Category Archives: Libertarian

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Groups across Texas head to Texas Capitol for "mostly libertarian" demonstration - ArkLaTexHomepage

(Paris) Wikipedia is still the greatest digital common good that the internet has delivered to us: the free online encyclopedia, one of the last dinosaurs of the libertarian and participatory internet, celebrates its 20 years with several challenges to overcome.

Posted on January 15, 2021 at 8:55 a.m.

Yassine KHIRIFrance Media Agency

A small miracle at the time of the triumph of the GAFAM and the Internet merchant, as described to AFP the historian Rmi Mathis, ex-president of the association Wikimedia France.

Founded on January 15, 2001 by the American Jimmy Wales with a non-profit goal, Wikipedia aims to bring together the knowledge of the planet on a single online platform thanks to millions of voluntary contributors.

The success was immediate. The first site was developed in English, German and Swedish Wikipedia followed in March 2001, and soon after ten more including French, Italian, Chinese, Russian and Catalan.

Looking to the future, Jimmy Wales hopes Wikipedia will spread to developing countries: It is really important that the next billion people coming on the internet want to contribute. The founder, interviewed by AFP, dreams of an institution that lasts so long [] than the University of Oxford.

PHOTO DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS, AFP

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales

The seventh most visited site in the world, Wikipedia has more than 55 million articles published in 309 languages. The content of each site is independent: no translations, but original contributions, sometimes supplemented by robots from public data.

Contrary to the traditional encyclopedia written by recognized experts, this collection of knowledge compiled by amateurs, often anonymous, has attracted innumerable criticism and hostility from certain academic circles.

When we know in more detail how Wikipedia is monitored, the articles are written, and the community exchanges, we can still consider that there is an overall level of reliability which is important, estimates Lionel Barbe, master of conferences at Paris-Nanterre University.

There remains a problem of diversity in the sources and themes addressed, with blind spots on subjects linked to developing countries. In question, the profile of contributors, mainly from the United States and Western countries.

The fact of wanting to build an encyclopedia does not attract just anyone and the people who are there are often CSPs, urban, graduates, supports Rmi Mathis, author of Wikipedia: Behind the Scenes of the Worlds Largest Encyclopedia (First Editions).

80%, or even more, it is white men who write Wikipedia articles, explains to AFP Marie-Nolle Doutreix, lecturer at the University of Lyon 2.

We went from 15% to 18.6% of biographies of women in French Wikipedia, says Natacha Fault. Founder of the Les sans pages project, aimed at combating gender imbalances.

But the gender gap will never be filled, because the reality is that the achievements of women have been very little documented throughout history.

Despite everything, at a time of the triumph of GAFAM, the online encyclopedia is a rare survivor of the participatory utopia of the libertarian web, conceived as a decentralized network of exchange and knowledge, recalls Lionel Barbe, for which Wikipedia is after all the greatest digital common good that the Internet has delivered to us.

Jimmy Wales assures us: We are not diverted from our mission for the sake of making more income, so we are not faced with these problems that we see today, this question of algorithms designed in such a way as to encourage engagement in order to increase advertising revenue.

The commercial Internet also has an interest in Wikipedia continuing, nuance Marie-Nolle Doutreix. Google has promoted the visibility of Wikipedia, but in return it uses its articles in its search engine and has significant traffic thanks to this encyclopedia.

Some would also like to draw inspiration from the encyclopedias original model of community moderation in the face of the massive circulation of false information on social networks.

We must not believe either that Wikipedia is going to save us from our own demons. It remains a tool. If we love conspiracy, I doubt that Wikipedia can discourage you, explains Lionel Barbe.

So Wikipedia faces two great challenges: to continue to encourage vocations as encyclopedias, and to moderate its own content and internal debates, on the basis of voluntary work.

All of this, as Lionel Barbe explains, in a context of very strong growth in collective fantasies.

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Wikipedia 20th anniversary | The libertarian internet dinosaur has become the worlds largest encyclopedia - Inspired Traveler

America has to deal with a virus infecting our politics stemming from demographic shifts and racial-threat anxiety or it will continue to poison our politics.

Remember the tea party? They were the conservatives in 2009, who had bold rhetoric about freedom and tax cuts, but their social policy revealed racial nativism and anxiety about white social, political and economic standing. Their rise came around the time the nation elected its first Black president.

Stanford University business professors explored the rise of the tea party during the Obama administration in a paper titled Threats to racial status promote tea party support among white Americans. The researchers conducted five experiments, which found that, while the tea party movement did contain people who advocated for libertarian politics, its growth was driven largely by racial-threat anxiety among whites concerned about their group position.

The paper cites other scholars as noting: A substantial literature demonstrates that racial threats can prompt antipathy, violence and political mobilization by dominant racial group members.

We should note that, while the tea partys economic agenda sounds libertarian, the Libertarian Party didnt benefit the way the tea party did from the movement.

In interviews, Glenn Beckwho is no liberalexpressed concern about tea party acolytes embrace of Trumpism and suggested the embrace wasnt due to economic-libertarian views but rather to racial-threat anxiety.

Trump certainly leveraged and spoke the language of white racial-threat anxiety throughout his administration. During his candidate announcement, he suggested Mexico was sending criminalsincluding rapiststo the United States. He suggested there were good people on both sides during a Unite the Right rally, where white supremacist marchers in Charlottesville, Virginia, shouted, Jews will not replace us.

According to The New York Times, he suggested shooting migrants in the legs to slow them down. He demanded President Obamas birth certificate. And he was always slow to denounce white supremacists.

Trumpism replaced the tea party in many ways, but what happened to the tea party?

It essentially went away. There is a Freedom Caucus. The group had more influence when Republicans were in the majority in the House. But in many wayslike Trumpthe groups actions helped Democrats move out of the minority, which diminished the caucuss influence.

This is not a definitive statement, but it is certainly aspirational: Trumpism will die.

Five people were killed during the violent insurrection of a riotous lot of patriots, who fed off a steady stream of alternate-reality tweets and Fox Newsbut most shamefully enabled by, among others, U.S. Sen. Michael Braun, U.S. Rep. Jim Banks and U.S. Rep. Jackie Walorski of Indiana.

Reality will set in as employers learn that their employees participated in only the second breaching of the nations Capitol in history. They will face questions about their role in one of the most ignominious days in U.S. history.

The rioters will face prosecution. The rioters, we hope, to prison for sedition. They might call it persecution. We will call it justice.

Cabinet members and others will continue to resign, much too late to save their reputations. No one will actually want Trump on their resume, their bioor even their obituary. Trump is a stamp of shame.

Trumpism will die.

Given this coming reality, one might presume that, like a virus, elements of Trumpismor at a minimum, racial-threat anxietywill continue to evolve. They will.

But perhaps recognizing issues related to racial-threat anxiety and addressing the economic anxieties of poor white people could create a political herd mentality.

__________

Wolley is a lecturer, columnist and diversity and inclusion consultant.

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Marshawn Wolley: Like the tea party, Trumpism will die - Indianapolis Business Journal

The frequent appeals to personal liberty made by anti-maskers and lockdown sceptics make a depressing addition to the Covid debate for anyone on the left who believes inliberty.It isnt just that those appeals dont add up to a very good argument. Its that a small group on the libertarian right (and assorted contrarian types who havejoined their ranks) have claimed the word liberty for themselves, degrading its meaning to suit their own ends.

But we've been here before.Duringthecholera outbreaks of the 19th century,therewasalsoastrident minority resisting the rules brought in to save lives, often by means of invoking liberty. (There were conspiracy theories then, too, one of which claimed that elites had released cholera to cull the poor;thisisprobably worth rememberingevery time you read about 5G or mysterious Chinese labs.)

What's interestingisthat the basisfor the public health measures put in place at the end of that century and afterwards was provided in part by John Stuart MillsOn Liberty, whichbecameaclassic text on the subject.According to Mills harm principle, liberty may be suspended if its expression harms someone else. TheDeclaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which laid out the values of the French Revolution, said much the same thing 70 years before.But though the lockdown sceptics arguments have beendiscredited,we still find ourselves in a semantic muddle. Andthereason for this is that many on the left have granted those self-described libertarians the exclusive right to define liberty, by forgetting or neglecting the libertarian strands of their own tradition, as well as their defenders.

[See also:Why lockdown sceptics should accept the overwhelming case for restrictions now]After all, libertyisn't the preserve ofthe right.Manygreat thinkersonthe left Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Herbert Read fuseda respect for liberty with a concern for social justice. You might even mention Gore Vidal, or Christopher Hitchens, whose libertarian leanings stayed with him throughout his political life.Defending (and, indeed, demanding) civil liberties was once a defining principle of the left.Bound up with itwas aleftist defence of liberty that differs starkly from the absolute variant on themodernlibertarianright. Orwell, invoked by the right whenever absolute free speech is questioned, wrote that there always must be, or at any rate there always will be, some degree of censorship, so long as organised societies endure. According to the leftist tradition, liberty may be (and often is) put to one side in pursuit of another cause: Freedom without equality is exploitation, as Rosa Luxemburg put it. To defend liberty, in other words, is not to give up your critical faculties, your common sense, or your regard for others. It isnt to become an evangelist for unbridled individualism.It's just to respect personal freedom and agency in the context of wider society.

And yet, turned over to sundry contrarians and the fringes of the libertarian right, inside and outside parliament, untrammelled individualism is what the word is now associated with. Liberty a political construct, used synonymously with but distinct from freedom is coming to mean a kind of absolute, do-whatever-you-like autonomy that has no regard for the harm that autonomy might do to others. On that view, being told you're not allowed to swing an axe into someone's face would be an attack on liberty. This is obviously ridiculous, but the fact is thatthe left has allowed a small group on theright to give liberty whatever meaning it likes.This isnt just an academic point. The lefts desertion ofliberty as an idealhas some dispiriting real-life consequences. There has been weak opposition from the left to the roll-out of warrantless mass surveillance as well as its means, much of it fraught with bias thathas very real consequences for social justice. The news over the summer that the right to peaceful protest might be restricted was met with little more than a shrug. (The architect of thatplan, theHome Secretary, Priti Patel, described the Black Lives Matter protests as currently unlawful due to Covid-19.) And one cant help but feel that the news the government has reportedly dropped its plans to let people define their own gender might have provoked a stronger reaction if a zeal for social justice could have been fused with an appeal to liberty.As for the pandemic,a nuanced critique of the Coronavirus Act from across the spectrum has been lacking.Those who would think of themselves asliberalhave been silent, despite the criminalisation of many forms of human behaviour without real debate, to be ratified retrospectively. Perhaps this is necessary in this case, but the lack of opposition sets a dismal precedent.As it is, the word liberty has been left to those who gleefully tweet photos of themselvessansmasks. That's something the left should findoff-putting. Compassion and a real emphasis on the common good are necessary during a crisis such as the pandemic. But that doesnt condemn the idea of liberty to meaninglessness or irrelevance.

[See also: Richard Seymour on why the hard right fought against lockdown]

Harry Readhead is a member of the advocacy group Liberty.

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How the right claimed liberty and made it a toxic word - New Statesman

Across the years and around the world, no single issue unites libertarians more than war, and no other issue is more important. Alibertarian despises war. In fact, one could view the whole libertarian project as opposition to war and militarism: Alibertarian disapproves of using violence to induce other people to do what one wants. Furthermore, alibertarian is hostile to the states attempts to impose military regimentation on society as awhole, treating citizens like soldiersorganized and trained by the state to effect the states ends.

The indirect effects of warmaking abroad are often inimical to liberty at home. The size and power of the state, which grow during war time, rarely return to prewar levels after the fighting stops.

Because wars inevitably create widespread death and destruction of property, threaten civil liberties, and encourage nationalist thinking instead of individualism and cosmopolitanism, libertarians treat war as, at best, an absolute last resort. Libertarians like Christopher A. Preble have cogently argued that alibertarian foreign policymust be restrained, shunning wars of choice, and that the military should be of an appropriately small size for that purpose. Some libertarians, like Bryan Caplan, think there are good reasons to oppose any and all wars, and many libertarians are inspired by the ideas and deeds of pacifists like Leo Tolstoy or William Lloyd Garrison.

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What is a libertarian? | Libertarianism.org

Billionaire reality TV star Mark Cuban was asked last Sunday if he would run for president as a Libertarian. And like a majority of Americans, he admitted he didn't really know where the party stands on issues.

Thanks to how unpopular the likely Democratic and Republican nominees are, top Libertarians hope that the increased focus on their party as an alternative will help shed light on the Libertarian message.

But many Americans remain in the darka 2014 Pew Research survey also showed that 44 percent of Americans didn't know the correct definition of the party. So the challenge the party faces as it holds its national convention this weekend is familiarizing Americans with its platform.

Here are five major pieces of the Libertarian Party platform, as well as some issues its platform committee on Saturday is looking to change for this year:

Individual freedom

The idea of individual freedom defines the libertarian movementits the party of limited government, in all forms.

We are the only political party that stands for your right to pursue happiness in any way you choose as long as you dont hurt anyone else and as long as you dont take their stuff, party chairman Nicholas Sarwark told The Hill.

This year, the partys platform committee is looking to highlight how that differs with the two main parties with a new addition to the platform preamble: Our aim is to keep the Republicans out of your bedroom and the Democrats out of your pockets, so that you can make your own choices and live your life as you choose.

That push for individual freedom colors the views of the party on just about every issueincluding drug legalization, free trade, and free-market health care, as well as the elimination of campaign finance and gun control laws.

Social liberals

The push for individual freedom puts libertarians toward the left side of the political spectrum on many of the major social issues.

The 2014 platform argues that government does not have the authority to define, license or restrict personal relationships, adding that consenting adults should have freedom to chose what makes them happy.

The same goes for drug legalizationthe party considers drug use and possession as victimless crimes that should be fair game unless the user hurts someone else in the process.

The platform does not currently address the death penalty, but the platform committee has proposed an indefinite suspension of the practice, noting the number of exonerations since 1973 and the disproportional use of the death penalty based on race.

Economic conservatives

Libertarians have faith in the free market and believe that theres little the government can do to pressure businesses or individuals that would be better than the power of the Invisible Hand.

That means unrestricted competition among financial institutions as well as the elimination of the Internal Revenue Service, Social Security and income taxes.

The main argument is that social pressure and the free market will convince individuals and companies to donate to charity to help the less fortunate -- replacing the need for the government-run social safety-net -- or make business decisions to protect the environment in the hopes of being rewarded by the market for those efforts.

And in the free market, companies live and die without the help of the government, so no bailouts.

But that doesnt mean taking the government entirely out of the equationthe platform committee has proposed clarifying that victims of a companys disregard for the environment should be given restitution when "damages can be proven and quantified in a court of law.

Abortion

Despite the socially liberal bent, this is an issue where libertarians disagree.

The 2014 platform echoed an effectively pro-abortion rights position, arguing government should be kept out of the matter, leaving the question to each person for their conscientious consideration.

But this year, a potentially contentious change recommended by the partys platform committee includes a complete retool of that platform, shifting the rhetoric back toward the center.

If adopted, the plank will declare that Libertarians believe that taxpayers should not "forced to pay for other peoples' abortions." That's a dramatic shift from the previous assertion that the issue should be left solely to the individual.

A proposal would add to that new wording that Libertarians respectfully disagree on abortion and where life begins, while another proposal would simply note that "Libertarians along the spectrum present logical arguments in support of their principled positions on abortion."

A fourth proposal by the platform committee calls to eliminate regulations on over-the-counter contraceptives to help prevent unwanted pregnancies.

Non-interventionist foreign policy

Libertarians want America to abandon its attempts to act as a policeman for a world, and its platform on defense reads like a criticism of Americas foreign policy direction. The partys goal is to maintain a military devoted only to national defense, while shutting down foreign military and economic aid.

Along with that de-emphasis on the offensive, the platform repudiates the tradeoff between liberty and security by declaring that national defense must not take priority over maintaining the civil liberties of our citizens.

That means vigilant oversight on national security programs to ensure no rights are infringed upon as well as getting rid of any security classification that could keep information out of the hands of the public.

Read the rest here:

5 things the Libertarian Party stands for | TheHill

For me the message that has resonated the most after the shocking events in our nations Capitol Wednesday were words that came from an organization that serves farmers.

We must come together, the message said. Not as farmers or city workers. Not as suburbanites. Not as environmentalists. Not as Republicans or Liberals. So-called moderates, Libertarians, Antifa, Proud Boys, or whatever.

We must all come together. As Americans. We must put aside bitterness. Disappointment. Outrage. We must rally instead behind the principles that forged our great nation in a time of great and desperate division and which has ultimately held us together through two world wars and more besides.

We must do this. Because we cannot sustain our Republic, and our liberty, if we dont.

I have been in the news business for going on 30 years now. And I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times Ive felt compelled to write an editorial. Particularly an editorial about politics.

I much prefer to focus on telling a good story. I like writing about farmers. Oil and gas workers. I love gee-whiz, aint that cool science. Its my goal every day to help people understand the science in their everyday lives, without ever realizing Ive taught them anything particular about that at all.

Given that I have a degree in chemistry, and the writing bug since I was 6 years old, I am ideally suited to this mission. That is where my head is most of the time. But what I saw happening Wednesday afternoon could not be denied, and it demands my words now as a patriotic American citizen.

I saw men and women carrying Trump flags, and Confederate flags, and wearing Make America Great Again hats, chanting something that sounded like Fight for Trump in our Capitol, the hallowed halls of the people.

Ill agree that some of them did look relatively harmless, strolling along a roped corridor like high schoolers sneaking into the teachers lounge for a soda. But others carried weapons. And some planted pipe bombs. A woman was shot, and at least one Capitol police officer has since died of injuries sustained during the conflict.

To say what I saw was intimidating is to understate it dramatically. It was terrifying, and I was not even there in person.

Moments after posting an article about this mob swarming the Capitol, I was confronted by conspiracy theories that somehow were already circulating. It was Antifa, I was told in no uncertain and scolding terms. A closely cropped photo of some guy in horns was posted as some kind of murky proof.

The individuals name, I later learned, is Jake Angeli, a longtime, well-known Trump supporter. The sign he was carrying, oh so carefully cropped out, said Q sent me. The individual scolding me with this proof failed to mention Angelis true purpose at the BLM rally was to heckle them, and to maybe recruit followers.

Weve reached a moment in time where people seem to think nothing of bending photographs, videos, and other details online to fit whatever reality they most want to believe in. This has not come about all at once. I have seen it creeping upon us over the last two decades in my social media feeds.

As a reporter, I have always welcomed all walks of life on my feed. Republicans. Moderates. Liberals. Libertarians. You name it. They are there. I appreciate all of them. They help me see the world through their eyes and educate me as I decide what is worth my words on any given day.

But its also been disturbing to watch over the years as alternate realities have risen to life, with such devoted adherents that you do not dare utter one word of disagreement.

I have even been unfriended over such things. The latest was when I pointed out to an old classmate that Trump supporters are not necessarily supporting him because they are racist. I thought a better understanding of why folks actually supported him might help my liberal friend understand why Democrats are not doing well in so-called fly-over country. For the record, Ive been unfriended by conservatives as well, but I digress.

Theres now a sect in my feed that firmly believes vaccines are harmful. If they were, Ive pointed out, you would see a lot more people suffering, since weve vaccinated literally everyone for decades. Not to mention, the scientist who first made the claim has since admitted he faked his study.

Theres another group convinced Hillary Clinton runs a porn ring in a pizza parlor. Still. Even after some poor soul showed up at said pizza parlor with a gun. That allegation was made up by a guy who later admitted he wrote that story just to boost Internet traffic. It certainly worked.

More recently, theres been an even more outrageous claim that Lady Gaga is drinking stressed out childrens blood to remain young. The photo for that particular myth-information came from an episode of a television horror series.

The folks who believe these outrageously false things are all people I know. People I consider intelligent. Some of them are attorneys. Others are teachers. None of them are stupid. Yet, seemingly, the more outrageous the claim, the more likely they are to take it up, post it, and then fervently argue for it against all comers. Even when it is provably false. The truth, seemingly, has no traction.

This dynamic has culminated in the violence we saw in the Capitol, where men like Angeli, an enthusiastic Trump supporter and QAnon devotee, bragged about, what to me anyway, is unimaginable. Assaulting our Capitol. Intimidating our lawmakers with violence. Talking about bullet boxes instead of ballot boxes and telling elected officials to toss ballots that they have somehow determined from afar are illegitimate or else.

The fact is that we have the worlds best legal process and it has already examined theses allegations of election fraud and found that there isnt just too little evidence. But no evidence. At all.

Charges of unfairness are serious, wrote Trump appointee, Justice Stepanos Bibas. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.

He and 90-some other justices in 60-some court cases filed by Mr. Trump and his supporters.

I can remember, as a callow youth who didnt really understand things as I do now, laughing at third world countries for this type of Banana Republic behavior. But I see now with sadness that there was nothing to laugh about. It deserved much more somber reflection than I was capable of then.

As tough as it may be to take, as angry as it may make you that I say it, we are all of us to blame for this breakdown of our society. There are no high roads here.

Maybe you are a liberal unable to understand the terrible fears that are driving the words and deeds of your Republican counterparts, which seem to you divorced from reality. Perhaps you are a Republican, doing the same in reverse to so-called Libtards who you believe to be truly evil. Or maybe you are a Libertarian, and thinking that makes you above it all, because you are neither of these bickering partisans.

But you are all wrong. All of you. I hope that what we all saw Wednesday, Jan. 6, serves as a wakeup call to you, regardless of which ism you claim.

Your opponent is not Darth Vader, and you are not Luke Skywalker defending Democracy. In fact, when you cast your opponent that way, you are attacking something foundational to Democracy, because you are ignoring the deeply felt concerns that your fellow American has. Its the equivalent of kicking a fellow American when he or she is down. And that is truly un-American.

I saw a scientific study not too long ago that found all these outrageous lies online are like mental chocolate for the brain. They fuel endorphins that make us feel good.

But its time now for all of us to stop consuming these toxic treats.

If something makes you mad online, stop for a moment and ask yourself who profits if you believe this item, particularly if it leads to something foolish, like storming the Capitol of our nation while China, Russia, and other countries that dont like us gleefully look on.

Continuing to consume these outrageous lies may feel good in the moment. But it wont bring any of us anything lasting. It certainly wont preserve our Republic.

And isnt that what we all really want above all else?

Rene Jean is the interim editor of the Sidney Herald and has covered oil and agriculture for the Williston Herald.

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We all bear the responsibility to come together - Williston Daily Herald

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

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

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