Category Archives: Libertarianism

Im fascinated by the debate that has been raging these past several days among conservatives around the issue of pornography. Im happy to accept blame for helping to start this scuffle because I think it has been a clarifying moment for conservatism. As Jane Coaston outlined in her fair and insightfulreporting at Vox,the dispute over porn regulation really springs from a more fundamental disagreement about the actual purpose of government.

Guys like Sohrab Ahmari have come down on the pro-regulation side, while the libertarians at Reason have settled, unsurprisingly, on the other. The dividing line even runs through The Daily Wire. My colleaguesMichael Knowles and Josh Hammerjoin Ahmari, myself, and others in the view that government has a legitimate role in battling the porn epidemic, while Ben Shapiroand Jeremy Boreingsay that it should not have a substantial role and any role, if there is one, should not include an outright ban. I think everyone cited above has contributed thoughtfully to the discussion, and Im not just saying that because two of them happen to sign my paychecks.

But through this whole back-and-forth, I havent seen anyone engage with what I consider to be my strongest argument. Putting aside, for a moment, the philosophical discussion about the nature of government and the states role in preserving the common good an important conversation, but one that leads us far into the weeds and loses sight of the original subject in the process Id like to re-emphasize a very simple point Ive made about the porn problem, specifically.

The defense of pornography, or at least of its remaining legal and mostly unregulated, seems to hinge on the fact that the content is produced and viewed by consenting adults. If viewers do not consent to viewing a sexual act, we all presumably agree that a crime has occurred. It would seem to strain the bounds of the most radical libertarianism to argue that a group of adults are within their rights to have an orgy on the subway, for example.

Porn is different, its argued, because you only view it if you seek it out. If viewers of porn were not consenting if internet porn were of such a nature that millions of people were forced to encounter it against their will every year then it would seem that the argument against prohibition or regulation begins to crumble. Well, I think it has already crumbled because indeed millions of people are exposed to itevery year against their will and consent. Those defending the legality of porn seem to be ignoring this group of victims, and I think that is an insurmountable moral and logical flaw in their position.

Children are first exposed to porn at the age of 11, on average. As we speak right now, there are no doubt millions of minors, some as young as five or six years old, watching adults have sex on the internet. This is an indisputable fact. Does the fact not blow to smithereens the consent excuse offered by the other side? Our legal system rests on the assumption that minors cannot consent to engage in sexual acts. If an adult has sex with a child, the adult is guilty of rape no matter if the child verbally agreed or not. In our society, we understand that children lack the mental and emotional maturity to make an informed decision in this area. To deny that is to literally defend pedophilia.

Well, if children cannot consent to engage in a sexual act, does it not inevitably follow that they cannot consent to witness such an act? If they cannot consent as a second-party participant, neither can they consent as a third-party participant. Thus, every child who watches porn does so, by definition, without consent. Again: I dont see how you can quibble with this argument without also quibbling with the logic for criminalizing pedophilic behavior. Im not saying that the people on the opposite side of this issue are trying to legalize pedophilia. Im saying that they fail to appreciate how our laws against pedophilia also provide a basis for pornography regulation.

This all means that every consenting adult who posts hardcore sex videos to the internet does so knowing that children can very easily access and view it. They are putting it, as it were, within reach of the child. If the child reaches for it, who do we blame? Is it the childs fault or the fault of the person who put it there? I would argue that every child who has viewed internet pornography is a victim of abuse. And the abuser is the person who posted that content where a child, with no trouble at all, could find it.

Indeed, the internet porn industry makes hundreds of millions of dollars every year on children. Each hit to a site like Pornhub is monetized. If millions of children go on that site which they do, because theres nothing to stop them then Pornhub profits to the tune of millions on the psychological and sexual abuse of children. If you dont think the government has an interest in the common good, broadly speaking, will you admit that it at least has an interest in preventing people from making millions on providing pornography to 12-year-olds?

The obvious dodge here is to lay the onus entirely at the feet of parents. Its not the pornographers fault, critics will respond. Its up to the parent to stop their kids from seeing this stuff. I find this rejoinder to be profoundly lazy. Its true that parents should be doing all they can to shield their children from the filth on the internet, but its also true that the internet is so ubiquitous that parents cannot, on their own, do a sufficient job in this regard. Even if the child has no phone and no internet access at home or, more likely, regulated internet access at home he can still go almost anywhere else and access the internet dozens of different ways. Short of moving into a cave in the desert, a parent can only provide partial cover. But partial cover, in the end, is only a little better than no cover at all.

Besides, this does nothing to relieve the responsibility of the person posting the content in the first place. Even if every child exposed to porn has ineffectual and inattentive parents (which is most emphatically not the case), that still doesnt explain why anyone should have the right to post sex videos on a public forum where children can easily access them. It might be true that some children who are molested could have been saved that trauma had their parents been more vigilant, but that does absolutely nothing at all to excuse the man who did the molesting. The same holds true for pornographers.

The question is this: Do we have a natural human right to post hardcore sex videos online where children can see them? Anyone who says yes has an extremely confused and hopelessly ambiguous conception of human rights. The rational people who say no, however, must weigh whether a persons privilege to post such content outweighs the right of a child to be free from sexual abuse and trauma.

This does not have to be a deeply philosophical debate about philosophies of governance and so on. This can be much simpler. You do not have a right to expose children to sexually explicit content. Children do have a right to certain basic legal protections. That fact alone, in my view, is enough to settle the argument.

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WALSH: Every Child Exposed To Internet Pornography Is An Abuse Victim. There Should Be Laws Protecting Them. - The Daily Wire

Surrounded by fellow Libertarians during a 2018 election night watch party at a rented Airbnb in Fort Worth, Eric Espinoza, who was running for state Rep. Jonathan Sticklands seat, saw a Facebook message notification pop up on his phone.

Its people like you who are preventing other candidates from winning, he recalls the message saying, though he doesnt recall which candidate the sender supported.

I was like, Hey, guys, look I think I finally made an impact, Espinoza remembers saying, as he passed his phone around to others in the crowded living room.

That to me was like, OK, cool, I was able to affect something so much that somebody who knows nothing about me, and nothing about why I ran, blames me for somebody losing when its not the votes. Its not that I took votes from them; its that people didnt want to vote for that person, and they had a better option.

Republicans and Democrats alike will blame third-party candidates for siphoning votes from traditionally two-way races. Espinoza not only took votes that might have gone to Stickland, a Republican, but he had more votes than Sticklands margin of victory. Stickland beat his Democratic challenger by fewer than 1,500 votes, and Espinoza, in third place, had racked up more than 1,600.

Its still rare for third-party candidates to capture enough votes to potentially sway an outcome in the past three general elections, there have been just six such instances, according to a Hearst Newspapers analysis. But the number is growing, in a sign of tightening Texas elections.

Tight races getting tighter

As races in Texas become tighter, more third-party candidates are having an impact on elections. Over the past three general elections, there were six races in which a third-party candidate won more of the vote than the margin of victory.

Year

Race

Highest-Scoring Third-Party Candidate

Party

Third-Party Candidate's Percentage of the Vote

Margin of Victory

2014

U. S. Representative District 23 (Democrat Incumbent Democrat Pete P. Gallego and Republican Will Hurd)

Ruben Corvalan

Libertarian

2.54%

2.10%

2016

U. S. Representative District 23 (Republican Incumbent Will Hurd and Democrat Pete P. Gallego)

Ruben S. Corvalan

Libertarian

4.74%

1.33%

2016

Member, State Board of Education, District 5 (Republican Ken Mercer and

Democrat Rebecca Bell-Metereau)

Ricardo Perkins

Libertarian

4.72%

3.94%

2018

State Representative District 132 (Republican Mike Schofield and Democrat Gina Calanni)

Daniel Arevalo

Libertarian

1.66%

0.17%

2018

Member, State Board of Education, District 12 (Republican Pam Little and Democrat Suzanne Smith)

Rachel Wester

Libertarian

2.66%

1.52%

2018

State Representative District 92 (Republican Incumbent Jonathan Stickland and Democrat Steve Riddell)

Eric P. Espinoza

Libertarian

2.75%

2.39%

In 2014, one third-party candidate had the potential to affect a races outcome. In 2016, there were two such races. And in 2018, there were three. (None won an election.)

Two of the six races were Republican U.S. Rep. Will Hurds victories in Congressional District 23 in 2014 and 2016. Two were State Board of Education races.

Only one of those third-party efforts could be considered an outright spoil, when Libertarian Daniel Arevalo got 1,106 votes in a Texas House race in 2018 that saw Democrat Gina Calanni beat Republican incumbent Mike Schofield by just 113 votes.

In all six races, the margin of victory was low, most at about 2 percent or less, and the third-party candidates were Libertarian.

A year after some of the most competitive state-level races in decades, Texas Republicans moved to make it easier for third-party candidates to receive and maintain a spot on the ballot. In doing so, they returned ballot access to the Green Party after it lost it following the 2016 election.

Maybe Republicans are just kind of viewing this as, either you could call it an insurance policy or maybe its a way to subject the Democrats to things theyve been subjected to on the part of the Libertarians, said Phil Paolino, an associate professor of political science at the University of North Texas who has studied the effect of third parties on presidential races.

As elections get tighter, Paolino said, you might see a few more races where third-party candidates are able to cover the margins whether itll have the effect of altering the results is a big question.

During a more competitive election, with the stakes higher, some voters may be less likely to vote for third-party candidates and risk a major partys chances, Paolino said. In the six recent cases where third-party candidates drew more votes than the margin of victory, its impossible to know the outcome if they hadnt run whether their supporters would have voted for a Democrat, Republican or skipped going to the ballot box at all, he said.

For subscribers: Texas Green Party has qualified for 2020 ballot and welcomes Democrats climate change focus

If the Republicans behind the bill were hoping to hurt their Democratic competitors by allowing Green Party candidates, who typically pull votes from Democrats, onto the ballot, that appears unlikely from a historical standpoint, at least. Green Party candidates never came close to tipping a race when they were on the ballot in 2014 and 2016.

Whitney Bilyeu, a representative to the Libertarian National Committee for a five-state Southern region that includes Texas, said she thinks Republicans and Democrats in Texas are getting very afraid of us.

When we see things like this, which we expect them to continue to happen, it is a sign that people are finally figuring out, No. 1, they have other options, Bilyeu said. And No. 2, that third option, which is us, is the only one that actually gives them what they want and are about what they claim to be about.

Bilyeu said both major parties have reacted to Libertarian candidates success by trying to limit their access to the ballot.

The Texas Green Party did not respond to requests for comment.

Another voice that is pushing ideas

Republican Rep. Drew Springer, who sponsored the bill, said he hadnt studied third-party election results until a reporter presented him with an analysis. The North Texan has run unopposed since he was first elected in 2012.

Springers bill required that third-party candidates either pay a filing fee or submit a petition to run for election, just as major party candidates are already expected to do. Filing fees range from $300 for a State Board of Education seat to $3,125 for a U.S. House race.

Prior to Springers bill passing, Republican Rep. Mayes Middleton had tried to pass a bill, HB 4416, which would have doubled the threshold for parties retaining ballot access by requiring candidates receive 10 percent of the vote in the previous general election.

An amendment Springer later added to his own bill reduced the ballot access threshold to 2 percent of the vote in the previous five general elections. Springer said its purpose was not to impact election results but to bring more voices to the table.

The biggest effect is the fact that you have another voice that is pushing ideas during the campaigning process, Springer said. Democrats and Republicans have to factor those policies into what theyre doing; I think that helps the whole process.

Of the presidential races that Paolino studied, third-party candidates did guide presidential priorities in some cases, such as in 1992, when Ross Perot took 19 percent of the vote, the most won by any independent or third-party candidate since former president Theodore Roosevelt in 1912.

Perots campaign about the dangers of the deficit did create some motivation for the two major parties to think about ways to reduce the deficit and ultimately, as we saw by the end of Clinton administration, produced a surplus, Paolino said. Its the idea that if 19 percent of the voters out there might be concerned with this, then its going to be better if we can show were doing something about it.

While Libertarians success in Texas has mostly been in local elections, Bilyeu said she still thinks the direction at the Legislature has been influenced by the partys platform, including its advocacy for marijuana legalization. The Legislature added several more conditions to the states medical marijuana program in its most recent session.

We are impacting elections one way or another, whether were covering the spread (between Democrats and Republicans) or not, because were getting messages out there that would not be heard otherwise and were putting candidates from these old parties on notice, Bilyeu said.

For subscribers: Libertarian, Green parties sue Texas over ballot requirements

Ballot-access battle

The Texas Libertarian and Green parties, as well as other minor party groups and some individuals, in July sued the state over its ballot requirements, including those imposed in Springers bill.

They argue that ballot access requirements one of which calls for them to track down thousands of voters who did not cast ballots in a primary election and get their signatures create a financial barrier to candidates. A federal judge denied the states motion to dismiss the suit Monday but declined to temporarily block the requirements.

Also on Monday, House Speaker Dennis Bonnen requested that the Committee on Elections during the interim period until lawmakers next meet in 2021 monitor the bill, among others, to ensure intended legislative outcome.

Espinoza, the Libertarian candidate in the 2018 race won by Stickland, said laws that restrict third-party ballot access wont prevent them from spreading their message and getting through to voters.

You can do all the political posturing you want to, but if the public does not see the change they want, thats not going to matter, Espinoza said. Theyre going to try to vote for someone outside the two-party system whos going to do what they say theyre going to do and enhance the individual freedoms of each voter.

Data reporter Stephanie Lamm contributed to this report. taylor.goldenstein@chron.com

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As Texas elections get tighter, more third-party candidates are making inroads - Houston Chronicle

There are close to 7,000 languages spoken around the world today. Yet, sadly, every two weeks a language dies with its last speaker, and it is predicted that between 50% and 90% of endangered languages will disappear by next century. When a community loses a language, it loses its connection to the past and part of its present. It loses a piece of its identity. As Microsoft thinks about protecting this heritage and the importance of preserving language, it believes that new technology can help.

For the past 14 years, Microsoft has been collaborating with te reo Mori experts and Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Mori (the Mori Language Commission) to weave te reo Mori into the technology that thousands of Kiwis use every day with the goal of ensuring it remains a living language with a strong future. The collaboration has already resulted in translations of Minecraft educational resources and it recently commissioned a game immersed entirely in the traditional Mori world, Ng Motu (The Islands).

Read More at Microsoft On The Issues.

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Dr. Anthony Fauci: The anti-vaxx movement is 'libertarianism taken to the extreme' - GZERO Media

TALLAHASSEE Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was in his element when he gave the opening speech last month at the national convention of the Federalist Society, the organization of conservative and libertarian lawyers.

Citing Federalist papers and 162-year-old U.S. Supreme Court cases, the Harvard-trained attorney made an articulate case against the branch of government he said felt superior to the others.

I think judicial power is too robust right now, DeSantis said. And I think the checks upon it are just simply inadequate.

Less than a year after taking office, DeSantis is faced with making his fourth and fifth picks for the state Supreme Court, melding Floridas highest court to his legal philosophy.

And his views are indistinguishable from the Federalist Society, whose members have been instrumental in making those picks. Leonard Leo, the societys executive director, vetted the three nominees DeSantis made earlier this year.

Two of those judges were later chosen by President Donald Trump for the federal bench meaning DeSantis gets two more Supreme Court picks, likely naming them early next year.

At the convention, Leo said he already knew who DeSantis will choose to replace them: committed Floridian originalists, referring to the originalist judicial philosophy popularized by the organizations most revered member former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

The philosophy goes like this: When reading the law, judges should interpret it as its written on the page. If the law is messy or unclear as it often is judges should not strain to come up with their own interpretations, or rely on what lawmakers might have intended.

That goes for the Constitution as well. The Constitution is not a document that can be interpreted to apply to 21st century problems, as many judges do.

***

Reshaping the court has long been the goal of Republicans in Tallahassee. Since the GOP controlled the governors mansion and the Legislature for the past two decades, only the Supreme Court has checked its power, blocking top priorities from school vouchers to redistricting.

After DeSantis was elected, he got to replace the three justices who were appointed by Democratic governors, and some believe Floridas high court is now among the most conservative in the country.

But in his zeal to reshape the courts, DeSantis, or his staff, has been accused of injecting politics into the judicial selection process.

Attorney Alan Landman, a former head of a judicial circuit nominating commission for the Florida judicial circuit court covering Brevard and Seminole counties, quit this year after he said DeSantis staff asked his to nominate a particular person a lawyer who was a member of the Federalist Society to the bench.

Landman said it was highly inappropriate, and that it had never happened when he served under Gov. Rick Scott for eight years.

When I served (members of the governors staff) never, never stepped into the (judicial nominating) process, Landman said. Never, never.

And former judges and lawyers were alarmed when DeSantis general counsel, Joe Jacquot, asked the chief judge of the Division of Administrative Hearings to step down. DeSantis appointed one of his own lawyers, a Federalist Society chapter president who had virtually no experience in the courtroom.

Last year, Floridas Supreme Court judicial nominating commission stocked with Federalist Society members failed to recommend a single person who was black to the bench, leaving the high court without a black justice for the first time in decades.

Black lawyers are already underrepresented in the legal profession, and there is no guarantee that DeSantis fourth or fifth nominations will be black.

For Eugene Pettis, the first black president of the Florida Bar, the oversight is unthinkable.

To be in the State of Florida and have five appointments and not one of them is African-American? Pettis said. I cannot believe that will happen.

DeSantis spokeswoman Helen Ferr did not say whether DeSantis was committed to appointing a black justice.

Governor DeSantis expects the (commission) to send the best judicial recommendations that focus on candidates who understand the rule of law and the important but limited role of the judiciary, she said in an email. Respect for the Constitution is imperative.

***

The Federalist Society and its philosophy has been popular with Florida governors going back to Jeb Bush, but it hasnt had such an ardent fan in the governors mansion until DeSantis.

He was a member of the society while at Harvard, and hes able to explain his support for originalist philosophy to laymen or lawyers. At the convention last month, he derided judges who didnt subscribe to it.

You have to have some objective measure to go by, DeSantis said at last months convention. It cant just be fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants philosophizing and imposing whatever idiosyncratic views you have on society under the guise of constitutional interpretation. Originalism provides a mechanism to (restrain) judicial discretion, which I think is very, very important.

By its nature, it means that judges should have less power to strike down laws passed by the Legislature or Congress.

DeSantis last month recounted the Supreme Courts 1857 decision in Dred Scott vs. Sandford, in which the court ruled that black people were not intended to be included under the word citizens in the Constitution. DeSantis called it one of the worst cases the Supreme Court ever decided."

The courts chief justice cited state and local laws at the time the Constitution was created to state that black people and white people were supposed to be separated the kind of legal logic that would rankle originalists.

On the other hand, critics believe some members want to use the philosophy to overturn Roe vs. Wade and weigh in on other social issues.

While the Federalist Society is nonpartisan, its dominated by conservatives and libertarians, and Trump has drawn on its members and their advice to fill federal court seats. Bob Jarvis, a professor of law at Nova Southeastern University, said their philosophy was just a fig leaf for conservatism.

I would disagree with the characterization that theyre not partisan, Jarvis said. Theyre highly partisan.

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DeSantis is reshaping Floridas courts with the Federalist Societys help - Tampa Bay Times

The Lost President: A.D. Smith and the Hidden History of Radical Democracy in Civil War America, by Ruth Dunley, University of Georgia Press, 214 pages, $54.95

Ruth Dunley first encountered Abram D. Smith as a barely mentioned bit of trivia in Glyndon Van Deusen's 1959 bookThe Jacksonian Era. "In September, 1838," Van Deusen wrote, "some 160 Hunters from both sides of the [Canadian] border attended a convention in Cleveland, where they elected one Smith, a resident of that city, President of the Republic of Canada."

Who was this Smith person, and how did he get elected by a bunch of carousing yahoos aspresident of a neighboring country? Why had she never heard of him before? Surely such a colorful figure should have made it intosometextbooksomewhere; surely his whole legacy was recorded in an obscure dissertation, some old journal article, or at least a beefy footnote. Something out there must explain this guy and his role in what became a major international affair.

But nonot even close. No one had ever bothered to write this man into history. Now Dunley had a dissertation to write.

The Lost President: A.D. Smith and the Hidden History of Radical Democracy in Civil War Americais the result of that work. Besides his Canadian adventure, Dunley found, Smith was the Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who struck down the national Fugitive Slave Act in his state in 1854. His name was also briefly floated for the vice presidency on Abraham Lincoln's 1860 ticket. Smith's life would be lost to time but for the efforts of a single historian.

Salvaging the record was no easy task. First off, the phrase "one Smith" from Van Deusen was not much to go on. After checking a variety of Ohio archives, Dunley concluded the man's initials were "A.D." But that made for a bittoo muchto go on. With 6,294 different necrology files linked to the name, she experienced both ends of the research historian's constant dilemmas: the hopeless dearth of useful evidence and the crushing mountain of clutter. Dunley took hours to comb through baby-naming books for possible combinations, entering them fruitlessly into Google; she checked just about every type of archive; she found suggestions that he may have been a doctor, a lawyer, a politician, but nothing terribly specific; she called on waves of archivists and librarians.

To make matters worse, the election that attracted her attention in the first place was a highly secretive affair, conducted by an underground militia of rowdy radical republicans intent on invading Canada to stir up revolution. These "Brother Hunters" or "Patriots" communicated in secret or by cypher, using their true names as infrequently as possible. Dunley went so far as to enlist an anonymous "hacker" to decode the Hunters' documents. Still no leads.

She learned A.D. Smith's address in Cleveland, but that went nowhere. She learned that he'd served as a justice of the peace there for some time, and she hoped to find a complete name amid the documents he signed. Maddeningly, however, "he had signed nearly every one of the fifteen hundred or so pages of his docket bookssome pages twicebut always with just his initials." Her hands were black with Jacksonian-era ink, but still she had no full name: "Not only did the world know nothing about A.D. Smith, but now, as his would-be biographer, neither did I."

And then Dunley did what any enterprising young graduate student might: "I went back to the Internet." After several more hours of digging, she uncovered a brief biography of one Abram D. Smith of the Wisconsin state Supreme Court. A few sources later, she found in an 1897 publication calledThe Green Baganother explosive scrap of evidence in the evolving mystery of his life. It read: "Before coming to Milwaukee [Abram D. Smith] was a justice of the peace in Cleveland, Ohio." Our author-hero's project finally started to come together.

Once Dunley discovered the essential components necessary to identify "one Smith," she slowly but steadily reconstructed his biography, the ambling and quixotic story of a 19th century "knight errant for republicanism." He was constantly in motion, moving from one place to another, staying just long enough to make a mark yet still disappear without much of a trace. He celebratedAmerica and Americanism in some of the most libertarian ways imaginable: As a young law student, he kept the Fourth one year by firing salutes to revolutionary heroes, drinking in their honor, and napping the day away in a rowboat, isolated on a lake island in New York's mountain country. He dreamed and spoke of universal progress borne across the globe on electrified telegraph lines, railroads, and steamships everywhere. He devoted his professional life to upholding the constitutional system as he understood ita series of fail-safes between would-be tyrants and the people's libertiesand he seized critical moments to shape events as they came to him.

He was a crusader for those weaker than himself, an advocate for the voiceless, a radical reformer. In the Canadian rebellions, he and others hoped to liberate a downtrodden and exploited people from the world's most powerful empire. Nearly 30 years later, in the South Carolina Sea Islands, he oversaw the redistribution of planter land to the freed people who had worked it.

Smith exhibited all the best (and worst) qualities of early libertarians. He was hopeful, tireless, radical, and passionate. He was also naive, prodigal, headstrong, and romantic. The Canadian rebellions were largely a homegrown affaira reaction growing out of the place's long history as part of the British empire yet deeply connected to the United States. As Canadians imbibed Jacksonian political rhetoric, separatist leaders such as William Lyon Mackenzie found greater and greater support for dismantling British class legislation and colonial spoils. As it happened, though, far more Americans like Smith supported the cause than actual Canadians.

Smith was lucky enough to avoid battle in the Canadas, but plenty of his fellow Hunters and Patriots suffered or died for their cause at the hands of a British court-martial. James Gemmel was one such captured Patriot, convicted and sentenced to transportation to Tasmania. Gemmel survived and wrote up his experiences, urging his peers to "avoid all frontier movementsthe best weapon in the hands of this great republic, with which to revolutionize the world, is surely a strict adherence to that wise, just, and honest policy, which carries in its train prosperity and peace." Smith, meanwhile, spent the next few years marveling that one country (the United States) could peacefully and voluntarily absorb another (Texas) into republican sisterhood. But that wonder of diplomacy was soon outshined by a slaveholder's war for Mexico and the Pandora's box of slavery's expansion in the territories.

A decade later, a runaway slave named Joshua Glover escaped to Smith's Wisconsin, and slave catchers apprehended one of Glover's abolitionist assistants, Sherman Booth, as retribution. In Booth's case, Smith declared the Fugitive Slave Act null and void in his state. Virginians might render human beings into property, but Wisconsin would recognize the humanity ofallpeople.

His stance made Wisconsin the first state to outright refuse cooperation with the national fugitive slave law. It was a major moment in the immediate prehistory of the Republican Party.

Yet by 1860, the Supreme Court had overturned his decision. Smith was rocked by a local bribery scandal, dumped from the Democratic Party, rebuffed by the Republican Party, and left without any vehicle for his constant stream of causes.

He must have leapt at the chance, then, to join the Direct Tax Commission in organizing newly freed slaves in the Sea Islands. There, he spent his final years enjoying the former slaves' new liberties with them, helping them toward literacy, subsistence, security, and equal citizenship. But even then, bureaucracy won the day; Smith's fellow commissioners convinced the Lincoln administration that he was doing more harm than good.

And perhaps he was. Smith died on a steamer from South Carolina to New York, the victim of a life of alcoholism and maybe harder drug use as well. He had reportedly been drunk on the job for years.

Throughout his life, contemporaries remarked that Smith's name was likely to go down in history bolded, underlined, and italicized. They thought that posterity would surely remember a man who lived life to such great effect. But historical memory is a fickle thing, and few libertarian heroes will be remembered unless we do the labor of history. Smith died in obscurity and was almost immediately forgotten. Now, thanks to Ruth Dunley and her tireless quest to unravel the Great Smith Mystery, we once again have memories of this man.

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Meet A.D. Smith, Forgotten Libertarian Abolitionist Hero and Would-Be President of Canada - Reason

A Libertarian walks into a bar. He sits down next to a socialist just as the 10 oclock news comes on the TV. There is a man poised to jump off the ledge of a very tall building.

Do you think hell jump? asks the socialist.

I bet he will, says the Libertarian.

Well, I bet he wont.

At that the Libertarian slaps a $20 bill on the bar. Youre on.

Just as the socialist puts down his money, the man swan dives off the ledge.

Upset, the socialist says, OK, I lost. Heres your money.

I cant take it. I saw this earlier on the 5 oclock news and I knew he would jump.

Oh, I saw it, too, says the socialist, but I didnt think he would do it again.

I laugh because this illustrates to me what Aristotle called the willing suspension of disbelief, something I find common among those who tout the wonders of socialism despite its obvious failure in every country where it has been tried, the most recent being Venezuela.

If you point out socialisms failure to anyone who believes in it, they will tell you that true socialism has never been tried. Ask them what true socialism is and they will have no answer. At least that has been my experience whenever I engage in an argument with someone on the left.

My father was a devout member of the Socialist Labor Party. Having been raised hearing names like Babeuf, Owen (who coined the term socialism in the 19th century), Marx and DeLeon, it is difficult for me to take seriously fauxcialist Bernie Sanders, a veritable dingleberry on the hind of capitalism, a millionaire with three houses who, while promising free stuff to everybody, neglects to mention the fact that as in the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that free stuff comes at the cost of their freedom. (Yes, Virginia, communism grew out socialism.)

There are those on the left who love to point to Social Security as socialism. Actually, it is a social-welfare program buttressed by a capitalist economy, a descendant of Bismarcks attempt to head off socialist appeal in the First Reich. The only resemblance to socialism is the fact that it is run by the government and will, according to a 2018 SSA Trustee report, not only run out other peoples money by 2034 but other people as well because of declining birth rates. So, yeah, that sounds like socialism. Still, the illusion of the socialist ideal appears to grow in popularity.

According to Gallup, some 51% of Americans aged 18-29 (that is 51% of millennials) have a positive view of socialism. I believe they are the 51% raised on Ritalin and participation trophies. I wonder if the drugs and unearned accolades created a group of people without any impulse to succeed, let alone compete. That may explain their attraction to Bernie and his participatory benefits. Or do they see him not as an angry old commie but as the kindly old gramps who always had lint-covered butterscotch in his pockets for them. Perhaps not the candy they were hoping for, but what-the-heck, it was free. And unlike Dad, Gramps didnt tell them to mow the lawn first.

In the opening sentence of his book, The Totalitarian Temptation (1976), Jean-Francois Revel writes, The world today is evolving toward socialism. So, who knows?

For those who insist real socialism has never been tried, I suggest they read Joshua Muravchiks Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism. In the epilogue he writes about the kibbutzim of Israel. He ends by writing: Only once did democratic socialists manage to create socialism. That was the kibbutz. And after they had experienced it, they chose democratically to abolish it.

And that about says it all.

Community Editorial Board member Romaine Worster lives in Greensboro with her wickedly funny and brilliant husband. Contact her at virichrosie@gmail.com.

Read more here:
Romaine Worster: The illusion of the socialist ideal - Greensboro News & Record

This article originally appeared on PA Post.

This months off-year election in Pennsylvania was fascinating not so much because of the electoral shakeups in once reliably red or blue counties, but mainly because of all the new parties and political faces that showed up on the ballot and won!

In Berks County, for example, instead of a blue wave or red army, the Libertarians painted their color (gray, maybe?) on the map. ChannelingRon Swansons limited-government energy,close to a dozen different libertarians ran in uncontested races this past election. They won Birdsboro and Kenhorst borough council seats and five township auditor seats. One mission is to show people that our ideology and methodology works and that people can trust us to help run these governing units, said the partys county chairman, Jerry Geleff. Geleff conceded that it may seem out of place for the party ofnogovernment to be campaigning to run some government, but he was quick to note that most Libertarians believea littlegovernment is necessary.

And while the greater Philly area saw a shakeup in historically Republican areas, arguably the largest upset (at least what most news organizations focused on) was Kendra Brookss election to the city council carrying the banner of the Working Families Party. Putting aside whether or not you agree with Brookss progressive platform, it will be interesting to see how the 14 council Democrats work with her and the two elected Republicans.

Finally, there was Paige Cognetti an independent whowon the mayors racein Scranton. Cognetti, a Democrat, was spurned by the party machine in the city. So she switched her registration to independent and ran on boosting small business while also increasing funding for infrastructure (true middle of the road politics).

So if youre looking to steer the dinner table political conversation away from the red vs. blue cliche, steer the topic to third party candidates and what their rise means in an increasingly polarized state and nation.

See the original post here:
3rd party wins promise to shake up Thanksgiving dinner table talk - WHYY

Our ideological confusion, always great, is growing still greater as political conservatism becomes redefined as whatever Donald Trump tweets and political liberalism becomes increasingly indistinguishable from radical leftism.

Clarity on ideological matters can usually be enhanced not just by more precisely defining ideological terms and acquiring a better understanding of political theory, but also by examining what movement from the political "center" to the political "right" or "left" produces.

This is not particularly difficult to do for leftism, which can be rather neatly plotted along the leftward side of the continuum by moving in increments from American Progressivism and European social democracy to democratic socialism and Marxism-Leninism. The further left you go, the more hostile the view of capitalism and the greater the desire to maximize state power over the individual.

Things are more complicated on the rightward side, however, because the right can't be represented in increments and forks off sharply to reach ideological positions that have virtually nothing in common with each other, despite the shared "right-wing" appellation.

Along these lines, the earliest strain of self-conscious political conservatism, the European conservatism of the 18th and 19th centuries, was genuinely conservative in the sense of wishing to preserve a feudal order increasingly beset by liberalism on one side and socialism on the other. It stood for monarchial authority and distinct class hierarchies, with a fusion of church and state (or at least deference to ecclesiastical authority) buttressed by a rigid set of social customs and mores. Its desire to preserve the status quo in the face of demands for reform helps explain our everyday understanding of the word "conservative."

That kind of conservatism was largely finished off by the Great War, which destroyed what was left of European monarchy and supposedly made the world "safe for democracy."

As what Louis Hartz famously called the "first liberal nation," America never had much of a feudal order or a form of politics supporting it, with the possible exception of a certain agrarian populist conservatism associated with the Confederacy (the part of America that most resembled in its political culture and social arrangements European feudalism).

As the feudal order faded in Europe in the face of the liberal and socialist challenges, "right-wing" by the interwar years came to be defined by the noxious fascism of Nazi Germany, Mussolini's Italy, and a motley crew of related regimes in Eastern Europe.

The fascism that provoked World War II was thus an ideological mish-mash of extreme authoritarianism, worship of state power, anti-Semitism and militarism. It was destroyed by World War II in the same sense as monarchial conservatism was by World War I, although whiffs could still be found thereafter in European politics in the Catholic authoritarianism of Franco's Spain and Salazar's Portugal.

Neo-Nazis might show up in small numbers these days in the streets of Charlottesville but they represent a minuscule percentage of the citizenry, lack political influence, and are reflexively condemned across the political spectrum.

With monarchial conservatism long gone and genuine fascism largely irrelevant since Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker, what is now called right-wing, at least in American politics, has become synonymous with conservatism and the Republican Party.

But our ideological confusion deepens when recognizing that the conservatism of Herbert Hoover, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan isn't really conservatism at all but the most direct ideological descendant of the classical liberalism upon which the American experiment is based. In most other democracies, with a more developed understanding of political theory, such folks are more accurately called "liberals" or "neo-liberals" rather than conservatives.

The essential "liberalism" of what is mistakenly called American conservatism is best captured by George Will, who recently argued that what American conservatives seek to "conserve" is the American founding, with its core values of the rule of law, individual rights, market economics, and self-government limited by a system of checks and balances.

These are the defining historical values of liberalism, and much more the values of a Goldwater or Reagan than an Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders.

As such, there can probably be no political movements more dissimilar than classical liberalism (which includes contemporary libertarianism) on the one hand and European fascism on the other (the central project of the former is limiting state power; for the latter, removing all such limits). And the classical liberalism contemporary conservatives seek to protect is the same liberalism that undermined monarchial conservatism in nation after nation in 19th and early 20th century Europe.

In short, "right-wing," referring as it does to ideological movements as incompatible as Nazism, Jeffersonian liberalism and contemporary libertarianism, has become a meaningless label.

Properly understood within the historical ideological spectrum, American conservatism is not conservatism but classical liberalism. And New Deal liberalism isn't liberalism but part of a broader socialist movement which developed historically apart from and in direct opposition to classical liberalism.

American conservatism is "right-wing" only in the sense of opposing the illiberal left.

------------v------------

Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.

Editorial on 11/25/2019

Print Headline: BRADLEY R. GITZ: What is 'right-wing'?

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BRADLEY R. GITZ: What is 'right-wing'? - NWAOnline

For a self-styled digital native who stresses "21st century solutions" to today's problems, presidential hopeful Andrew Yang has a decidedly 20th century way of addressing what he considers to be problems: spend more, regulate more.

As Reason's Billy Binion noted, the tech entrepreneur's proposals about "Regulating Technology Firms in the 21st Century" involve a lot of unwise monkeying around with "Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act; the landmark legislation protects social media companies from facing certain liabilities for third-party content posted by users online." Like many other critics of online platforms (including progressives such as Elizabeth Warren and conservatives such as Josh Hawley), Yang buys into the nonexistent distinction between "publishers" and "platforms" as a means of regulating the speech and economic freedom of social media companies and website operators.

In the same document, Yang also proposes to

It's this sort of "new" thinking that loses libertarians. In what way does a new, presumably cabinet-level, agency do anything other than expand the size, scope, and spending of government in a way that will inevitably limit speech and expression? That it's being done in the name of "the children" makes it seem like a punchline from a mid-1990s episode of The Simpsons. Yang asserts that "we are beginning to understand exactly how much of an adverse effect" social media is having on kids and that Facebook, Twitter, and the rest face no "real accountability" even as he rhapsodizes about his 20th century childhood: "I look back at my childhood and I remember riding a bike around the neighborhood, but now tablets, computers, and mobile devices have shifted the attention of youth."

Spare me the nostalgia and moral panic, which is highly reminiscent of the '90s panic over the supposed effects on kids of sex and violence on cable TV (lest we forget, Attorney General Janet Reno and other leaders threatened censorship if the menace of Beavis and Butt-headand other basic cable fare wasn't cleaned up). The social science is far from settled on any of this stuff and the first reaction to perceived problems should never be creating a series of government controls. Social media companies face all sorts of pushback in the marketplace, too, including lack of interest from users (Facebook has posted two years of declining use in the U.S.).

What would any of Yang's plans cost in terms of dollars and cents? It doesn't really matter because the visionary will pay for everything with a value-added tax on digital advertising.

Lord knows Republicans, including Donald Trump, are hardly avatars of a new way of governing, but the Democratic presidential candidates have yet to meet a problem that can't be solved by creating a whole new program or bureaucracy. South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg wants to shell out $1 trillion to make housing, child care, and college more affordable. Elizabeth Warren wants to raise taxes by $26 trillion and Bernie Sanders wants national rent-control laws while washout Beto O'Rourke yammered on about the right to live close to work before bidding adieu to the 2020 race. Joe Biden wants to spend $750 billion over the next decade to deliver what Obamacare was supposed to do.

Over the last 40 years, federal spending averaged 20.4 percent of GDP while federal revenue averaged just 17.4 percent. That gap, says the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is only going to get wider, saddling future Americans with more and more debt, which dampens long-term economic growth, among other bad outcomes.

The federal government spent about $4.4 trillion in fiscal year 2019 (while posting a $1 trillion deficit). Surely there is more than enough savings to be found in that massive sum before proposing big new programs that will be layered on top of a seemingly infinite number of existing efforts to fix all the big and small problems of the world. It shouldn't be too much to insist that all candidates for president (and every other federal office) explain how they are going to bring revenues and outlays into some sort of balance. But at the very least, we shouldn't stand for yet more spending and regulation that simply gets layered on top of what is already there.

Continued here:
Andrew Yang's 'Department of the Attention Economy' Is Why Libertarians Don't Trust Democrats - Reason

Photo by Isabella Castillo | The State Press

"Dear State Press, you've got mail." Illustration published on Friday, March 3, 2017.

Earlier this month, The State Press published an opinion piece calling on ASU clubs to sign a resolution supporting the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The resolution would also prohibit signees from collaborating with student organizations that express support for the state of Israel. In response to this, ASUs College Libertarians and College Republicans would like to publicly announce that we, as student organizations, will not be signing this resolution.

We recognize that this is part of a larger, more complex issue and that there are good-faith arguments on every side. We believe that each individual has a right to choose where they stand on this issue. But as two different political clubs on campus who believe in peace, liberty and freedom, we feel the need to explain the three primary reasons why we will not be signing this resolution nor supporting this movement.

Firstly, the calls for a boycott of Israeli products wholly misses the mark. If the goal of BDS is to send a message to the Israeli government, a boycott of goods made in Israel will directly hurt the citizens of Israel long before the government feels any real effects.

Additionally, the calls for sanctions against Israel continue this trend, considering the mountains of evidence that suggest sanctions are largely ineffective. Instead, the BDS movement seems to be more so aimed at delegitimizing the state of Israel rather than trying to influence change. We do not believe that refusing to acknowledge the very existence of either party will do anything to pacify the conflict at hand.

Secondly, BDS and their often aggressive tactics have the unintended consequence of discouraging any negotiations toward peace in the region. This is why the current president of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas, a supporter of a two-state solution, said in 2013 that Palestinians do not support a boycott of Israel.

Finally, it is important to note that the Anti-Defamation League has said that many of the founding goals (and) strategies employed in BDS campaigns are anti-Semitic.

Both of our clubs strongly condemn anti-Semitism of all forms. There is no reason to support a cause that actively marginalizes ASUs rich Jewish community. This is not to mention the recent uptick in anti-Semitic activity on campus.

As such, our student organizations will not be signing onto any such resolution, and we will continue to work tirelessly to fend off anti-Semitism on all fronts. We urge other organizations and students of all sides of the aisle to join us in this effort to stamp out hate and promote civil dialogue.

Sincerely,

David Howman, President, ASU College Libertarians

Joseph Pitts, Vice President, ASU College Republicans

Editors note: The opinions presented in this letter to the editor are the authors and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors. This letter to the editor was submitted by David Howman, president of the ASU College Libertarians and Joseph Pitts, vice president of the ASU College Republicans.

Reach the authors at david.j.howman.44@gmail.com and jdpitts4@asu.edu.

Want to join the conversation? Send an email toopiniondesk.statepress@gmail.com. Keep letters under 500 words and be sure to include your university affiliation. Anonymity will not be granted.

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Letter to the Editor: College Libertarians and College Republicans oppose BDS movement - The State Press