ballots en masse and paid men to illegally cast additional ballots. After the scandal emerged, it was too late Harrison was president, and America was angry.

The Progressive movement latched onto this populist anger and pushed through a series of election reforms at the turn of the nineteenth century. As state and local governments began to print their own ballots, the fusion ballot steadily lost support.

New York, however, has maintained the fusion ballot status quo. Although it occasionally comes under attack as an unfair practice, others laud its ability to grant a greater voice to third parties. Nevertheless, as the 2016 election shows its boon to third parties seems more like a benefit to the Democratic and Republican parties.

Figure 1

Figure 1 is a partial copy of aNovember 2016 New York absentee ballot. As you can see, three presidential candidates (Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Gary Johnson) appear on the ballot more than once.

Fusion voting in a presidential election is more complicated than other races because of the Electoral College. When voting for a presidential candidate, a voter is actually voting for an elector to the Electoral College, not the candidate herself.

Figure 2

Lets look at Hillary Clinton (Figure 2). She appears as the candidate for the Democratic, Working Families, and Womens Equality parties. Because these parties submitted identical lists of Electoral College delegates to the New York State Board of Elections, each of these candidate slots offer an opportunity to vote for the same elector for Clinton. Thus, a vote for Clinton under the Womens Equality ticket is, in essence, the same as voting for her under the Democratic ticket the vote will be aggregated towards the same elector count. The same is true for Donald Trump appearing as the Republican and Conservative parties nominee.

Gary Johnson, on the other hand, has a major problem.

New Yorks definition of a political party is one that received at least 50,000 votes in the most recent gubernatorial election. Only political parties have automatic access to the ballot, meaning that, in essence, only the Democratic and Republican parties are automatically qualified to be on the ballot. Independent parties must submit petitions with 15,000 signatures in order to qualify for the presidential ballot.

Gary Johnsons Libertarian Party obtained the necessary signatures to put Johnson on the presidential ballot and submitted the list of Electoral College delegates to the State Board. After this, however, the Independence Party also endorsed Johnson, but submitted a different list of Electoral College delegates than the Libertarian Party. Because of this, Johnsons vote totals for the Libertarian and Independence parties will not be aggregated.

Figure 3

Say, for example, Johnson won 30% of the vote under the Libertarian Party and 5% under the Independence Party, while Clinton won 34%, Trump won 29%, and Jill Stein won 2%. Johnson would have the majority of the votes at 35%, but Clinton would have the most electors and would win New York.

As unlikely as the scenario seems (Clinton has a >99% chance of winning New York at the time of publication), it is important for New Yorkers to take a hard look at the merits of fusion voting. Although fusion voting supposedly helps third parties, it seems to only help those third parties who support major party candidates meaning it ultimately helps major parties. Maybe it is time to recognize the real value of fusion voting in New York: the ability of placing ideas on the ballot.

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New York, Fusion Voting, and Gary Johnson Whats an ...

Young Americans for Liberty at Linfield College compared to terrorists, accused of threateningschools safe spaces

All they wanted to do was promote free speech and intellectual diversity. Instead their activities were condemned and shut down by professors and students.

So say members of the Young Americans for Liberty campus club at Linfield College, who tell The College Fix their efforts were stifled and stymied through fear and intimidation, administrative power, and student hysteria at their small school in McMinnville, Ore.

The liberty-loving students say they faced repeated and intense backlash from some professors and students after launching their club this past spring mostly notably their event with controversial Professor Jordan Peterson was canceled by campus leaders. Peterson is the University of Toronto psychologist recently famous for his opposition to the requirement of made-up gender pronouns.

The student group was also investigated for circulating a free speech ball on which someone drew Pepe the Frog, the unofficial alt-right mascot. After an investigation, during which YAL leaders were called in and interrogated, the student who drew the image was forced to write a conciliatory essay.

Another of their events, a screening of The Red Pill,a documentary on mens rights activists and critical of the contemporary feminist movement, drew even more ire from campus leaders, with one even likening the libertarian students events to terrorism recruitment.

The associate dean of faculty wrote in the Linfield Review: Just as becoming a terrorist is a gradual, step by step process, people do not become part of the alt right overnight. These events represent a kind of soft recruitment into more extremist ideas.

Another professor accused YAL of threatening the schools safe spaces.

In response to these controversies, a recent campus survey found that there should be some restrictions of speech, people should watch their language as to not offend anyone, and that offensive speakers should not be restricted, the Linfield Review reports.

Coming out against [campus leftists] is going to subject you to some real trouble, recent graduate Parker Wells, a member of Young Americans for Liberty, told The College Fix. Theres a real climate of fear for people who are outside of the normal liberal campus way of thinking. People are not comfortable saying what they think.

Pervasive left-wing campus culture

In telephone interviews, Wells and rising sophomore Keifer Smith (pictured) said it was their schools pervasive, left-wing campus culture that led them to help launch the Young Americans for Liberty club.

They said they were inspired by the lack of intellectual diversity at the private liberal arts college, which enrolls about 2,800 students and pledges to create global citizens out of its pupils, according to its website.

There was a lot of complaining that the campus was moving too far in one ideological direction, Wells said.

He added he felt there was a strong left-wing culture established by professors that felt nearly impossible to escape. For example, during a wine course he took the professor went on a forty-five minute lecture about the wage gap. You cant really escape a certain set of ideas no matter where you go.

So they launched Young Americans for Liberty. Wells became its events coordinator, Smithits vice president.

Then all hell broke lose.

The saga of the free speech ball and Pepe the Frog

The groups first event of the year was a free speech ball on April 12. To playfully promote free speech and free expression, group members set up a large beach ball on campus upon which students could draw or write anything they wanted.

When students came up to the beach ball, YAL organizers gave out fliers advertising the other events they would be hosting the Peterson lecture and The Red Pill mens rights documentary screening.

On the ball, one student drew Pepe the Frog the notorious image that some deem to be representative of the alt-right. The view that Pepe is a hate symbol is evidenced by the Anti Defamation Leagues inclusion of Pepe in its list of general hate symbols. However, the ADL explicitly notes that the majority of uses of Pepe the Frog have been, and continue to be, non-bigoted.

While Pepes presence on the ball did not immediately spark any censure in fact, many students found it hilarious, Wells said when the image of Pepe on the beach ball wound up on Linfields Instagram, censorship, slander against YAL, and an administrative investigation into the group ensued, according to Smith and Wells.

Linfields President, Thomas Hellie, received a number of emails from people outraged that Pepe an (alleged) symbol of racism and white supremacy was on the ball. Hellie took down the instagram post and told the Linfield Review that As soon as it was pointed out that the photo included the image, the Instagram post was removed.

The Linfield Advisory Committee on Diversity then held a free speech forum for the whole campus the Monday after the free speech ball. The diversity committee told YAL that it would not specifically focus on their group or the free speech ball, but that it would be an opportunity to talk about free speech in general.

However, according to Smith, the forum turned into three and half hours of 90 students and professors interrogating and slandering members of Young Americans for Liberty.

The two men said English Professor Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt alleged that YAL is funded by conservative dark money and funded by alt-right white supremacists. Wells and Smith both reject these claims.

There is absolutely no evidence to support that, Smith said.

But extremely problematic is how Dutt-Ballerstadt described the libertarian clubs invitation to Peterson and its screening of The Red Pill in an interview with the Linfield Review.

Problematic because neither Peterson nor the film will be promoting dialogues about gendered inclusions but rather be promoting a dangerous and offensive logic of gendered exclusions, said the English professor, who is also co-coordinator of the Gender Studies Program. The promotion of such exclusionary practices greatly threatens safe spaces for our students, staff and faculty who belong to marginalized groups and violates our ethos of upholding mutual respect on our campus.

Free speech is penalized

After the free speech forum, Wells said, the administration called in every member of YAL for one on one interviews and asked us who drew the frog? After administrators found out who it was, they made the student write an essay about the Pepe incident. (This student preferred not to be identified so as to avoid outrage from other students.)

During the developing controversy, Professor Peterson, in comedic opposition to the existence of safe spaces on college campuses, tweeted: Im violating some more safe spaces soon: Linfield College, April 24.

After this tweet, the Associated Students of Linfield College, citing Petersons violation of Linfields harassment policy and Petersons lack of punctuality in turning in an application it was a day late canceled the talk.

A spokesperson from Linfield stated in an email to The College Fix: There are always conditions for funding. Dr. Peterson and the student organization failed to meet any of the conditions set forth, and ASLC responded by removing its sponsorship and cancelling its funding.

Wells (pictured with Peterson) said that the college has happily looked over such lateness in the past, and it is by no means a precedent for canceling a talk.

Nonetheless, the show went on. Peterson and YAL rented space at the Evergreen Aviation Center Museum grounds and, according to Smith, about 400 fans showed up, and more than 300 people watched it on livestream. The talk was exceedingly well received: Peterson received a standing ovation and the lecture has since been watched more than 86,000 times on YouTube.

As for Linfield cancelling his speech: You were obviously just looking for any excuse, said Peterson in his YouTube response to Linfield.

MORE:College disinvites professor who wont use gender-neutral pronouns because of safe space joke

More trouble ahead

But even during this success, YAL still faced hostility from students.

After Petersons lecture, people congregated in the theater discussing the talk. Wells says that a student at Linfield who he had never spoken to went directly up to him and said, Hey. I appreciate what youre doing here, but seriously fuck you. Putting his middle finger right in Parkers face he said, I think youre just doing this for yourself and you dont care about how it effects other people. And for that all I can say is fuck you.

They also didnt win over many left-leaning ideologues on campus for their May 2 screening of Cassie Jayes The Red Pill.

Professor Dutt-Ballerstadt, in an op-ed in the Linfield Review, rhetorically suggested the YAL events promote racism, homophobia, transphobia, bigotry, misogyny, rape culture, violence against women and a disregard for disabled individuals on our campus.

She continued: The agenda of groups like Alt-Right and campus clubs that are either supported by the Alt-right or providing a platform for the Alt-Right is clear. They want to challenge college campuses for their numerous diversity and inclusion initiatives that provide a legitimate space for ideas and knowledge base that have been historically marginalized and excluded.

Dutt-Ballerstadt did not respond to a request by The College Fix for comment. Linfields media spokesperson Scott Nelson did not respond to a question aboutDutt-Ballerstadt.

Wells also alleged that students were worried about being publicly associated with YAL not only due to social pressures, but due to possible negative academic consequences.

Ive heard this from multiple students in multiple professors classes. And its really not that surprising when you look at whats been said. If youre a freshman and you read what Professor Dutt-Ballestadt said then you wouldnt dare tell her that you had any part of the YAL, he said.

Meanwhile, in the Linfield Review, professor and Associate Dean of Faculty Dawn Nowacki wrote: Overt white supremacism, misogyny, and hatred of LGBTQTI people have not been strongly expressed in the events organized by the Young Americans for Liberty. In fact, these efforts are a lot more subtle. Just as becoming a terrorist is a gradual, step by step process, people do not become part of the alt right overnight. These events represent a kind of soft recruitment into more extremist ideas.

But a Linfield spokesperson stated in an email to The College Fix that the claims of suppressing intellectual diversity are not true.

I flatly rejected the notion that speakers on campus reflect a political homogeneity. Among conservative and libertarian speakers Linfield has hosted in recent years are Jim Hoffman (twice), Steve Knott, Justin Dryer, Tom Palmer, Mark Blitz, Peter Berkowitz, Mark David Hall, Jason Brennan, Chris Preble, Patrick Allitt and Michael Zuckert. All have strong conservative credentials. Huffman is not only a constitutional scholar, but was also a Republican candidate for attorney general of Oregon. We have hosted these speakers because we believe its important to have a civil debate on our campus. We have also hosted liberal speakers for the same reasons, said Linfields spokesperson Scott Nelson.

Lasting impact?

At the end of the day, efforts by the Young Americans for Liberty at Linfield College have helped pave the way for intellectual diversity and free speech, said its president Lucas Carter in an op-ed in the Linfield Review.

Among other things, a conservative equivalent to Young Americans for Liberty, known as Turning Point USA, has spruced up on campus and there is word that a democratic socialist club is in the works, Carter stated. This is exactly what we wanted and we couldnt be any more proud to have pushed Linfields culture in this direction to be able to discuss such variety of views. That is true diversity. Relating back to the previous paragraph: It mightve been a bumpy road, but our activism ultimately paid off and helped foster a culture of respect for the Linfield community.

MORE:Student government rejects Young Americans for Liberty chapter: Its dangerous

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About the Author

College Fix contributor Max Diamond is a recent graduate of Reed College and a freelance writer and editor in New York City.

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Students launch libertarian club at small Oregon college and get harassed, investigated, condemned - The College Fix

Last week marked the one year anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando. The last month and a half has brought multiple terrorist attacks to the UK alone. The last few years have seen a dramatic rise in the frequency of these attacks both abroad and on our soil. On Tuesday there was an attempted suicide-bombing in Brussels.

Sadly, many of us are adjusting to the idea that this is becoming just part of our day-to-day life, and we just need to get used to it. It is unfortunate that we have no way of identifying the threat and preventing the attacks. Its too bad there is no common factor that links these attacks together. Its too bad these murderers pledge allegiance to only themselves, showing their devotion to being a lone wolf. It is good, however, that we can rule out one possible cause. Not only have we heard it from the left and their media, but before each violent slaughter, the attackers usually shout This has nothing to do with Islam.

Now, I already see you scrolling to find the comment section and telling me what an intolerant, hateful, racist, Islamophobic, bigot I am. Well, you can go ahead, but Ill clarify the pertinent point: I am not advocating hatred or discrimination against Muslims or Middle-Eastern People, at any time, for any reason. However, I am advocating an honest conversation about ideologies and systems of government without being censored. There is no question that there is an overwhelming number of Muslims who are not violent or evil. There is also no question that those countries with a centralized, Islamic government rooted in Sharia law violate human rights on a regular basis and desire domination of the west to establish a world-wide Caliphate.

The wests hesitancy to discuss the ideological flaws of Islam shows yet another success of the lefts ability to control the narrative. For obvious reasons, when you look at our countrys history, being called a racist is one of the most damning labels on a societal level. The left knows this. They do their very best, and are usually successful, in finding a way to label all of their political enemies racist in an attempt to shut down or derail the discussion, even if the discussion has nothing to do with race. This is especially true when trying to have a discussion about the dangers of Islam. It is easier to just continually attack someones character than it is to defend an ideology that you know is indefensible.

I want to quickly address a few myths perpetuated by the left regarding Islam. First, that the number of Muslims who exercise a literal translation of the Quran is insignificant. According to Pew Research, a significant majority of Muslims, who dont necessarily live in a place with institutionalized Sharia, support Sharia law as an effective legal code and favor harsh, capital punishment for the infidels that violate the tenants of Islam. Here are just a few examples:

There are roughly 81 million Muslims in Egypt, which means over 71 million people support Islamism and capital punishment for violating Islamic code in Egypt alone. Billions of Muslims worldwide support genital mutilation and the literal caning of women in the streets for speaking to a man that isnt her husband, and support repressing other womens rights including driving a car or owning property, as well the extinguishing of all political and religious minorities, and the public execution of LGBT people. Why do the same progressives, feminists, and social-justice warriors who claim to care about perceived oppression, bigotry, misogyny, and homophobia in the United States close a blind eye to the heinous injustices in Islamic countries?

Keeping those statistics in mind, Id like to address the other non-sequitur coming from the left: the idea that ISIS is comparable to the Westboro Baptist Church or the KKK. The WBC consists of about 12 inbred people, and the idea that the KKK is still thriving in America is a fantasy. In addition, a basic study into the teachings of Christianity will show you why this is lunacy. These groups act in direct opposition to the teachings of the Bible. While the Old Testament is filled with one-liners that you could pull both in and out of context, what Islam apologists fail to realize is that the Old Testament is not the governing rulebook for Christianity, the teachings of Jesus Christ are. For Christians, Jesus came to fulfill or complete the Old Law, and the actions taken by these small numbered radicals are certainly in conflict with His teachings. Christian churches across the globe are not preaching in defense of the WBC or KKK, they in fact preach the literal opposite. On the other hand, Sharia law and the violence and jihad it encourages is formed directly from instructions in the Quran and the Hadith, and is supported and preached daily to billions of followers.

By refusing to see Islams role in the imploding of the Middle East, as well as the dangerous spread of terrorists to the west, the left prevents the reform that Islam needs. Unlike Christianity, which Islam apologists will continuously make illogical analogies to, there has never been a reform to Islam. While the medieval era featured Christianity as a political ideology, separation of church and state is a core tenant of the Judeo-Christian founded West. While the number of Christians in any given society may be the majority, the practicing of faith is mainly done in private, in homes or churches. No major Islamic school of thought has sought to separate the private spirituality of its members from the public Islamic state. Islam, as many Muslims practice it, is a totalitarian ideology. In their eyes, there can be no separation.

On another interesting note, leftists will go blue in the face telling you that Islam has nothing to do with the atrocities literally committed in its name, and then in the same breath tell you that Donald Trump is responsible for every crime committed by white men since he has been on the campaign trail because of his dangerous and hateful rhetoric. Those are some impressive mental gymnastics.

Youve heard the saying the enemy of your enemy is your friend. This has led to many nefarious partnerships throughout history, some recent examples include the Republican Party with Donald Trump and the modern-left with Islamism. We are seeing Republicans bend their principles at will to Trumpism, and we are seeing the left begin to normalize and mainstream violence towards those with whom they disagree. It is easy to forgive or overlook someones flaws if you feel that youre working towards the same goals. The left believes the ends justify the means. The left discourages and represses free-thinking. The left preaches a deep hatred of the western Judeo-Christian society, traditions, and values. So, why is the left directly preventing the much-needed reform of Islam? They certainly dont want to admit it, and I know this sounds extreme, but Id encourage you to think hard on this proposal: leftists are more ideologically aligned with ISIS than they are with the Americans on the other side of the aisle.

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Why is the Left so Dishonest about Islam? - Being Libertarian

Hundreds of libertarians converge on Lancaster, NH this weekend to celebrate Porcfest (PanAm Post).

Nestled amidst New Hampshires majestic White Mountains, Lancaster, NH this week hosts the XIV annual Porcupine Freedom Festival, the signature event of the libertarian Free State Project.

Libertarians worldwide should draw inspiration from the Free State Project, perhaps the greatest movement of libertarians putting their beliefs into action. Founded by Yale doctoral candidate Jason Sorens in 2001, the movement specifically sought to address concerns within the libertarian community over the difficulty facing third parties at the national and state level, due to a political and legal establishment that exists to support a two party system.

The Free State Project thus began a lengthy search process, looking for a state where they could attract libertarian transplants nationwide. They began looking for a state small in size, favorable to libertarian philosophy, and where they felt that they could exert real influence in bringing about libertarian-minded public policy. In 2003 the group selected New Hampshire over runner up Wyoming by a 57% to 43% margin.

The famously libertarian state, with its Live Free or Die Motto proved an ideal fit for the movement, and by February of 2016, 20,000 libertarians had signed The Pledge, promising to move to New Hampshire within the next five years. Their efforts soon bore fruit. In 2014, 18 Free Staters were elected to the state legislature as both Republicans and Democrats. Currently 15 members of the state legislature are Free Staters. The Republican Party has largely welcomed the newcomers with open arms, approving of their limited government message.

The FSP has not been welcomed with the same enthusiasm by some local Democrats, however. State representative Cynthia Chase had some choice words for the Free State Project, suggesting in 2012 that, Free Staters are the single biggest threat the state is facing today. There is, legally, nothing we can do to prevent them from moving here to take over the state, which is their openly stated goal. In this country you can move anywhere you choose and they have that same right. What we can do is to make the environment here so unwelcoming that some will choose not to come, and some may actually leave. One way is to pass measures that will restrict the freedoms that they think they will find here.

Apparently to proponents of big government like Chase the threat posed by freedoms is truly terrifying! To those led astray by the Democratic Party limited government, Constitutional freedoms, entrepreneurship, Second Amendment rights, private property, are dangerous notions that must be eradicated.

Porcfest this year features Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne as the keynote speaker. Byrne is an e-commerce and school choice pioneer who firmly believes in the power of free markets and educational choice to transform lives and nations. Through his Worldstock Fair Trade division, he has funded schools throughout Asia and Africa, while providing local artisans opportunities to sell and market their hand-crafted goods. Byrne is a prime example of someone who can effectively expound upon the power of capitalism to lift those in the developing world out of poverty.

He notes that,Worldstocks mission is to create sustainable livelihoods for artisans around the world by leveraging the internet to introduce their good to the U.S. market. Were privileged to be able to further support international humanitarian efforts around the world by bringing schools, clinics, drinking water, and sustainable cottage industries to artisan communities globally.

The speaker lineup addresses issues of national, state, and local significance, including workshops on how to strategize and plan for a move to New Hampshire. Attorneys and real estate agents, technology experts, privacy and civil liberties advocates, Second Amendment proponents, cryptocurrency enthusiasts, and supporters of limited Constitutional government converge upon the White Mountains to share ideas and inspire each other to use New Hampshire as a springboard to put their theoretical beliefs into practical action.

FSP should be a shining beaconan inspiration to lovers of liberty and opponents of big government and state abuse wordlwide. Perhaps nowhere else in the world has one group of dedicated activists done more to bring about real change. Hopefully the efforts of FSP will inspire similar movements in other parts of the world.

David Unsworth is a Boston native. He received degrees in History and Political Science from Washington University in St. Louis, and subsequently spent five years working in real estate development in New York City. Currently he resides in Bogota, Colombia, where he is involved in the tourism industry. In his free time he enjoys singing in rock bands, travelling throughout Latin America, and studying Portuguese.

EspaolOn Thursday, Mexican President Enrique Pea Nieto denied claimsthat his administration isspying on journalists, human rights activists and lawyers. Here and now I want to categorically state this is a democratic government, this is a government that respects and tolerates critical voices," he said during the inauguration of a park in the state of Jalisco. Heconcluded his speech by sayinghe trusts that "under the law, justice can be applied against those who have raised these false statements against the government." Many have taken the statement as a threat, but Nieto has since denied those interpretations, while stressing thatthe Mexican government's technology is used only to maintain the country's internal security and to combat organized crime. Read More: El Chapo Guzman Sues Netflix, Univision over Use of His Image Read More: Russia Sides with Cuban Dictatorship, Calls Trumps Policy Reversal Cold War Rhetoric "It is very easy to point fingers," he said. "And to suggest thatthe government is spying. Nothing is more untrue than that, because none of the claimants can affirm or show evidence that their life has been affected by this alleged espionage." googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1459522593195-0'); }); The claims of espionage were originally made by a Monday report inThe New York Times.President Nieto said he will not act against the publication or any of the people that made a complaint to the Attorney General's Office. When asked if there would be reprisals against those who accused him of espionage, the Mexican president replied: "Do not get me to say what I have not said. Why should I take any actions against freedom of expression? On the contrary,we are creating better conditions for freedom of expression." Source: Animal Poltico

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Free State Project: Libertarians Putting Beliefs into Action - PanAm Post

ideological garbage

The professor assigned reading from the Cato Institute. What a crime.

The College Fix reported:

Student tries to get professor in trouble for assigning her libertarian reading

University of St. Francis student Jennifer Martin tweeted Wednesday that her professor (an adjunct, it turns out) gave her an assigned reading on national health care systems from the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank that is widely respected in D.C. for the quality of its research and thought-provoking events (one such event covered here last fall).

Cato also got tens of millions in funding over the years from Charles and David Koch, the billionaire brothers who are active in Republican politics, and it was co-founded by Charles four decades ago.

This was enough for Martin to declare that her professor had committed an academic sin, and she would get this person in trouble for giving her ideological garbage from a conservative propaganda machine to read. (Never mind the Kochs sued Cato for control of a board seat five years ago, and the settlement protected Catos independence.)

See the original post here:

Student Complains After Prof Assigns Libertarian Reading Material - legal Insurrection (blog)

From: C Sent: Tuesday, June 06, 2017 10:19 AM To: wblock@loyno.edu Subject: Involuntary Commitments blog on Lewrockwell Professor Block, I wanted to thank you for your recent post on lewrockwell about Involuntary Commitments (https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/involuntary-commitments/). Yours is the first post that Ive seen in all these years that addresses what Ive seen as a real weakness in the libertarian community. Ive had enough interactions with people to know that many people need help to pull themselves up. Whether its because of mental illness, traumas suffered, circumstance, an unlucky turn, you name it, life isnt easy. Life is hard and some people get crushed underneath it. I suppose Ive reached a point where the further away the government were talking about the more strict libertarian I am, but the closer to home were talking about the more pragmatic I become. Welfare at the federal level versus the local city or town level are two completely different things. Ive seen too many people beaten down by the government school system, or the drug war, or poverty, or abuse, (and yes, as you mention much of this would be alleviated by a more libertarian system) that if some of my local tax dollars goes to fund a local abused womans shelter, or a local foodbank for the homeless, or a reading program at the local library to help children, yeah, I can get behind that. I think that where Libertarians shine brightly is in understanding the big picture, the core principles that drive big problems. But sometimes I also think that after years (or decades) of seeing all the horrible things that government has done, it becomes easy for libertarians to stick their nose up at the world (and the people suffering in it) and subtly confuse their deep understanding of what ails the country with genuine compassion. Your comments were the first Ive seen that broaches this topic. Sincerely, the 80% Libertarian. C

Dear C: Without government, the poor would be much better off. The state takes half the GDP and wastes most of it. They use a lot of their share of our production to regulate us, and make us even less efficient. Even so, charitable giving is generous. Without the statists, it would be much higher. I dont think we need fear for the plight of the helpless in the free society. Nor am I a big fan of federalism; let the cities and states solve problems, not the federal government. The state is the state is the state; it is evil at any and all levels. Yes, other things equal, we libertarians expect better from local than central governments, but this is not always the case. President Reagan once threatened NYC with dire consequences for their local rent control ordinances. I favored him over them in that episode. Hopefully, this experience will now raise you to 81% libertarian, or more.

Readings. On federalism: Block, Walter E. and Stephan Kinsella. 5/24/05. Federalism. http://archive.lewrockwell.com/block/block48.html

On charity, poverty:

Anderson, G., 1987; Anderson M., 1978; Beito, 2000; Block, 2001, 2011; Brown, 1987; Delery and Block, 2006; Elder, 2016; Hazlitt, 1969; Higgs, 1995; Knight, Simpson and Block, 2015; LaBletta and Block, 1999; Moscatello, McAndrews and Block, 2015; Murray, 1984, 2006; Niskanen, 2006; Olasky, 1992; Piven and Cloward, 1993; Richman, 2001; Rothbard, 1996, 1998; Sowell, 2014; Tucker, 1984; Williams, 2014. For a critique of Murray, 2006, see Gordon, 2006.

Anderson, Gary M. 1987. Welfare Programs in the Rent Seeking Society, Southern Economic Journal, 54: 377-386

Anderson, Martin. 1978. Welfare: The Political Economy of Welfare Reform in the United States, Stanford: Hoover Institution

Beito, David. 2000. From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.

Block, Walter E. 2001. Transfers in Kind: Why They Can be Efficient and Nonpaternalistic Comment, International Journal of Value-Based Management, pp. 191-199; http://www.walterblock.com/publications/transfers_in_kind.pdf

Block, Walter E. 2011. Toward a libertarian theory of charitable donations. Economics, Management, and Financial Markets. Vol. 6, No. 4, pp. 9-28; http://www.addletonacademicpublishers.com/abstracts/economics-management-and-financial-markets/volume-64-2011/toward-a-libertarian-theory-of-charitable-donations-to-criminals-governments.html; http://www.addletonacademicpublishers.com/component/option,com_sectionex/Itemid,103/id,23/view,category/#catid143

Brown, Arnold. 1987. The Shadow Side of Affluence: The Welfare System and the Welfare of the Needy, Fraser Forum, October.

Delery, Jeanette and Walter E. Block. 2006. Corporate Welfare, Markets and Morality; Vol. 9, No. 2, Fall, pp. 337-346; http://www.acton.org/publicat/m_and_m/new/index.php?mm_id=6; http://www.acton.org/publicat/m_and_m/new/article.php?article=37; http://www.acton.org/publicat/m_and_m/pdf/9277645.pdf

Elder, Larry. 2016. Black fathers matter. June 13; http://www.catholiceducation.org/en/controversy/marriage/black-fathers-matter.html

Gordon, David. 2006. A Man, A Plan, A Flop. Mises Daily. April 24; http://mises.org/misesreview_detail.aspx?control=296; http://mises.org/daily/2118

Hazlitt, Henry. 1969. Man vs. the Welfare State. New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House.

Higgs, Robert. 1995. The Myth of Failed Policies. The Free Market. June. Vol. 13, No. 6. http://www.mises.org/freemarket_detail.asp?control=239&sortorder=articledate

Knight, Victoria*, David Simpson*, and Walter E. Block. 2015. Welfare: The Negative Societal Effects. Acta Economica et Turistica. Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 77-93; http://141.164.71.80/exchange/walterblock/Inbox/Re:%20%20_x003F_Welfare:%20The%20Negative%20Societal%20Effects._x003F_%20Acta%20Economica%20et%20Turistica-2.EML/1_multipart_xF8FF_2_AET%20Vol%201%20No%201.pdf/C58EA28C-18C0-4a97-9AF2-036E93DDAFB3/AET%20Vol%201%20No%201.pdf?attach=1; http://hrcak.srce.hr/index.php?show=toc&id_broj=12165; http://hrcak.srce.hr/index.php?show=clanak&id_clanak_jezik=221911

LaBletta, Nicole and Walter E. Block. 1999. The Restoration of the American Dream: A Case for Abolishing Welfare, Humanomics, Vol. 15, No 4, pp. 55-65

Moscatello, Rick, Megan McAndrews* and Walter E. Block. 2015. Satisfied with Poverty: An Argument for Ending Welfare. Journal of Leadership and Management; Vol. 3, No. 5, http://leadership.net.pl/index.php/JLM/article/view/75; reprinted in Leadership and Management: Emerging, Contemporary, and Unorthodox Perspectives, Szpaderski, Adam and Christopher P. Neck, editors

Murray, Charles. 1984. Losing Ground: American Social Policy from 1950 to 1980, New York: Basic Books

Murray, Charles. 2006. In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State. Washington, D.C.: The AEI Press

Niskanen, William. 2006. Build a Wall around the Welfare State, Not around the Country, Cato Policy Report. September/October; http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/build-a-wall-around-the-welfare-state-not-around-the-country/

Olasky, Marvin. 1992. The Tragedy of American Compassion, Chicago: Regnery Gateway.

Piven, Frances Fox and Richard Cloward. 1993. Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare, New York City, NY: Vintage.

Richman, Sheldon. 2001. Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State. Future of Freedom Foundation

Rothbard, Murray N. 1996. Origins of the Welfare State in America, The Journal of Libertarian Studies, Vol. 12, No. 2, Fall, pp. 193-230

Rothbard, Murray N. 1998 [1982]. Welfare and the Welfare State. In The Ethics of Liberty, Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, pp. 160-193; http://www.mises.org/rothbard/ethics/ethics.asp

Sowell, Thomas.2014. Welfare does not work. http://www.targetliberty.com/2014/11/thomas-sowell-welfare-does-not-work.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TargetLiberty+%28Target+Liberty%29

Tucker, William. 1984. Black Family Agonistes, The American Spectator, July, pp. 14-17.

Williams, Walter E. 2014. Black People Duped. March 4; http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/03/walter-e-williams/black-people-duped/

Walter Williams documentary: http://www.suffernofoolsfilm.com/preview.php

1:11 pm on June 11, 2017 Email Walter E. Block

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Walter Block - Austrian Economist and Libertarian Theorist

they faced repeated and intense backlash from some professors and students

So many progressives dont even seem to understand what Libertarians believe. If they did, more college students would probably be Libertarians.

The College Fix reports:

Students launch libertarian club at small Oregon college and get harassed, investigated, condemned

All they wanted to do was promote free speech and intellectual diversity. Instead their activities were condemned and shut down by professors and students.

So say members of the Young Americans for Liberty campus club at Linfield College, who tell The College Fix their efforts were stifled and stymied through fear and intimidation, administrative power, and student hysteria at their small school in McMinnville, Ore.

The liberty-loving students say they faced repeated and intense backlash from some professors and students after launching their club this past spring mostly notably their event with controversial Professor Jordan Peterson was canceled by campus leaders. Peterson is the University of Toronto psychologist recently famous for his opposition to the requirement of made-up gender pronouns.

The student group was also investigated for circulating a free speech ball on which someone drew Pepe the Frog, the unofficial alt-right mascot. After an investigation, during which YAL leaders were called in and interrogated, the student who drew the image was forced to write a conciliatory essay.

Another of their events, a screening of The Red Pill, a documentary on mens rights activists and critical of the contemporary feminist movement, drew even more ire from campus leaders, with one even likening the libertarian students events to terrorism recruitment.

Read this article:

New Libertarian Student Club at Linfield College Harassed and Condemned - legal Insurrection (blog)

Im paying too much to be forced to read ideological garbage

After he cut the microphone for the high school valedictorian who criticized the authoritative attitude of administrators, guaranteeing the suppression would go viral, Wyoming Area Secondary Center Principal Jon Pollard told the new graduates to watch what you put on social media.

Its advice that would have been better directed to another young person who showcased her narrowmindedness and disinterest in hearing other perspectives on Twitter.

University of St. Francis student Jennifer Martin tweetedWednesday that her professor (an adjunct, it turns out) gave her an assigned reading on national health care systems from the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank that is widely respected in D.C. for the quality of its research and thought-provoking events (one such event covered here last fall).

Cato also got tens of millions in fundingover the years from Charles and David Koch, the billionaire brothers who are active in Republican politics, and it was co-founded by Charles four decades ago.

This was enough for Martin to declare that her professor had committed an academic sin, and she would get this person in trouble for giving her ideological garbage from a conservative propaganda machine to read. (Never mind the Kochs sued Cato for control of a board seat five years ago, and the settlement protected Catos independence.)

She even pinned it to the top of her Twitter feed.

What followed was a mostly civil back-and-forth between Martin a self-described liberal lover who claims repeatedly she would feel the same about reading a liberal think tank and some names that might be familiar to College Fix readers.

Former Fix writer Nick Pappas quipped: If I had to read the writings of communists, and listen to the words of terrorists, you can read what a few liberatarains [sic] think.

They argued a bit, with Martin saying Cato was not a reputable source and its article omitted data to push the limited govt agenda, and Pappas saying that Martin was setting an unrealistic standard for any article. (Current Fix writer Kayla Schierbecker joined in with a quip, too.)

Group blog Popehat, a great source of First Amendment-related posts, joked that If its any comfort its pretty clear you wont be able to understand [the article] well enough to be corrupted by it.

Various professors and young academics joined in to encourage Martin to broaden her reading to things she disagrees with and formulate thoughtful critiques.

The student kept insisting that political think tanks are not educational, but that she read the Cato article and it confirmed her view that Cato is political propaganda.

Philosophy professor Francis Beckwith of Baylor University (with whom I have a past connection via another think tank, the Discovery Institute) thanked Martin for giving him a good example of the genetic fallacy for his class.

Most responses were simply bemused. Charles Cooke is National Review Onlines editor, by the way, and the Niskanen Center (Will Wilkinson) is a much younger and explicitly activist libertarian think tank.

Before I go any further: The universitys website has no record of this professor Fran Steel that I could find, nor does Google, and USF (a Catholic institution) has not responded to my query as of late Wednesday.

But Martin refers to the professor further down the thread as an adjunct, and this could be an online class. USF is based in suburban Chicago, but it also has a healthcare-focused campus in Albuquerque, which would explain why Martin was offered a reading on healthcare policy.

We werent all sure at The Fix whether this was even a real argument by Martin, or if it was a prank or parody. It fits every stereotype we have of students who refuse to engage with an argument based on some wholly subjective standard (its not responsible, as Martin says).

And we do have trouble believing shed really object to reading an article in, say, a Center for American Progress publication. Heres another Martin tweet that is posted on her front page.

What is encouraging about this thread is Martin keeps engaging with critics even as she says she shouldnt have to engage with Cato because of its (complicated) Koch relationship.

And given everything you hear about trolling and the inability of people of different views to have a civil conversation on anything, this is a pretty damn civil argument.

Lets hope Martin learns from this experience and becomes eager to explain why an argument is wrong, using her own responsible data, and not simply why the source of the argument invalidates it.

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Student tries to get professor in trouble for assigning her libertarian reading - The College Fix

There has been debate this week about how many libertarians are there. The answer is: it depends on how you measure it and how you define libertarian. The overwhelming body of literature, however, using a variety of different methods and different definitions, suggests that libertarians comprise about 10-20% of the population, but may range from 7-22%.

Furthermore, if one imposes the same level of ideological consistency on liberals, conservatives, and communitarians/populists that many do on libertarians, these groups too comprise similar shares of the population.

In this post I provide a brief overview of different methods academics have used to identify libertarians and what they found. Most methods start from the premise that libertarians are economically conservative and socially liberal. Despite this, different studies find fairly different results. What accounts for the difference?

1) First, people use different definitions of libertarians

2) Second, they use different questions in their analysis to identify libertarians

3) Third, they use very different statistical methods.

Lets start with a few questions: How do you define a libertarian? Is there one concrete libertarian position on every policy issue?

What is the libertarian position on abortion? Is there one? What is the libertarian position on Social Security? Must a libertarian support abolishing the program, or might a libertarian support private accounts, or means testing, or sending it to the states instead? A researcher will find fewer libertarians in the electorate if they demand that libertarians support abolishing Social Security rather than means testing or privatizing it.

Further, why are libertarians expected to conform to an ideological litmus test but conservatives and liberals are not? For instance, what is the conservative position on Social Security? Is there one? When researchers use rigid ideological definitions of liberals and conservatives, they too make up similar shares of the population as libertarians. Thus, as political scientist Jason Weeden has noted, researchers have to make fairly arbitrary decisions about where the cut-off points should be for the libertarian, liberal, or conservative position. This pre-judgement strongly determines how many libertarians researchers will find.

Next, did researchers simply ask people if they identify as libertarian, or did they ask them public policy questions (a better method)? If the latter, how many issue questions did they ask? Then, what questions did they ask?

For instance, what questions are used to determine if someone is liberal on social issues? For instance, did the researcher ask survey takers about legalizing marijuana or did the researcher ask about affirmative action for women in the workplace instead? Libertarians will answer these questions very differently and that will impact the number of libertarians researchers find.

While there is no perfect method, the fact that academics using a variety of different questions, definitions, and statistical techniques still find that the number is somewhere between 7-22% gives us some idea that the number of libertarians is considerably larger than 0.

Next, I give a brief overview of the scholarly research on the estimated share of libertarians, conservatives, liberals, and communitarians in the American electorate. I organize their findings by methods used starting with most empirically rigorous:

Ask people to answer a series of questions on a variety of policy topics and input their responses into a statistical algorithm

In theses studies, researchers ask survey respondents a variety of issue questions on economic and social/cultural issues. Then, they input peoples answers into a statistical clustering technique and allow an algorithm to find the number of libertarians. This is arguably the strongest method to identify libertarians.

Ask people to answer a series of questions on a variety of policy topics and plot their average responses on a 2-dimensional plot

In these studies, researchers 1) average responses to multiple questions on economics and then 2) average responses to multiple questions on social/cultural/identity/lifestyle issues. They then take the two averaged scores to plot respondents on a 2-dimensional graph (Economic Issues by Social Issues).

Ask people to answer a question about economic policy and a question about social policy

While not as rigorous as asking people multiple questions, this is another quick way to observe the diversity of ideological opinion in surveys.

Ask people if they identify as libertarian and know what the word means

The Pew Research Center found that 11% of Americans agree that the word libertarian describes me well and know libertarians emphasize individual freedom by limiting the role of government.

Ask people if they identify as socially liberal and fiscally conservative, an oft-used definition of libertarianism

A 2011 Reason-Rupe poll found that 8% of Americans said they were conservative on economic issues and also liberal on social issues. But the same method found 9% identified as liberal on both social and economic issues, 2% identified as liberal on economic issues and conservative on social issues, and 31% identified as conservative on both social and economic issues. They remainder were somewhere in the middle These results are consistent with polls from Rasmussen, and Gallup which finds a public preference for the word conservative over liberal. This means many people who endorse liberal policy are inclined to self-identify as moderate or conservative.

Conclusions

In sum, the overwhelming body of empirical evidence suggests that libertarians share of the electorate is likely somewhere between 10-20% and the conservative and liberal shares arent that much greater. Libertarians exist, quite a lot, but you have to know what youre looking for.

Excerpt from:

How Many Libertarians Are There? The Answer Depends on the Method You Use - Cato Institute (blog)

who wants diabetics to die as punishment for their sins of sloth and gluttony, the Trump Administration makes clear that this will be Administration policy too.

It needs to be clearly understood that the American Taliban Christians in the ranks of Trump defenders will support the denial of health care to every person whose illness they deem to be a divine judgment for sin. As court prophets to the rich and powerful, such prolife Christians will tell cancer victims, diabetics, the obese, pregnant women, STD and AIDS victims and a host of others that they are parasites who brought it on themselves and who should be punished with denial of health care because a just and righteous God wills it.

And all the while they pronounce death and judgment on the lebensunwertes leben in the name of a false Jesus, these Christians lie that it is a state social safety net and not their own brutal and vindictive hearts that keeps them from otherwise being as generous to sick as St. Francis of Assisi. Who do they think they are kidding?

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On the heels of my conversation with the Good Catholic Libertarian - Patheos (blog)

Is there room for another heel in the Illinois governor's race?

Former pro wrestler Jon "The Illustrious One" Stewart says yes and he's looking to put his rivals for the Libertarian Party nomination in a half nelson, then body-slam Bruce Rauner and whoever the Democrats select in the general election.

"Politics is wrestling with suits and ties on," Stewart, 50, told Chicago Inc. "I'm comfortable on a mic, and I'm not afraid to tell the truth."

It isn't The Illustrious One's first run for elected office. Back in 1997, he unsuccessfully ran as a Republican for the state House on the North Shore with a little help from President Donald Trump's counselor Kellyanne Conway.

"I was her first political client," said Stewart, who lives in Deerfield and now runs his family's used-car dealership. "She's probably one of the smartest people I've ever met so I'm not surprised she has got to where she is.

"I'm a little like her we both speak our minds, and sometimes we might speak out of turn, but we are not afraid."

But by Stewart's own admission, the best-known episode of his colorful life came in 2006 when he was mistaken for longtime "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart by a high school in Utah that accidentally booked him for a fundraising gala.

Stewart later took an unsuccessful stab at running for Congress as a Republican, before a falling-out with the late then-Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka led him to join the Libertarians in 2011.

Like Conway, Stewart remains a fan of Trump, who himself has dabbled in the pro-wrestling world. Stewart said he voted for Trump after previously backing Barack Obama because Trump is a necessary "Molotov cocktail thrown into the system in Washington, D.C."

That could cause problems for Stewart at the state Libertarian convention in March 2018, when party members will select their candidate in a caucus and might hold Stewart's failure to support Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson against him.

Two other Libertarian candidates, Matt Scaro and Kash Jackson, have also announced runs, and Illinois Libertarian Party Chairman Lex Green said Stewart "has to overcome" the irritation of party workers who spent $100,000 getting Johnson on the ballot in Illinois.

"But Jon is a good candidate, and there are many pragmatic libertarians who may be able to look past that," Green said.

Stewart is hoping that policies including a Trump-like plan to send 300 federal officers into Chicago's Englewood neighborhood to combat violence and replacing pensions with 401(k)s for new government hires will sway voters.

And he pointed to the 1998 election of former wrestler Jesse "The Body" Ventura as governor of Minnesota, as well as Trump's recent victory, as evidence of an enduring appetite for outsider candidates.

"When I first ran in the North Shore, I think most people were expecting a bleached blond guy in a leather motorcycle vest to show up, so they were surprised to find someone in a shirt who was engaged on the issues," Stewart said.

Though his campaign doesn't have much money, car dealers across the state have vowed to back him, he said, adding that people who underestimate him will be "surprised."

"The state's politics aren't working it's surreal at this point," he said. "How can the Democrats and the Republicans say, 'Give us one more chance?'"

kjanssen@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @kimjnews

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Former pro-wrestler with ties to Kellyanne Conway seeks Illinois governor nod - Chicago Tribune

The Libertarian Party of Jasper County recently celebrated its official recognition by the Libertarian Party of Indiana. Though the local party's precise number is small, members are planning events to spread the message of libertarianism, and several initiatives for county politics may be arriving in the near future.

Loren Berenda, a Shelter Insurance Agent and former law enforcement officer, is the local party chairman. He believes that the party first began to find momentum in Jasper County during the 2016 presidential election, if only due to the unpopularity of the major party candidates. Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson collected 620 votes from the county, according to courthouse records.

"I know there's a lot of locals who weren't happy with Gary Johnson," Berenda said. "But it was an alternative to Hillary Clinton. And then, obviously President Trump had a lot of negative publicity that was coming out...A lot of people just pushed Gary Johnson's box as a protest to the other two."

The number of voters doesn't have to reflect the exact number of registered party members, and it did show potential interest in Libertarianism from locals. So, local party members decided to try for official recognition from the state-level party. Read the full story in the print edition or by subscribing to the e-edition.

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Jasper County Libertarian Party gains official recognition - Newsbug.info

Had a typical conversation with a Libertarian about the question of health care as a right. He was a typical Catholic dissenter from the Churchs teaching on this point, offering the typical Libertarian falsehoods like:

The reason this is a lie is that health care is not charity. It is, as the Church teaches, a right.

The Libertarian lie in reply to this is twofold.

The reply to these lies is twofold as well:

The reason health care is a right is that life is a right and health is simply a corollary of that. And because health care is a right, guaranteeing access to it, like guaranteeing the right to be born, is a matter of justice, not charity, too. And since it is precisely the business of the state to secure justice, it is the rightful business of the state to secure access to health care for all.

My Libertarian correspondent would have none of this, of course, and emitted the customary lie of Libertarians that state involvement in health care robbed him of the power to glow with the burning personal charity that would consume his heart for the poor and sick, did not the state remove a buck and half from his paycheck in brutal act of violent theft. The poor and sick would see the dawn of a new Millennium of care for all their needs at the hands of a Marching Army of Living Libertarians Saints more generous than St. Francis of Assisi if the state and its monstrous confiscatory powers were not aided by the liberal cabal Catholic bishops in calling for universal health care (as they have, in fact, done for a century).

But then the mask suddenly slipped and he wrote:

Youre an economic buffoon who also happens to be guilty of the sins of sloth and gluttony. You and your following should be ashamed of yourselves for demanding the robbery of the material wealth of the productive.How much of your health care is a right? Youre obese. Should we be forced to pay extra for your sins of gluttony and sloth?

And there it was. All the burning charity suddenly evaporated and made clear that the use of medicine as a weapon to punish the lebensunwertes leben is one of the many charming features of Libertarianism. You know, like this:

I remember when Catholics were all up in arms about death panels. Turns out the only real problem was that guys like my deeply, truly Catholic Libertarian reader wanted to make sure that *he* got to chair them.

And thats the thing. With very few exceptions, Libertarianism is a philosophy which, in contests between the wealthy and powerful vs. the poor, virtually *always* sides with the powerful and declares any state action on behalf of justice for the defenseless to be violence while all violence against the weak is the invisible hand of the market.

Mixed with a smug real Catholic pride, it assumes all illness is Gods punishment for sin and wants to see the wrath of God run its course on those guilty of (in this case) gluttony and sloth (like he knows one damn thing about me and is competent to render such a verdict on the life of a total stranger). This Libertarian Judge of Souls wants diabetics (or anybody else they deem guilty of health-related sins, whether sinfully pregnant women, sinfully sick smokers, sinfully obese cubicle workers or sinfully sick AIDS patients) to die as punishment rather than he pay one damn penny to help their treatment. And he wants everybody to believe that this is all because he is more personally generous than St. Francis of Assisi, but the state gets in the way of his holy charity. These guys are so full of crap and such massive and vindictive narcissists, it takes your breath away.

More:

When the Libertarian Mask Slips and the Eugenicist is Revealed - Patheos (blog)