Being Libertarian, Liberty Link Media Group Announce Strategic Media Partnership Being Libertarian Being Libertarian LLC is proud to announce that it will, through its media division, Being LibertTV, be entering into a comprehensive, strategic, long-term relationship with Liberty Link Media Group, the popular venture started by Nicholas Veser and ... |
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Being Libertarian | What a US Relationship with Russia Should Look Like Being Libertarian Sparks have been flying ever since President Trump, in an interview with FOX News anchor Bill O'Reilly, came to the defense of Russian President Vladimir Putin after O'Reilly called Putin a killer. The media was sent into a feeding frenzy when Trump ... Donald J. Trump - T.co This post has been updated to clarify the source of the Gateway Pundit's article on the - T.co Photo contradicts Pelosi's statement about not meeting Kislyak |
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Libertarians in Iowa now will be able to check the box on their voter registration form officially indicating their political affiliation.
Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate announced last week that the Libertarian Party of Iowa has attained official political party status.
Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson received 3.8 percent of the vote in the November elections, surpassing the 2 percent threshold required by state law for the party to be recognized.
I would like to congratulate the Libertarian Party of Iowa on being recognized as an official political party by the state, Pate said in a statement Thursday. I encourage all Iowans to become and remain active in the political process.
Johnson received about 3 percent of the vote nationwide in November. He received no electoral college votes.
Now that Libertarians have official party status in Iowa, candidates can participate in 2018 primary elections, and the Libertarian Party will be included as an option for Iowans on voter registration forms.
The Secretary of States office said the last time a political organization was granted full party status in Iowa was the Iowa Green Party in 2000.
The partys nominee at that time, consumer activists Ralph Nader, received 2.2 percent of the presidential votes that year.
There are 9,100 registered Libertarians in Iowa.
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Justin Amash cant seem to concentrate. His eyes keep drifting toward the TV behind me, mounted on the wall inside his congressional office. The 36-year-old representative from Michigan, who arrived in Washington six years ago as a self-described libertarian Republican, is rattling off a list of concerns about the newly inaugurated president, but he is distracted by C-SPANs programming: Mick Mulvaney, his close friend and colleague from South Carolinaand a similarly libertarian-minded Republicanis getting grilled during his confirmation hearing to become director of the Office of Management and Budget. Arizona Senator John McCain had just finished his inquisition and was particularly harsh, scolding Mulvaney for voting to slash military spending and withdraw American troops from Europe and Afghanistan. It was a tense exchange, and Amash savored every moment of it. The ascent of Mulvaney to such a powerful position in the federal government, libertarians believe, proves that their ideology has invaded and influenced the Republican mainstream in a manner unimaginable a decade ago.
There is, however, a complicating factor: Mulvaneys new boss is President Donald Trump.
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In campaigning for the presidency, Trump frequently sang from the same hymnal as libertarian primary rival Senator Rand Paul, warning against regime change and nation-building abroad, decrying the allied invasions of Iraq and Libya (never mind that Trump initially supported both), and promising to disengage from a self-immolating Middle East while re-evaluating American involvement in NATO. The election of an ideologically unmoored reality-TV star was startling to many libertarians, but at least it suggested some progress in their struggle with the GOPs interventionist wing. The silver lining is that Trump proved you can win the Republican nomination, and the presidency, by criticizing neoconservative foreign policy, says David Boaz, executive vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute.
I think the McCain-Graham wing of the party is withering, Amash tells me in his office, referring to South Carolinas hawkish senator. It was dominant 10 or 15 years ago on foreign policy matters and surveillance and other things. But today, its a rather weak force compared to a decade ago in D.C. And its almost nonexistent at home.
And yet, Trump also pledged to oversee a massive military buildup. He threatened to bomb the shit out of the Islamic State; suggested killing the families of terrorists; expressed an interest in seizing Iraqs sovereign oil; advocated the return of torture; and, in his inaugural address, declared he would eradicate Islamist terrorism from the face of the Earth. When I mention all this, Amash bursts out laughing. Not exactly a libertarian philosophy, I say. No, he shakes his head. Its not.
There are areas, certainly, in which Trumpism and libertarianism will peacefully co-exist; school choice, as evidenced by Trumps selection of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, is one example. Deregulation is another. But by and large, they cannot be reconciled. Where libertarians champion the flow of people and capital across international borders, Trump aims to slow, or even stop, both. Where libertarians advocate drug legalization and criminal justice reform, Trump and his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, seek a return to law-and-order policies. Where libertarians push to protect the First and Fourth Amendments, Trump pushes back with threats of banning Muslims and expanding the surveillance state. And where Mulvaney has dedicated his career to the argument that dramatic fiscal measures are needed to prevent the United States from going bankrupt, Trump campaigned unambiguously on accumulating debt, increasing spending and not laying a finger on the entitlement programs that make up an ever-growing share of the federal budget.
THE LIBERTARIAN STANDARD-BEARERS: Rep. Justin Amash and Sen. Rand Paul outside the Capitol in 2015. | Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call
Sooner or later, something has to give. Mick knows the numbers. And hes going to get to, at some point, a soul-testing moment, Mark Sanford, his fellow South Carolina representative and a self-identified, lifelong libertarian, tells me. Do I go with, you know, what Donald is saying? Or do I go with what I know to be mathematic reality?
This disconnect captures the sense of uncertainty and conflict that libertarianswhether they are Republicans, Democrats or adherents of the eponymous third partyfeel in the age of Trump. After generations of being relegated to the periphery of American politics, they are seeing some of their most precious ideals accepted and advocated for at the highest levels of government. But in many policy areas, there has never been a president who poses a greater threat to what they hold dearone who is poised, potentially, to reorient the GOP electorate toward a strong, active, centralized and protectionist federal government. The Trump presidency, then, is shaping up to be a defining moment for the libertarian movement.
But it wont come down to intraparty disputes over marijuana, or sentencing reform, or government data collection. Rather, the viability of libertarianismfor the next four or eight years, and potentially much longerwill be determined to an overwhelming extent by the relative stability of international affairs and the level of security Americans feel as a result.
Not long ago, libertarians were having their long-awaited moment, with Rand Paulsupposedly the candidate who could rebrand their once-fringe ideology for a new generation of Americansgracing magazine covers and converting Republicans to a philosophy of laissez-faire at home and restraint abroad. But the reason he isnt president today, his allies say, owes equally to the rise of Trump and that of another disruptive phenomenon.
Two people were Senator Pauls undoing in the presidential race, Chip Englander, his campaign manager, tells me. Donald Trump and Jihadi John.
DEFINING MOMENT: At a 2007 primary debate, Ron Paul argued U.S. interventionism led to 9/11. | Mark Wilson/Getty Images
Libertarians call it the Giuliani moment. It was May 15, 2007, and the former New York mayor stood across from Ron Paul on a debate stage in Columbia, South Carolina. They had nothing in commonpersonalities and ideologies aside, Rudy Giuliani was comfortably leading the GOP presidential field, while Paul was polling in the low single digitsbut they would soon produce an inflection point in the partys modern history, one that triggered a decade of unprecedented progress for libertarians.
As a panel of Fox News moderators mocked his opposition to the Iraq War, Paul argued that American intervention in the Middle East was a major contributing factor to the September 11 attacks. Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us? he asked. They attack us because weve been over there. Giuliani, whose candidacy arose from his heroic handling of 9/11, pounced, calling it an extraordinary statement and asking Paul to withdraw it. The crowd roared with approval, but Paul didnt budge. I believe very sincerely that the CIA is correct when they teach and talk about blowback, he responded.
That statement, better suited to an Ivy League faculty lounge than a Republican debate stage, was the spark that started everything, says A.J. Spiker, the former Iowa GOP chairman who backed Ron Paul and later his son Rand for president. Before long, there was talk of a Ron Paul Revolution, which somehow wasnt an overstatement: As he climbed in the polls and gained name recognition, Paul began raising eye-popping sums of money online with the help of liberty movement groups that had begun forming across the country, with much of their grass-roots energy concentrated on college campuses.
There was, however, an unintended consequence: Pauls popularity served to cement libertarianisms reputation as an exotic strand of internecine opposition rather than a reliable, cooperative piece of the GOP coalition. Even though he emphasized other issues in his campaignmost memorably, auditing the Federal Reserveit was Pauls harsh critique of President George W. Bushs interventionism that defined his candidacy in 2008 and again in 2012, as well as his sons political ambitions, in the eyes of the party elite.
He alienated a lot of Republicans with a very isolationist foreign policy message, says Bob Barr, the former Georgia congressman who abandoned the GOP and became the Libertarian Partys presidential nominee in 2008. Barr, listening to Paul that year, recalls thinking, If libertarians continue to exist on ideological purity in that regard ... it will condemn them to not expanding their influence in the party.
The Republican establishment was banking on exactly that. Having watched with alarm as Pauls 2012 campaign attracted significantly more support than its 2008 iteration, the partys elder statesmen were eager to undermine the movements long-term viability. When I spoke with Karl Rove a month after Election Day 2012, he predicted libertarianism would soon regress to pre-Paul irrelevance. I dont think the antiwar sentiment is durable, Rove told me. The Republican Party is not going to find itself in five or 10 years committed to neo-isolationism.
In the year that followed, Roves prediction looked anything but prescient. In July 2013, Amash sponsored an amendment to restrict the National Security Agencys bulk data collection program; it fell just 12 votes shy of passage in the House, despite fierce opposition from President Barack Obama and the congressional leadership of both parties. That amendment was inspired by blockbuster revelations a month earlier, made by intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, that the governments domestic surveillance practices were illegal. That followed a watershed moment in March 2013, when Rand Paul, then a freshman senator from Kentucky and inheritor of his fathers messianic following, had completed a nearly 13-hour filibuster in opposition to the nomination of John Brennan as Obamas CIA directorand more broadly, to the administrations refusal to rule out drone strikes on American citizens. This momentum was validated by Republican leader Mitch McConnell, a mascot of the Washington establishment, hiring Jesse Benton, the Paul family consigliere, to manage his own 2014 Senate reelection.
With another White House campaign on the horizon, the dreams of a movement rested on the younger Pauls shoulders. Everyone recognized that the disheveled, curmudgeonly 70-something Ron could win hearts and minds but never the presidency. Randmore polished, more nuanced and nearly 30 years youngerwas the libertarians chosen one. (Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Partys 2016 nominee, was never taken as seriously.) Ron had won 21 percent of the vote in Iowa and 23 percent in New Hampshire in the 2012 primary; Rand, in the eyes of his bullish base, had nowhere to go but up.
Sure enough, by July 2014, he sat atop the GOP presidential field in the RealClearPolitics average of national surveys; that same month, NBC News released polls showing him leading in New Hampshire and tied for first place in Iowa. As he prepared to launch his campaign in early 2015, Paul basked in hisand the libertarian movementsascendance, which crescendoed with an August 2014 New York Times Magazine feature, with the headline, Has the Libertarian Moment Finally Arrived? It was met with hosannas inside Pauls political operation.
Twelve days after the Times piece was published, an organization known as the Islamic State, or ISISwhich had announced the formation of a caliphate to govern Muslims worldwide, but globally was not yet a household namereleased a video depicting the beheading of American journalist James Foley. Exactly two weeks later, ISIS published a similar video showing another American journalist, Steven Sotloff, also being beheaded. With the spectacular barbarism piercing Western consciousnessamid wall-to-wall coverage, the executioner was dubbed Jihadi John by media outletsObama delivered a prime-time address on September 10 and pledged to destroy ISIS.
The next month, Time magazine featured Paul on its cover as The Most Interesting Man in Politics. The timing could not have been worse: Having intended to capture Pauls rise, the story marked the onset of his decline. He had already dropped to 12 percent in the RCP national poll average, from 14 percent in July; by Christmas, he was at 9 percent. The crash continued throughout 2015, interrupted by only a fleeting bounce after his April 7 campaign launch. In late July, he was below 6 percent, and by October, one year after Times cover, he hovered at just over 2 percent.
We did a survey in Iowa that fall, and in the survey, Republican caucus-goers were very much opposed to the policies that Senator Paul was waving the flag for: less spying, less drone strikes, less foreign intervention, closing of foreign bases, recalls Vincent Harris, the campaigns chief digital strategist.
Embarrassingly, Pauls numbers plunged so low that Fox Business excluded him from its main debate in January 2016, less than a month before Iowas first-in-the-nation caucuses. (Paul boycotted the undercard debate.) A few weeks later, after winning just 4.5 percent of the vote in Iowa, Paul quit the race.
THE NEW BOSS: Rand Paul with Donald Trump after the president signed a bill undoing a coal rule. | Rex Features/AP
It was a dramatic, if unsurprising, fall from grace. Ron Paul had masterfully exploited the frustrations of a war-weary Republican Party, and though his son was hyped as an objectively superior messenger, everyone understood the foundation of his appeal could crumble with a sudden shift in public opinion. We as libertarians know that at a time of fear, our brand doesnt sell very well, says Jack Hunter, the editor of Rare Politics and co-author of Rand Pauls 2011 book, The Tea Party Goes to Washington. So when we saw beheadings on the news ... we knew it would be problematic.
Polling suggested as much. In November 2013when Rand Paul was riding high43 percent of Republicans said U.S. anti-terrorism policies were going too far in restricting civil liberties, while 41 percent said they werent going far enough to protect the homeland, according to Pew Research. In September 2014during the immediate aftermath of the Foley and Sotloff execution videosthose figures were 24 percent and 64 percent, respectively. The shift in sentiment would only accelerate. A separate poll in September 2014, commissioned by CBS News, found that 39 percent of Americans favored sending U.S. ground troops to Iraq and Syria to fight ISIS, with 55 percent opposed. Five months later, in February 2015, the percentages inverted: 57 percent of Americans wanted U.S. ground troops deployed to battle ISIS, and 37 percent were opposed. (Among Republican voters, it was 72 percent and 27 percent, respectively.)
To remain competitive, Paulwhose candidacy was already suffering from other manifest shortcomings, lack of financial support and personal prickliness chief among themtried to thread an impossible needle: projecting greater toughness to reassure mainstream Republicans, without sounding so muscular as to alienate his base. We accomplished neither, Tony Fabrizio, the Paul campaigns pollster, says. With all respect to Rand I think he wanted to prove he and his father were different. And that created natural tensions. By trying to please both sides, he wound up pleasing neither.
Drew Ivers, who chaired Ron Pauls 2008 and 2012 campaigns in Iowa, shocked his fellow libertarian activists by declining to endorse Rands 2016 bid. I remember him telling me once by phone that he was going to submit a proposal to go to war with ISIS, Ivers tells me. Go to war? Wait a minute. What do you mean, go to war?
I busted his chops about it, Matt Welch, editor at large of Reason, recalls of Pauls proposed declaration of war. And he said to me, Look, I cant win a Republican primary under these conditions if I dont support some kind of confrontation with ISIS.
Paul declined an interview request for this article. His spokesman, Sergio Gor, said in an email, Our focus is on Obamacare repeal and replacement exclusively right now. More accurately, the senators friends and allies say, he simply has no interest in re-litigating his presidential run or participating in a post-mortem of it.
Ironically, there was one Republican in 2016 who outdid Ron Pauls rants against Bushs interventionismand he won the partys nomination. Look at Trump. He went to South Carolina, a military state, and said the Iraq War was a disaster, said 9/11 happened on Bushs watch, shared these borderline conspiracy theories, Welch says. He was stridently antiwar and anti-interventionand he stomped the competition.
Trump had beaten Paul at what was supposed to be his own game.
***
Its the wild card of global affairsand the terrible hand it dealt Pauls 2016 campaignthat distracts from libertarianisms successful infiltration of the domestic policymaking complex. Education, which Republicans nationalized under Bush, is increasingly being handed back to the states. A coalition of liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans has begun challenging the status quo on issues ranging from police militarization to asset forfeiture to sentencing reform. Meanwhile, two of the libertarian communitys other longtime goals, marijuana decriminalization and marriage equality, have been realized in irreversible ways.
And yet, all of this momentum might be rendered insignificant, even irrelevant, if the new Republican president ends up going to war. In fighting for the heart and soul and future of the GOP, libertarians understand their chief strategic priority is holding Trump to his non-interventionist rhetoric. This explains why Paul was willing to support Sessions nomination, despite the new attorney generals sharply divergent views on issues such as drug prosecution and asset forfeiture: Paul, it appears, would rather spend what political capital he has opposing anyone who might inflame Trumps foreign policy. (Do not let Elliott Abrams anywhere near the State Department, the Kentucky senator wrote the week of Sessions confirmation vote, responding to reports that Trump could pick the well-known neoconservative to be deputy to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.)
So far, Paul and his ilk are taking some comfort in the company Trump keeps. The president passed on hiring Abrams. And the principals of Trumps national security teamTillerson, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Homeland Security Secretary John Kellyare regarded as pragmatic realists who will restrain, rather than encourage, the presidents more aggressive instincts.
TRUMPs LIBERTARIAN: Mick Mulvaney is sworn in as director of the Office of Management and Budget. | Ron Sachs/picture-alliance/DPA/AP Images
That said, Trump, who loves to be called a man of action, feels a mandate to escalate various conflicts with Americas enemies. Exit polls on Election Day found that 24 percent of all voters thought the fight against ISIS was going very badly, and Trump won 83 percent of that group. Some in the Pentagon reportedly want to send ground forces into Syria. Trump has already proved unhesitant to deploy American troopsspecial operators at minimumto foreign soil. That he decided to greenlight a tremendously dangerous operation in Yemen almost immediately after taking office shows an appetite for boldness and a willingness to accept collateral damage; a Navy SEAL, as well as several civilians, were killed in the operation.
Its not what President Rand Paul would have done. And yet libertarians, who feared they ultimately would choose between an interventionist Democrat in Hillary Clinton and a neoconservative Republican nominee, still believe, perhaps naively, that this was their next best outcome. Marco Rubio, the hawkish Republican senator from Florida, would have been much worse for us, Amash tells me. I think Rubio would have ushered in a long decline of American foreign policy. Trump is just a shock to the system. Rubio is a younger, more charming John McCain.
In any case, the grass-roots foundation laid by Ron and Rand Paul seems likely to outlast Trump. Young Americans for Liberty, the group that grew out of Rons 2008 campaign, went from 96 chapters nationwide in 2009 to 602 chapters in May 2015, the month after Rands campaign launched. Today, there are 804 chapters. This growth, combined with continuous, non-election-year activismand polling showing that younger voters, both left- and right-leaning, are increasingly libertarian in their views of governmentwards off pessimistic assertions that their moment might have just come and gone.
Look at every single candidate who ran, and look at their infrastructures, Cliff Maloney, president of Young Americans for Liberty, tells me. Do you see people out still knocking doors for Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush or Ben Carson? No. This is going to be a slog. And were going to fight through.
The more important fight will take place on Capitol Hill. With the vast majority of Republicans already capitulating to Trump, libertarian-minded lawmakers are positioned as the most vocal bloc of intraparty opposition. Ron Paul was a lonely voice of dissent in Bushs GOP, and benefited politically when the party faithful eventually came around to some of his arguments. Today, theres a much larger contingent in the Congress oriented toward libertarianismAmash, Sanford, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and others in the House; Rand Paul and Mike Lee in the Senateand it has already shown a willingness to tangle with Trump where others in the party have passed. The aggressiveness with which libertarians check Trumps overreach, at home and abroad, will correlate with the movements credibility, and popularity, if Republican voters turn against the presidents policies.
But what if they dont? Knowing the Libertarian Party just nominated its most experienced presidential ticket ever and won just 3 percent nationally, the grave fear among libertarians is that Trumps actions will represent the very worst of his campaign promisesintervening militarily, adding to the debt, abandoning trade, restricting civil libertiesand that the GOP electorate will love him for it.
If the Republican Party becomes thoroughly Trumpist, Boaz says, theres not much room for libertarians.
Tim Alberta is national political reporter at Politico Magazine.
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Hundreds of students shouted down Libertarian author and political scientist Charles Murray during a lecture Thursday at Vermonts Middlebury College, forcing him to move to a private room and stream the lecture online.
Mr. Murray, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, was interrupted immediately after taking the podium at the McCullough Student Centers Wilson Hall, according to video posted by The Middlebury Campus student weekly.
Once he started to speak, dozens of students stood up and turned their backs to him, holding signs and asking others to join. They then read a script in unison condemning Mr. Murrays supposed hate speech and started chanting Racist, sexist, anti-gay, Charles Murray go away.
Mr. Murray stood silently at the podium for 18 minutes until organizers approached him.
The college ultimately decided to cancel the lecture and moved Mr. Murray to a private room where he could stream the talk live, The Middlebury Campus reported.
Mr. Murray is most famously known for writing the 1994 book The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, and is deemed a white nationalist by the liberal nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center.
He was set Thursday to discuss his 2012 book Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, which students argued normalizes white supremacy and white nationalism.
More than 450 Middlebury alumni signed a letter published Wednesday condemning the schools decision to allow Mr. Murray on campus.
The student group that invited the author, the American Enterprise Institution Club, said the invite was not necessarily an endorsement of his beliefs.
I really think his work Coming Apart is incredibly important in understanding the forces at play that brought the movement together, and as a Republican, I dont understand this movement enough, club president Phil Hoxie told a local NBC News affiliate.
Bill Burger, the vice president of communication at the school, said he was disappointed by the protesting students behavior Thursday.
We respect the right for students to express themselves and to protest, and we acknowledge that at the opening remarks for the event, but its clear that a group of students were committed to disrupting the event, and to an extreme degree theyve done that, he told NBC. Fortunately, weve been able to preserve what he says again, the important thing in our community is that there is an opportunity for people to speak and to be heard and listen and to challenge.
Middlebury officials told Inside Higher Ed that as Mr. Murray was trying to leave campus, protesters swarmed the vehicle and jumped on it, trying to prevent him from leaving.
Mr. Murraysaid on Twitter Friday that he was physically assaulted by the out-of-control mob.
Report from the front: The Middlebury administration was exemplary. The students were seriously scary, he tweeted.
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Libertarian author Charles Murray shouted down by Middlebury College students - Washington Times
Horse-racing monitors at Monmouth Park in Oceanport, where bettors can wager on races. The gambling industry hopes the Trump administration will be open to expanding wagering to sports betting.(Photo: Kevin Wexler/The Record)
The Competitive Enterprises Institute, known asalibertarian think, has published an eight-page paper on what it considers a foolish federal policy on sports betting in the U.S.
The group describes itself as "a non-profit public policy organization dedicated to advancing theprinciples of limited government, free enterprise, and individual liberty."
Here is my summary of some of the key passages:
For those not fully up to speed on how we got here, it's explained thusly:
The Origin of the Sports Gambling Ban.By the late 1980s, at least 13 states had considered proposals to legalize sports gambling, most in the hope that legalizing and taxing the activity would fill increasingly large budget deficits. That so worried gambling opponentssuch as lawmakers and sports league officials who feared gambling would compromise the integrity of sporting eventsthat Congress passed the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (PASPA). Once enacted, PASPA prohibited states that did not already allow sports betting from licensing, promoting, or authorizing the activity. In effect, PASPA blocked all states, save for Nevada, from legalizing and regulating bets on the outcome of individual sports contests.
"The proposal, sponsored by Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.), was championed by the commissioners of the four major sports leagues, who testified that such a law was necessary to prevent a cloud of suspicion over athletes and games and to avoid sending a regrettable message to our young people. Congress justified intervening in what had traditionally been viewed as a matter for state regulation by declaring sports gambling a national problem. The harms it inflicts are felt beyond the borders of those states that sanction it. The moral erosion it produces cannot be limited geographically. Without federal legislation, sports gambling is likely to spread on a piecemeal basis and ultimately develop an irreversible momentum.
This is a segment on "game integrity with a reference to a very famous case:
"In many ways, sports betting lines operate like financial markets. For example, when international open market trading is done in commodities, attempts at manipulation become much easier to detect because anomalies will be noticed and analyzed quickly. The same holds for sports betting. Betting lines do not shift much. An extreme fluctuation, which might occur if large amounts of money was suddenly being bet on a longshot underdog, would set off alarm bells......
"This is exactly what happened during the Black Sox scandal, when several members of the Chicago White Sox threw the 1919 World Series. It was the strange, sudden shift in betting odds that first alerted sportswriters and others that something fishy was going on. Bookmakers originally had the Sox as 7-5 favorites, with rumors that the odds might go as high as 2-1 by the time of the game, but a sudden swing in betting in New Yorkan unusually large amount of money being bet on the underdog Cincinnati Redsput the odds at even money by Game 1. The odds shift occurred, it turned out, because gangsters had bribed several members of the heavily favored White Sox to throw the Series. Rumors about a fix were rampant well before the Series first pitch.
The Black Sox went on to become the most infamous sports betting scandal in history. As a result, nearly 100 years later, gambling remains virtually the only unpardonable sin for an active player, coach, or manager in any sport. Players who have used performance-enhancing drugs or have been found guilty of criminal acts ranging from assault to illegal dog fighting have returned to the field. Gambling on games, on the other hand, almost always results in lifetime bans for athletes and officials. This is a formidable disincentive for players to be involved with gamblers or game fixing. Yet, few remember today that it was the bookmakers those taking bets on the gam e who first caught the scent of something fishy going on with the World Series."
The volume of new tax revenue also is addressed:
"If this economic activity were brought into the daylight, it would mean millions of dollars for cash-strapped states. In New Jersey, for example, illegal sportsbook makers prosecuted in the late 1990s had an annual volume of around$200 million. Global gaming research firm GamblingCompliance projects that a fully developed legal American marketwhere bets are placed at casinos, online, and at retail bookmaking shopswould produce $12.4 billion in annual revenue, five times bigger than the U.K.s sports betting market and 11 times bigger than Italys. All of which would be subject to tax. Tapping into this new source of revenue would not even require new laws for most states, as the federal government already requires people to report earnings from gambling and even allows them to write off gambling losses up to the amount that allows them to offset their winnings."
The paper concludes by saying that "the law must treat consumers like adults."
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Libertarian think tank makes case for legal sports betting - NorthJersey.com
Screenshot via ZodiacThe Washington Post's Alyssa Rosenberg notes that David Fincher's Zodiac was released 10 years ago. The film received rave reviews, but still seems underappreciated by the general public. In her retrospective, Rosenberg notes that Zodiacwhich chronicles the efforts of police officers and journalists to catch a real-life serial killer in the 1960s and 70sstill resonates:
The characters have resources to pursue their investigations, and they're given time and plenty of leeway by their superiors (though one local politician runs for governor on the argument that the cops didn't have what they needed to crack the case). And neither is "Zodiac" a story about the sorts of failures involved in the Vietnam War, where brilliant people, restricted both by their own faith in technocratic solutions and their fears of being seen as soft on Communism, made fatally terrible decisions.
Instead, Fincher captures the uncertainty and loss of confidence that follow from a prolonged failure by institutions and people who are doing everything they're supposed to, only to find that it doesn't produce the correct results.
Ten years after "Zodiac" was released, and almost fifty years after the July 4 killing that sets the movie in motion, we're still living with and working through the consequences of the decline and loss of faith David Fincher captured in this masterful film. Fincher's "Fight Club" offered up a vision of weaponized male turned against society as a whole, while his "Gone Girl" portrayed female anger that had been distilled into a particularly venomous domestic poison. "Zodiac" is his movie for the rest of us, who have to live in a world going slowly insane without losing ourselves.
For me, Zodiac was a story about obsessionwhat it feels like to care about something that most other people have lost interest in. The serial killerwho calls himself the Zodiac and sends cryptic messages to the authoritiesslaughters a handful of people, and then largely retreats into the shadows. He botches some of his attacks, and others don't fit his profile, calling into question whether he's a single person or a group of completely unrelated nutcases taking advantage of a momentary spotlight.
As days become weeks and even years, everybody moves on, except the police officers assigned to the case and the newspaper cartoonist who can't let it go. They're driven, not by public safetyas one character points out, more people die crossing the street than at the hands of the Zodiac killerbut by their own insatiable, personal need to solve the case. Asked why he still cares about a serial killer who has long since fallen inactive, Jake Gyllenhaal's character snaps, "I need to know who he is!" Anyone who's ever attempted a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle, but misplaced the last few pieces, will relate.
Zodiac also makes some lightly libertarian criticisms of authorityin particular, its limits. The various representatives of the institutions that fail to capture the killerthe police, newspapers, local politiciansaren't evil, or incompetent. They're decent people trying to do right by the citizens of California. But they encounter structural problems: the crimes cross city and county lines, and no single entity has all the relevant information. In an early scene, the lead detectives ask a county official to make copies of the evidence in his possession and fax it to San Francisco PD. He replies, "We don't have telefax yet."
The film also explores the notion that violence is random, and its underlying causes don't fit neatly into preconceived narratives. The Zodiac killer isn't Hannibal Lecter, or Ramsay Bolton. He's a weird loner whose actions don't reflect a discernible ideology of evil. This kind of real-world violence is the hardest to address through public policy, because there's no identifiable reason for it.
In the end, it took someone outside the law enforcement bureaucracyGyllenhaal's character, cartoonist Robert Graysmithto finally solve the case, to the extent that it's solved at all.
Excerpt from:
Zodiac Turns 10: Why This Amazing Film Is Libertarian - Hit & Run ... - Reason (blog)
It goes without saying that libertarianism, as a political philosophy, is fiscally conservative i.e. that on a policy level, the State must conserve, rather than spend on a whim. Virtually all libertarians agree that this is technically correct.
The jury, however, is apparently still out on social issues. Many in the libertarian movement desire a merging between American conservatism (as opposed to virtually any other conservative movement in the world), which includes social conservatism, and libertarianism. Conservatism, as a political position, is quite region-specific, and entirely relative. To be a conservative means something different at different times. It is not a statement of principles in and of itself, but a belief that certain principles which are already being adhered to, must continue to be adhered to. This is why a European conservative is, for the most part, someone who still desires a strong welfare role for the State, and an America conservative is much more reluctant to support increased welfare.
Roger Toutant recently wrote that apparently, Libertarianism is, at its core, a fiscally and socially conservative movement. He says this without much further ado, instead opting to hide behind a facade of pragmatism. His reasoning goes that if libertarians continue to represent themselves as fiscally conservative and socially liberal (not to be confused with welfarist social liberalism), we will never win any popular support, because the right will refuse to get on board with our degenerate and lost social views, and progressives will never agree to our notion of small government.
Social liberalism, which is not under discussion here, but it is worthy to note, is a political philosophy in its own right, with its own economic theories. Being socially liberal, on the other hand, implies a public policy stance, as opposed to personal liberalism, which means that the individual himself behaves in a liberal fashion. Being socially liberal is nothing more than the notion that the State has no right to legislate decency or morality. (And given that were talking about American conservatism here, I should emphasise that it does not matter whether its a supranational government, a national government, a provincial or state government, or a local government). The States mandate is and always will be fixed to protecting people and property from physical aggression, enforcing mutually-agreed upon agreements, and guarding against fraud. All of this, naturally, must be wrapped up in the doctrine of the rule of law, i.e. the State cannot act arbitrarily, everyone must be equal before the law, people can appeal decisions, etc., etc.
Toutants is not an isolated argument. Indeed, it has become increasingly popular over the last year for conservative-leaning libertarians to defend and emphasise the ostensible compatibilities between libertarianism and American conservatism, while also emphasising the incompatibilities between traditionally left-leaning positions where progressives and libertarians share common ground. Christopher Cantwell is the embodiment of this worrying trend, having testified before a New Hampshire legislative committee that the government should prohibit female nudity on public beaches. He used highly-questionable arguments (including but what about the children?) in support of this position, but at the end of the day it was clear that his social conservatism was rearing its head in what was supposed to be a matter left to the political philosophy of libertarianism.
The founders of libertarianism would not have bothered to distinguish libertarianism from American conservatism. Indeed, if American conservatism and libertarianism are as indistinguishable as many make them out to be, why did the distinction come about at all?
This is all especially worrying to me as a South African, and, I imagine, to many libertarians across the world (to be anecdotal: my arguably anti-conservative Facebook posts get more likes from my European compatriots, over the norm where my American compatriots are mostly in the majority). In South Africa, conservatism means a preference for Apartheid, a highly-socialistic system founded in the very fascist notion that the State is the embodiment of the people and enforces their will. So when I enter into policy debates, only to have my opponents declare with conviction that libertarianism is conservative no doubt something they picked up from what is happening in America I am placed at a significant disadvantage.
The definition of conservatism which American conservatives have adopted enables them to relate, even if only at a distance, to the non-national philosophy of libertarianism. This is, however, not the case anywhere else in the world (at least, not to this extent). Therefore, when the argument is made that libertarianism and conservatism or social conservatism more particularly should, in essence, become one thing, a custom-made American definition is used. This is partly the problem with the assumptions underlying Toutants argument.
Libertarianism is set apart from American conservatism in one principal respect, which also sets it apart from progressivism, and which is the only justification for it being distinguished from both: individualism. A conservative, such as Toutant, can accept the basic premises of the NAP in theory, as have many conservative-leaning libertarians, but individualism in general is curiously excluded in favor of other values, such as (often bizarrely) democracy, certain social values such as the traditional marriage.
Toutants questionable interpretation of libertarianism is most evident in the following paragraph:
As far as I can tell, the vast majority of Libertarians are conservative in nature. They do not rely on the NAP to provide guidance to their moral behaviour, nor to help them define what is good or evil or what actions should be punished, or not, by the state. For that they rely on their culture and their religion. To many, the NAP is the equivalent of the Christian commandment, thou shalt not steal, full stop.
Being a libertarian who is personally conservative, and being a libertarian who advocates social conservatism, are two different things, considering that social conservatism is a public policy position. As an individual, I am arguably personally conservative. I believe in a higher power, I have never tasted alcohol or nicotine, I try to be decent, and look decent. But when my libertarian hat is on, i.e. when I engage in political philosophy or public policy (I work in public policy) then I am an individualist, I am socially liberal. And, in that respect, it is a prerequisite for a libertarian to be socially liberal qua libertarian.
Jared Howe, a Being Libertarian associate, recently wrote in a public Facebook comment that many Americans view libertarianism as a leftist movement due to the open border / free movement people. He went on to write that identity politics is not automatically invalid, and that even Hans-Hermann Hoppe relied on the historical and practical role of the monogamous family in his work. I am, as some would know, one of the open borders people. To many, that makes me a leftist ab initio, and clearly according to Howe as well. However, I obviously dispute this line of thinking, especially considering the rationale most open borders libertarians provide for their position, i.e. it is always founded in sound libertarian theory, even if it is not particularly Hoppean libertarian theory. Hoppes work is invaluable, but I dont recall him being declared the final arbiter on what is and what is not correct libertarian thinking.
Evidently, it has become problematic to use this description of libertarianism, i.e. that we are fiscally conservative and socially liberal. It causes confusion and opens doors which should not even exist (such as the ostensible similarities between libertarianism and American conservatism). Instead and this has become more popular in certain respects if we want to appeal to a broad audience rather than philosophy club, we should say we value personal and economic freedom for individuals. In this way, we avoid the confusion between socially liberal and social liberalism, which is a philosophy with some unfortunate socialist connotations, and avoid the confusion between American conservatism and fiscally conservative.
However, before we can go about reforming our marketing strategies, we should be clear about the fact that we comprise a distinct movement, and that while American conservatives have been worthy and valuable allies in many battles, we have our own agenda, which is often at odds with that of conservatives. We are not a subsidiary, extension, or transformation of American conservatism, but something entirely different.
Our victories over the left will be meaningless if we lose our identity in the process, instead becoming part of the authoritarian horseshoe paradigm we naturally must oppose.
* Martin van Staden is Editor in Chief of Being Libertarian.
This post was written by Martin van Staden.
The views expressed here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect our views and opinions.
Martin van Staden is the Editor in Chief of Being Libertarian, the Legal Researcher at the Free Market Foundation, a co-founder of the RationalStandard.com, and the Southern African Academic Programs Director at Students For Liberty. The views expressed in his articles are his own and do not represent any of the aforementioned organizations.
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Social Conservatism and Libertarianism Are Not Mergeable So Stop Trying - Being Libertarian
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Dries Van Thielen
TLR: Why will the 2017 elections be more successful than the one in 2012?
VALENTINE: Like the American Libertarian Party, the Dutch Libertarian Party was inspired by dogmatic anarchists. However, similar to the American Libertarian Party, we recently had a strong disagreement on approach. On the one side, we had dogmatic theorists, stating that the libertarian ideology could not dilute. On the other side, we had an uprising of pragmatics favoring a more conciliatory attitude. We went along with the pragmatics and thus far we reached a wider audience and I myself, receive more phone calls from journalists. Without betraying our ideology, we composed a more attractive program which resulted in more and younger members.
TLR: Your campaign shows similarities with Gary Johnsons presidential campaign which was unable to attract major media attention. What is the approach of the LP towards media?
VALENTINE: For 2017, our strategy consists out of two approaches. First, we try to attract political attention for the upcoming elections. In doing so, we make efforts to draw attention by focusing on social media Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn and mixing ourselves in online discussions by creating our own content. You see, similar to Johnson, we are never asked for political debates. When we are debating on a local level, the audience is drawn into our ideas since we pose a different concept than spending more money on topic A or B as our colleagues propose. Political TV debates are somnolent since no party offers solutions for ongoing problems (like poverty, ).
Secondly, we try to look further than the upcoming elections. In 2017, we will work to introduce three cornerstones (political, intellectual and social) of libertarianism in the LP. A political cornerstone since it is the only way to become more influential in the Netherlands. An intellectual cornerstone since we are too often drawn to American media outlets (FEE, Libertarian Republic, CATO, and Mises.org,), focusing on the United States. Instead, we would introduce our own articles and platform focusing on the Netherlands.
Third, a social cornerstone, showing the power of freedom and individual cooperation. We missed out on a strong equip of volunteers throughout the years, being active in the fibers of society will change that. Currently, we are working to maintain and professionalize our team.
TLR: According to your recent Twitter campaign (#Nexit), the Netherlands have to opt out of the EU and NATO. Why would this be a good idea?
VALENTINE: People who join politics are well-intended, I presume. They join a party with the firm belief to change the mishaps in their respective country. So did the EU: it started with good intentions free movement of goods, people and capital, a lessening of trade restrictions These ideas are utterly libertarian-inspired, but the reality and elaboration differ from these well-intended ideas. Nowadays, we have an army of unelected bureaucrats in Brussels and Luxembourg, designing our society! This is as un-libertarian as can be.
Without sounding too much like Geert Wilders (the entire Preliminary Election Program of PVV is 1 page long), I believe that the EU-agreements can be summed up on 1 page: freedom and free trade doesnt need codices. Brussels needs to disappear and The Hague needs to retake control.
As an alternative to the European Union, I would suggest the model Switzerland holds up. Granted, it isnt a libertarian utopia, but it only has 8 million inhabitants divided amongst 26 cantons, each with its respective constitution. The smallest particle decides which results in a more involved population. The citizens witness first handed the effects of their own policies.
TLR: And NATO?
VALENTINE: The same goes up with NATO. The NATO pact took off with good intentions, for we have to defend ourselves against invaders: libertarians arent pacifists. However, similar to the EU the intentions are overtaken by reality.
See, the moment we centralize our countrys interests, it gets troublesome since the organization you transfer your own interests to, has incentives of their own. In the case of NATO, the interests of its largest member the United States prevail on the ones of smaller member states (Netherlands and Belgium).
It is untenable to keep this relic from the Cold War alive as you take into account what it is used for nowadays: bombing sovereign states. Consistently bombing neighboring countries will not lead to a more secure Europe.
TLR: Can free trade solve the question of security, as a reaction for the dismantling of NATO? The majority of wars are fought for a lack of free trade.
VALENTINE: If goods dont pass the border, troops will. No sane country will put well-functioning commercial relations at risk since every interaction is advantageous for both participants. It would benefit the world if the world-wide free trade would be allowed (decline of poverty as the main advantage).
TLR: Besides free movement of goods and capital, your program mentions the open border solution based on the 19th-century European model. Will every individual integrate into this model?
VALENTINE: We favor the open border policy. Every individual is free to cross borders but we will check in your country of origin, whether you have ties with terrorist organizations.
Also, we encourage immigrants to work as soon as they enter the country instead of being pampered by the government, as is the case nowadays. Only, we will not allow immigrants to make use of the social benefits. In doing so, we counter the argument (theyll ruin our welfare) made by advocates of closed borders.
I find our system logical. Therefore, we counter the argument made by Geert Wilders. He states: We have to close borders, no one is allowed to cross borders and the Muslims already residing in the Netherlands will soon be kicked out! These accusations are nonsense and will harm the economy.
TLR: You grew accustomed to libertarianism by the writings of Ron Paul. Do you have any book recommendations for our readers?
VALENTINE: As an introduction into libertarianism, I highly recommend Revolution: A Manifesto by Dr. Ron Paul. Besides the classics (Economics in One Lesson or The Law), I was impressed by Matt RadleysThe Evolution of Everything. He refers to himself as a libertarian in minuscule. Many libertarians are attracted to libertarianism for its moral or economic aspect. It never goes both ways. The entire world is driven by invisible natural laws so it is unnecessary and illogical to set up structures according to Radley.
Since it is election season, I am currently reading The audacity to win by David Plouffe, Obamas Senior Advisor. It was he who was responsible for his (re-)election which interests me nowadays and I think it is a good read for many (non-pragmatic) libertarians. Unfortunately, the story does not tell itself.
TLR: I heard a passionate libertarian. When do you call the elections successful?
VALENTINE: The goal of the American Libertarian Party was to reach for 5% of the votes mainly to become a household name. The same goes up for us: the long-term is more important than these elections. If we reach 1 seat in parliament, it will be considered a grandiose success. Even if we reach 0.5 seats, which will correspond with about 20 thousand votes, these elections will be considered successful. This way, we will become a party worth taking into account.
EUGlobal Politicsimmigrationlibertarian partyNAvoNetherlandsRobert Valentine
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With the victory of Betsy DeVos, it seems the Department of Education may be entering its end-of-life phase. Although I would thoroughly enjoy finishing it off with a few blows of a hammer (then poking it to ensure it is good and dead), the narrowness of her victory margin suggests that detractors will successfully petition to keep the department on life support for some time. Even though the mere existence of a Department of Education flies in the face of the Constitution, people have gotten rather used to it: kind of like the awkward office Christmas parties that everybody dreads but cant abandon because they are considered an integral part of polite society. Right below muh roads in importance is muh public schools. Publications like the New Republic seem to look at Ron Pauls revolutionary idea of public school abolishment as a sure symptom of severe mental illness (reason alone for me to strongly consider his stance).
I have both hope and misgivings about the appointment of DeVos, but I find the clear disdain for her, exhibited by some of my least-favorite talking heads, mildly encouraging. I am, at the very least, interested to see what she will do, and I hope that one of her first orders of system dismantling is to staunch the bleeding of tax dollars into higher education.
From a pragmatic perspective, this move is clearly a simpler one than some of her other endeavors will likely be. The people attending college are adults and (one would hope) better able to handle the removal of their babysitter. But the reason for its importance goes beyond mere convenience. Higher education and more specifically the governments funding of it lies at the crux of many of our most pressing problems in the United States.
Until recently, I would likely have promoted our illustrious institutes of education as a solution to problems, instead of their cause; probably because the Department of Education has the word education right in its name, and that sounded so promising. I wont go into all the spectacular examples that have proven this line of thinking obsolete, but I think most people who are not either Shaun King or professors teaching seminars entitled Why All White Men Are Hitler would agree that these institutions are largely failing to educate anybody. This fact is not likely to change overnight, but merely extricating the government from them accomplishes one vitally important end quashing the illusion of entitlement that is destroying our country.
One of the first experiences many people have when officially reaching adulthood is navigating college. When state schools are so heavily funded by taxes, supplemented by state-run student loans and grants, students are immediately handed a large sum of their tuition for free and thereby unaware of the true cost of education. According to the New America Foundation (cited in The Atlantic), the federal government (your taxes) spent $69 billion on funding for higher education in 2013 (and that does not include loans). Worse, as soon as students arrive on campus, peppy student body representatives are handing these mini adults their free condoms, meal cards, and bus passes. Two seconds after reaching adulthood, they are having the idea that life is supposed to be free reinforced.
Women are oppressed by their own fertility and must be compensated. We are all victims of natural hunger and must have meals provided by well, it doesnt really matter who is paying for it, as long as WE are not. No apartments are available next to campus, so we need transportation somebody needs to cover that. And we have the right to receive education, in the area of our interest, be it interpretive dance or something even less practical.
Furthermore, we have the right to be assisted by tax money in these endeavors. If we shockingly find ourselves unable to secure a spot in a wildly successful dance company, we can have our student loans forgiven, as if doing so just required an apology and a conciliatory handshake. We have a right, nay, a DUTY, to pursue our destiny.
Mind you, I am not discouraging individuals or businesses who want to assist struggling students in these areas. Quite the contrary. I am merely pointing out that by having the government do it, we are eliminating the faces of the generous donors and the natural gratitude that often follows direct receipt of a gift. We are replacing that with the impression that these services somehow grow on trees. There is a condom tree, a bus pass tree, and a tree that produces the gelatin dessert served in your dining hall.
This may account for the tree-hugging movement among environmentalists. They got their degrees at these schools.
Unfortunately, once the government has sold this lie to students, it has them in prime position to sell them more. Consider that if these items did grow on trees, the government would tax and regulate them until they were prohibitively expensive, then heroically find ways to cut costs for students by making somebody else pay for it. The legislators who did this would now be considered champions of equality and education by the students, even as they grift those very students future selves out of tax money.
And thus, the cycle of government dependence is born at the commencement of higher education. State-sponsored universities are creating citizens who see legislators as saviors and imagined entitlements as natural resources.
Eliminating government involvement is not likely to turn clueless students into responsible adults overnight, but it will hopefully avoid our current crisis of sending intelligent young people into expensive schools and having them emerge 4 years later, 50 economic I.Q. points lower.
If we are going to kill the beast of overreaching government, we need to go for the jugular: tax-funded higher education.
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Muh State Universities: Breaking Free of Indoctrination - Being Libertarian
The UN has determined that both the rebels and the opposition from Syrian and Russian forces had committed war crimes that have caused many casualties among the civilian population of Aleppo.
The investigation report released by the UN Commission of Inquiry noted that Syrian and Russian forcespervasively used weapons to bomb highly populated areas in the rebel-held capital of Aleppo during last years conflict.
According to Al Jazeerathesemunitions included aerial bombs, air-to-surface rockets, cluster munitions, incendiary bombs, barrel bombs, and weapons delivering toxic industrial chemicals.
The Syrian governmentalso used chlorine bombs, a banned chemically toxic weapon that caused hundreds of civilian casualties according to the UN report.The government has repeatedly denied using chemical weapons in the war, which has killedalmost 400,000 people.
The report also accused the Syrian government of ameticulously planned and ruthlessly carried out air strike on a UN and Syrian Red Crescent convoy in western Aleppo in September, which killed14 aid workers.
According toAl Jazeeras Mohammed Jamjoom, the press was told was that the UN is preparing a dossier so if there is a tribunal that eventually happens, the evidence is ready to try to prosecute those who are accused of doing war crimes.
Rebels have been accused of firing shells indiscriminately at government-held areas and other parts of western Aleppo. Rebels also reportedly prevented groups of civilians from escaping eastern Aleppo during the latter stages of its fall, and used some civilians as human shields.
The Syrian government has repeatedly deniedmost of the claims put forth against it, and the rebels have also failed to take any accountability for their actions. Both sides have ravaged the city of Aleppo, killed many innocent civilians, and have used inhumane and illegal methods in fighting each other.
Photo Credit: Reuters/Kenan Al-Derani
This post was written by Nicholas Amato.
The views expressed here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect our views and opinions.
Nicholas Amato is the News Editor at Being Libertarian. Hes an undergraduate student at San Jose State University, majoring in political science and minoring in journalism.
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UN: All Sides Committed War Crimes in Aleppo - Being Libertarian
A Swarthmore Libertarian whos launched a campaign against U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., is holding a town hall on Sunday, March 12, to talk about the impact of legal force on addicts.
Dale Kerns is an estimator for an electrical contractor. He also serves on the board of Goodwill of Delaware and Delaware County and is seeking the Libertarian nomination to run against Casey next year.
At 11 a.m. on March 12, he will host a town hall at the Clarion Philadelphia Airport at 76 Industrial Highway in Essington.
Speakers at the event include Christopher Dreisbach, CEO of Blueprints for Addiction Recovery and Christopher Baston, a U.S. Air Force veterans and contributor on WPHL radio.
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The Kerns campaign said the event was motivated by his own recent loss of a relative to drug addiction and is meant to show the negative impact that the criminalization of addiction had on families and homes.
Two Republicans have already announced theyre in the race as well: Andrew Shecktor, a Berwick borough councilman who ran successfully last year as a delegate for Donald Trump to the Republican National Convention, and state Rep. Rick Saccone of suburban Pittsburgh.
Originally posted here:
Swarthmore Libertarian running against Casey to hold town hall - The Delaware County Daily Times
The past week has been a wild one in the libertarian movement that resulted in a great deal of soul-searching and reflecting. With left-libertarians triggered and showing their nasty, totalitarian colors under the pressure, many rational libertarians are realizing that this poison must be removed from the movement post haste before even more damage is done.
Anarcho-capitalist author and philosopher Christopher Chase Rachels has taken the lead in this valiant effort. In an apparent response to the growing acceptance of violence, harassment, and mob tactics by left-libertarians, Rachels is striking back. He drafted a manifesto for his new right-libertarian alliance that he published earlier today.
We as the libertarian right seek first and foremost to promote a society whose prevailing legal system(s) is/are firmly rooted in the private property ethic and the NAP, Rachels said in his manifesto. That this is the fundamental core of the peaceful, civilized, and prosperous society.
Those words sound like doctrinaire libertarianism, but Rachels manifesto definitely could appeal to those on the right as well. Rachels cleverly outlined language to satisfy right-wingers who are growingly interested in forming model communities to rid themselves of leftists completely, a noble goal if there ever was one.
People have the right to pool their property and form whatever type of community they wish based on whatever cultural values they have so long as insodoing they do not violate the private property of others, Rachels said.
This means that right-wing people could clique up with fellow right-wingers, even if they happen to be white, and form exclusionary communities. While this notion may make a left-libertarian run shrieking to the safety of a lynch mob, right-libertarians understand that this is true freedom. Rachels alliance might finally be the vehicle to promote a consistent, unapologetic strain of libertarianism that unabashedly promotes freedom, no matter what the outcome.
Jared Howe of Being Libertarian has provided a great deal of intellectual ammunition on Rachels behalf as he embarks upon his new mission.
When the left organizes, the right traditionally does nothing, though this is rapidly changing, Howe said. When the right organizes, the left spergs the fuck out and lapses into hysterical purity spiraling, gaslighting and Kafkatrapping.
This tells me that the left is TERRIFIED of the right. As Brexit, the election of Trump, and the rise of the Alt-Right have demonstrated, the left clearly isnt going to prevail through verbal abuse alone. Thats why theyve been escalating and provoking violent conflicts with Trump supporters. For them, it isnt about being right; its about survival through parasitism.
As the libertarian movement inevitably splits along partisan lines, opportunities will arise for libertarians to regroup, strike back, and make a lasting impact. Rachels and Howe clearly understand the need to combat the stasis in the libertarian movement. Their project has the real potential to focus libertarian resources toward achieving necessary ends.
The alliance does not have a website at the current time, but interested individuals are encouraged to email [emailprotected] for more details.
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New York Times | The Isolation of College Libertarians New York Times Leftists, in an effort to make campuses welcoming ostensibly, for everyone end up frequently silencing conservative and libertarian students. They paint any argument that isn't progressive as immoral, so conservative students can find themselves ... |
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This article originally appeared on AlterNet.
I once had a conversation with a Libertarian friend who insisted that freedom was the answer to everything ironic since he was getting married the following week.
Freedom to have sex with others while married? I asked.
Of course not, he said.
Freedom for your children to do whatever they want?
No, thats different, he said.
Freedom for everyone to have a nuclear bomb?
No, that wouldnt be good.
Freedom for people to steal?
No, that has to be controlled.
You dont really think that freedom is the answer to everything, I said. The real question is what to constrain and what to let go free. The question in social engineering is the question in all engineering. Its a question of tolerances: What to constrain with tight tolerances and what to let run free with loose tolerances. That question is built right into the paradoxical declarations that we should all, be intolerant of all intolerance, or tolerate all intolerance.
Sorry, thats not my question, he said.
But why? I asked.
Because its hard and I dont want to bother with it.
I applauded his honesty. If you want to know why its not obvious to everyone by now that the question is what to tolerate and not tolerate, its simply this: The question is difficult.
Its so much easier to be a hypocrite, to claim that total freedom or total constraint are the only possibilities and that you favor one and oppose the other. Its easier to pretend that youre crusading for absolute freedom against absolute control or vice versa than it is to deal with the messy complexity of trying to sort out what to free and what to constrain.
Hypocrisy is the alternative to praying for the wisdom to know the difference between what to constrain and what to let run free. Just pretend that you already have theperfect wisdom to know the obvious difference. Pretend that theres no question, control is always bad, freedom is always good. Or vice versa.
And with hypocrisy, you can even have it both ways depending on your momentary needs and whims. You can claim that you always favor one as you can switch back and forth.
I dont like that this constrains me. We should all be free always.
Always?!
Yes, judgment is always bad. People should never be judgmental.
But isnt should a judgment?
No. And why do you always have to disagree with me?
I dont always and anyway, didnt you just say that people should be free always? Doesnt that apply to me too? Shouldnt I be free to disagree with you?
No. People should always do the right thing. People should always be controlled by the moral principles I know and espouse.
But, but, you just said . . .
Theres a difference between being and feeling consistent. To be consistent you have to tame the tendency to extrapolate to universal principles from whatever youre feeling in the moment. You have to be able to notice your inconsistencies.
Since thats difficult and self-compromising, its easier to just feel consistent. For that you need only hold one idea constant. Just always chant, Im consistent. I have integrity. Im not like all of the other people around me. Other people are inconsistent hypocrisy. Im not.
If you hold that one thought with all your heart then you dont have to pay attention to your flip-flopping. You can have all your cakes and eat them too.
You wont live by your inconsistent standards, but if youre insistent enough, youll be able to convince yourself that you do, and maybe youll be able to convince others too. There are lots of hypocrisy cults you can join, mutual admiration societies that claim some absolute truth, thereby liberating themselves to follow their whims, confident that theyre consistent.
These days, libertarianism is one such cult, growing in popularity, in large part through sponsorship by the Koch brothers network of donors, spending billions through private charities to achieve a cabal of about 400 billionaires ultimate aim, to be unconstrained in everything they do. The cabal was inspired by a self-serving misreading of the Soviet Union. Fred Koch, the Koch brothers father was a key provider to Stalin as he built the Soviet Unions oil industry. When Fred saw the devastation wrought by his client Stalin he wrote that, What I saw in Russia convinced me of the utterly evil nature of communism. . . . What I saw there convinced me that communism was the most evil force the world has ever seen and I must do everything in my power to fight it, whichI have done since that time.
Rather than bite Stalins hand that fed him he conveniently focused on the rationalization that Stalin employed to justify his dictatorship. Fred went on to say in 1938 that Although nobody agrees with me, I am of the opinion that the only sound countries in the world are Germany, Italy, and Japan, simply because they are all working and working hard. He loved fascism; he hated communism.
Thus was born the hypocritical Koch campaign, control for freedom; constrain for liberty, dictate anarchy. It was easy to get other wealthy donors enthusiastic about the movement, donors like our new education secretary Betsy Devos, a self-declared Libertarian who donated over $200 million to hypocritical campaigns for state-imposed religious education in the name of Libertarianism. And its been easy to find politicians who will mouth and defend the hypocrisy for the money.
Thats what happened to what once was the Republican party. The Republicans who embraced American traditions bent to the Kochs will or were chased out by Koch-funded candidates from the Tea Party. If youre wondering whatever happened to our country, what explains the weird jack-knifing lurch toward libertarianism, the Koch brothers are a good place to find answers. The Tea Party wouldnt have lasted any longer than the Occupy movement if it werent orchestrated and funded by the Kochs.
Do I sound like a conspiracy theorist? If the alternative to conspiracy theory is the assumption that there are never any conspiracies, were in real trouble. There are conspiracies. The difference between conspiracy theorists and people who reveal real conspiracies is in whether the eagerness to find oneor the evidence leads one to the conclusion that there is one. If you read the facts on the Koch brothers, I think youll find that the evidence stacks up pretty conclusively.
But no matter how much money you pour into selling something, it wont sell if theres no latent appetite. With Libertarianism as a rationalization, theres plenty of appetite, the appetite for some alternative to having to think about whats worth and not worth constraining.
Libertarians have bought themselves the ultimate freedom, paid in full with a commitment to hypocrisy, the freedom to never have to wonder about or learn from anything ever again, the freedom to feel consistent without having to trouble themselves with the hard question that shows up everywhere since sometimes freedom turns out well and sometimes it turns out badly:
In engineering:There are bolts and there are ball bearings. We bolt some things down and we let other things run free.
Computer engineering:Algorithms are constraints that enable you to input a free range of variables and get reliably constrained results.
Social engineering:We want people to have freedom to do what they want so long as it doesnt cause more damage than their freedom is worth. Laws, at their best, are constraints that maximize freedom.
Liberty and justice for all:Justice constrains us, liberty frees us. Justice is security. Government at its best seeks the best mix.
Freedom and responsibility:Youre free on the dance floor, but unless youre special (P.S., youre not) your freedom comes with responsibility for not constraining other peoples freedom. You dont get to crowd everyone into the corner by dancing wildly with your eyes shut shouting I believe in freedom!
Social movements:The best and worst movements in human history have all had the same rallying cry, a proud We demand more! Thats the cry of those crowded out but also those who already have more than their fair share. Its the cry of the womens and civil rights movement but alsoof the Nazis. So whats the difference between the good and bad versions of that rallying cry? Hypocrisy, demand for more dance floor when youre already taking up plenty of it.
Player vs. married:A player is free to date whomever but the freedom comes with a loss of security, no reliable partner to come home to. A married person is more constrained but in the bargain gains some security.
Freelance vs. salaried:Salaried workers are more constrained than freelancers, but in exchange, they get a bit more security.
Evolution:Life is a trial and error process and we are the trials. This makes us ambivalent, rooting for ourselves as trials and rooting for the trial and error process. In our hearts, we cry let the best man win and it damned well better be me!
Sore losers:Sore losers smash the game board if they lose. Libertarians are like that. They think that if they dont win, the game is rigged against them and must be destroyed so that they always win.
Free willvs. determinism:We claim that free will as better than determinism but actually were ambivalent. What wed really like is the freedom to advance and the determinism that locks in the advances weve already made. What we really want is a ratchet, freedom to climb, constraint against falling.
We can have that ratchet if we shut our eyes, dance impulsively and shout freedom is the only answer! while crowding everyone else into the corners by meaning only our personal freedom, the hell with theirs.
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What does freedom actually mean? Self-indulgent Libertarian hypocrisy knows no bounds - Salon
Conservative and libertarian law professors demand more politically balanced faculties
February 28, 2017
Law schools are notoriously one-sided when it comes to the political leanings of their faculty, and conservative and libertarian academics are tiredof seeking change behind the scenes.
More than two dozen law professors, many familiar to College Fix readers, sent an open letter to the executive committee of the Association of American Law Schools.
It lays bare their grievances against AALSs failure to take concrete preliminary steps to promote viewpoint diversity among law faculties, in the words of the professor who shared it, libertarian luminary Randy Barnett of Georgetown.
Drafted by Case Western Reserve Law Prof. George Dent, who has led a yearslong effort in the association to promote diversity beyond skin color and sex, the letter says conservatives and libertarians are grossly underrepresented on law faculties:
For several years now a number of legal scholars have asked the AALS to support the commitment to viewpoint diversity stated in its by-laws.
While the new executive director seems also to take us seriously, and this years AALS annual meeting seemed to have better balanced panels, the association refuses to go further, the letter says.
At last years annual meeting, several professors met with the executive committee to ask for creation of a Political Diversity Task Force; for viewpoint diversity to be made a regular element of the sabbatical reviews for member schools; and for access to the associations Faculty Appointments Register, to help them track viewpoint diversity in hiring.
Its been a year since AALSsaid it would create subcommittees to examinethese requests, and nothing has happened, says the letter:
We fear that the Executive Committee does not take our concerns seriously and intends to take no action to address them. Both scholarship and teaching suffer when law schools are echo chambers in which only one side of current debates is given a voice.
The signatories include Case Western Reserves Jonathan Adler, University of San Diegos Gail Heriot (a potential Trump administration pick), George Masons Ilya Somin and UCLAs Eugene Volokh.
Read the letter.
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Idealists, or purists, can be frustratingly impractical with their ideology. Some will consider any form of political action an endorsement of state power and others will only support political activists that adhere strictly to impractical or impossible standards. Meanwhile, realists have a tendency to dismiss any extreme ideas, including those of ancaps (anarcho-capitalists), as completely worthless if they deviate too far from the current schematic of civilization.
I am not suggesting that all libertarians fit neatly into these two categories, but those who do are prevalent. Im asserting that these libertarians are needlessly in opposition, when in fact these sides are complementary, not antagonistic. Is it a contradiction for one person to be on both sides of the spectrum simultaneously? Not if we view idealism as the goal and realism as the means to achieve it.
The purpose of idealism is to provide the end goal. Idealisms only constraint is that it must account for human behavior. In libertarian ideology, anarcho-capitalism is typically considered idealism. No reasonable thinker expects anarcho-capitalism to become mainstream anytime soon. It is only an ethical standard for which to aim. The inability to apply it to the immediate present does not negate the moral arguments for it.
In the past, when slavery was globally accepted and relied upon, the concept of abolition would have been viewed as having catastrophic consequences. When slave labor was the standard means for large-scale production, the idea of automated machinery or any other replacement was impossible to fathom. Today, these concepts are reversed. Blatantly advocating slavery is nearly unheard of, and automated machinery is casually accepted as the go-to method of large-scale production. This is why idealism is not to be easily dismissed. However, what purpose is a goal without means to achieve it?
The purpose of realism is to provide the means to achieve these goals. Realism is pragmatic and practical, focusing only on what can be accomplished in the world we are given today. Realists focus on using methods that bring about change, even if the change is minor or involves compromise.
Having a realistic path is necessary to achieve any goal. As weve all heard numerous times, if we want to accomplish a goal, we must break this goal up into smaller, simpler, easily achievable goals. No entrepreneur can succeed with a great idea, but no business plan to implement. In this same manner, no anarchist can eliminate the state solely by preaching Rothbard. Nor can a minarchist limit state power only by reading Adam Smith.
It cannot be considered a sacrifice of principles to compromise so long as its a net benefit for liberty.
Those such as Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), Congressman Thomas Massie (R-KY 4th), and Congressman Justin Amash (R-MI 3rd) can all be considered realists. While the extent of their impact is debatable, it is difficult to argue that they have achieved nothing.
But why are both idealism and realism necessary?
Say youre unhappy with your current environment, so you decide to move. The role of the idealist is to decide your destination while the realist charts your path. On the way, you notice the road isnt perfectly straight. At some points, you may actually be increasing the distance between you and your destination. At other times, you might be traveling north when your destination is northwest. These times are not inefficient, but necessary for progress. This explains the complications of realists. The path to the goal is not always obvious, and idealists can benefit from a realistic approach.
Since both the realists and the idealists are necessary, why not be both? Instead of choosing a side, why not hold a realist position and an idealist position on each issue?
Sometimes these positions are the same, and other times different. For example, is it hypocritical to believe in open borders and to actively support extreme vetting? I argue no.
A welfare/warfare state can complicate things. A policy that works for Japan may not work for South Africa and, in a similar sense, a policy that works for America in 2017 may not for Ancapistan in 2517.
There are already a few that could be considered both realistic and idealistic. In fact, an entire branch of anarchism is devoted to a form of practical activism: Agorism.
Agorists advocate withdrawing from government and living as an anarchist through a black or grey market.
As for specific examples, there are three that stand out. Judge Andrew Napolitano considers himself an anarchist, yet is obviously part of the system as a judge. Tom Woods, another ancap, has advocated for political involvement as well. Perhaps the most controversial example is Stefan Molyneux, an activist that has written two books on anarchy and yet routinely advocates against open borders in present day America.
Despite these examples, a majority of libertarians appear bonded to either realism or idealism, reluctant to see the viability of the another. Perhaps collaboration between the two can be a solution to the frequent infighting within the libertarian scope.
* Nathan A. Kreider is the Fall 2015 Spring 2017 president of the Young Americans for Liberty chapter at Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania. He runs nkreider.com and tweets from @LibertyNAK regularly.
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The Libertarian Party continues to bask in a historic election year, gaining party status and ballot access in more states in 2016. The general platform of fiscal conservatism and social liberalism/tolerance/openness is striking a cord with many voters looking for alternatives outside the two-party political structure.
In some states, like Iowa, the local Libertarian Party is celebrating major party status. However, other Libertarian Parties must fight Republican and Democratic forces to gain the party status or ballot access they believe they rightfully earned after the 2016 elections.
In Tennessee, the state Libertarian Party asked the secretary of state to declare it a qualified political party, according to Ballot Access News. Current law requires minor parties to get at least 5 percent of the vote in the previous gubernatorial election.
The last gubernatorial election was in 2014, when 5% of the vote was 67,687. The partyscase for qualified party status is that Gary Johnson received70,397 votes. I reached out to the chairman of the Libertarian Party of Tennessee for comment, and will update the article with the chairmans comments.
The Libertarian Parties in Ohio and Washington stateare also fighting state officials on being denied major party status, despite Johnsons success in 2016. In Washington, the secretary of state added the total number of write-in votes to the total presidential count to drop the Libertarian Party below the required number (5% of the vote total) to obtain major party status.
The Ohio Libertarian Party has long been locked in conflict and litigation with the states Republican secretary of state, Jon Husted, over candidates being denied access to the ballot and denying the party recognized status. Multiple lawsuits have been filed by the Libertarian Party against Husted, which have had no success before the Supreme Court.
Husted denied the Libertarian Party of Ohio recognized party status because Gary Johnson had to run in the state as an independent, even though he was the Libertarians presidential nominee. The party had been previously stripped of its party status and the state would not let Johnson run under the Libertarian label.
These are just a fewexamples of the struggles the Libertarian Party and other minor parties experience just to get on the ballot. In many states, the petition requirements to appear on the general election ballot area deterrent. And even if a minor party believes it can get the signatures necessary, many fear legal challenges from the major parties that could potentially cripple theirparty financially.
The Libertarian Party of Illinoischallenged a law before the Seventh Circuit Court of Appealsthatmakes it harder for third parties to gain ballot access. An update from the Courthouse News Serviceindicates that the court may be poised to rule in the Libertarian Partys favor. It would be a big win for Libertarians not only in Illinois, but across the country.
Original post:
Libertarian Ballot Access Fight against Two-Party Duopoly Grows Stronger - IVN News
By Thomas L. Knapp
Feb. 7: Muhammad Ali Jr., returning to the U.S. from a speaking engagement in Jamaica, is detained for two hours at Florida's Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport and questioned about his name and religious beliefs.
Feb. 22: Passengers disembarking from a domestic (San Francisco to New York) flight at JFK airport are held up by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents demanding their IDs.
Feb. 24: Jeffrey Tucker of the Foundation for Economic Education clears the usual security checks at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta Airport en route to Mexico. Then, while actually boarding the plane, he and the other passengers on the flight are stopped by U.S. Marshals demanding that they submit to retinal scans.
You're probably thinking that this is the point where I'll take a break to blame Donald Trump. It isn't. It's the point where I'll take a break to remind Americans who've been voting for politicians who promise to "secure the border" and other such authoritarian nonsense that THIS is exactly what they've been voting for.
When advocating for the libertarian position on immigration ("open borders," which also happens to have been the position Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush both took in the 1980 Republican presidential primary debates), I usually prefer to stick to the moral argument. That argument, put simply, is that where peaceful people move to, settle or work is nobody's business but theirs.
But there are practical arguments against America's increasingly draconian immigration laws too. Enforcement is expensive but, fortunately, almost certain to be ineffectual (if it worked, severe economic downturn would be the result).
The most important of the practical arguments, in my opinion, is that a police state built to persecute immigrants will necessarily persecute everyone else as well.
I've spoken with friends who traveled in the old Soviet Union and eastern Europe before the Berlin Wall came down. They see near-complete similarity between those regimes and the operations of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection and Border Patrol forces.
The difference between pre-reunification East Germany and the 100-mile wide "constitution-free zone" along the U.S.-Mexico border is the flag the agencies in question salute. Recent administrations have worked to expand that zone to cover the entire country and the Trump administration seems bent on finishing the job.
The near-total police state blossoming before our eyes is the inevitable result of America's 70-year romance with the astoundingly stupid idea that it's the government's business to monitor and control who travels, lives and works where.
America had legally open borders for its first century as a nation, and nearly so for half a century after that. It wasn't until after World War II that one even needed a passport to enter or leave the United States.
Open borders worked. Freedom worked.
The subsequent seven decades of attempts at rigorous immigration control have irrefutably established that our choice is not between open borders and closed borders, but between immigration freedom or totalitarian government. And Americans' time to stop the stampede toward the latter is running short.
Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.
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Libertarian View: The immigration enforcement police state is here - SouthCoastToday.com
The Libertarian Cato Institute released a study in 2016 that actually disproves Donald Trumps theory that banning Muslims from entering the United States will save American lives. That likely wasnt the intention of Cato, but their own work proves that Trump is full of it. Ring of Fires Farron Cousins discusses this.
Transcript of the above video:
The Libertarian Cato Institute actually released a report in 2016 that incidentally happened to completely disprove everything that Donald Trump and his Administration have told us about the intended effects of their Muslim ban. Now as it stands right now the Administration is currently redrafting that executive order to make it into something that the courts are not going to rip apart. The likelihood of them being successful with that, extremely low considering the fact that these are not lawyers, these are not people who understand foreign policy. Its likely theyre going to write something thats not exactly going to pass the muster when it comes to being legal.
However, this Cato Institute study from 2016 shows that in the years between 1975 and 2015, a 40 year span, there were 20 incidents where refugees entered the United States and committed acts of violence. In those 40 years, of those 20 people who were refugees three people were killed. 40 years, 20 refugees involved in incidents. Only three people killed.
Contrast that with home grown terrorism. I mean, how many people died in the Oklahoma City bombing? How many people have been killed by right wing hate groups? I mean just this week two men were killed by one white man because he thought they were Muslims. He thought they were Middle Easterners. Turns out they were from India. They were engineers, very well respected people with huge educations, working to make things in the world better, and he murdered them in a hate crime because he thought they were Middle Eastern, as if thats some sort of justification for killing another human being. While he murdered them he was yelling, Get out of my country. No. You get out of the country. Thats not what we do here in the United States.
I bet if Donald Trump and his Administration actually looked in to the amount of terrorism being caused by white men in the United States, maybe wed have a different kind of travel ban. Its not hard to identify the problem when you look at all the variables. Now the Cato Institute Study was just trying to figure out if refugees coming into the United States were a threat or not. It turns out according to Cato that theyre not. If we want to address the real threats we have to look at all the data. We have to look at the acts of home grown terrorism being committed by white men in the United States, because those are the treats. Those are the real problems. The people who take over a wildlife refuge in Oregon, the people who have standoffs with federal officers in the SouthWest, those are terrorists. Those are people that we need to be worried about. Those are people that we should probably be afraid of. Those are people that should spend the rest of their lives behind bars because that is illegal.
Those are the people that we should be worrying about, but instead the Trump Administration, Republicans in general, theyve created these Middle Eastern boogeymen, telling us that we need to be afraid of them coming over here and trying to kill us. Meanwhile, the real people who pose a threat to our very lives are the ones around us. Maybe the crazy neighbor, maybe the guy down the street. The people that you wouldnt ordinarily think because statistically they pose a far greater threat to our lives here in the United States than anyone coming over as a refugee.
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Libertarian Think Tank Proves That Trump's Muslim Ban Won't Work ... - The Ring of Fire Network