Andy Craig (former IPR Contributor (November 2014 to November 2016)), the Director of Election Policy at the Rainey Center, and an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, recently authored an opinion for The Daily Beast regarding President Trump’s keynote speech to the Libertarian Party’s National Convention. Titled: IS THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY TOO BIGOTED EVEN FOR TRUMP? APPARENTLY NOT (published 03 May 2024), Andy writes, in part:
. . . Trump is . . . the exact opposite of an ideological libertarian. But . . . there is a certain logic on both sides of this odd exchange. . . Republicans have long seen the Libertarian Party as costing them winnable elections . . . (but) the Libertarian Party ain’t what it used to be. . . (so) the Trump campaign might end up wishing they’d taken a closer look . . . they’ve put their candidate on what might be the most overtly bigoted stage of his career. . . with a particular zeal for overt antisemitism . . . the “German New Medicine” conspiracy theory . . . headlining a virulent Holocaust denier . . . (deleting) a nearly 50-year-old platform plank condemning bigotry as “irrational and repugnant.” . . . (describing the LP’s) new mission as fighting “wokeism.”
It would be fair to say . . . Trump has never spoken to such an openly bigoted organization before.
The full article can be read at The Daily Beast HERE.
IPR readers who choose to follow Andy Craig on X may do so HERE.
NOTE: Andy Craig contributed approximately 289 articles to IPR over the course of approximately 25 months. Interested readers can find those linked HERE.
Seebeck, I disagree with your assessment of Reason, CATO, and the vast bulk of the sane part of the libertarian movement.
There is also the other part, following in the footsteps of pre-internet prototroll Murray Rothbard, cult-following former Republican congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul and his former right hand man and current Trump supporter Lew Rockwell, and trolling up a weird mix of anarchocapitalism sci-fi/fantasy and far right, bigot or bigot adjacent views, often combined with an inflated by multiple orders of magnitude view of their numbers, influence, or political chances of success, as well as frequently dabbling or more than dabbling in far out grand conspiracy beliefs and unconventional legal theories. They sometimes try to start a country or form a physical community of some sort somewhere, which invariably turns out to be a scam.
I’m not sure I would describe them as libertarians, but I’m willing to call them that if they want, because I’m not particularly attached to the label. If they insist on monopolizing it, I’m fine with others for whatever I am, free market liberal, classical liberal, small government liberal, or whatever. I don’t care, since labeling and categorizing political views is far from an exact science, and there are many things I’m not that certain about.
I’m not sure how you brought yourself to decide that I don’t know or care anything about libertarianism. It couldn’t possibly be because of anything I said here, as far as I can see.
Coincidentally, I also have an interest in minor parties and independent candidates, which is the stated reason for this discussion forum. I’m here because I’m curious about them. Curiosity isn’t ignorance, but it also has its limits. I’m not interested in all their minutia, sending them money, or attending their events. I’ll read, comment, and sometimes possibly vote for them, generally for local office, sometimes state office or congress. Never yet for president, although I wouldn’t categorically rule it out.
Time is, likewise, a limited resource. Curiosity has its limits, like I said.
Why are you here? To play gatekeeper sentry and run off non club members? Hopefully it’s not to declare yourself king of the universe and demand everyone bows down in awe. If you are, good luck with that. Enjoy visiting DC as a tourist and pretending you rule the world. If not, come back when you descend from your Mount Olympus ego trip, and maybe you can participate in a rational conversation. It remains to be seen.
Correction: ..deluded yourself to the point of thinking those have anything to do with running the world..
Lol. My checks don’t bounce. I don’t write them to the pathetic likes of your party. That would be chasing good money after bad. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt, ended up using it to line the cat litter box.
I show up where my presence is needed or where I think it might be interested to show up. You show up at cosplay conventions. If you’ve really deluded yourself to the point that those have anything to do with running the world, I hope you get the help from a competent qualified mental health professional that you need as soon as possible, take the medications you get prescribed as a result regularly, and get better soon.
Perhaps you’re under the delusion that I’m complaining about stupid crap your cosplay political party does. On the contrary. I find it funny. Your party is a joke. Sometimes funny, sometimes not, but that and that alone is why I still pay any attention to it at all. Luckily, laughing at your wacky cosplay political party doesn’t require writing checks or going anywhere. I can do it from home, or wherever I am, for free, other than any time opportunity costs.
Who is this we that’s done here? Do you speak of yourself in the third person, have multiple personality disorder, delusions you run the world (hence, perhaps, the royal we), or is that supposed to shut me up? I’ll address Jim, others here, or for that matter you if I feel like it. You’re not the boss of me, no matter what fantasies of running the world you might be headed to your cosplay political party convention to play out.
Have fun, and don’t forget the spray tan.
Jim, I understand this far more than you will EVER comprehend or think you do.
Reality, your check bounced. The world is run by those who show up. I show up. So did 23 others who also got elected last convention. Others did not, and they complain about it. Too bad.
We’re done here. I have a ton of convention prep to do.
Jim, it’s your time to spend in whatever ways you see most fitting, so I won’t say I’m sorry for your loss (of time, reading all those). What’s in a major party platform? Typically, a bunch of promises to special issue groups, which basically serve to tell them, we care about you (yeah, right), so mobilise whatever donors, volunteers, and voters you can for our nominees. The special interest groups do their part of that, and the major party politicians compromise away their promises to these groups when they both elect people to office in more or less equal numbers, then they repeat the same dance next election
What’s in a Minor party platform? Only a very tiny number of activists in each Minor party is responsible for the bulk of what ends up in the language. Seebeck is apparently one of those. Only a tiny number of a minor party supporters end up at any given national convention. The last time I was dumb enough to spend money and time to attend such a libertarian shindig, Denver in 2008, they didn’t do proxy votes. I don’t know whether that changed since then.
But, as far as the platform debates go, most of the people physically there may as well be proxy votes. There are a lot of other things competing for their attention that weekend, so if they’re not out in the hall or socializing during any given vote, they’ll typically be turning to other people who pay a lot more attention to platform crap to see how to vote or maybe get swayed by one of the tiny number of people who make arguments for or against any change – usually it’s the same few people over and over.
I probably don’t need to tell you that. But just in case your party activism or study and debate are solely online, that is the reality. It’s not the opinions of the entire party voter, donor, or volunteer base. Those have next to zero impact on what’s in the platform. It’s not even the opinions of the few hundred national convention delegates. It’s effectively the cobbled together opinion of primarily a couple of dozen people who spend a lot of time reading, arguing and debating platform language and proposed changes.
What does it have to do with small R reality? Basically, nothing. I could spend an endless amount of time debating any given platform plank with you and Seebeck, but there’s literally no point. To take just one small example, the statement that people are born with certain rights is total nonsense. It has zero objective basis in any observable facts in the material world. People are born with, at best, whatever liberties the politicians, lobbyists, judges and bureaucrats are nice enough to let them have until the next terror attack, whipped up media frenzy, etc.
Even those are routinely ignored as the law is actually applied, and that’s when the law even enters any given situation of people having their theoretical freedoms trampled on as a matter of course. Usually, must people just take it, either ignorant of those legal theoretical rights or not feeling empowered to take to the legal system to stick up for them. Then if they do, they usually give up before seeing it through, or get screwed in the end by scumbag judges, lawyers, prosecutors, and behind the scenes influence peddlers cutting deals.
See, that was just one sentence. We could go through an endless number of such useless philosophical gobbledygook rabbit holes and stay stuck in each one forever. But, endless life extension technology is not yet perfected, and even if it were, is that really the best way to spend eternity ?
So, platforms are useless philosophical gobbledygook crap cobbled together by a few dozen people why actually pay attention to what’s in them and then butt their heads over their differences by spending a lot of time and money to attend cosplay political party conventions, weaponizing cosplay law (some guy’s book of rules), and cosplay lobbying their fellow cosplay politicians to prevail in debates over a cosplay declaration of wishful thinking. Thus, we have the platform.
Who reads them? Obviously you. I guess some people read them. But very few people vote on their basis. They vote on the basis of what actual candidates say or are falsely reported to have said, which is often a lot different than the platform of whichever party nominated them. Or on the basis of arguing with people in real life or online whose understanding of what the different parties and their candidates stand for is different degrees of off from the platforms. Or on the basis of how they perceive the horse race, et c, etc.
So, statements of wishful thinking by a few dozen people who take the wishful thinking seriously, spend a lot of time and money to attend cosplay political congresses and lobbying other cosplay politicians and gaming cosplay parliamentary law, read by few voters, and forming the basis of action (changing votes by voters, changing their messaging by candidates, or changing their actions if elected as politicians) by even fewer.
So what good is a wishful thinking statement like “we think bigotry is irrational and repugnant”? It’s basically a Nazi punks F off sign. Refer back to reddit link somewhere way down in the thread as to what happens when Nazi punks are not told to F off. For non link clickers, basically: the first few are nice and polite and reasonable and well behaved, and make what sound like rational arguments. But then they bring friends and those bring friends etc, and they stop being nice and start taking over and showing their true colors, acting like fash do whenever they feel at home and running everyone else off.
You have to stop that process long before they get to be the controlling leadership of your party and eventually your platform will say crap like “the people who descend from the colonial rebel founders of the USA are born with the right to be free of minorities, immigrants and their descendants, so in the name of liberty let’s round those up and either kill them or send them back to their ancestral continents. We denounce racial equality as irrational and repugnant.” Your party platform doesn’t say anything like that. Yet. But given how things are playing out, in 5 or 10 years it probably will. Or more likely still, it will be several much more minor minor parties, some of which will say crap like that and some which won’t.
People who either don’t understand that this is the direction which the so called libertarian party is going, or that it’s almost certainly too late in that process to reverse that course, aren’t looking at the momentum and the way things actually work even within the reality of minor party organizing, evolution, and fights for control playing out over time, which is itself an order or several degrees of magnitude removed from a larger reality in which these cosplay parties, what they stand for, what goes on at their events and discussions etc matters very, very little, and will likely matter less and less going forward.
So yeah, that was a waste of my time too. The people who don’t get this will still not get this, even in the unlikely event they will read it. Seebeck will say I didn’t actually say anything. I don’t even know if you’ll read it, and then if you do you might say it’s not nearly that late in that process and it can be headed off at the pass. Maybe I’m guessing wrong but chances seem good it will be either that or no reply. So, sorry for my own loss. In lieu of flowers, you all (yeah right) can send your thoughtful wishes telling me to go join the time I just killed in an adjacent cemetery plot as soon as possible, but not until I die a slow and painful death, or any other words to that effect.
Seebeck – You do understand what “voluntary” means, don’t you? Or did you just miss that word (twice)? Violations of rights are only violations when someone objects to the action.
For example, punching a random person in the face is assault. Punching someone in the face with whom you are in a boxing match is not. Setting up a pile of tires, lighting it on fire, and using giant fans to blow the smoke into your neighbors yard is a violation of their rights, assuming they object. The exhaust from your lawn mower drifting into your neighbor’s yard is not because your neighbor tolerates that pollution in exchange for enjoying the equal right to pollute your property with his lawn mower exhaust. And then there’s the things men and women do. Huge difference between voluntary and not.
An economically redistributive government is not violating anyone’s rights if it is a government to which society is voluntarily subscribed. But, it is prohibited by the Libertarian Platform, in violation of a free society’s right to create any government it wishes.
There is no contradiction in the former discrimination section of the platform. One sentence says WE condemn bigotry. Another says private organizations are free to set whatever standards they deem appropriate. Our standard was – past tense – to condemn bigotry. We were perfectly free to set that standard. Or not, if we wanted to open the door to those people. The platform did not call on anyone else to condemn bigotry.
You shouldn’t be voting on this stuff without understanding it.
And, for the record, I have read every LP platform, approximately 50 years worth of Republican, Democratic, and Prohibition platforms (mostly pre-1932), at least one Constitution platform, most of one Green platform, a bunch of tiny parties, like the Pirate Party the Reform Party, some socialist party or other, and a bunch of defunct platforms, like the 1948 Progressive party, the 1948 States Rights Democrats, the 1968 American Independent platform, and several from the 1800s. Getting all of those perspectives was enlightening. Very useful for conceptualizing the political landscape and understanding alternative points of view without inserting your own bias.
You are projecting, and who is this we? You and your multiple personalities? I write for my own amusement, and overanswer questions, even highly presumptuous ones, such as the idea that those who don’t roll around in l.p. minutia and take it seriously have no right or reason to comment on it at all, know nothing about it, or about the confused set of somewhat overlapping ideas considered by various sets of people to be libertarian, close , or further from libertarianism than a cannibal Khmer rouge, depending who you ask.
Your delusion that I say nothing deepens because you lose attention past the sound bite of genuflection to your premises. I understand your premises fairly well; I’ve considered , adopted many of, and latter rejected them. My disagreement is not out of either ignorance or complete disagreement on big picture direction. I don’t think anything you’re doing helps anything move in that direction at all. Your stated goals don’t have anything to do with the vast bulk of party related activity or the behavior of active members and alleged leaders, who almost uniformly all exhibit every trait of becoming the worst sort of totalitarian despot given any power at all ever .
The party could do a lot more good by being a deliberate, conscious joke instead of an unwilling one. Besides that, the best thing for people who genuinely believe in its big picture stated goals is to have as little to do with it as soon as possible. That doesn’t mean giving up the right to comment on it’s absurd psychodrama. If they wanted a secret members only club, they should have started one .
I don’t overvalue myself. If I valued myself highly, I wouldn’t responded to your highly loaded questions and pretentious, delusional, projecting statements. I’m of well below average value , if any. I’ve wasted the vast majority of my life and talents, such as they are. I have many serious character flaws. I do however have opinions, and the right and inclination to express them . I have many reasons that go into forming those, including wrong opinions I used to have and the profound ways they misled me into doing lots of things that didn’t help the supposed reasons I was doing them or were actually counterproductive.
Who gets what out of the lessons I learned is up to them. You have no idea who all is reading how much, or will later, or what they take away from it . At least unlike you, I know full well I speak only for myself and don’t for a moment pretend otherwise. Speaking for an undefined collective is authoritarian group think at a bare minimum. Perhaps being active in a political collective naturally lends itself to such collectivist group think delusion, especially when you spend so much of your time taking it way too seriously for way too long.
Yawn.
The more you talk, Actually, the less you say.
And the less you say, the less we hear.
You overvalue yourself.
Bless your heart and have a nice day.
I know quite a bit more than you realize, or that I care to know. For starters, I know libertarians love to insist that other factions of libertarians aren’t real libertarians, or not libertarians at all. In fact, they tend to devote far more time to viciously attacking each other as they do to doing anything that might marginally reduce the size, scope, absurd complexity and irrational casual cruelty of big government at any foreseeable real world junction of space and time.
The chance of anything they spend the bulk of their time arguing, name calling, suing, and sometimes physically attacking each other about mattering in anything remotely connected to the real world are akin to a human randomly assembled from swirling air in a hurricane.
Why interact? Well, for starters , it says independent political report, not libertarian philosophy microscale verbal battle royale to the horrible death and well beyond among hostile, aggressive, rapidly mutating open match to decide once and for all how many angels on pin and what their best dance moves are. Not obscure Gordian knot group multi team rope tug contest over Nth order tangents of some wacky dude’s rule book, internal board manual, etc, etc. Not school board elections at a school for the severely autistic with multiple diagnoses and severe early childhood trauma. Not sociopathic cosplay political party clubhouse, members only.
I like observing theater of the absurd, following the drama, making guesses about subplots and character development, anticipating plot twists, and reading the funhouse perspectives of others who take all that stuff seriously, like I once did, wasting a chunk of my life taking absurd comedy seriously. The only silver lining is making me qualified to observe that same convoluted and ever metastasizing mess from the outside with more grasp of the bizarre rituals and details than the average person, who would just see a highly unpleasant bunch of insects attacking each other and anyone who gets close viciously.
Having been stung enough to barely notice it, and having duped myself into wasting lots of time and effort trying to engineer a better insect colony that would, somehow, improve the human condition before the species, planet, or both are ancient history, I now can see a great deal of rich drama and pathos in observing from enough distance to not get caught up in too small detail while seeing much of the main action and taking non random guesses about what I don’t see. The great levels of absurdity, in the actual actions, stated motives, probability estimates, prioritarization, guesses etc of others is the best part.
Occasionally finding just how wrong some of my interpretations or guesses were, or, even more rarely, actually learning something potentially useful is another benefit. Seeing things few if any others see as early as i do is also pretty cool.
Curious, as far as I can tell, has a roughly similar perspective.
I think, paradoxically, those in the very thick of the action tend to be hilariously far more clueless than anyone else paying even the slightest attention. It may seem counterintuitive until you realize small distances and constant swirling causes dizziness and extremely distorted perspective. Coupled with naturally combative personalities, always aggressively doubling down on anything no matter what , and soon you have one of the funniest bad hallucinogenic trip cum melodrama ever conceived.
Also, occasionally and in seemingly random ways, it occasionally intersects in all sorts of ways with the real world, or what passes for it these days. Like, one of the cars in a crazy movie/play chase sequence ends up in the parking lot, veers onto the street, and causes a huge pile up. Ambulances crash into each other, news helicopters suffer unusual malfunctions, etc, etc. An actor playing a doctor rushes outside to render aid, and randomly discovers a new way to reconnect stuff in a human body to supplant internal combustion engines. And on and on like that.
Observer:
Learn to actually do your name. Right now you aren’t very good at it.
Ballot counting falls to the state delegations and not all states do it at the same pace. That’s not on Ms. Harlos. At Reno, it was California and Virgina with their write-in circuses that slowed everything down. It was neither Ms. Harlos nor the tellers, who were stuck waiting on them.
And no, there is no push to have a credentialing fight. There is a push to AVOID that by having states get it right on the front end.
You really don’t know what’s going on.
Jim,
Come back when you understand that violations of rights are not subject to government whim or popular vote.
See, there is not blind spot. We on the Platform Committee clearly understand the fundamental difference between government action and private action, and the Platform, had you bothered to read the WHOLE THING, reflects that.
And yes, I voted against the Cohen word salad (although he didn’t write it; he simply made the motion), and I voted for removing the old plank. To my view, that was a step backwards for a lot of reasons, the least of which was the whole thing of emotive dog whistles of “irrational and repugnant.” It simply did not belong in that plank. To educate you, here’s the old plank:
3.5 Rights and Discrimination
Libertarians embrace the concept that all people are born with certain inherent rights. We reject the idea that a natural right can ever impose an obligation upon others to fulfill that “right.” We condemn bigotry as irrational and repugnant. Government should neither deny nor abridge any individual’s human right based upon sex, wealth, ethnicity, creed, age, national origin, personal habits, political preference, or sexual orientation. Members of private organizations retain their rights to set whatever standards of association they deem appropriate, and individuals are free to respond with ostracism, boycotts, and other free market solutions.
See the problem there? The first two sentences talk about rights. The fourth sentence talks about the role of government. The fifth sentence talks about the role of the private sector and individuals. The third sentence contradicts the fifth, ESPECIALLY when coupled with the second sentence of 1.0. It simply had no place in the plank or in the Platform.
The simple solution was to strike the one sentence. That was debated heavily within the Patform Committee. Striking the whole plank was the wrong answer, compounded by the replacement.
The delegates made the call. It was the wrong call, in my opinion, but here we are.
But your reasoning and arguments are just nonsense. -1 0 1.
Curious,
Cato and Reason are beltway Cosmotarians, giving lip service to libertarianism when not busy fellating the statists. It’s been that way for over a decade, and probably longer.
Actually,(and to some extent Curious),
Since you outed yourself as knowing nothing about the LP and having no inclination to change that, why are you here?
Re observer, Executive Summary :
The party is over. You don’t have to go home, but it’s not worth staying there. Believe me now or believe me later. The future of “libertarian”/ish parties can be seen in the myriad nominal socialist parties.
Libertarianism lives on and thrives in myriad other ways, just like socialism. The namesake party is a counterproductive anachronism at this point. Time to move on, as more and more people will.
It would be a silly technicality, but I would think you could argue it for the FEC 5% threshold (though CA alone wouldn’t get you there), and also for purposes of the LP’s delegate allocation formula, in theory. Which basically means it would break the latter.
But I agree it’s unlikely the convention will nominate Trump. Much more likely is it’s going to be total chaos and fail to complete the nomination balloting at all, and you wind up with a fractured mess on top of the state ballot lines already controlled by parties that aren’t LNC affiliates. McArdle has no idea what she’s doing actually chairing the convention. Harlos is incompetent and painfully slow at getting ballots counted. It’s a weak, divided field of candidates that would take 4 or 5 or 6 or more ballots even running smoothly. And before you even get to that, Harlos is planning to push for a big stupid fight over credentialing as they seek to disenfranchise non-Mises Caucus states.
There will be a lot of screaming and not so much floor business actually getting completed. Whatever does get done will be widely, and probably rightly, regarded as illegitimate including by at least some state parties.
If they aggregate vote totals in California, I don’t think it can really count as an LP highest vote total. Can we say AIP got highest ever vote total by conomination if Trump when they did? Only in a disingenuous way.
Nota is likelier. Even that’s probably below water. None of the faceless men competing with nota would get very many votes regardless, and of that, maybe only 10% – so, like 25,000 nationwide, maybe – is true margin given that most of it cancels each other out. When we break that down to swing states, 2-3k? Even less? Even in a very close election, which it probably won’t be this time, that’s unlikely to be the difference maker.
Jim, now that does sound Marxist, or close. I’ll have to think how that can coincide with what was described earlier. Is he a DPRK Kim dynasty fan? I guess I could read his books, but I’m not sure I’m that interested. I seem to recall they are thick, both in the number of pages and density of prose, but it was decades since I even glanced, much less seriously read.
Ok,more then two, but not much more. Trump could easily get L.P. on in NY if he wanted a second line there. Connecticut, California, but not much more. Low single digits. It would be dumb. Trump would get basically the same if L.P. nominates nota, which is much more plausible, even without Trump. How many votes would Trump get as LP 2nd line if that did happen? Most of his votes by far even in those few states would be on the Republican line. I’m thinking he wouldn’t beat Johnson 2016 , given the number of states difference plus big disparity between 1st and 2nd line .
Would he gain any appreciable votes? I’m doubtful. Libertarians who might vote for Trump would vote for him as a Republican anyway, with a very slight bump if LP NOTAs. From there, no bump to speak of if L.P. nominates Trump. Other libertarians who would never vote for Trump still won’t even if he’s the LP official nominee. No point in that for him.
Curious – I don’t consider Hoppe Marxist, either, but Tom Knapp has attempted to make the connection between the two on this forum in years past. Hoppe admittedly, invited that by saying that he believes that certain fundamental tenets of Marxism are correct. Namely, that the history of the world has been a history of class struggle, that there is a ruling class which takes the surplus profit from the workers, and that that relationship will eventually lead to a class conscious awakening and revolution.
Hoppe disagrees with Marx in that he thinks the situation changed under capitalism because, unlike previous economic systems, under capitalism the worker-capitalist class have a mutually beneficial arrangement. Capitalism allows for workers to build expensive, time intensive products and be paid up front while the capitalist class which ‘confiscates’ a share of the profit provides the equipment and waits until the product is built and sold before they are paid. This argument, of course, wasn’t original to Hoppe. Hoppe’s only contribution was in claiming that Marx was correct before capitalism.
Though technically, if he was a fusion nominee in California that would possibly be the LP’s highest vote total ever for president, even if there was no Libertarian-labeled presidential candidate on the ballot anywhere else. California fusion is aggregated, they aren’t separate ballot lines. It’d be a single vote total with both labels. Trump got six million votes in California in 2020, which was about 3.8% of the NPV.
As a fusion nominee, I think he could appear on the ballot as Republican/Libertarian in more than just two states, but it would only be a few. California has fusion for president only; Trump was on the ballot there as GOP + AIP in 2016. I think Oregon and Connecticut are also legal possibilities. But in New York, the LP is not qualified and is unlikely to become qualified this year.
Actually: What I mean is that, when there’s a will, there’s a way.
After all, it was reported on this very site earlier in the week that the heads of various state parties invited Bob Jr. to seek the LP nomination.
And thus, per that, in re Bob Jr, these leaders believe there’s a way, and ergo, that would apply to Trump’s campaign.
Socratic Gadfly – what do you mean by stampede? Delegates are chosen way before the convention, unless their rules changed from back when I was stupid enough to waste my time on such crap instead of just laughing at the theater of the absurd.
Trump would only have a libertarian line in 2 states if they nominated him due to fusion laws. They could nominate NOTA, which could be interpreted as trying to help Trump. Or it could be a completely reasonable reaction to having a particularly lackluster, seven or so dwarves seeking their nomination – these guys could teach the witness protection program a thing or two. If one of them gets the nod, he will probably come in behind the big three plus Stein and likely Terry. And additionally get less media than Cornel West. Probably more votes, but only due to being on the ballot in a lot more states. They will most likely end up with the fewest votes, lowest percentage and lowest placing in decades.
If they do pick NOTA, I wouldn’t presume it would have turned out differently if Trump is there or not.
Jim – that doesn’t sound like Marxism to me, unless I completely misunderstood Marx? Granted,I’ve only read translated excerpts and second hand summaries, but enough from different sources to where that seems far from Hoppe; how does he jibe private property , aristocracy and monarchy with Marxism, if he does?
OK, if this looks like a repost? My comment didn’t show up as either OK or waiting in moderation:
@Actually, thanks. Saturday would leave Trump free from NYC courtroom obligations, first.
Second, it’s before the actual LP presidential nomination.
And, contra McAwful, I think if Trump backers want to “stampede” the convention, they’ll find a way.
Maybe they’ll decide to “Revive with Vivek” (riff on the old “Revive with Vivarin” commercials) even?
Curious – Hoppean Covenant Communities. Hoppe has a fetish for monarchies and thinks that, over time, in a free society (or his version of a “free” society), a natural aristocracy would arise. This is the same guy who thinks it would be “libertarian” if the government acted as if it owned all of the property in a country and set immigration standards designed to exclude non-whites.
PaleoLibertarians are supportive of free trade while PaleoConservatives are economic nationalists who support trade protectionism. That’s the only real difference. It did get to the point where Rothbard admitted he was no longer really a libertarian. PaleoLibertarians and GeoLibertarians are both on the borders of libertarianism, but on opposite sides. One is libertarian on economics, but nothing else. The other is libertarian on everything except economics.
Marxist cum monarchy? Sounds like North Korean Juche?
“And that explanation is just straight late-life Rothbardian PaleoLibertarianism”
“Rothbardian PaleoLibertarianism” is an oxymorong. When Rothbard went paleoconservative, he abandoned libertarianism, at least as a strategic approach.
I like to think that if he had lived, he’d have realized that was a terrible mistake and changed his mind on strategy (for the nth time).
But he died, and lesser minds (Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell, Jeff Deist et al.) just continued running down the last road he had turned onto. It didn’t help that they invited a Frankfurt-educated Marxist cum monarchist to ride along.
Magafest confirmed
https://www.breitbart.com/2024-election/2024/05/09/vivek-ramaswamy-debate-deliver-speech-libertarian-national-convention/
Socratic Gadfly, Icymi, Seebeck corrected me about Thursday. It’s on Saturday. I don’t know the answer to the permatan question. Some people have suggested melanin envy. The kindergartenesque banter on the libertarian leadership chat indicated that Hagopian knew his effort was doomed.
Seebeck “I actually voted against the change, because the change is a too-long word salad that makes people’s eyes glaze over.”
You mean you voted against Spike Cohen’s attempted compromise language? Because the Mises Caucus proposal was to delete that one sentence and replace it with nothing.
I have doubts about anything in our platform is too long, given that ours is roughly 20% as long as the Constitution Party and only 5% – 10% as long as the Greens, Democrats, and Republicans.
Seebeck “no, its removal does not make bigots welcome.”
Yes, it does. They are now welcome, as long as they don’t attempt to use the government to enforce inequality. What they are now free to do is use the party’s position on freedom of association and secession to advocate for the break-up of the US into racially segregated countries. They would be free to have a whites-only home land and use private property rights to keep out undesirables. The Libertarians say so. Rothbard literally argued for exactly that in the early 90s. That is what you are inviting to the party.
Seebeck “What it did was remove the negative social judgement, deserved or not, from the equation of what the Party stands for and reverts to neutrality on such judgement, as the Platform specifically states: 1.0 PERSONAL LIBERTY Individuals are inherently free to make choices for themselves and must accept responsibility for the consequences of the choices they make. Our support of an individual’s right to make choices in life does not mean that we necessarily approve or disapprove of those choices. In reality, the old plank contradicts this one, because the old one implied the very disapproval that this plank disavows. It was simply inconsistent. …”
Weird how you seem to have a blind spot for the other inconsistencies in the platform. For example, the platform says “All efforts by government to redistribute wealth, or to control or manage trade, are improper in a free society.” But, if people truly have a free society, then they are free to set up any sort of government that they want, as long as it is voluntary. And that includes having a government that redistributes wealth.
Having the platform say that government should not be free to redistribute wealth, even a voluntary government, is simply a way to keep out the socialists. I, personally, don’t have a problem with that. But, I also don’t have a problem with keeping out the racists.
Per Actually’s May 8 comment, and assuming Mr. Permatan is still in trial in NYC, has McArdle talked about moving him off Thursday night to Friday or Saturday?
Related: Any update on the Hagopian challenge?
Finally: Per the story and per my “Mr. Permatan,” what is up with White folk who have certain racial views but themselves want their skin to be a few shades below that of Casper the Friendly Ghost?
Bigotry and stereotypes are in the eye of the beholder. While it’s true that stereotypes have some factual basis, that factual basis also has logical explanations.
If you’re an unskilled worker in a Latin American country beset by violence stemming from the drug war and US consumers appetite for South American products the US government has made illegal, you face a waiting list that’s longer than a normal human lifespan to immigrate to the US legally. For your children’s safety and your and your children’s economic survival and opportunities, it’s quite logical to immigrate illegally, despite all the risks and difficulties.
If you’re a kid growing up in a rough neighborhood dealing with bullies, it makes sense to join or form a gang for protection. As the gang culture spreads, you may not have a choice – urban gangs have their own form of a military draft.
If you’re a young man in a colonised nation, you may feel you have no better choice but to turn to terrorism. That could be Palestine today, or British Palestine if you were Jewish in the 1930s and 40s. Had the American revolution turned out differently, it’s likely history books today would describe the colonial rebels as terrorists.
Why is there a stereotype of Jews as greedy? They were forbidden to own land in Europe at a time when land was the chief measure of wealth and social status, and relegated to being merchants at a time when being a merchant was frowned on. Furthermore, Christians were not allowed to charge interest, creating the Jewish “banking monopoly.” Normal business profit and money lending interest were greed in the minds of peasants.
If you’re a white cis hetero Christian young man in America today dealing with wokism, you’re not completely illogical if you end up as a tiki torch marcher or tattooed skinhead. It’s a normal reaction to social pressure stimuli, just like those others.
Seebeck,
Oh, sorry. I forgot that one of the favorite occupations of libertarians is to claim other libertarians aren’t libertarians. Thus, Reason, CATO, and most of the libertarian movement aren’t libertarians if they share the leftist stereotype of an LPtarian circa 2024. Out of curiosity, what ideology are they?
Secondly, what made you misread your plank as a personal reference? I would have thought it would be clear from context that I meant your party’s plank.
Third, it was you, not me, who said that the stereotype of LPtarian as a Charlottesville tiki torch marcher is purely leftist – I’m not daft for rolling with your description.
Fourth, it’s pretty clear from the reset thingy Jim quoted that making bigots feel welcome was the intent of the change, unless you say he misquoted it. If you said that, I missed it.
Fifth, you seem to make assumptions about my own ideology. I don’t recall ever saying I’m a libertarian, leftist, conservative, moderate, or indeed anything about my views. If I did, where did I do that?
From your answer, which I admittedly only skimmed because it delves way too deep into arcane things I don’t care about, I think I see the answer to my original question: the bigots and bigot-adjacent in your party received the tacit cooperation of the technical manual Pharisees who miss the forest for the trees and simply didn’t consider the effect over time of the Nazi bar transformation, as described in the link I supplied in round one below, or its impact over time on your party’s image with the general public.
Most of the general public isn’t eager to associate with organizations, or vote for parties, which make Charlottesville tiki torch marchers feel at home. You can dispute that if you wish, but I’m reasonably sure I’m correct.
Seebeck, I don’t doubt you can cook. Our tastes are different. You like dressing and croutons on salad, I don’t. You like bbq sauce on 15 bean and vegetable soup, I special order ultrahot sauces which aren’t sold in regular stores from Ed Currie, who grows the world’s hottest peppers. You take this cosplay political party stuff seriously, for me it’s absurd entertainment. People have different tastes. Vive le differance.
I don’t pay attention to your calendars for the same reason I don’t go digging in your bylaws or some dude’s silly book of rules or a thousand other things that I could spend my time on: I have other things I would prefer to use that time for. It’s a limited resource, after all.
I read some article somewhere which specifically said Trump would be speaking on the first night, Thursday. I had no reason not to take it at face value until you told me otherwise. The idea that I would be double checking your calendars, bylaws, etc is about as realistic as your nominee being competitive for the presidency, unless you actually do nominate Trump, in which case you’ll also be on the ballot in only two states due to fusion laws.
You are correct, lawfare could indeed play havoc with your best laid plans. So could Trump discovering, any time between now and then, that he has something better to do that day/evening, or that he doesn’t feel well, or that the secret service has safety concerns – it could be a lot of things. For your sake, I hope you’re absolutely sure the AV setup is working, just in case.
However, congratulations on not making Trump and everyone traveling with him spend 16 hours stuck in traffic, while at the same time making that traffic marginally even worse.
I think it’s pretty hilarious that you think I’d be pressing you for what you’re not at liberty to reveal. For me, one of the best things about real life theater of the absurd is the whipped up speculatory drama. Trying to peek behind the curtains would spoil all the fun.
Curious:
First, you can discount Reason because they jumped the libertarian shark several years ago. They’re not more libertarian than Cato, and both of those organizations just think they are. They’re really statist these days.
Second, if you engage in that kind of stereotyping, then you are not being libertarian. You’re not being individualist. Is everyone guilty of it at times? Sure. That includes both you and me, too.
Third, no, they’re not all leftists. Don’t be daft.
Fourth, it’s not my plank, it’s the Party’s and I am not the Party alone. I actually voted against the change, because the change is a too-long word salad that makes people’s eyes glaze over. But there was no appetite in this cycle’s Platform Committee, of which I am the Chair, to change it, especially after it was just passed. We read the room.
But, no, its removal does not make bigots welcome. What it did was remove the negative social judgement, deserved or not, from the equation of what the Party stands for and reverts to neutrality on such judgement, as the Platform specifically states:
1.0 PERSONAL LIBERTY
Individuals are inherently free to make choices for themselves and must accept responsibility for the consequences of the choices they make. Our support of an individual’s right to make choices in life does not mean that we necessarily approve or disapprove of those choices.
In reality, the old plank contradicts this one, because the old one implied the very disapproval that this plank disavows. It was simply inconsistent. But the replacement was bad in it s own way.
But it did not flip from unwelcoming to welcoming. It went from unwelcoming to neutral. It did not go from Drive to Reverse. Analogously, It went from Drive to Neutral, and no transmission was blown. Or to put it another way, it went from -1 to 0, not 1- to 1. And -1 ? 0 ? 1.
And the reality is that a statement regarding personal choice or activity or belief has no place in a political document that deals with PUBLIC (government) activity or policy. They’re different spheres.
The banal observation that libertarians don’t want hate speech laws has nothing to do with why an organization is not worth supporting when it elects a chair who can’t shut up about the Jews are poisoning the wells.
Seebeck, except it’s not only leftists who call your party out for cozying up to and inviting fash. It’s also other fellow libertarians – Andy Craig, others writing in Reason among various places, Jim’s comment below, etc.
Stereotypes generally have at least some factual basis. Some Hispanics are illegal aliens. Some young black urban men and boys are gang members. Some right-libertarians are bigots. Obviously, not all or most, but enough to cause the stereotype of a libertarian to shift , including the stereotype of a libertarian party member among other libertarians, including former party members.
I suppose you’ll tell me they are all leftists as well?
Your prior plank didn’t call for government force against bigotry. It was just basically a bigots not welcome sign. It was removed specifically with the stated intent of making them welcome, providing Jim quoted the stated explanation accurately, which I did not see you dispute.
Curious:
But when did that even become a stereotypical libertarian?
It really isn’t except to the stereotyping strawman left because libertarians don’t ascribe to their group divide-and-conquer politics.
It used to be a long haired hippie capitalist who hates paying taxes.
I resemble that remark, even though I was never a hippie. ?
What went wrong?
Nothing. One of the aspects of libertarianism, as I previously explained, was that it allows for bigotry and it is addressed on an individual basis by simple support or shunning, not government force. Using government force to support or suppress speech and opinions that some subjectively view as wrong, immoral, or incorrect, or right, moral or correct, is the real problem.
Actually:
1. 15 bean and vegetable soup doesn’t need hot sauce. The secret ingredient is Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ sauce. And yes, I do know how to cook just fine. Got pork chops going in the crock pot for pulled pork (less fat and shreds better) with baked sweet potatoes and baked beans going in a second crock pot, all from scratch, for dinner tonight. And that’s a normal day when my wife and I team up in the kitchen.
2. Trump’s Thursday schedule is irrelevant. Why? Because he’s speaking on *Saturday night.* Do pay attention to such things as calendars. The Thursday 23rd date on the initial announcement refers to the beginning of the Convention, not when he’s speaking.
3. He will be there in person barring lawfare. There’s a lot going on behind the scenes that you’re not aware of and I am not at liberty to disclose (so don’t bother pressing it).
Seebeck, sure, not every libertarian is a skinhead with swastika, iron cross and confederate tattoos and white or red laces in their Doc Martens. But, when did that even become a stereotypical libertarian? It used to be a long haired hippie capitalist who hates paying taxes. Or so I thought. What went wrong, when, how, and why? Is it too late before your party becomes a Nazi bar?
https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesFromYourServer/comments/hsiisw/kicking_a_nazi_out_as_soon_as_they_walk_in/
Fascinating, kind of like looking at microorganisms reproduce through a microscope.
20 years with the same or nearly identical language (1974-1980; 2008-2022), plus 8 years with the same sentiment expressed somewhat more tepidly but substantively the same idea (1998-2006). So I guess if you only count the 20 you can technically call that not “most of the history of the party.” But come on. Point is it’s a long-standing thing, had been unchanged for a long time when they deleted it, and was deliberately a callback to how the party had said that from its very early history. And to call it almost fifty years old is accurate regardless.
The anti-bigotry plank first appeared in the 1974 platform as “we condemn bigotry as irrational and unjust”, with unjust being replaced by “repugnant” in 1976.
It was removed in 1980 and replaced with “we oppose any governmental attempts to regulate private discrimination” and “The right to trade includes the right not to trade for any reasons whatsoever.”
At best, that’s just dumb politics. Enough people finally realized it by 1998 that a line was inserted saying “While we do not advocate private discrimination, we do not support any laws which attempt to limit or ban it.” It kept the “The right to trade includes the right not to trade — for any reasons whatsoever” line.
In 2006 that was dropped in favor of a line stuck under the Sexuality and Gender heading which optimistically read “Culture wars, social friction and prejudice will fade when marriage and other personal relationships are treated as private contracts, solely defined by the individuals involved, and government discrimination is not allowed.” No specific mention of any sort of racial or other discrimination.
“We condemn bigotry as irrational and repugnant.” reappeared in 2008 and remained there until the Mises Caucus took over in 2022. So, 20 years, in total.
And the stated explanation in the Reno Strategic Action Plan was “One of the major goals of the Mises Caucus is to make the LP appealing to the wider liberty movement that is largely not currently here with us. That movement strongly rejects wokism and the word games associated with it. This along with the deletion of the abortion plank will display that there are serious cultural changes in the party that are more representative of that movement.”
And that explanation is just straight late-life Rothbardian PaleoLibertarianism. There is only one group of people that would refuse to join a party based solely on the line “we condemn bigotry as irrational and repugnant”. And deleting that line was meant to appeal to them. That is the “serious cultural change” the Mises Caucus wanted.
“We condemn bigotry as irrational and unjust” was in the 1974 platform. The language became “We condemn bigotry as irrational and repugnant” in 1976. It remained in 1978, was dropped in the 1980 rewrite, and returned in 2008. In the interim various other discrimination planks came and went, some expressing the same sentiment like “we do not advocate private discrimination” from 1998 to 2004, others not. But it’s not inaccurate to note the language deleted in 2022 was almost 50 years old (46, to be precise), point being it was a deliberate callback to the party taking that stance from its very early history. And it had been in the platform continuously for the preceding 14 years.
Seebeck, you used a lot of words, but stated nothing. The next time you make 15 bean and vegetable soup, don’t forget the hot sauce and spices.
Is Trump too bigoted for the LP? Is the LP too bigoted for Trump? I don’t see that being the case. I see more of an issue with scheduling, for those who think Trump will be there in person.
Court typically let’s out mid afternoon in Manhattan. As I understand it, Trump is scheduled for Thursday evening. He has court both the day of and the next morning. Traffic sucks on the 95 between NYC and DC. Trump and everyone traveling with him would have to go both ways. I don’t see Trump riding Amtrak – that’s definitely a Biden thing. There’s the Trump plane, but have you seen the price of gas lately? Do you know how much gas it takes to fill up a plane for a round trip from NY to DC? Trump’s liquid assets are heavily taxed by civil court fines, legal fees, and appeals bonds.
The Trump campaign doesn’t have money to blow on an in person appearance to a few hundred folks, when a video link or even more likely a canned video would do. How’s the AV contract coming along, is it approved yet?
And even that may not be possible, even if Trump doesn’t change his mind or discover a schedule conflict. He may be in jail in Manhattan for gag order violations. Or, he may be in jail in Atlanta or DC (actually across the river in Virginia) because contempt of court in Manhattan violates the conditions of pretrial release in those two trials. Technically, it does in Florida as well, but that judge is way more friendly.to Trump.
In some ways, perhaps, the LP would be well served to be more discriminating, not less.
When was the bigotry plank put in their platform? I don’t really care, do you?
The “We condemn bigotry” plank was not in the Libertarian Party’s platform for most of the history of the party.
I read the column.
Frankly, it’s a hot steaming pile of bovine excrement based in Craig’s sensitivities being upset by the normal ebb and flow of the political pendulum that causes changes of the guard within the LP. That’s happened before, and it will happen again, inevitably.
Are there bigots in the LP? Probably. But there probably are bigots in every organization.
A bigot is defined by Oxford Dictionary as “a person who is obstinately or unreasonably attached to a belief, opinion, or faction, especially one who is prejudiced against or antagonistic toward a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group.”
One could argue that everyone is a bigot of some sort based on that definition. Just insert your preferred belief, opinion, or faction here–or in Craig’s case, insert your prejudice against the Mises Caucus here.
But not everyone in an organization is a bigot, either. That’s a Bad Bushel Fallacy, for about every organization in the universe not named the Klan or Aryan Nation. It’s also a Guilt by Association Fallacy, not to mention along the line of the No True Scotsman Fallacy and Ad Hominin.
Bigotry is an individual characteristic and behavior, not a group. Craig, in his rush to crapwash (as opposed to the opposite extreme of whitewash), forgets that point.
But let’s be real: everyone discriminates and aligns certain ways with every decision of every day, even down to the words used in writing. Hell, I’m even doing it right now, choosing my words carefully and discriminating against those that don’t convey what I wish to state. We all do it without thinking, primarily economically (Pepsi or Coke? Levi’s or Lees? Chevy or Ford? Catholic or Protestant? Mets or Yankees? etc.). The obstinate attachment to a belief, or a group such as a family, organization, church, or any tribe by any name is simply part of who we are as human beings. Should we really give a damn about one’s personal plumbing, melanin levels, belief system, or tribe? Not really, except that when the actions the individual does as a result of those things actually harm others or messes with their stuff, then there’s a problem. That’s aggression, and that’s when it’s wrong. But that’s also a case-by-case basis.
Craig wants the LP to pass judgment on actions with a subjective measure beyond violation of others and their property (including the property of their self-owned lives and bodies), but the libertarian position is to not do so. That’s why the “irrational and repugnant” part was removed from the platform. Is bigotry irrational and repugnant? By any reasonable standard, yes, because it fails the test of addressing individual actions in favor of group stereotyping, as Craig does here in becoming that which he despises by being bigoted himself, against the Mises Caucus and those in power in the LP that are not of his preferred tribe. That’s not even mentioning the simple point of bigotry denying human dignity in both self and others.
But the reality is that libertarianism in its foundation of freedom of choice does include both the right to make choices and hold views that others view as irrational and repugnant, just as those others have the right to disagree. But as long as the rights of others are not violated, that isn’t a problem. The solution to bad speech? More speech. The solution to bad actions? More good actions. The solution to bigotry? Experience and knowledge to get past the groupthink stereotypes to get to the individuals. Just as every Hispanic is not an illegal alien and every black urban teen isn’t a gang member, neither is every libertarian a bigot or any other pejorative thrown out there.
Is Trump coming to the LPC a good thing? The jury’s out on that, and time will tell, but it’s way too early right now. Does it have high risk and high reward potential? Absolutely. Is that scary? Sure! But it would behoove Craig to remember that above all, libertarianism is about the individuals and not the groups, and he fails spectacularly in his forgetfulness in that column.
The headline is phrased to be insulting to the LP (LP more bigoted the Trump), but at the sacrifice of accuracy. It falsely describes the point of the article.
An accurate description would be: Is Donald Trump Too Bigoted for the LP.