I watched some of the live stream of the Libertarian Party national convention in Reno a week ago. There’s nothing quite so entertaining, in a grim sort of way, as libertarians hitting each other over the head with Robert’s rules.
Ayn Rand once dismissed libertarians as “anarchists playing at politics.” This would be a good description of the LP, if not for the fact that a large number of its members are not anarchists at all.
I’m not here to bash the party, not totally. Some of my best friends are Libertarians. Honest.
Except for 1972 (my first year as a voter), I voted for the LP candidate in every presidential election up through 2004. I couldn’t bring myself to pull the lever for the 2008 ticket, and wrote in my dog’s name instead. That was the year I swore off voting ever again, for reasons both broader and deeper than disenchantment with the LP.
Watching the proceedings this year in Nevada, I reflected on my own history with the party, and why I eventually concluded it is not a very good vehicle for achieving liberty.
Until about age 25, I thought of myself as a liberal, because I deeply cared about civil liberties. I had no interest in economics, and in fact considered it of little importance to real life, if you can believe it.
Reading Harry Browne’s How I Found Freedom In An Unfree World changed everything. Particularly enlightening was his description of markets as the win-win way we cooperate to satisfy our desires, not only for things sold in stores or advertised on TV, but in areas not normally seen as market-based, even dating and mate selection.
In 1976 I was working for a small newspaper in Alabama when I read about something called the Libertarian Party. I recognized that its principles, grounded in individual freedom, were the ones Browne had championed in his book, although he wasn’t keen on voting or political activism. (Ironically, Browne would later run, twice, as the LP presidential nominee.)
I wrote an editorial for my paper calling attention to the LP’s presidential nominee that year, Roger MacBride. I also voted for him. As I recall he got fewer votes in Alabama(!) than Gus Hall, the Communist.
Four years later I heard a radio spot for the party’s 1980 nominee, Ed Clark. I called the phone number and the person answering turned out to be the recent chair of the Alabama LP, now moved to DC. I expected to be encouraged to hand out literature or do other low-level work; instead, he asked if I wanted to be Alabama chair.
I spent the next decade heavily invested in the Libertarian Party. I organized conventions, and attended the national one in New York City in 1983. I did radio and TV interviews as the state party spokesperson, even though it went against my grain as an introvert and lifelong stage-fright sufferer. I wrote numerous letters to newspaper editors. I ran for public office more times than I can now remember.
My commitment to the LP tapered off in the 1990s, first, as individuals more talented at hustling and promoting took over the Alabama party’s leadership, and then, after moving to North Carolina, where I was never more than sporadically involved.
My best memories of my time in the LP are of the people I met. I played host, scheduler and in some cases chauffeur to Ed and Alicia Clark, David Bergland, Ron Paul, Russell Means, Jim Lewis, Andre Marrou, Nancy Lord, Dick Boddie, Tibor Machan and Walter Williams. I got to at least shake hands and have brief chats with Murray Rothbard, Harry Browne, Karl Hess, Peter Breggin and Roy Childs.
I also met people whose friendships transcended our work for the cause. They include the late Marshall Fritz, who founded Advocates for Self-Government and whose newsletter I edited. There are others from that time that I still keep in touch with and whose friendship I treasure for reasons far more important than the happenstance of political affinity.
As a vehicle for getting to liberty, though, the Libertarian Party is a wonderful way (I concluded) … to spin one’s wheels, if not drive into the ditch.
Starting in 2020 the greatest crime against humanity in living memory was carried out in naked daylight: the imposition of tyranny in the U.S. and around the world, using a virus as the excuse. Sociopathic politicians, corrupt health bureaucrats, dark-arts propaganda practitioners, pocket-lining pharma CEOs, bought media figures, useful-idiot celebrities, tech gatekeepers and sundry billionaires and other self-fancied elites mounted an all-out assault on the rights and freedom of millions.
Whether all this was simply a crisis (real or ginned-up) that power-hungry people individually decided was too good to waste, or a pre-planned and globally coordinated conspiracy, I’ll leave to others to debate.
However the Covid tyranny came to pass, this — this! — was the moment a libertarian party was made for, if any was. Yet the LP and its presidential candidate were weirdly silent on the liberticide taking place before their eyes. Instead of hammering the tyrants and relentlessly denouncing lockdowns and mandates, they recited old libertarian boilerplate that sounded timid and oddly irrelevant in the dystopian “new normal” era.
When a libertarian “Howl” was needed, we got “Pigeons on the grass alas” from the LP.
That sound of crickets from LP leadership at this pivotal moment (as well as a cringey tweet from the presidential campaign related to Black Livers Matter) outraged members of the purist Mises Caucus, who ultimately took over the party and elected one of its own, Angela McArdle, to national chair at Reno.
Even with stronger and more pertinent messaging, though, it’s doubtful the LP could have had any more impact in 2020 than it did, whether electorally or as part of the national “conversation” over Covid hysteria and the dictatorial measures flowing from it. The sad truth is that a half century after its founding, the alleged party of liberty has no place at the table when freedom and tyranny are debated.
In 2020 and continuing through today, the strongest voices against Covid tyranny have been non-political or non-libertarian, or both: Doctors, scientists, lawyers, high-profile podcasters, independent reporters and others who’ve endured mockery, hate, deplatforming and career endangerment for daring to expose and oppose the assault on basic rights. Two of the most heroically outspoken are prominent liberals: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Naomi Wolf, who for their trouble were ostracized by former friends and allies on the left.
Perhaps the post-Reno iteration of the LP will do better. I’m impressed with Dave Smith, arguably the public face of the Mises Caucus and bruited for the 2024 presidential nomination. Although disagreeing with him on a couple of issues, I find him smart, articulate and engaging. He’s also quick on the draw when challenged, which I attribute to his years as a stand-up comic. Hecklers don’t faze him.
Nevertheless, and speaking as a former LP member (mea culpa), the very idea of a “libertarian” political party is problematic, no matter who helms it.
It squanders people’s time, energy and money in overcoming the state’s obstacles to ballot presence, leaving less of all three for messaging on behalf of liberty.
Like HOAs, it attracts people who love acquiring petty power through holding office, getting on committees, making rules and policing others.
It doesn’t actually “get the ideas out there,” ostensibly one of the main reasons for running libertarians for public office. In the heat of an election, neither the media nor most voters care about ideas. They care about the horse race, and with rare exceptions LP candidates are non-starters in that race.
It enables individuals with a weak or non-existent grasp of freedom’s principles to parade as libertarians. How many LP candidates have I observed who were running to “support our troops,” “give police the tools to do their jobs,” “make government more efficient” or, Lord help us, “run government like a business,” while barely or never talking about liberty? Too many.
When it wins elections, the people put into office become part of the machinery of the coercive state, like it or not. Some may throw an occasional wrench into the gears, but the machine clanks on. Mostly they either become irrelevant or part of the problem.
By running candidates for city council, state or U.S. representative, president, etc., it reinforces the idea that those offices, and the system within which they exist, are legitimate. This may be acceptable to minarchists and small-government advocates, but for those of us who understand the unalloyed evil of statism and want to get rid of rulers altogether, it is not.
It encourages the morally questionable act of voting, by which some people are chosen to exercise illegitimate authority over others. I’ve come to agree with Wendy McElroy: “No one has the right to place one human being in a position of political power over another. A consistent libertarian can never authorize one human being to tax and control peaceful activities. ”
There are some talented individuals in the Libertarian Party. If they asked, I would advise them to abandon grasping at the gears of political power, and to spend more time writing, speaking, podcasting or whatever they’re good at. Even better would be finding ways to avoid complying with state impositions on liberty, and building voluntary, alternative structures to statist ones.
That said, I’m glad to offer at least a half cheer to the folks in the Mises Caucus. So long as there’s a party that bills itself as libertarian, I prefer it has spokespersons who actually talk up liberty — and do so in an uncompromising way.
I also offer them this food for thought from one of my social media friends, David Shellenberger: “Politics is a symptom of government, not the path to liberty. The only libertarian parties should be those celebrating progress in ending rulers.” (Tweet, 5/29/22)
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