If libertarians built the roads, maybe they wouldnt be racist – Washington Examiner

Libertarians face many trite and tired arguments against their ideology, but none is more famous than the ever-present Who would build the roads? attack.

But while libertarians are forced to spend a good bit of time talking about roads, the rest of the country is typically less focused on our nations infrastructure that is until this week when Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg made comments that ignited a firestorm over the topic.

In remarks made about the trillion-dollar infrastructure bill, Buttigieg alluded to the racist design of Americas highways and his plans to use the funds to address the problems theyve caused.

I dont think we have anything to lose by confronting that simple reality, he said. And I think we have everything to gain by acknowledging it and then dealing with it, which is why the Reconnecting Communities, that billion dollars, is something we want to get to work right away putting to work.

In response, conservative pundits went to work defending the government which they often do when accusations of systemic racism come up. Its an odd stance given the fact that the Right claims to believe the government is inherently corrupt, vile, and perverse. But racist? Not a chance, how dare you allege such a thing.

If we step back from the culture war for a moment, though, it is easy to come up with a number of examples of systemic racism that most on the Right would not argue. Gun laws were implemented to ensure black people did not have access to firearms after the Civil War. Government schools, which are assigned based on zip codes that are affected by the policies of redlining, consistently produce racially disparate outcomes. And occupational licenses have commonly been put in place to block certain people from entering careers.

While the policies that built our nations roads may be less familiar to many, there are countless historical examples that back up Buttigiegs claims.

Our highways were mostly built throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Ambitious engineers sought means to link downtown business districts with the suburbs, and to do so, they often had to cut through existing neighborhoods, meaning a great deal of disruption to those residents and a good amount of eminent domain seizures. Wealthier neighborhoods, which tended to be white, had the political might to fight off these projects while the poorer neighborhoods, which were often mostly black, did not.

To build Interstate 10 in New Orleans, engineers cleared a large portion of land along the oak-lined commercial thoroughfare of North Claiborne Avenue. The black residents fought this plan unsuccessfully at the time, and dozens of homes and businesses in the community were destroyed while the nearby French Quarter was left untouched.

Its a pattern one can find replicated dozens of times throughout virtually every city. According toThe Pew Charitable Trusts , In Miami, Interstate 95 flattened swaths of a Black neighborhood called Overtown, forcing some 10,000 people to leave their homes. In Nashville, Tennessee, the I-40 expressway demolished 620 houses, 27 apartment buildings and six Black churches.

The impacts on the black community were severe. Not only were they not compensated for their properties at market rates eminent domain seizures rarely are but the roads ruined black-owned businesses, caused home values to fall, increased pollution, attracted homeless camps and crime under overpasses, and cut communities off from one another.

This is what people mean by systemic racism. And whether it was done intentionally by government actors to cut black communities off from white neighborhoods as segregation became illegal, or if it was merely done because these communities lacked the political power to fight back, the results are the same.

We should not seek to tear down existing roads as Buttigieg has flirted with, but we should seek to learn from our history and use this as yet another example of the failures of government power and central planning.

One thing is certain: If libertarians built the roads, theyd have a lot better chance of not being racist.

Hannah Cox (@hannahdcox ) is a libertarian-conservative activist and a contributor to the Washington Examiners Beltway Confidential blog.

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If libertarians built the roads, maybe they wouldnt be racist - Washington Examiner

Whos Afraid of Higher Education? – New York Magazine

The school promises forbidden courses to students. Photo: PBS/YouTube

In 1971, the televangelist Jerry Falwell embarked on an ambitious new venture. With the help of Elmer Towns, a Christian academic, he founded a new institution of higher education: Liberty University. Falwell had grand dreams for his new school, as his official biography on Libertys website makes clear: Not only would it function as an ideological factory for churning out new conservative activists, it would do so on a grand scale. Falwell wanted the school to grow to 50,000 students, a goal the school says it has now achieved. Liberty wasnt Falwells first educational experiment, either. Hed previously founded a K-12 school as a segregation academy. Before wokeness entered the right-wings lexicon, desegregation was the enemy of the hour.

Decades later, the right remains fixated on education, agitating over the alleged prevalence of critical race theory in public schools and the hysterical excesses of college liberals. Race and gender are still animating concerns. Enter Bari Weiss, a self-styled tribune of the people, with an announcement that parallels Falwells earlier foray into higher education: She, too, is starting a university with some help from her friends. The unaccredited University of Austin is dedicated to the fearless pursuit of truth, proclaims a post on Weisss Substack. Nearly a quarter of American academics in the social sciences or humanities endorse ousting a colleague for having a wrong opinion about hot-button issues such as immigration or gender differences, wrote the universitys new president, Pano Kanelos, citing the controversial academic Eric Kaufmann.

Kanelos is half-right. There is a free-speech crisis in higher education, but it exists on campuses like Libertys, where students and faculty have long complained of censorship from zealous administrators. My alma mater, a Christian university much like Liberty, actively restricted the content we could publish in our student newspaper; a trustee once complained that I had used the phrase reproductive rights in an article. Years later the school confiscated copies of an independent student publication. Nevertheless, Kanelos ignores these examples to single out Yale and Stanford and Harvard. In these top schools, he queried, and in so many others, can we actually claim that the pursuit of truth once the central purpose of a university remains the highest virtue? Kanelos implies the existence of a past where the university was once free of donor pressure or administrative cowardice or, more to the point, pesky student activism. But this history only exists in his imagination. Universities have always been fraught places, where the free exchange of ideas often results in intellectual turbulence.

Its precisely that intellectual turbulence that Kanelos, Weiss, and their comrades seek to escape, much as Jerry Falwell did in the 1970s. Falwell was no outlier. The right has long dreamed of alternatives to traditional higher education. The televangelist Pat Robertson founded Regent University for similar reasons. Michael Farris, the founder of the Homeschool Legal Defense Association, founded Patrick Henry College in 2000 to shelter homeschool graduates and funnel them into Republican politics. Hillsdale College has assumed a sharply right-wing political identity over time, and rejects federal funding as a matter of principle. (A Hillsdale professor sits on the University of Austins board of advisers.) These schools exist as laboratories for right-wing thought; they are committed not to free expression but to indoctrination. The University of Austin will be no different.

Consider the parties involved. As a student at Columbia University, Weiss developed a censorious reputation of her own.A campus organization Weiss co-founded did demand that the administration change the departments curriculum and make it easier to file complaints against professors, measures that would have affected certain scholars responsibilities and duties, as well as their future job prospects, the writers Mari Cohen and Joshua Leifer observed in Jewish Currents. Weiss and her fellow activists targeted Arab professors for speech they deemed hostile to Israel, efforts shes since downplayed to better portray herself as a campaigner for free expression. A University of Austin founding faculty fellow Ayaan Hirsi Ali, has called Islam a nihilstic cult of death and has claimed that violence is inherent to the religion, which bodes ill for any Muslim who might wish to attend the new university. The new universitys positions on sex and gender arent hard to guess, either. Another fellow, the anti-trans academic Kathleen Stock, voluntarily resigned her position at the University of Sussex, claiming that student protests curtailed her own academic freedom. Put another way, Stock found free expression a bit too lively to tolerate.

Others linked to the university stand accused of crossing professional lines with female students. One, Joshua Katz, received a year-long suspension from Princeton University over an inappropriate relationship with an undergraduate woman. Another, Joe Lonsdale, has been accused of raping a woman he mentored, an allegation he vehemently denies. Lonsdales nonprofit, Cicero Research, is fiscally sponsoring the new institution.

So what rights will a University of Austin student actually possess? They cant count on a right to free expression, that much is clear. The presence of Lonsdale and Katz raises further questions about the universitys position on due process for survivors of sexual misconduct. Students wont even benefit from an intellectually diverse faculty. Survey the schools website, and you wont find a single leftist scholar. Nor should we expect to find one. Lonsdales nonprofit, Cicero, says its committed to free-market based solutions to public policy issues. And as a private institution, the University of Austin will retain the broad freedom to censor students and faculty as it sees fit as does Liberty and my alma mater. What weve got, then, is a Bible college for libertarians. Those disturbed by progress will find shelter on campus. Pledging freedom from wokeness, the University of Austin actually seeks freedom from free exchange. There is a soupon of social liberalism, which extends no further than equality for LGB people and not to trans people and which is too inadequate to greatly distinguish the school from other conservative institutions. In this university, Falwell would see kindred minds. Theres nothing new here.

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Whos Afraid of Higher Education? - New York Magazine

She helped her husband start a far-right militia group. Now the Oath Keeper’s wife says she has regrets – Los Angeles Times

EUREKA, MONT.

Looking back at the Capitol riot, Tasha Adams ponders her time as an Oath Keepers wife and asks: What if I had not supported him?

Him is her estranged husband, Stewart Rhodes, founder and leader of the Oath Keepers, an anti-government group whose members stand accused by federal authorities of having played a crucial role in the Jan. 6 insurrection. During nearly 23 years of marriage, Adams says she devoted herself to Rhodes aspirations. She worked as an exotic dancer to help put him through college, assisted in writing his papers and encouraged him to successfully apply to Yale Law School. When he was looking for direction in life a cause Adams helped him start the Oath Keepers.

Over the next few years, Adams became disillusioned by the far-right organization and her marriage. The Oath Keepers, she says, increasingly promoted conspiracy theories while engaging in extremist activities and rhetoric that demonstrated racial and ethnic biases. Meanwhile, her husband became emotionally and physically abusive, she says. In 2018, hoping to put Rhodes and the organization behind her, she left him and filed for divorce.

With congressional committees and federal investigators examining the threat posed by domestic extremists and their contribution to the insurrection, Adams has been conducting an exploration of her own life and culpability in the forming of the Oath Keepers. Her journey provides behind-the-scenes insights into how a Las Vegas car valet transformed into the leader of an organization that sought to overturn a presidential election.

Column One

A showcase for compelling storytelling from the Los Angeles Times.

If I hadnt helped him start it, I mean, there would probably still have been an insurrection, Adams, 49, says in an interview in this old logging town, not far from where she lives. But what would it have looked like? That is what Im trying to figure out.

Adams has not been shy about sharing her experiences tweeting critically about Rhodes and his organization, while launching an online crowdsourcing campaign to fund her divorce. Last month, she spoke at length with investigators for the special House committee examining the Capitol riot.

Eureka, the town not far from where Tasha Adams lives, is known as an old logging town.

(Tailyr Irvine / For The Times)

Dissecting what transpired in any relationship can be a fraught endeavor. This story is based on Adams recollections, as well as reviews of court records and interviews with two of her adult children, Dakota Vonn Adams and Sedona Rhodes, who confirmed their mothers account. More than a dozen current and former officers and board members of the Oath Keepers did not respond to requests for comment.

Rhodes did not respond to repeated phone calls and text messages. The 56-year-old has not been charged in the insurrection. He has said the Oath Keepers were in town to provide security for advisors to then-President Trump and supporters and did not intend to enter the building.

Adams, who speaks in rapid-fire sentences that frequently end in quips, starts each day by firing up a laptop on her kitchen countertop, scanning for news about the Oath Keepers.

She has read how 18 Oath Keepers have been indicted on conspiracy charges for forcing their way into the Capitol, and she has studied prosecutors damning portrait of Rhodes. They allege in court papers that Rhodes urged Oath Keepers to come to Washington to fight for Trump.

He was on the Capitol grounds during the insurrection, prosecutors say, and provided live updates to his members storming the building. Theres no indication that he entered the Capitol during the riot. Rhodes described the rioters as patriots and later compared the insurrection to the Boston Tea Party, prosecutors say.

Adams met Rhodes when she was an 18-year-old dance instructor at an Arthur Murray studio in Las Vegas, and he was a 25-year-old student.

She was the daughter of strict white Mormon parents who ran a window manufacturing business. Rhodes was an intense and worldly former Army paratrooper who maintained his military physique and parked cars for a living. He told her of growing up in a multi-ethnic Christian family, spending summers picking fruit alongside relatives. Rhodes has described himself as a quarter Mexican and part Native American, invoking that heritage at times to deflect against allegations that the Oath Keepers are sympathetic to racists.

Adams says she was drawn to Rhodes life experience because it was so different from mine.

An archival photograph of Tasha Adams during her honeymoon with Stewart Rhodes rests on a table.

(Tailyr Irvine / For The Times)

They had been dating four months when Rhodes accidentally dropped a .22-caliber handgun and shot himself in the face, blinding himself in the left eye. She says she felt obligated to assist him.

I was suddenly taking care of a man with a hole in his head, Adams says.

With Adams contemplating becoming a professional ballroom dancer, the couple struggled to make rent; she says Rhodes began to press her to find a more lucrative trade.

Every day, Adams recalls, he was like, You should be a stripper and make more money. She took up exotic dancing, earning $100 a night.

They married in 1994, and she worked at a high-end strip club until she had their first child, Dakota. Each night, Adams says, she helped Rhodes with his assignments at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and nurtured his dreams of becoming a lawyer.

I wanted a house with a treehouse for Dakota. I thought, man, I struck the jackpot, she says, describing her emotion upon Rhodes acceptance by Yale. Im married to a future Yale Law School graduate!

But Rhodes turned down high-paying internships his first year and took a nonpaying summer gig at a conservative think tank. He was more interested in causes than money, says Adams, adding, I knew then I was never going to get the treehouse. She says Rhodes charted a similar course after graduating in 2004, working mostly in smaller practices or as a freelance writer of legal briefs.

Rhodes had always been interested in politics, Adams says, and they both subscribed to libertarianism, a philosophy that promotes free markets and limited government. They fervently supported one of its staunchest adherents, then-Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas).

While volunteering for Pauls 2008 presidential campaign, Rhodes and Adams met veterans and former police officers who were drawn to the candidates libertarian views. Thats when Rhodes decided to form the Oath Keepers, a group focused on recruiting veterans, military personnel and police officers and encouraging them to remain true to the oath they swore to defend the Constitution and to disobey orders they consider illegal.

Adams says she liked the idea and believed in the groups focus. Its goals aligned with her libertarian views of limited government, and she saw it as a good way for her husband to tap his charisma to earn a living. She says she envisioned Oath Keepers as a a cigar club of like-minded libertarians.

I thought it was something he could do well, she says. What a great name, right? I thought, wow, we are going to sell a lot of T-shirts and motorcycle jackets.

By the time Rhodes launched the Oath Keepers in March 2009 two months after President Obama took office Adams says she realized the group was not going to be a cigar club, nor a libertarian version of the ACLU.

In a blog post that month, Rhodes wrote that his groups principal mission was to prevent the destruction of American liberty by preventing a full-blown totalitarian dictatorship from coming to power. Our Motto is Not on our watch!

Adams says she accepted Rhodes vision for the Oath Keepers because he seemed to mostly be pushing the boundaries of free speech and advocating for limited government.

For its first couple of years, the Oath Keepers operated on a tight budget. Adams says she handled its mailing lists and ran its website, keeping it updated with links to events, missives from Rhodes and links to news stories about the group.

According to pages captured by the Internet Archive, much of the site was dedicated to testimonials from members, many current and former military personnel, who expressed enthusiasm about joining the organization and its mission. I find no higher calling than to join forces with the Oath Keepers, and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with my fellow Americans in our own defense, wrote a member who identified himself as an Air Force officer in June 2009.

In November 2009, a person who identified himself as an Army veteran posted: Its time to stand up for liberty and truth above all else. To Reclaim the Republic for the people, by the people, of the people from the hands of tyranny. The poster added he was particularly concerned about puppet politicians, the Central Banking gangsters, the U.N. ...

With the rise of the tea party movement, the organization grew rapidly. At its height in 2015, the Oath Keepers had about 35,000 members, Adams says. Anti-hate groups have pegged its top membership at no more than 5,000.

Adams says she stepped away from the group in 2010 or 2011 and focused on raising her children. She and Rhodes would eventually have six. In her spare time, Adams blogged a bit, describing herself as a homeschooling, breastfeeding, homebirthing, libertarian, freedom fighting, gun-toting really cool mom.

On the blog, she described her husband as being cute and sexy and extolled his rise from being a down-on-his-luck car valet to leader of the Oath Keepers.

Adams cringes when she reads such posts. I was creating the world I wanted it to be, she says, not the one it was.

At the Oath Keepers height, in 2015, Adams says, the organization had about 35,000 members.

(Tailry Irvine / For The Times)

In 2013, Rhodes announced that the Oath Keepers would create teams, prepared with military-style training, to respond to the implosion of society. Until that point, such training had been prohibited, Adams says, because Rhodes didnt want his group to be considered a militia.

There is a stigma attached to militias, she says. And he wanted to avoid that.

Suddenly, she says, Oath Keepers were running around playing army.

The Oath Keepers in 2014 and 2015 assisted ranchers and miners in Nevada and Oregon in armed disputes with federal authorities. Rhodes also deployed Oath Keepers in 2014 to Ferguson, Mo., to patrol and protect businesses during protests unleashed by the shooting of a Black 18-year-old, Michael Brown, by a white police officer.

Rhodes was criticized by anti-hate groups for that action, and he was chastised by a local Oath Keepers leader for engaging in a racial double standard by failing to assist Black residents accusing law enforcement of abuses. Adams says she raised similar concerns with Rhodes, particularly after the Oath Keepers had defended white ranchers and miners.

Members of the Oath Keepers have generally avoided the kind of inflammatory rhetoric utilized by white supremacists. The groups bylaws prohibit anyone from joining who advocates, or has been or is a member, or associated with, any organization, formal or informal, that advocates discrimination, violence, or hatred toward any person based upon their race, nationality, creed, or color.

But experts say such circumspection belies how the Oath Keepers actions, and statements by members, have assisted in the spread of racist language and hate.

Members of Oath Keepers think of themselves as rejecting racism, yet they and allied groups have served as de facto security for neo-Confederate and alt-right groups, Sam Jackson, a professor at the University at Albany-SUNY wrote in his eponymous book about the Oath Keepers. In other words, like most of the contemporary patriot/militia movement, the [Oath Keepers] is not organized around a perceived racial identity, but neither is it as free of racism and bigotry as it likes to claim.

Jackson noted that Rhodes has wielded his Mexican heritage to push back on claims that he or the Oath Keepers are in league with racists, even as his group has disseminated videos that display bigotry toward undocumented migrants and Mexicans. Rhodes has compared Latino and Black Lives Matter activists to jihadist terrorists and well funded Marxist and racist agitators. He has said that illegal immigration was an invasion and described as dirtbags the mostly Black NFL players who protested racial injustice by kneeling during the national anthem.

Adams says she once believed that anti-hate groups were exaggerating the dangers the Oath Keepers posed because Rhodes convinced her the criticism was unfounded and a ploy to raise money.

After Ferguson and the armed standoffs, however, Adams says her views changed. While Rhodes and leaders did not tolerate discriminatory language I never heard him say anything like the N-word, she says, and he would get rid of anyone who did the estranged wife believes her husband and other Oath Keepers nevertheless exhibited racial and ethnic biases in several, frequently subtle ways. She cited their refusal to back Black residents protesting police abuse in Ferguson, their harsh rhetoric about immigrants and their vision for America. They described America as if they were looking out at a crowd at a baseball game, she says, and seeing a sea of white faces with rosy cheeks.

She adds that the Anti-Defamation League is correct in describing the Oath Keepers as a large right-wing anti-government extremist group. And the Southern Poverty Law Center is accurate, she says, in claiming the Oath Keepers is based on a set of baseless conspiracy theories about the federal government working to destroy Americans liberties.

Stewart Rhodes, founder of the citizen militia group known as the Oath Keepers, speaks during a rally outside the White House in 2017.

(Susan Walsh / Associated Press)

Among the conspiracy theories that Rhodes advocated on the Oath Keepers website and in frequent appearances on conservative TV and radio shows: A U.S. military exercise in 2015 might be a prelude to a coup, baseless claims about voter fraud in the 2016 election and a deep state takeover of the U.S. government. Later, after the 2020 election, he fully embraced and promoted unfounded conspiracies that the election had been stolen and supported Trumps efforts to stay in office.

Adams says she tried to temper Rhodes conspiratorial rhetoric because it didnt serve any purpose except make him look crazy.

By 2016, Adams says, Rhodes had become an ardent supporter of Trump, putting aside early doubts: Stewart thought Trump was too pro-government and pro-spending. Adams added that her estranged husbands attraction to the former president is obvious in hindsight: They are very similar in that they both push conspiracy theories. Its like watching a demagogue be attracted to a demagogue.

It was not possible to independently verify Adams descriptions of her role in the Oath Keepers. Jackson, the author and professor, says she did not come up in his research of the group. I would be surprised if they were coequals, the professor says, referring to Adams and her husband. He declined to speculate further on Adams role in the organization, saying he did not delve into Oath Keepers private lives because they could be difficult to untangle.

Living in remote areas of Montana, Adams says she had no friends, and her life revolved around keeping her husband happy and raising and schooling her children.

Those who know Adams say they rarely saw her outside the presence of Rhodes. Marcy Kuntz, Adams midwife for three births starting in 2006, recalls that Adams didnt speak much about herself, except to apologize for failing to pay bills on time. She was always accompanied on appointments by her husband.

Kuntz delivered the babies at Adams homes, which were generally located deep in the Montana woods. The house was busy, with all the kids, Kuntz says, and I got the sense that her and her childrens world was in that house. They didnt get out much.

She seemed like a very private person, adds Kuntz, who has spoken to Adams a few times in the years since she separated from Rhodes. You could tell she supported what Stewart did as his wife, as a wife supports a husband. ...

In retrospect, it is clear he was very controlling. She kept it all to herself for so long.

Adams and two of her adult children say that by 2015 a year after her sixth child was born they were becoming increasingly disenchanted with Rhodes as a husband and father. He was gone for long stretches, leaving her to raise their children in an isolated part of Montana, said Adams, Dakota and Sedona.

When Rhodes was home, he belittled and berated his wife and kids, kept tabs on their whereabouts and engaged in physical abuse, according to Adams and the two children, as well as allegations included in court records filed by Adams.

In a 2018 application for a restraining order, Adams alleged Rhodes grabbed their then 13-year-old daughter by the throat. Whenever he is unhappy with my behavior (say I want to leave the house he doesnt like me to leave), he will draw his handgun (which he always wears), rack the slide, wave it around, and then point it at his own head, she wrote in the application, which was denied by a judge. It is not clear why the judge declined to grant the order.

According to Dakota and Sedona, their father didnt just promote conspiracy theories he brought them home. One night the power and phones went out, Dakota says, and his father became convinced the FBI had cut the lines, presaging a raid.

Tasha Adams, seen in the reflection of a window, ponders her time as an Oath Keepers wife and asks herself what would have happened if she had not supported her husband.

(Tailyr Irvine / For The Times)

It took us 45 minutes to pack the vehicles, says Dakota, 24. If the FBI was really coming, would they have given us that much time? We drove off and about an hour later, he was like, I guess they arent coming. So we turned around and went home to bed.

Sedona, 22, says her father once ordered the children to dig a tunnel so the family might escape if authorities raided the house. It had a plywood roof, and he had the little kids go through it to get used to it, Sedona says.

Adams and her children say it took years of enduring such behavior for her to see the truth.

Your reality gets warped. He controlled our reality, says Dakota, who succeeded on Nov. 8 in legally changing his name from Dakota Stewart Rhodes because he disdains his father.

His mother was also concerned that Rhodes could use his legal expertise and connections to keep the children. She says she put those fears aside in 2018 and filed for divorce. Rhodes moved out of the house, and appears to live out of state. The divorce case, which was filed under seal, remains unresolved, in part, because Adams says she is in debt to her lawyers.

Earning a living selling used clothes on the internet, Adams has been pecking away at a memoir and says she has been thinking about getting a college degree in extremist studies. Her goal, she says, is to teach about the dangers posed by extremist groups and their leaders.

Among the questions she thinks she can answer for students: How has Rhodes managed to avoid arrest while other Oath Keepers were indicted in the riot on conspiracy charges? In dissecting her life as an Oath Keepers wife and following coverage of the federal prosecutions, Adams says she has a theory: He is very good at getting others to take the risks.

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She helped her husband start a far-right militia group. Now the Oath Keeper's wife says she has regrets - Los Angeles Times

The Rise of the Mises Caucus – Bacon’s Rebellion

Ludwig von Mises

by Bruce Majors

Virginia had electionsthis week that garnered no media coverage: internal elections for offices in the Libertarian Party of Northern Virginia.

Voters and the media pay little attention to Libertarian and other smaller party candidates except when they poll well enough to look like spoilers. That happened in the 2013 gubernatorial election when Robert Sarvis won 5% of the vote, tilting the election, many Republicans believed, from their candidate Ken Cuccinelli to Democrat Terry McAuliffe, and in the 2016 presidential presidential campaign when Gary Johnson at one point polled in the double digits.

Libertarians played no such spoiler role in 2021, yet in off-year elections some 150 of them were elected to local offices across the country, mainly in smaller rural and suburban jurisdictions doubling the number of elected Libertarians. (None were in Virginia.) Perhaps more significantly, Libertarians have been redefining themselves. In the past, the party had a left-leaning streak that stressed such ideas as legalizing all drugs, opening the borders to immigration, and eliminating taxes. Over the past year, though, the Libertarian Party has experienced an internal revolution led by a group called the Mises Caucus.

Ludwig von Mises, an Austrian Jew, fled the Nazis and became a professor of economics at New York University. There he founded a school of free market economics dubbed Austrian economics, along with his Nobel Laureate student Friedrich Hayek, author of the oft-cited book, The Road to Serfdom. (Austrian economics is a specialty of the economics department at Northern Virginias George Mason University.) The ideas of Mises, Hayek, and the Austrian economists have seeped out of the libertarian movement and infiltrated mainstream thinking among conservative Republicans and even some decentralists on the Left.

One of Mises chief concerns were how governments manipulated interest rates and money supplies by creating money and credit and government debt, which he argued causes business cycles. He also explained how government has imperfect knowledge about supply, demand, and opportunities in the economy, information captured by changing prices, and, so, cannot effectively plan an economy.

Hayek wrote more widely on social, political and philosophical topics, and argued that as government planning and intervention creates economic failure, leading to the rise of dishonest, grifting, and brutal politicians who will look for scapegoats to blame for their failed policies.These ideas may be abstract to most people, but they explain what Americans are seeing in the wreckage of the Biden economy.

To outsiders the Mises people might look Trumpian, or at least like a right-populist movement, compared to the left-libertarians. Most Mises libertarians would reject this characterization, pointing to, among other things, their radically pro-free trade advocacy. But they do tend to emphasize private property and free market economics as the core of their politics. Many entered the libertarian movement by working on campaigns for former Congressman Ron Paul, a gold bug and promoter of Austrian economics, who was actually the Libertarian Partys presidential candidate in 1988. However one might describe the Mises Caucus, it shares with many conservative groups de-platforming attacks from Facebook and other tech titans for wrong thought posts about COVID and other policies.

The Libertarian Party has had a decades-long internal struggle between coastal elite campaign consultants and think tank executives, often working in jobs funded by Charles and David Koch, and other libertarians who do not work professionally in politics and the media. The latter have long decried the former as variously Beltway libertarians (the Kochtopus, Craniacs, after former CATO Institute executive Ed Crane) or as liberaltarians because of their alleged need to ingratiate themselves with the Democratic media establishment. In the 1980s these outsider libertarians were led by Murray Rothbard, another Austrian economics professor who was a student of Ludwig von Mises. The professional libertarians sometimes belittle the competenceand messaging of their rivals.

On Saturday 50-odd Libertarian delegates elected new officers in an online convention, and a Mises or right-populist trend was discernible. It looked as if, as in many states, the Mises Caucus had conducted a recruitment drive, persuading Ron Paul fans and others who were not previously in the Libertarian Party to join and become delegates at state and local conventions. (One long-time local Libertarian activist and former LP candidate for Virginia state delegate summed it up: Im not anti-Mises, but I am concerned about a bunch of what are essentially random people populating the entire board.)

Like the Virginia general election, where the GOP routed Democrats, several offices were taken for the first time by candidates who were women or African American.

Jake Berube, a lantern-jawed advertising sales man for conservative media sites like Human Events and the Washington Examiner, was elected chairman over incumbent Adam Theo, a government contractor who had just run as one of several independents for Arlington county council. Theo had identified himself in his race as a progressive libertarian, emphasizing issues like eliminating qualified immunity for law enforcement.

Josie Gallagher, a tax consultant for small businesses and a Ron Paul fan was elected vice chair for Arlington and Alexandria, over Alex Pilkington, a paralegal at the (in)famous Democrat-affiliated law firm Covington and Burling and a former CATO Institute intern who said open immigration would be a primary area of focus.

C.J. Cunningham, another Ron Paul fan, was elected vice chair for Fairfax and Falls Church. Dan Ford, a veteran and the only African American running, was elected vice chair for Loudoun County. William Ogle, a physicist who made his Mises affiliation explicit in his campaign speech, was elected treasurer over Theo associate Katie Wilson. James Waddell was elected secretary and Henry Baraket, an immigrant from the Middle East who said he had fled tyranny and appreciated liberty, was elected as the boards at-large member. As the aforementioned long-term activist summed it up: I dont know anything at all about these guys. Literally never heard their names before today.

Just as Virginias off-year election predicts the 2022 midterms, another long-term activist participating in the convention says it predicts what will happen at the Libertarians statewide convention later this year: Obviously the notable thing is a clean sweep by the Mises Caucus folks. It speaks to the general trend of rapid increase in the size of the Mises Caucus and many small l libertarians joining the Libertarian Party. Based on today, Id anticipate overwhelming support for the Mises Caucus at the statewide convention in a few months. The Virginia Libertarian Party holds its convention in February in Glen Allen.

So, a new caucus is pulling new members into Virginias third largest party, which has shown itself able to affect Virginia elections. But are they just doing this to take over another state party, and its delegation, so they can decide who the Libertarians run as a Presidential candidate in 2024? Or will they use their new recruits to actually run in local and state offices in Virginia?

Northern Virginia resident Bruce Majors has written for The Hill, the Los Angeles Times, Reason, and other publications. He writes a Substack column,The Insurrection.

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The Rise of the Mises Caucus - Bacon's Rebellion

The post-Reagan GOP is still a work in progress – The Week Magazine

Thirty-two years ago the Berlin Wall fell, a Cold War victory viewed as one of the crowning achievements of the movement conservatism associated with Ronald Reagan. An important development in its own right, this anniversary of the wall's fall is an opportunity to take stock of conservatives who want to replace the "dead consensus" of Reaganism with something else.

We've seen social conservatism take on a bigger role in the political coalition at the expense of individualists (often described as libertarians, no matter how big the government continues to get under the GOP's watch), winning a recent election in blue Virginia by campaigning on parental control of local public schools. Conservatives have begun thinking through some of the contradictions between Reagan's vision of a secure Main Street and untrammeled Wall Street, especially as big corporations side against them in the culture wars.

The most ambitious Republicans are seeking the approval of these new strains of the right. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has fought both public and private COVID-19 restrictions that rankle the base. Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas) and Marco Rubio (Fla.) made pilgrimages to the National Conservatism Conference, a gathering of the right's new nationalists.

And yet with former President Donald Trump back on the golf course, much of this still feels like a work in progress. The conservatives for the common good have sounded libertarian, even libertine, about the pandemic except for the fact that they're willing to regulate masking and vaccination policies by private companies, too. There are arguments for why the "free market" doesn't simply mean businesses get to do whatever they want. But the overarching philosophy here, to the extent there is one, is that members of my political coalition get to do whatever they want in defiance of the wrong people trying to tell them what to do.

Perhaps the new conservatism's answer is that this is how the left has always done things, and a movement too committed to abstract principles to take on its own side in an argument will always lose. But, for the moment, old-fashioned "tear down the wall" conservatives have more to show for their efforts than the newfangled "build the wall" crowd.

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The post-Reagan GOP is still a work in progress - The Week Magazine

Guest Opinion: Calling out the Idaho Freedom Foundation – Idaho County Free Press

For political conservatives, countering big governments alluring but empty promises are challenging. The task is tenfold harder when libertarians pretend to speak for conservatives.

The Idaho Freedom Foundation (IFF) was founded, in part, with a bequest from activist Ralph Smeed. A mentor of my old boss, Senator Steve Symms, I spent many hours escorting Ralph around Washington, D.C. He rejected the label conservative, proudly claiming to be a libertarian.

A mutual acquaintance recently mentioned Smeed when talking about the IFF, noting If Ralph could see what it is today, hed be appalled.

Who could predict that Smeeds legacy would today be aiding President Bidens Attorney General, Merrick Garland, to keep parents away from public schools?

Garland has threatened parents passionate about their kids education. Using a letter from the National School Boards Association (NSBA) as a fig leaf, he directed the FBI to investigate a disturbing spike in irate school board patrons.

Keep in mind, Garland heads the same Justice Department refusing to investigate the free speech of Antifa protestors marching down burned and vandalized city streets.

Professor Maud Maron, of Cardozo Law School, an advisor to the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, criticized Garlands move, noting that actual violence should be condemned without reservation, but the incidents cited by the NSBA are not criminal and they definitely do not warrant federal intervention.

Garlands motive is obvious. His own son-in-law sells social-emotional learning assessments that use a racial lens to pigeon-hole students, an approach opposed by many parents. He doesnt want parents challenging school boards and wishes they would stop advocating to improve their public schools. He is joined in that cause by IFF President Wayne Hoffman.

Hoffman has been pushing to get parents to quit public schools altogether. He presumably doesnt know or doesnt care that many rural Idahoans have no alternative. And he may be funded by purveyors of private schooling and home-school curricula, although the IFF is notoriously quiet about who pays their bills.

Hoffman recently attacked public schools for teaching Critical Race Theory (CRT). He conveniently neglected to mention that this turn toward Marxism surfaced early in elite private schools.

Even worse, Hoffman bungled the definition of CRT, a mistake that led Lt. Governor Janice McGeachin to a fruitless survey of statewide curricula. Critical Theory is more about tactics than content. Its insidious outlook on the world is imbedded deep in educational philosophy, influencing how some teachers think, but rarely showing up as a topic in a K-12 classroom.

And getting the theory wrong has had devastating consequences. One teacher in Idahos Magic Valley offers an inspiring syllabus using the Minidoka Internment National Monument as an object lesson. Students learn how widespread fear can lead a government to heavy-handed tyranny despite a constitution that guarantees individual rights. Could any topic be timelier?

After Hoffman scolded legislators for not doing enough to ban CRT, that teacher was warned to downplay the Minidoka lesson a direct result of Hoffmans focus on what history is taught, not how the history either illuminates or obscures constitutional principles.

Making IFF even more problematic is its political grassroots drawing from anti-government voices, including some uncomfortably allied with civil rights objectors. A vocal faction of IFF activists recently affiliated with an organization opposing the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

To have any credibility, those of us who oppose CRT need to stand as unequivocal defenders of civil rights. IFF cannot do that.

The democrat running for governor of Virginia has said, You dont want parents coming in on every different school jurisdiction saying, This is what should be taught here. The IFF delivers that same message.

Parents educational choice is a long-desired conservative goal. Libertarians prefer private education. When IFF undermines public schools while parents have limited private alternatives, that sound you hear is principled libertarian Ralph Smeed rolling over in his grave.

Trent Clark, of Soda Springs, is the acting chairman of United Families Idaho and has served in the leadership of Idaho business, politics, workforce and humanities education.

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Guest Opinion: Calling out the Idaho Freedom Foundation - Idaho County Free Press

Kmele Foster Is Right: Banning Critical Race Theory Isn’t Going To Stop It – The Federalist

On the latest The Fifth Column episode, cohost Kmele Foster reiterates his argument, previously expressed in a coauthored New York Times op-ed, that banning critical race theory in schools is bad. While discussing to what extent public opposition to this form of racism fueled Republican success in last weeks elections, Foster again claimed there is zero evidence that this particular strategy [of banning CRT in schools] is working.

In practice, these bills create a great deal of uncertainty about how curriculum should be constructed and what constitutes a kid being made to feel uncomfortable or being told they should feel shame on account of their race, he claimed.

He cited a school board meeting in which teachers questioned whether they should now teach the other side of the Holocaust. That is a direct result of these idiotic bans of critical race theory, Foster claimed. Later he also noted that Texas lawmakers are asking state institutions to report whether they are using public resources to buy and promote anti-American and racist books, claiming thats a prelude to book bans.

For one thing, even if Texas lawmakers do take action after they gather this information, they will not be banning books. They may refuse to expend public resources on certain books, but that is not banning them. Actual book bans, actual censorship, would mean what happens with successful full-bore cancel operations from the left: The person with the book is unable to publicly publish or distribute it, even on his own time and dime.

Its a bit like what Twitter and Facebook do to presidents and members of Congress, which libertarians and classical liberals (like Foster claims to be) are always telling us is totally fine because Facebook and Twitter are private companies and they should not be forced to publish and distribute speech they dont agree with.

Well, fine, then, lets spread this libertarian goose sauce around equally. If Twitter shouldnt be forced to platform Donald Trump and Republican Rep. Jim Banks, the good taxpayers of Texas also shouldnt be forced to pay for, distribute, and platform speech they dont agree with through the government institutions they are supposed to democratically control.

Thats not a book or a speech ban, at least according to the reasoning of libertarians like Foster. If any government declines to fund their activities, such speakers and authors would still be free to speak and publish as they wish. They would not be free, however, to force other people to subsidize their speech. (This also gets into how government and monopolies today control public squares and what should be private life by subsidizing and legally preferencing only one politically favored side, a very big aspect of all this that must be saved for additional discussions.)

To Fosters point about college-educated teachers alleged difficulty in understanding pretty obvious laws, it seems likely to me that any nincompoops asking about teaching both sides of the Holocaust are trolling. Its clear what they are legally supposed to teach and not, they just dont want to comply with the law, so theyre getting pedantic, like a middle schooler or a Jesuit. [Update: It turns out Fosters characterization of this story was based on fake news, and I was right: this was a biased curriculum director falsely characterizing the Texas law to local teachers.]

Its only hard for teachers to figure out what they are now allowed to teach if they dont want to understand the message. Just dont be a racist, and youre good. The problem is, some teachers seem to believe they deserve public sinecures to preach the gospel of anti-white hatred. Thats why they just cant accept the laws obvious intent and meaning and move on.

This blends into a point Foster also made in the podcast that I think is dead-on accurate.

Maybe, as opposed to taking a side in an idiotic culture war, if you try to circumvent the whole thing and focus on things that actually matter, like developing pedagogy thats better, like establishing curriculum that works in a more serious way, he said. Im sorry, if you think that the culture war is going to be over because someone passed a ban in Virginia, go look at Texas. Theyre still having problems.

Setting aside the absurd reductionism I know of nobody who thinks CRT, yet alone all the culture wars, will be instantly solved by a state ban Foster is right that CRT bans are not enough. One proof is in those very teachers who are resisting the will of the voters who fund their salaries and supply children to their classrooms.

Critical race theorys hold on the U.S. education and corporate systems is the poisonous fruit of a poisoned tree. To root it out will require a lot more than state and local bans. It requires of the right exactly what the far-left is doing: Systemic thinking.

That means not taking an isolated, whack-a-mole approach that lawmakers might prefer so they can just pass some patch on the problem and send voters home with a pat on the head. It means making a comprehensive, holistic assessment of how so much of American local, regional, state, and even national leaders participate in and even condone open, government-supported racism.

Why are there any teachers, let alone entire unions, teachers colleges, entire teacher training systems, curriculum factories, testing companies, the whole education cabal supporting open racism and anti-American hatred? How is it that such important drivers of American society not only condone but energize hatred against their own predecessors and way of life? How is it not obvious to so many so-called leaders of American society that this ideology they put hundreds of millions of dollars behind is contemptible and incompatible with truth, justice, and the American way?

The very existence and widespread use of CRT is an indictment on the entire system. As such, it requires not merely a one-off response like a ban. It demands a comprehensive evaluation of the entire education system and a total reorientation of its priorities and methods. The neo-racists are right about one thing: Racism in America appears to be pretty systemic. What theyre wrong about is what kind of racism, as well as the right way to address it.

Earlier this year, commentator Richard Hanania made the point, on which I built several related arguments, that critical race ideology has been furthered by U.S. laws and institutions since the 1960s. It hasnt been imposed on America from space aliens, and it hasnt grown entirely organically, its been fostered by years of legal and policy accretions.

So thats another area in which Foster is wrong. Attempts to ban critical race theory from classrooms, Foster also said on the podcast, Dont make any differentiation between what youre doing in kindergarten and twelfth grade, that is f-cking censorship and that is not how you go about changing the culture. The book banners never win, -sshole, full stop.

On the contrary: Taking control of public and private speech, and tilting the many interlocking education monopolies in favor of leftist ideology, has absolutely been a winning strategy for hard-left ideologues. If speech banning didnt work so very, very well, theyd let Trump back on Twitter and conservatives on CNN.

You 100 percent do change culture by changing laws. Thats exactly how we got critical race theory everywhere, as Hanania pointed out this summer: Wokeness is law, he pointed out, going on to detail multiple ways in which government policies force schools and employers into racism in the guise of combatting racism.

If it is law, it can be changed. And it should be, because racism is evil. So, yes, ban teachers from preaching racism on the taxpayers dime. But dont stop there, because government-sponsored racism doesnt stop there, either. Not even close.

Photo U.S. Army photo by Bob McElroy

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Kmele Foster Is Right: Banning Critical Race Theory Isn't Going To Stop It - The Federalist

Josh Hawley is dead right about men and marriage – Washington Examiner

Of all the speeches at this months National Conservatism Conference, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawleys call for men to abandon video games and pornography for work and family has drawn the most attention.

The Washington Post, NPR, and Axios all followed up with stories questioning Hawleys premise: that through policy choices and cultural messages, the Left has devalued men and weakened the nation.

The Washington Posts coverage by Christine Emba was the most encouraging as Emba readily admitted that increasing numbers of men are disconnected from their work, families and children. And that mens labor force participation has fallen from 80 percent in 1970 to 68 percent in 2021. And that more men are deciding to opt out of higher education. And even that pornography is a problem.

Embas only real beef with Hawley appears to be that he should be pressed to offer solutions.

But Hawley did!

We must rebuild an economy in this country in which men can thrive. And that means rebuilding those manufacturing and production sectors that so much of the chattering class has written off as relics of the past, Hawley said before offering a policy solution. We can start by requiring that at least half of all goods and supplies critical for our national security be made in the United States.

Hawley then moved to tax policy, noting, We must make the family the center of political life. There is no higher calling, and no greater duty, than raising a family. And we should encourage all men to pursue it.

I believe the time has come for explicit rewards in our tax code for marriage. Forget the marriage penalty. There should be a marriage bonus. And we should allow the parents of young children to keep more of their own money as well, Hawley said.

Now, one can argue about the feasibility of Hawleys domestic manufacturing requirement or attack his marriage bonus as social engineering, which many of our libertarian friends like to do, but these are real policy solutions being offered to solve the defining problem of our time: the disintegration of the American family.

If anything, we need more politicians like Hawley willing to lead on the issue.

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Josh Hawley is dead right about men and marriage - Washington Examiner

The Infrastructure Bill Makes Building Back More Expensive – Reason

In this week's Reason Roundtable, Matt Welch, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Peter Suderman, and Nick Gillespie gather to berate one of the most expensive legislative packages in U.S. history and discuss some significant takeaways from last Tuesday's elections.

Discussed in the show:

1:52: That $2.1 trillion (yes, trillion) infrastructure bill that just passed.

20:35: Lessons from last week's elections.

29:05: Weekly Listener Question: I'm an attorney. All of my colleagues and I are fully vaccinated, yet we wear masks in the office. We are all required to be vaccinated. I hate it. Your response would be to find another job. I think Peter just had the audacity to suggest that switching employers is similar to going to a different restaurant because you don't like the spaghetti at the Olive Garden. For me, libertarianism is more than just a paradigm for government. It's a life philosophy. I am weary of the idea that anything goes, even if it's bad, as long as it only happens in the private sector. I am writing this email using a ridiculous pseudonym because I would not want my employer to know that I read and listen to Reason. They could fire me if they associate me with anything that looks un-woke; is this OK with you? Sure, I could quit my job. But any other job will have the same requirements. That doesn't really represent choice. Out here in the real world, you do not get to choose your job so easily. I do not have the option of being a professional libertarian. So I jab and mask, so I can keep making enough money to help my parents, no matter what I believe or what I wish to do with my body. This is OK with you?

41:53: The unveiling of the OSHA/vaccine mandate specifics.

51:58: Media recommendations for the week.

This week's links:

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

Today's sponsors:

Audio production by Ian KeyserAssistant production by Regan TaylorMusic: "Angeline," by The Brothers Steve

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The Infrastructure Bill Makes Building Back More Expensive - Reason

Cindy Axne will run for reelection in Congress, closing the door on Iowa gubernatorial bid – Des Moines Register

U.S. Rep. Cindy Axnewill seek reelection in Iowa's 3rd Congressional District, she announced Friday, officially closing the door on a possible run for governor in 2022.

Axne, a West Des Moines Democrat, previously ruled out running for the U.S. Senate,but shehad left open the possibility of running for governor.

She announced the news during a Friday morning taping of Iowa Press on Iowa PBS.

"Folks, I'm going to be running for the United States Congress here in Iowa's 3rd District," she said.

The news comes just days after Republican U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks said she would compete in the 1st District rather than stay in a newly redrawn 3rd District.

The pair of announcementshelpsolidify the field of candidates that will competein the 3rd District, which includes Des Moines and is expected to be among the most hotly contested races in the country.

More: Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks will run for reelection in new 1st Congressional District

Already, outside organizations like the National Republican Congressional Committee have been targeting Axne with attack ads as they try to unseat vulnerable Democrats.

Axne is one of only a handful of congressional Democrats in the country to win in a district Trump carried in 2020, though she won by a narrow margin. Axne beat Republican challenger David Young by just 1.4 percentage points, 49% to 47.6%. Libertarian candidate Bryan Holder earned about 3.4% of the votea share that some Republicans said undercut Young's effort.

This election cycle, Axne will compete in a new set of counties reorganized under the3rd District as a result of the state's redistricting process.

More: Iowa lawmakers accept second redistricting plan, setting up next decade of politics

Overall, the partisan makeup ofthe new district remainslargely unchanged, with Democrats continuing to account forabout 36% of registered voters and Republicans making up about 34%.

But some geographic shifts could make Axne's reelection campaign more difficult.

Polk and Dallas Counties, the two largest population centers, still anchor the 3rd District. But it loses several counties along the state's western border that Axne had focused on during her previous two terms while addressing severe flooding there, helping her to makeinroads with voters. Instead, the district gains several other rural counties that tend to favor Republicans that Axne has not campaigned in before.

Axne said her job is tomeet those new voters "and tell all those folks that I'm there for them and I've got their back."

"Its about taking my voice out to the people that I would be representing, hearing from them, listening to their concerns and talking with them about how Ive already been putting policy in place to benefit their lives and address those concerns," Axne said. "But also the policy that Im currently working on thats helping them."

Those issues include securing more money for biofuels, lowering prescription drug prices, improving mental health care for veterans and addressing the nation's supply chain problems.

Many of those subjects, Axne said, can be addressed through President Joe Biden's agenda, including a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that Biden plans to sign Monday and a $1.75 trillion "Build Back Better" bill that would include money for child care, lower prescription drug prices and pay for education and climate change initiatives.

"I believe that once we get the infrastructure bill signed into law, the Build Back Better Act signed into law, next year folks are seeing expansion of those child care centers, theyre seeing more money in their pocket because of the earned income tax credit or the child tax credit," Axne said."I think about the folks here who are on insulin. Were going to cap it at $35 a month."

No Democrats have announced a challenge to Axne, but a handful of Republicans are competing in a primary election as the party seeks to unseat her.

Among them are state Sen. Zach Nunn of Bondurant, who currently leads the Republican field in fundraising. Nunn raised $281,905 in total receipts during the fundraising quarter that ended in October, giving him $213,779 in cash on hand.

Political newcomer Nicole Hassoof Johnston raised $170,863 and finishedthe quarter with $134,670 in the bank.

More: Why Iowa Democrat Cindy Axne voted for $1.2 trillion infrastructure plan

Retired State Rep. Mary Ann Hanusa, a Council Bluffs resident, previously announced she would run in Iowas 3rd Congressional District. But as a result of redistricting, her home county of Pottawattamie now sits in the 4th District, which is more heavily conservative and represented by incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Randy Feenstra.

Hanusa told the Des Moines Register she had been waiting on Miller-Meeks' decision before deciding what to do with her own campaign. Had Miller-Meeks chosen to compete in the 3rd District, Hanusa said she would not have challenged her.

"Obviously deference went to Mariannettes decision," Hanusa said. "So now that thats been made, I will look at the situation and consider everything.For right now, the campaigns still on."

Since launching her campaign in April, Hanusa has raised $103,619, including $65,826 in the third quarter. She has$44,718in the bank.

More: A year out, Iowa candidates raise money for 2022 elections; Finkenauer, Hinson rake in most

Gary Leffler, a Republican activist from West Des Moines, has filed a statement of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission, but he has not yet filed financial reports.

Axne goes into the race with about $1.6 million in cash on hand afterraising $757,831 during the third quarter.

Despite outraising her opponents,she knows she's facing an onslaught of ads from national Republican groups.

"I am the number one targeted race by the National Republican Campaign Committee," she said. "They want to take me out so that they can have the House."

In a sign of how competitive the race will be, state and national Republicans quickly issued statements criticizing Axne following her reelection announcement.

"Axne has spent the past two years hiding from Iowans and cozying up to Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden," Republican Party of Iowa Chair Jeff Kaufmann said."Axne represents a continuation of Biden and Pelosi's disastrous agenda and Iowa Republicans are committed to fighting back to stop it."

Brianne Pfannenstiel is the chief politics reporter for the Register. Reach her at bpfann@dmreg.com or 515-284-8244. Follow her on Twitter at @brianneDMR.

Stephen Gruber-Miller covers the Iowa Statehouse and politics for the Register. He can be reached by email at sgrubermil@registermedia.com or by phone at 515-284-8169. Follow him on Twitter at @sgrubermiller.

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Cindy Axne will run for reelection in Congress, closing the door on Iowa gubernatorial bid - Des Moines Register

The BS is Strong with Marco Rubio – Legal Reader

Marco Rubio may not perceive the lack of historical awareness (and ironic comedy) in his speech to a conservative conference last week, but you might.

Last week, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) addressed the National Conservatism Conference in Orlando, Florida. According to the National Conservatism website, the gathering is dedicated to reviving the nationalism that binds us, so that we can flourish together. We see the rich tradition of national conservative thought as an intellectually serious alternative to the excesses of purist libertarianism, and in stark opposition to political theories grounded in race, they say, with a nod to the specter of CRT.

Since the conference brings together the best the modern American conservative movement has to offer and defines the future conservatives want, I thought it most profitable to really dig into Rubios speech. As the lightly edited transcript on his site says, The thing I really like about this conference is about thinking, listening, learning and ultimately defining what it means to be a conservative in the 21st century. When people in power offer this kind of insight, its best to listen up.

To get at the heart of what Marco Rubio is offering to us, Im going to delve into (and quote heavily from) the more-polished, cleaned-up version that The American Conservative printed as a Rubio op-ed, titled We Need Corporate Patriotism To Defeat American Marxism.

There was a time when, to paraphrase Charles Wilson, what was good for big American companies was good for America. But today, led by a generation of leaders who feel no obligation to our nation, corporate America is the instrument of anti-American ideologies. This is a bold opening for Marco Rubio, who has taken a great deal of money in contributions from individuals and PACs associated with the likes of Raytheon, Goldman Sachs, and Bank of America. However, it is clear that the sort of nationless rich and companies that would hide their money overseas really dont feel an obligation to our nation. Go on, Marco, tell us more.

The collapse of corporate patriotism opened the door for these companies to fall for anti-American ideologies The companies that control the vast majority of Americas economic resources and curate the information we see and hear on a daily basis now say that America is a racist or sexist country. A country based upon stealing land by displacing or outright killing the original residents, built by enslaved people brought in chains because they were perceived as stupid and servile and because their darker skin would make them stand out, and which, even now, still reverberates with cries of build the wall! by people who cheered separating brown children from their parents, is racist? I wonder how anyone could get that impression.

These oligarchs believe the very existence of America is fatally flawed, and they are devoting hundreds of billions of dollars to advance corporate propaganda that reflects these beliefs. They aim to remake our society, our culture, and our country. They aim to redefine what constitutes a good life in America. Is Marco Rubio objecting to companies being able to spend money as a form of speech? Im sure hell get to work right away to help pass a law overturning Citizens United, then. As far as what constitutes a good life in America, I have some suggestions. How about not poisoning Americans via decaying lead plumbing? Or earning a wage that lets you raise your kids above the poverty level? Or mitigating sea level rise in Florida? Rubio had the chance to support a package like this, but voted it down and called it socialist.

For over a century these have been the tactics used by Marxists to take over countless nations and societies. Marxists use corporate oligarchs to promote the struggle of the working class to seize the means of production? For real? If we do not fight back, we will lose America. No, Marco dear, youre losing America by feeding the oligarchs. I didnt start paying attention yesterday, you know. This is not hyperbole. In fact, is it very familiar to the Americans I was raised by and those I still live among, who witnessed Marxist revolutions take over their homelands. Is Marco Rubio asserting that corporations have taken over Cuba?

But the battle against cultural Marxism will not be won by relying on an outdated Wall Street Journal Conservatism that does not fully address the challenges faced by working Americans in our 21st century economy. No, the Chamber of Commerce wing of the Republican party has no interest in addressing the problems of working Americans, except to hold them further underwater. That is why big businesses have funded both major American parties for so long.

Defining conservatism as just cutting regulations and taxes works well for the nationless companies headquartered in America. However, those companies have no incentive to reinvest in Americas families, communities, or future. If Rubio is firing a shot over the bow of Corporate America here, well know in the coming months as his voting record begins to evidence his support for more regulations and higher taxes on these nationless companies, in order to invest in American families, communities, and future. If he doesnt, this is so much hot air. Keep an eye on him.

It is time we push companies to meet their obligations to America. The GOP has long been a coalition party that brought together free market libertarians and social conservatives in order to enact policies that please both. In practice, this results in a worldview that grants corporations rights as if they were flesh-and-blood people, but without the moral obligations that real people feel. Is Rubio leaving behind the free market ideology that now defines his party? What would Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand say?

What does that look like? Since these nationless companies got many of their corporate privileges from the policies of the United States government, we should use those policies to reward and incentivize corporate decisions that promote a strong and prosperous America. This is edging very close to the planned economy that conservatives have long derided as failed Communism, but OK.

First, that means getting wokeness out of the boardroom. At a minimum, we should require that the leadership of large companies be subject to strict scrutiny and legal liability when they abuse their corporate privilege by pushing wasteful, anti-American nonsense. Its interesting that Marco Rubio suddenly wants to police corporations this closely. If companies are getting woke (that is, supporting human rights, alleviating poverty, caring about the environment, and other similar goals), its because theyve decided that these actions are profitable and serve the interests of the shareholders. Henry Ford, capitalist icon, knew that his workers needed to be able to afford his products. Maybe Ford was too woke for Rubios taste.

For example, we can use the current shareholder primacy argument against these companies. Right now, the burden is on the shareholder to prove these woke, anti-American stanceslike boycotting a state for governing its own election lawsare bad for shareholders. Instead, we should place the burden on the company to prove it is acting in the best interest of shareholders. If companies like Coca-Cola, Major League Baseball, and Delta Airlines are bowing to public pressure and leaving Georgia, perhaps keeping their customer base is more in line with shareholder interests than is supporting voter disenfranchisement. If their politically active customers (and Georgias voters) are Americans, its hard to consider these positions to be anti-American.

Second, that means a stock market that holds companies accountable for pro-American goals hahahahahaha gasp pardon me rather than left-wing social engineering or globalist profiteering. We should require that companies disclose to investors and be held to account for their investment in Americafacilities, workforce training, number of Americans hiredas opposed to off-shoring jobs overseas, or showing how diverse their workplaces are. Oh, Marco Rubio, your memory is so short that youre failing to remember how proud your fellow conservatives were of St. Ronald Reagans stance regarding globalization. Free and open markets, not a komissar in every boardroom. In 2018, the Republicans passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, signed into law by President Trump and which Marco Rubio himself voted for, which incentivized offshoring of American jobs. It passed the Senate with only Republican support. Whos woke now?

[W]e should have requirements that companies boards of directors be free of any conflicts of interest with foreign adversaries such as China. Suddenly conflicts of interest bother Marco Rubio.

When regular workers save for retirement, they shouldnt have to give over the control of their investments to investment funds that will command the company to act against those workers own interests 401(k) retirement accounts exploded during the Reagan administration. Reagan ran on the idea of privatized retirement savings (like IRAs), and changed the law to expand adoption of the 401(k). As a result, employers started offering them as a benefit, instead of actual pensions, while the resulting increase in stock market investment made the investor class even richer. Conservatives have long favored dismantling, even privatizing, Social Security, forcing those who want to save for retirement to turn to investment funds instead of employers and the Government. Rubios commentary here is comedy gold.

For example, the retirement fund for Americas service members, the TSP, should be banned from investing in Chinese military companies, or using service members savings to push American companies off-shore to China. That is something Congress can fix right now and on which there is bipartisan agreement OK, do it, Mr. Rubio. See if your fellow conservatives will bite.

One solution would be to mandate that these institutional shareholders merely send in the votes of the ultimate beneficiaries of these funds, rather than vote on their behalf. There would be a lot less craziness in Americas corporations if the people voting their shares were firefighters and teachers rather than their union bosses or Wall Street. I wonder if he would soon find just how many woke firefighters and teachers we have.

The ultimate way to stop the current Marxist cultural revolution among our corporate elite is to replace them with a new generation of business leaders who consider themselves Americans, not citizens of the world. I simply cant get over just how badly Marco Rubio wants to stop Marxism via state control of corporations.

That is how we defeat this toxic cultural Marxism and rebuild an economy where Americas largest companies were accountable for what matters to America: new factories built in America, good jobs for American families, and investments in American neighborhoods and communities. It sounds like Marco wants what actual Socialists have pushed for while his conservative pals have been shoveling jobs out the door and failing to invest in our communities or our future, to better enrich the already-rich. Welcome to the dark side, Comrade, heres your commemorative hammer-and-sickle lapel pin.

It is not too late to get it right, but we have no time to waste in restoring what has made this nation great for so many generations. What made this nation great is mostly the practices and policies that Marco Rubio and his party have opposed since at least the time of Nixon, if not the Gilded Age. Ill be interested to see if his voting starts to match his rhetoric, or if this pretty patriotic speech is simply opening the door to something much uglier. If this is the best, most intellectually serious discourse that the conservative movement has to offer, though, we should all be a little worried over whats become of the American political scene.

Related: If MLB is a State Actor, Who Else is Too?

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The BS is Strong with Marco Rubio - Legal Reader

The Libertarian Alternative | Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute

If youve routinely endorsed conservative policies and candidates, but now find that rightwingers have become chauvinistic, fiscally irresponsible and intolerant, consider the libertarian alternative.

If youve previously embraced liberal policies and candidates, but now find that leftwingers have pushed identity politics and socialist bromides, consider the libertarian alternative.

Libertarians have praised President Trump for progress in the Middle East, success against ISIS, reduced troop levels abroad, lower taxes, less regulation, and the confirmation of judges who appreciate individual rights and limited government. On the other hand, we have criticized Trump when he derides our intelligence agencies, cozies up to dictators, alienates our allies, and exacerbates global tensions. Weve also been troubled by his xenophobic immigration policies, protectionist trade barriers, punitive drug policy, excessive focus on the culture wars, and exploding federal spending.

Libertarians will support PresidentElect Bidens plans for criminal justice reform, immigration liberalization, civil rights, social permissiveness, revitalizing American diplomacy, reducing our military commitments, and nonproliferation. On the other hand, we will vigorously oppose higher taxes, more regulations, affirmative action, Medicare for all, the Green New Deal, expanded welfare, free college, ballooning entitlements, ahigher minimum wage, and judges who think the Constitution is amalleable document that courts can exploit as an alternative to legislation.

In essence, libertarianism is the political philosophy of personal and economic freedom. We believe that capitalism is the most efficient and morally defensible means of allocating scarce economic resources. Philosophically, we subscribe, as did Thomas Jefferson, to the idea of unobstructed liberty within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. Governments role is to secure those rights, applying sufficient coercive power but no more than the minimum necessary to attain that objective.

Put somewhat differently, we should be free to live our lives as we choose, as long as we dont interfere with other people who wish to do the same. Of course, individuals can never be completely selfsufficient. Thats why we sometimes need rules, enforced by government, to make peaceful cooperation possible. The risk, however, is that rules too extensive will produce asystem of special favors that extracts largesse for the politically connected at the expense of the rest of us. By contrast, libertarianism relies on spontaneous ordering minimizing the role of acommanding power that might preempt freely chosen actions.

Libertarians are not opposed to reasonable safety regulations, selective gun controls, or sensible restrictions in other areas. Moreover, we recognize that markets are not perfect. But neither is government. The relevant standard against which to compare our current framework is not autopian world in which justice is ubiquitous and all inequities have been systemically purged. Instead, we have to look at the current environment versus one in which regulations would be more pervasive meaning that some problems might be solved, but other problems would no doubt multiply.

Among those other problems: disincentives to innovate, favors to special interests, increased cost, reduced growth, governmentconferred monopolies, anticompetitive barriers to entry, restricted consumer choices, higher prices, overlapping and confusing laws, abuses of public power, and excessive resources devoted to politicking and lobbying.

How, then, can someone who views the left as excessively collectivist and the right as excessively authoritarian join with libertarians in advancing socially liberal and fiscally conservative goals? One way is to vote for candidates who come closest to promoting proliberty policies. Given the current political mix, those candidates will not be pristine libertarians. But its not necessary to agree with libertarianism acrosstheboard in order to move public policy in the right direction.

Second, alibertarian movement might be buttressed by supporting legislation and other political actions that foster personal autonomy and limited government. Such support policyspecific rather than candidatespecific could be in the form of lobbying, communications with government officials, letters to the editor, or donations to likeminded organizations.

Finally, theres the outside prospect of forming aviable third party. Two obvious hurdles complicate that approach. First, campaign contributions are presently limited to $2,800 per candidate per election. Effectively, that precludes all thirdparty candidates except those who can selffund. Second, 48 of the 50 states award presidential electors on awinnertakeall basis. Only Maine and Nebraska assign electors, in part, district by district. Consequently, candidates who have no chance of winning astatewide popular vote will not be able to garner any electoral votes.

Regrettably, therefore, fashioning an undiluted libertarian alternative will take time and effort. But incremental progress toward favorable public policy is practicable, opportune, and indisputably worthwhile. Lets get the ball rolling.

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The Libertarian Alternative | Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute

Libertarian and Green parties cry foul over ballot change – Niagara Gazette

The New York State Libertarian and Green parties are calling foul for the change of rules for third parties running candidates in New York state.

Cody Anderson, the chair of the Libertarian Party in the state of New York, said his party, along with the New York Green Party, had filed a preliminary injunction in a federal lawsuit to have the State Board of Election cease implementing changes to Election Law passed in Part ZZZ in U.S. District Court Southern District of New York.

If we lose, and I dont think we will, but if we lose, it will be nearly impossible to get back on the ballot, Anderson said.

The changes

In 2018, the Libertarian Party, the Green Party, the Independence Party and the SAM Party all receivedmore than50,000 votes each for their candidates in the governors race. Before Part ZZZ, this secured each of them a party line in the 2022 election.

However, the rules have now been changed, according to Duane Whitmer, a former-candidate on the Libertarian line. And he said thats not fair, or even legal.

Under the new rules, the ballot access that these parties earned through 2022 was removed, Whitmer said. In 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the thresholds were changed, and these parties needed to reach a higher threshold in 2020 in order to maintain ballot access.

That higher threshold was 171,000 votes for their presidential candidate, about 2% of the votes cast in New York for the nationwide election, said Whitmer.

Part ZZZ stipulated that instead of securing 50,000 votes for each partys candidates for governor and thereby becoming a recognized political party for four years with a ballot line, that time was sliced in half to two years and included the race for president. Candidates nominated by third parties in both the presidential election and the gubernatorial election must gather 130,000 votes or 2% of the vote in New York whichever was higher to keep their parties on the ballot line.

This knocked down all four of the third parties mentioned to square one petitioning to get on the ballot that they'd won the right to be on already.

What now?

"We had had ballot status originally in 1996," said Gloria Mattera, co-chair for the New York Green Party. "We had really kept building the party with petitions of tens of thousands of signatures. We ran local candidates, myself included several times. ... We'd maintained ballot status for three gubernatorial cycles.... We're working hard to overturn this unfair law."

If the parties loses the lawsuit, Libertarians and Greens will have to collect 45,000 signatures, up from 15,000, to run a candidate for governor.

If they win the lawsuit, the party will only need petitions from about 5% of registered Libertarians or Greens in New York.

We can lie down and take it after fighting for ballot access (for years), Anderson said. Or we can stand up and fight it. Fight it all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary.

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Libertarian and Green parties cry foul over ballot change - Niagara Gazette

Libertarian, Green parties file injunction in lawsuit aimed at state efforts to quell third parties – The Daily News Online

A cynical power play by two tired old parties.

Thats what leaders of the states two largest third-parties are calling a provision slipped into the state budget that seeks to make it harder for third-party platforms to make it on the state and national ballots.

The Libertarian Party and Green Party filed a motion in federal court Tuesday for a preliminary injunction against the provision.

The provision, Part ZZZ, is the rider to the New York State budget, passed in April under cover of the pandemic, that increased vote and petitioning thresholds required for minor parties in New York state to obtain and maintain automatic ballot access, party leaders say.

In the motion, the parties asked the court to grant a motion for a preliminary injunction directing Defendants not to apply the new voter and petitioning thresholds from Part ZZZ and continue to apply the previous party definition.

This preliminary injunction is about protecting the Constitutional rights of the Green and Libertarian Parties, but more than that we intend to protect the rights of all New Yorkers to democratic choice in our elections, said Gloria Mattera, New York co-chair of the Green Party. The move by Governor Cuomo and the Legislature in the budget was clearly done to eliminate those choices and to do so as rapidly as possible. We reject their cynical power play.

The budget provision changes how minor parties achieve ballot status.

Currently, minor parties need 50,000 votes for their candidates for governor, a mark that will allow the parties to qualify for the ballot every four years.

The Green and Libertarian parties have both established the right to be on the ballot, based on the previous rules.

The new rules would require minor parties get 130,000 votes, or two percent, of votes cast to remain on the ballot. The provision also requires qualifications to happen every two years, instead of every four.

The provision came from Jay Jacobs, chairman of the state Democratic Party. He initially called for the required votes to be set at 250,000.

Jacobs, in an article in The New York Times, said the change was aimed at reducing voter confusion and rooting out corruption.

The Green and Libertarian parties filed a lawsuit in July in the Southern District of New York that claims the new provision alleges infringement upon First and Fourteenth Amendment rights to organize, identify, and vote for minor parties under the United States Constitution, and that the new voter and petitioning requirements are therefore unconstitutional.

The suit has yet to be heard, prompting the parties to seek an injunction.

The Libertarian Party has been the fastest-growing third-party in the country and leaders say the new rules will damage its status.

We maintain that the unconstitutional actions of the governor and legislature have caused irreparable harm to the Libertarian and Green Parties, as well as to other minor parties in New York State, said Cody Anderson, chair of the Libertarian Party of New York. Rather than allowing the governor to use the state Board of Elections as a tool to punish his political enemies and consolidate his power, we have asked the courts to recognize the violation of our 1st and 14th Amendment rights, to enjoin the Board of Elections to cease implementation of Part ZZZ, and to allow us to continue offering voters principled alternatives to the two tired old parties.

Locally, Chase Tkach, chair of the Libertarian Party of Orleans County, said she, too, is appalled at the efforts to block third parties.

The actions taken by the Board of Elections are meant to suppress voters, said Tkach, who in 2019 received more than 12 percent of the vote for a seat on the county legislature. Im confident we will win.

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Libertarian, Green parties file injunction in lawsuit aimed at state efforts to quell third parties - The Daily News Online

LETTER: Yukon the Libertarian friend of a reindeer? – The News Herald

The News Herald

Two years ago, the CBS broadcast of "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer"was attacked by cancel culture. Somecalled for its removal, due to Rudolph being bullied. Yet, they fail seeing Rudolph overcomes it and becomes Santa's lead reindeer.

There's also a libertarian message, in a subplot.

More: Have an opinion? Submit a Letter to the Editor

My favorite characterof this specialis Yukon Cornelius. He struck meas the main comedy relief. As I watched him in my adulthood, I discovered a hidden fact. Yukon is a libertarian.

Libertarianism always existed in the U.S.While the Libertarian Party beganin 1971, libertarianism was well before then. This includes our pop culture. Yukon's character, is a libertarian personificationin a Christmas icon.

He owns the land Rudolph and Herbiemeet him in. He originally prospectsfor silver and gold, which libertarians say is real/solid wealth. He voluntarily asks Rudolph and Herbieto join himin his prospecting. After escaping from Bumbles, he changes his mind and decides to prospect silver.

When going through the fog, Yukon calls it "thick as peanut butter."Herbie tries correcting him, saying, "You mean pea soup." Yukon replies, "You eat what you like and I'll eat what I like." After rescuing Rudolph and friends from Bumbles, he helps Bumbles reform. Bumbles voluntarily changes and accepts Yukon's help. He learns new skills and takes a job, helping Santa decorate tall Christmas trees.

At the special's end Yukon discovers a peppermint vein. Knowing he's now in Christmas Land he decides to open a peppermint mine and sell the mineralfor future Christmases. He makes Bumbles his partner and they go into business together.

His story continuesin the DVD sequel, "Rudolph and the Island of Misfit Toys."

He and Bumbles' peppermint vein runs out and he'sfacing closing the mine. Underneath the final vein, Yukon discovers gold. His hard workpays off.

On a final note, Yukon carries a pistol, but he never uses it. The fact he carries itshows he believes in private gun ownership.

Overall, Yukon Cornelius proves he's a libertarian and shows the long-term successesthat come from it. See it yourself, next time you watch it.

David Agosta, Secretary Bay County Libertarian Party

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LETTER: Yukon the Libertarian friend of a reindeer? - The News Herald

Masks are the conservative thing to do – The Gazette

With 350,000 Americans dead, we may be weeks away from losing 420,000, or more than all American deaths in World War II. Will you change your ways when the number becomes 5,000 per day? What if it becomes 10,000 per day?

Freedom, an idea Ive long been a public friend and vocal supporter of, should be defined as: your right to live your life how you see fit, as long as that doesnt prevent others from doing the same. Yes, this libertarian is saying: No man is an island.

Are individual liberties and a sense of community completely at odds? Were air-raid blackouts during World War II a violation of freedom, or simply a responsibility? When faced with the strong chance that your behaviors could harm others, is it still your right to act or not act any way you please?

Not shuttering those lights, drunken driving and not taking obvious COVID-19 precautions dont necessarily injure or kill someone else. But ultimately, directly or indirectly, it will.

That isnt freedom.

Thats you valuing your own temporary comfort and convenience over the lives of others. That doesnt make you a Patriotic American, it makes you a part of the biggest threat America has faced in 100 years. That isnt written in a hyperbolic sense, but in the shortage of body bags sense.

And when this virus kills or harms someone you love or maybe even you youll have wished you could take everything back. But by then, it will be too late, as its already too late for the 350,000 dead Americans and their families.

Embarrassingly enough, it seems this denier mentality is mostly slanted to one side politically. So hear this message from one of your own: Act right now.

This is our Nations biggest test, and its being failed, badly.

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Sean Curtin of Iowa City is an advocate for conservative views including the 2nd Amendment, civil liberties and criminal justice reform.

Sean Curtin

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Masks are the conservative thing to do - The Gazette

Biden’s Judicial Picks Should Include Lawyers Who Battled the Government in Court – Reason

Libertarians are sure to be unhappy with plenty of incoming President Joe Biden's judicial picks. But there is one glimmer of hope on the courtroom front. The Huffington Post reports that the Biden team is looking to bring some much-needed professional diversity to the federal bench:

In a letter obtained by HuffPost, Biden's incoming White House counsel Dana Remus tells Democratic senators to try to find public defenders and civil rights attorneys in their states who they think would be a good fit for a federal judgeship.

"With respect to U.S. District Court positions, we are particularly focused on nominating individuals whose legal experiences have been historically underrepresented on the federal bench, including those who are public defenders, civil rights and legal aid attorneys, and those who represent Americans in every walk of life," reads the Dec. 22 letter.

That is welcome news. As Cato Institute criminal justice scholar Clark Neily has pointed out, there is a "wild imbalance" on the federal bench "between judges who used to represent the government in court and judges who used to challenge the government in court." Given that "nearly every court case pitting a lone citizen against the state represents a David-versus-Goliath fight for justice," Neily noted, "to further stack the deck with judges who are far more likely to have earned their spurs representing Goliath than David is unfair to individual litigants and a bad look for the justice system as a whole."

This is one point on which libertarians and progressives can agree. "The federal courts have largely become peopled with lawyers who are former prosecutors, which has entirely skewed the lens through which the law is seen. Public defenders have essentially been shut out," Sherrilyn Ifill, the head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, told an interviewer last month. "I'm not interested in a lot of Black prosecutors being appointed to the federal bench," she continued. "I'm not interested in cosmetic diversity. I'm interested in substantive diversity."

To say the least, Joe Biden is not the most promising figure from the standpoint of criminal justice reform. During his long career in politics, he stood out as an inveterate drug warrior and law enforcement booster. But it is never too late to make amends. If Biden is even remotely serious about pursuing criminal justice reform, one positive thing he can do as president is to nominate more judges whose experience includes battling the government in court.

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Biden's Judicial Picks Should Include Lawyers Who Battled the Government in Court - Reason

I lost a law school election to Josh Hawley. I moved on then, and he should now on Trump. – USA TODAY

Irina D. Manta, Opinion contributor Published 3:15 a.m. ET Jan. 5, 2021

He beat me for president of the Yale Law School Federalist Society by exploiting the rules. He should follow my example and not contest Trump's loss.

Sen. Josh Hawley has made waves with his call for Republican senators to object to President-elect Joe Bidens election victoryand force Congress to voteWednesdayon whether to accept the Electoral College results.I invite Sen. Hawley to reconsider his misguided position and, instead, to do what I did when I lost an election to no other than him: show grace in defeat.The principle is the same whether the election is for president of the United States or, as with us, for president of a campus club.

Sen. Hawley and I were both members of the Yale Law School Class of 2006. While we had our differences, we shared a common bond through our joint participation in the schools fairly small Federalist Society, made up of mostly conservative and libertarian law students.

At the end of our first year, we were both electedas Vice Presidents for Events of the YLS Federalist Society. Collaborating in these positions in our second year proved difficult. I organized the lion's share of the groups events and frequently received no responses from him on emails I sent to him and the Societys president that year. This puzzled me because I thought ourgoal was to make the organization as strong as possible, and failure to communicate was an obstacle.

This isnt to say that Sen. Hawley didnt have his qualities as a vice president. For example, his marketing skills certainly contributed tostrong turnout at an event with the late Harvard Law School professor William Stuntz. While I did more work that year, Sen. Hawley knew better how to shine the spotlight on his contributions, which is an important skill in the political arena.

The YLS Federalist Societys presidential electionstarted rolling around the spring of our second year, in 2005, and it was traditional for one of the two VPs for Events to assume that role. Sen. Hawley and I each announced our candidacies. Shortly before the election, a friend tipped me off to how Sen. Hawley was planning to beat me, given that he was uncertain he coulddo so based onvotes only fromregular members who knew our records best.

Irina Manta on May 22, 2006, in the Lillian Goldman Library at Yale Law School.(Photo: Family courtesy)

Asappearedaccuratebased on the eventual turnout, Sen. Hawley had obtained from the sitting president the student email addresses for the YLS Federalist Society listserv (and the president, whom I had helped to win the previous year, did not volunteer that information to me at that stage). The rule was that anyone who had signed up for the listserv by a certain earlier date could vote in the Societys elections. This included a bunch of people whodid not attend events and had little or no involvement with the Society.

Hawley's White House path:Be No. 1 at pandering to Trump and trampling democracy

The rule, while easy to administer, was a bad one. It even had the potential for individuals to co-opt the Society for the sole purpose of destroying it. Historically, however, nobody had exploited that rule, to my knowledge. Instead, candidates had campaigned for votes from people actively involved withthe Society.

Law professor Irina D. Manta and Sen. Josh Hawley.(Photo: Manta by Carlos Farini. Hawley by Getty Images.)

I found out about Sen. Hawleys plans too late to counter them successfully. I lost the YLS Federalist Societys presidential election to him by a handful of votes.The presidency comes with a number of advantages, including entry to key professional opportunities. From my perspective, I was the more deserving candidate and cared more about the organization. The voting rules, again, were problematic, and Sen. Hawley exploited that all the way to victory for himself and the rest of his slate.

But you know what? As far as electoral fairness is concerned, none of that matters. The rules were the rules. The people who showed up to vote had the right to vote. I have no reason to believe that the person who counted the votes miscounted. Based on the system we had, which while flawed was hardly unethical, Sen. Hawley won and I lost. And not once did I attempt to contest that loss.

Sen. Hawley and I both ended up initially aslaw professors, but thenour paths split. He pursued political offices while I remained in academia (though also continued my own political activism). And while he has been one of President Donald Trumps loyalists, I have been the opposite, from my membership in Checks & Balances(a group of lawyers and academics committed to the Constitution and the rule of law)to my volunteer work for the Biden campaign in 2020.

On his way out the door: Congress should impeach Trump again and bar him from holding any future public office

Of course, the stakes are much higher when it comes to the presidency of the United States than that of the Yale Law School Federalist Society. Conversely, however, maintaining the integrity of the democratic system of our country vastly trumps doing so for a law school club. While Sen. Hawley is unlikely to succeed in his bid to hinder President-elect Biden from taking office, he is setting a dangerous precedent such that one day, a hostile Congress could overturn a rightful presidential election.

The courts have ruled repeatedly that there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. Some speculate that Sen. Hawley is simply posturing to position himself for his own presidential run someday. Even if this provided ethical cover for his actions (spoiler: it doesnt), he has the intelligence to find better tactics than erodingour democratic system.

Irina D. Manta is Professor of Law and Founding Director of the Center for Intellectual Property Law at Hofstra University'sMaurice A. Deane School of Law. Follow her on Twitter:@irina_manta

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I lost a law school election to Josh Hawley. I moved on then, and he should now on Trump. - USA TODAY

‘The Upswing,’ Social Connectedness and Wile E. Coyote | Confessions of a Community College Dean – Inside Higher Ed

Along with celebrating the holidays and taking a badly needed break from email, one of the happier aspects of the break was getting a chance to read long-form prose in big, uninterrupted chunks. So I put on my political theorist hat for a while and read Robert Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garretts new book, The Upswing.

Putnam is best known for his earlier work on social capital, especially Bowling Alone. The new book is about social connectedness and its rise and fall in the United States over the last century. Social connectedness here refers to behaviors indicating concern for a larger group. Thats a necessarily broad brush, but Putnam and Garrett spend several chapters triangulating its meaning through quantitative analyses of trends ranging from age of first marriage to the choice of uncommon baby names to church attendance to pronoun use in literature to political ticket splitting. In case after case, they trace an I-We-I curve in which the culture of individualism appears not as an inexplicable deviation from recorded history, but as a recurring feature. In the early 20th century, as they tell it, individualism was rampant in the United States. Concerns for we got stronger from then until the early 1960s. Somewhere in the mid-1960s, the curve changed direction, and the we culture started abruptly to move back to a me culture.

Although theyre careful to tread lightly on the politics of it, it becomes clear that much of what progressives care about assumes some identification with a larger we. To the extent that appeals based on we fall flat, progressive causes will struggle. Putnam and Garrett use that framework, and their data, to argue that the popular image of civil rights progress is largely backward: in their telling, Black Americans economic situation was improving markedly throughout the early 20th century, with the upward slope plateauing after the 60s. Putnam and Garrett repeatedly use the image of taking the foot off the gas on all sorts of measures of social progress after the 60s, with varying degrees of plausibility. (They also make some weird unforced errors, such as the claim that President Carter initiated an affirmative action program to help correct gender imbalances in 1974. President Carter took office in 1977.) The claim is that when Americans were expanding the circle of we, great progress was possible; when the culture shifted to me, even the force of changed laws wasnt enough to keep progress moving forward.

As with any sweeping historical claim, its easy to find examples on both sides. For instance, much of the anxiety around conformity among 1950s social critics reflected a concern that the culture of we had grown too strong. The Lonely Crowd, The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit and The Organization Man were all, in various ways, expressions of the fear of conformism gone too far. (Nearly every episode of The Twilight Zone can be seen the same way. Ayn Rands oeuvre is the reductio ad absurdum of this critique.) Having just seen the Russian revolution, the rise of Nazism, the rise of the modern corporation and two world wars in three decades, many thinkers of the time subsumed all of those under the category of collectivism. Much of the countercultural fixation in the 60s and 70s on smallness, localism and authenticity can be understood as a reaction to too much we.

In the decades since, by Putnam and Garretts argument, a sort of proto-libertarianism has become cultural common sense. We can see that in the decline of/assault on private sector unions, the spread of tax revolts and all manner of risk-shifting from the larger society to its individual members, such as the replacement of defined-benefit pensions with defined-contribution accounts. In 2016, a major-party presidential candidate declared on national television that tax evasion makes [him] smart, and he got elected anyway. Thats quite a distance, conceptually, from buy war bonds. Even the areas in which progressive causes have won, such as greater respect for the LGBTQ community, are broadly compatible with a libertarian outlook: in the current vernacular, you do you.

Putnam and Garrett get a lot right. I often claim that the reason community colleges struggle is that they were built to create a middle class for a country that no longer wants one. The chronology fits: the bulk of community colleges in the U.S. were established in the 1960s, just as the we culture was cresting. In their unabashed inclusivity, community colleges stand as living monuments to the idea of expanding the circle of we. As that cultural strand has been increasingly occluded by a more self-centered one, community colleges (and public institutions generally) have struggled. If education is understood as a private good, rather than a public one, then the community part of community colleges is an awkward fit. Perhaps thats why some community colleges are dropping that word from their names entirely. Now we use taxpayer funding to publish a college scorecard, to enable students to calculate the best return on investment. Thats not how public goods were ever supposed to work.

Still, something about their narrative didnt seem quite right. And thats where I turn to another great midcentury American thinker, Chuck Jones.

Jones was one of the minds behind Looney Tunes. My favorite of his creations was Wile E. Coyote, a hapless predator forever chasing the elusive Roadrunner. Wile E. was a tinkerer, in his way, though his affinity for Acme products never turned out well. One of the recurring jokes was that Wile E. would regularly find himself suspended in midair, having run off the side of a road, but he wouldnt fall until he looked down. Gravity didnt kick in until he looked. Once he realized what had happened, he blinked forlornly at the fourth wall and fell, landing with a cloud of dust.

When I tried summarizing The Upswing to my daughter, and I got to the part where the curve inflected in the 60s, she immediately asked the right question: Why then? Why then, as opposed to 10 years earlier or 10 years later? What was so special about the mid-60s?

Its about race, and the category of we.

If the book took a view beyond the U.S., it might have noted that more racially homogeneous industrialized societies adopted social democratic reforms much more quickly and thoroughly than the U.S. did. The vaunted bipartisanship of Congress in the 1950s was premised on racial exclusion in which both parties were complicit, if in different ways. The period of an increasingly we culture was also a period of severe immigration restrictions, as well as Jim Crow. We didnt mind locking up Japanese Americans in internment camps during the war, or making blackface singers some of the most popular entertainers in the country. The we at the time was defined against a clear and unambiguous they.

In the mid-60s, the boundaries between the we and the they were destabilized in ways that led many white Americans to start turning away from a common culture. The Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act and Fair Housing Act were abrupt shocks to many; looser immigration restrictions quickly led to a cultural diversification beyond what many white Americans took as normal. Although Christopher Laschs title The Culture of Narcissism often gets used as shorthand to describe selfishness, Laschs use of the term was more deliberate than that. He noted that what killed Narcissus, in the story, wasnt exactly selfishness; it was the inability to see where he ended and the pond began. Narcissism, in his telling, is the loss of clear boundaries between self and other. One reaction to that loss of boundaries is an anxious effort to fortify new boundaries. Imposing order, whether by building walls or by withdrawing from the public sphere to a self-contained bubble, offers the (ultimately false) promise of restoring a lost sense of security.

In other words, its not a coincidence that the moment at which much of white America was compelled to look was the moment at which many whites started to withdraw from the we culture. Like Wile E., the majority culture had been in an unsustainable position for some time, but didnt have to face it; once it did, it couldnt unsee what it saw. At this point, several decades along, a certain strain of herrenvolk populism has become a sort of lifestyle brand. Its based on the assumption that if Wile E. never looked, he never would have fallen. Its determined not to let its followers make that mistake.

The task for those of us who believe in inclusion as an ethical imperative is much more difficult than just waiting for the next turn of the cycle. It involves recognizing just how complicated a category like we actually is, and how much of it relies on contrast with a they. William James recognized the issue over a century ago, when he lamented American intervention in the Philippines. Noting how combat often brings out valor and loyalty, he called for a moral equivalent of war that would draw out those same virtues, without the brutality or imperialism. Banding together against a virus, or against a climate catastrophe, is still banding together. That may explain why some otherwise-intelligent people are so offended by public health campaigns; the campaigns imply the existence of a public, and the usefulness of collective action.

Thats exactly what makes them effective. Theres a lesson in there, if one is willing to look.

Inclusion is a choice. It has to be made over and over again, in ways large and small. Putnam and Garrett offer some sense of just how expansive the choice is, and how high the stakes are. On that, I couldnt agree more.

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'The Upswing,' Social Connectedness and Wile E. Coyote | Confessions of a Community College Dean - Inside Higher Ed

Here we go again: What to expect as Georgia counts votes – Chattanooga Times Free Press

ATLANTA (AP) This week will find us back in a familiar place waiting for Georgia to count votes.

With control of the U.S. Senate at stake, all eyes are on a runoff election that has Republicans David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler facing Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. Millions of dollars have poured in, Georgians have been bombarded by advertisements and messages urging them to vote, and both sides have sent their heavy hitters to help turn out voters.

Some things to keep in mind as the polls close Tuesday night:

HOW DID WE GET HERE?

Perdue got about 88,000 more votes than Ossoff in the general election, but a Libertarian candidate's 115,000 votes kept him from topping 50%, which is required to win. Gov. Brian Kemp appointed Loeffler to the Senate in December 2019 after Sen. Johnny Isakson stepped down. She and Warnock were competing in a 20-candidate special election to serve the two years remaining in Isakson's term. Warnock got 1.6 million votes, while Loeffler got nearly 1.3 million and Republican U.S. Rep. Doug Collins placed third with nearly a million votes.

WHEN DOES THE BALLOT COUNTING START?

The polls are set to close at 7 p.m. EST on Election Day, and that's when ballot counting can begin. Absentee ballots must be received by the close of polls to be counted. Military and overseas ballots postmarked by Tuesday and received by Friday will be counted, and absentee voters also have until Friday to fix any problems so their votes can be counted.

No ballots, including absentee ballots received in advance of Election Day, can be counted until the polls close. But a state election board rule requires county election officials to begin processing absentee ballots verifying signatures on the outer envelope, opening the envelopes and scanning the ballots before Election Day. That should speed things up on election night. Still, some absentee ballots received by mail or in drop boxes up until 7 p.m. on Election Day will still need to be processed.

WILL WE KNOW THE WINNER ON ELECTION NIGHT?

Just like in November, it's very possible Americans will go to bed without knowing who won. All indicators point to the likelihood of very tight margins in both races.

Media organizations, including The Associated Press, often declare winners on election night based on the results that are in, voter surveys and other political data.

But in a close race, more of the vote may need to be counted before the AP can call a winner.

THE LEAD MAY VERY WELL SHIFT AS VOTES ARE COUNTED

In a close contest, look for the Republican candidate to jump out to an early lead. That due to two factors: First, Republican areas of the state usually report their results first. Second, Republican voters have been more likely to vote in person, either on Election Day or during the early voting period. Many counties release those in-person results first.

Meanwhile, heavily Democratic counties, including Fulton, DeKalb and Chatham counties, historically take longer to count votes. Democratic candidates could also make late surges because of late-counted mail ballots, which heavily favored Ossoff and Warnock, as well as Joe Biden, in November.

In November, Perdue held a lead of about 380,000 votes over Ossoff at 10 p.m. EST on election night. But Perdue's lead eventually fell below 90,000.

In a very tight race, it could take several days to determine a winner. In November, more than 5 percent of Georgia's votes were counted after noon on the day after Election Day. At that time, Donald Trump led Biden by 100,000 votes in a race that Biden eventually won after all the mail ballots were counted.

GEORGIA'S DONE A LOT OF BALLOT COUNTING ALREADY THIS ELECTION CYCLE

That is true and the trend could continue with the runoff. Under Georgia law, if the margin separating the candidates is within 0.5%, the losing candidate has the right to ask for a recount. That would be done by running the ballots through the scanners again, as happened when President Donald Trump requested a recount after the results showed him losing to Biden by about 12,000 votes.

But we're not likely to see a full hand recount like the one done for the presidential race during the general election. That was triggered by a requirement that one race be audited by hand. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger chose to audit the presidential race and said the close margin in that contest required a full recount. Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs said the audit requirement doesn't apply to runoff elections.

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Associated Press writer Stephen Ohlemacher in Washington contributed to this report.

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Here we go again: What to expect as Georgia counts votes - Chattanooga Times Free Press