Libertarians take detour: Will it pay off? Should it?
Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson speaks at the National Libertarian Party Convention in Orlando, Florida in 2016. Johnson is apparently too moderate for the Libertarian Party these days.
SACRAMENTO » The Libertarian Party has always been a place where liberty’s staunchest defenders argue about the most-pressing issues facing Americans: Should individuals be free to buy nuclear warheads? Should we tolerate purchase-age limits after we legalize heroin? Is there anything really wrong with child labor? Do we eliminate 99% or 100% of the federal government?
The LP brags that it is the nation’s third-largest party, but its most successful presidential candidate (Gary Johnson in 2016) received a mere 3.3% of the vote. The nation’s highest-ranking party official is Riverside County Supervisor Jeff Hewitt. Then it’s slim pickings, which explains why activists can’t decide whether to act like a real party that tries to elect candidates or a dysfunctional family that argues about nonsense.
The latter usually wins for obvious reasons. As the saying goes about academia, “The politics are so vicious because the stakes are so small.” This year’s convention was unusually bitter, with insurgents from the Mises Caucus wresting control of the party and installing their chair, Angela McArdle. This might seem like one of those military battles over a pointless hill, but it points to the future of the libertarian movement.
There’s little doubt that the, er, mainstream libertarians have done little with the party apparatus over the years. As an ideological movement, libertarianism has faltered as Democrats take a progressive turn. Republicans have gotten better at “owning the libs,” but have abandoned their less-is-more philosophy along the way. There’s an opportunity here as both parties become extreme.
The LP’s winning faction claims the old guard wasn’t combative enough during COVID lockdowns. It promises a harder edge. For a sense of tone, here’s one post-convention caucus tweet: “Sovereign immune government agents who use taxpayer funds to resist the release of bodycam footage of a massacre at a youth indoctrination prison shouldn’t exist, let alone be the only ones armed in society.” Don’t they sound nice?
Anyway, the newcomers promise to make the Libertarian Party libertarian again.
The old guard argues that Mises people aren’t really libertarians – but populist, antiLGBQT, paleo-libertarians who are part of a right-wing offshoot inspired by the Mises Institute, Ron Paul and the late firebrand economist Murray Rothbard. “Foes accuse it of right-wing deviationism and racism,” according to Reason.
The Mises Caucus denies these accusations, but one of its first actions was removing the party’s longstanding platform statement: “We condemn bigotry as irrational and repugnant.” They added a softened version as a compromise. Their stated goal is to stop trying to placate libertarianism’s liberal foes, but many traditional libertarians remain concerned.
“Is the Mises Caucus position that you can be a bigot and be a member of the Libertarian Party?” Reason’s Nick Gillespie asked McArdle. Her response: “Yeah, I think that is absolutely the position because we don’t agree on what being a bigot means.” Since taking over, the party hasn’t had any trouble agreeing on the meaning of some less-definable concepts, as it unloads on “wokeism.”
They aren’t bigots, but there’s a real debate over combativeness and philosophy. The newcomers seem to be following the paleo-libertarian playbook written by Rothbard and Ron Paul in reaching out to populist, social conservatives. Paleo-libertarians tend to be conservative on border and abortion issues. Lo and behold, the new group neutralized the platform on those issues, as well. We’ll see how it plays, but I didn’t think the nation needed two right-populist parties.
I always took solace in the wackiness of party debates, and the free-spirited nature of many of its activists. After I gave a talk at a state convention, I had an in-depth discussion about redevelopment policy with a smart bearded man who happened to be wearing a purple dress, blonde wig and fairy wings. The party was laissez faire in its attitudes as well as economics.
The 2016 presidential nominating process was a doozy. Voters ultimately selected the most mainstream ticket – former Republican governors Johnson and William Weld – but candidates included John McAfee, the globetrotting tech pioneer who fled police in Belize and ultimately was found dead in a Spanish prison cell.
A candidate for chair stripped on stage at the national convention. Then there’s Senate candidate Vermin Supreme: “Yes I am a politician — I will promise you anything your little electorate heart desires — because … I have no intention of keeping any promise that I make.” At least he provided levity — something that might soon be out of bounds.
Libertarian writer Jeffrey Tucker argued in 2014 that there are two types of libertarians: “humanitarians and brutalists.” The former embrace liberty because it promotes peace, harmony and creativity. The other group because “it allows people … to form homogeneous tribes … to exclude and isolate and be generally malcontented with modernity … and to reject civil standards of values and etiquette in favor of antisocial norms.”
Judge for yourself whether these are the current battle lines.