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Scared Straight at the Libertarian Convention
James Weeks, candidate for Libertarian Party chair, danced and stripped down to his thong before leaving the stage amid a chorus of boos.
By dinner time Saturday I was a bit disappointed with how my experience at the Libertarian Convention had progressed. Part of me was eager to bask in the craziness that I had assumed such a gathering would inevitably draw out. Yet to that point, I had encountered little out of the ordinary. We met with numerous campaign workers, all of whom seemed polite, professional, and possessing a full measure of sanity. Discussions with various delegates turned out many people who seemed eminently reasonable and thoughtful. As James of England and I sat down to eat before the debate, we each expressed a bit of surprise out just how uneventful the entire affair had been thus far.
Having let our guards down a bit we set out for the debate, oblivious to the horror show that awaited us. Charles Cooke has said that the easiest way to determine if one is a conservatarian is that when you find yourself among conservatives you feel like a libertarian, while if you find yourself among libertarians you feel like a conservative. After two hours in a room with hundreds of libertarians and their candidates, I was seeking forgiveness from the ghost of Edmund Burke for having ever been led astray.
It is difficult to convey just how uncomfortable it was to sit in that room as miscellaneous spectators let out bloodcurdling screams of disapproval when Gary Johnson stated that Islamic terrorism was a threat to the United States, and that the Iran nuclear deal was dangerous. There was a palpable sense of helplessness when candidate Darryl Perry insisted that the United States was responsible for WWII, and his lunacy was met with widespread cheers. James and I looked at each other in shock as candidate after candidate declared taxation “the worst kind of theft,” presumably making muggers morally superior to IRS agents.
After nearly every candidate promised to end all forms of taxation, most of them stated that we had an obligation to pay back seniors the money they had paid into Social Security. How these funds would be secured was largely left to the listener’s imagination. Candidate Marc Allan Feldman suggested that taxpayers should be able to allot their tax dollars for specific purposes when they write the check to the Treasury. You could use the memo section of the check to write “Education” or “Police” or my personal favorite “Bombs for killing children overseas.” Bombing children overseas turns out to be the Libertarian Party’s preferred way of describing any military action the US has taken around the world.
Part of me wants this policy implemented, simply so I could watch the horror on these candidate’s faces as 70 percent of all federal revenue was allocated to the military by ordinary citizens.
The most negative reactions of the crowd came in response to Gary Johnson, whose identity as a faux libertarian is never more starkly visible than when he is surrounded by the genuine article. When Johnson suggested that he would not do away with driver’s licenses, as he prefers to not let the blind drive, he was nearly booed off stage.
All of the candidates agreed that drugs should be legalized, but any suggestion that it should not be legal for children to use them was met with jeering. It was pointed out that it is the parents of these children who should be keeping their kids off of drugs until they reach an age where they can make these decisions for themselves. That parents should do this is a truism. The open question is of course what to do when they fail to be responsible parents. Where is the line, that when crossed, causes law enforcement to step in? No candidate addressed the point.
With the exception of Austin Peterson, the stage was overwhelmingly pro-abortion. Johnson appears to have pivoted completely to this position over the course of the convention, after presenting a more moderate face at many appearances. Feldman brought out the tired argument that he would never force someone else to comply with his beliefs and couldn’t tell a woman that she can’t have an abortion simply because he believed it was morally wrong. Feldman presumably feels no such restraint about forcing others to comply with his beliefs of right and wrong on the subjects of theft, rape, and murder of those who have been born.
John McAfee equated internationally diplomacy to the relationship between husband and wife, where the husband needs to apologize even when he is in the right. Peterson declared that he had never met a “damned Republican” that he liked. Having already denounced Democrats earlier in the evening in similar fashion, we can only conclude that Peterson doesn’t like 97 percent of the US population.
My shock at the overall poor quality of arguments coming from the stage likely stemmed from my mistaken impression of what a libertarian is. I had assumed that despite the wack jobs who are surely present, most were something comparable to Milton Friedman, and desired to slowly push the country in the direction of more limited government. Instead, I learned that there are anarchists and there are statists. If you’re not on board the train of no government, you are the enemy.
Speaking of trains, the highlight of the evening was McAfee’s closing statement, which I will not transcribe below but will attempt to summarize. I fear that much like the Necronomicon, reading it can drive sane men mad. I surely failed a sanity check while listening to it. After explaining that he had been waiting the entire campaign for this one minute to talk sincerely to the voters, acAfee proceeded to paint perhaps the greatest metaphor that has ever been conceived by a human mind.
He described the Libertarian Party as a skyscraper that was being built from the top down. Hold that image in your mind as the metaphor shifts to a train which is filled with compromise. McAfee planned to derail this train, and instead lay new tracks. Why the train couldn’t simply be stopped and perhaps cleared of the compromises is unclear. For reasons I cannot comprehend, these new tracks would run through the grassroots. He presumably didn’t mean that he wished to crush the grassroots under a locomotive, but he provided no additional context. Somehow this new train would enable us to build the skyscraper from the ground up. Perhaps it is a cargo train.
I remind you that his entire campaign was building to this one minute to talk to the voters.
After an evening of watching the Libertarian Party let their freak flag fly, we fled the scene like we had just committed a hit-and-run. It was tempting to skip the following day’s presidential vote and instead head to Disney World, in an attempt to restore some faith in humanity. Against this better judgement, we returned to witness the proceedings.
As ballots were being distributed, many points of order/information and privileged motions were made. Of the 10 or so interruptions, three related to outrage that “none of the above” was not listed on the ballot. Each time it was patiently explained that the delegates could write in “NOTA” if they desired. Each time this provided no comfort. How does one express their anarchist purity if they accept any of the available options? One man requested that he be allowed to play his harmonica. The motion was granted. Another to make Dobby from the Harry Potter series the official Libertarian mascot was ignored.
Perhaps the most incredible feature of the convention is that Gary Johnson became the Libertarian nominee, despite virtually everyone I spoke to at the convention having huge reservations about his purity. When pressed for a reason for giving him their votes, his supporters universally replied that they thought he had the greatest potential to do well in the general election. Though I never pressed the point, I wished I could ask each of them if they were comfortable with a moderate Republican like Johnson at the head of their party, why were they so resistant to supporting conservative Republicans in order to fight big government? If they are able to put aside principle and vote for electability in this race, why not others?
As Johnson appears likely to get the 5 percent of the vote he needs to get the Libertarian Party public election funding (one of the most non-libertarian actions I can imagine), it is clear that the largest faction within the party is focused on growing at all costs. If moderating their candidates is necessary, so be it. Getting 7 percent of the vote nationally would be a huge step forward. But the amount of moderation required in order to bring them into parity with the Republicans and Democrats would leave a Libertarian Party that is every bit as compromised in their principles as the left and right they despise so much.
The lesson of the weekend is clearly that the Libertarian Party is five kinds of crazy and they know it. As they self-administer electroshock therapy, I am forced to admit that I am clearly not one of them.
Note: We left before candidates began taking their clothes off.
Published in General
Okay, I’m no student of history or political theory, but in my uneducated opinion, if you put “ordered liberty” at the fulcrum of your left/right spectrum, it works just fine. You’ve got your fascist/totalitarian/authoritarians (Democrats — because they know what’s good for you) at one end, and your anarchist/isolationist/antinomianists (Libertarians) on the other.
Conservatives (formerly represented by the Republican party) recognize the need for limitations/prohibitions (based on Natural Law) stemming from flawed human nature (Original Sin) to preserve order. But, we’re also cognizant of the necessity of individuals to exercise their free will within socially developed (or Divinely Revealed) constraints.
Unfortunately, we’re finding out just how precarious the balance is when the people are insufficiently moral and religious.
I think that’s an interesting model that sheds some light on some issues, but the trouble with reducing all issues to a single axis is that it suggests that the positions on the two ends should be polar opposites, when in fact there are plenty of issues where Democrats and Libertarians tend to agree:
That was my reaction. When I think of prominent families in American politics, the first ones that pop into mind are the Kennedys, Clintons, and Bushes. I don’t want any of those.
Then how about a military dictatorship? General Petraeus seems like he would make a decent leader, considering the available alternatives.
Who says we’d have to pick a monarch from an established American dynasty? My favored candidate at the moment is Prince Hans-Adam of Liechtenstein.
Right. So, from just about the earliest use of the term it was agreed that the abstraction was that the left was the party of the revolutionary class, the right the party of those opposed. The revolutionary class in France and America in the 18th century was the Middle Class, making the revolutions capitalist revolutions. Since capitalism has already been established in most of the world (countries we call communist are mostly clear that they’re in the capitalist stage of development, with the communist label being aspirational rather than something already achieved), the left is now the party of the revolution. Hence Hitler being right wing, because he expanded welfare with the intent of avoiding a revolution.
So, for instance, expanding the franchise downwards in class is generally agreed to be a leftwards move (there can be specific moments when this is not true, when resisting such an expansion might bring about a revolution and a greater shift, but that’s about tactics, not principle; also, expanding the franchise by gender is more complicated), but restricting the vote to the landed gentry isn’t necessary to be a rightist today. It may be that in the future we have the debate move back to that point, but right now we resist revolution by voter ID and other law and order platforms, by encouraging participation in the productive economy (ie working, not the myth that managers etc. don’t produce), by discouraging the confrontation and violence of labor disputes, and by defanging radical speech by promoting free speech as something that takes place in the light of day. It’s also helpful to pacify the world somewhat and keep the rest of the world from being too revolutionary, since we both live in a shared media environment and believe attacks on America to be worth avoiding if we can.
Great choice, however I thought the whole point of a monarchy is that we don’t get to pick the king?
Otherwise we’re right back in the same dilemma choosing between King Donald or Queen Hillary. Shudder.
We can have decent military leaders running the executive branch without dictatorship. Indeed, time was that was the most common way for a chap to wind up promising to faithfully execute and such.
So by that metric are Libertarians on the left or the right? It seems to me that the complete dismantling of the welfare and regulatory state that they desire would qualify as a revolution if actually enacted.
I know what you mean, but, on the abortion issue, for example, libertarians are all over the place (morally confused). The anti-abortion libertarians hold the conservative position because they recognize the unborn as an individual deserving of rights. The pro-choice libertarians prefer the individual rights of the mother to supersede the individual rights of unborn person, if they recognize the personhood of the unborn at all.
Their emphasis, though, on individualism (radical individualism) is the polar opposite of the collectivist Left. Whereas the conservative view is “no man is an island,” nor is he a Borg — societal order wedded to individual liberty.
Great don’t pick.
It will be me as King. Now, bow down everyone, and be snappy about it. Also, someone bring me a 12 pack of Krystals!
Monarchies can be elected – one man, one vote, one time.
So, the last time Johnson ran, he was against this, supporting all of the anti-abortion efforts that have been made by Congress since 2012. The guy who came second (Petersen) is staunchly pro-life, as is by far the most famous LP nominee, Ron Paul, the only guy for whom one found serious affection at the LP convention. It’s not in the platform, because it’s not an area where the LP believes it has agreement.
While Johnson agrees with the Democrats on this, his party appeared to have a strong majority in favor of the de facto Republican position on this; we shouldn’t force bakers and photographers to participate. So far as I know, there are no other live issues on this subject. This is really why I think that the claim that libertarians are to the left on sex and drugs and to the right on other things overstates the doctrine’s contemporary claim to leftism; today, there are no sex issues, so it’s really just drugs. The LP takes positions either held by the Democrats or rejected by them as excessively leftist, but those positions are as likely to be fiscal as social, and are, empirically, unlikely to be personal liberty maximising.
Sure. This is the one inviolable touchstone, although you present it here in an eccentrically moderate form; the consensus at the convention was on the legal sale of hard drugs to five year olds.
Well, again, there’s more debate here than one might think. Petersen and Paul both represent a substantial body of LP opinion.
Sure. There’s also a “we believe not in human freedom, but American freedom” position that is pretty dominant in the LP, generally put in terms of, eg., the Norks being free to choose to have the form of government that they have. For a fair number of those advocating, eg., a return to the confederacy or the banning of burqas, it’s pretty clearly an advocacy for white American liberty (and, hey, they’re not racists, Asians and Jews are fine).
I’m not sure that’s necessarily true. In addition to more distant examples of monarchy by choice such as Charles II and the Glorious Revolution, it’s worth noting that the people of Liechtenstein rejected a referendum in 2012 that would have stripped Han-Adam of much of his power, by a margin of 72% to 28%.
Because I was trying to list areas of consensus between Libertarians and Democrats. These days I think the Democrat base is solidly behind marijuana legalization, though I’m not sure the party leadership is fully on board yet, but I think most Democrats would still balk at the legal sale of heroin to toddlers.
In this case if you mapped views on a one-dimensional spectrum you’d have Libertarians at one end, Democrats somewhere in the middle, with Republicans tending to be the staunchest remaining Drug Warriors.
I’ll support you if you’ll make me Archduke of San Francisco. You’ll need a loyal ally to keep the dirty hippies from plotting a revolution against Your Majesty.
I didn’t see volunteered advocacy for this at the LP convention. When Johnson promoted an expansion of SS with a new entitlement, that wasn’t greeted with the sort of horror that met his suggestion that we should retain drivers licenses. As a practical matter, the LP’s principled issue advocacy is essentially limited to drugs and the military, which would put it slightly on the left (I’m not sure if drugs make much of a difference either way, and the military position is opposed to the rule of law).
OTOH, this appears to be largely opportunistic; when they get into state government as LP people, they tend to act as moderate Republicans. When they’ve held previous office, it’s almost always as moderate Republicans (sometimes, as in the case of Paul, it’s as someone who votes as a moderate Republican while holding some crank views that fail to influence policy, sometimes, as in the case of Barr, Weld, or Johnson, straightforward moderate Republicans). In general, they acted to move things to the right, although Johnson’s incredible fiscal irresponsibility may have been the rare exception to the rule.
It’s worth noting that there’s been almost no actual narcotics activism from libertarians while they hold office. If you want to look at the actual changes made to improve the lot of addicts (rehab and such), to legalisation (Colorado, Oregon, etc.), to civil asset forfeiture (as in New Mexico), or to sentencing (as with Obama’s reforms), you’ll find the work being done by Democrats and Republicans who show no interest in selling out and going LP. The most obvious exception is Bob Barr, who was a keen drug warrior before undergoing the conversion on the issue required to become the LP nominee.
If you’re talking about where libertarians, small l, stand, then it’s generally on the right. It’s true that a lot of their policies would probably lead to revolution in practice, they generally believe this not to be true and oppose revolution from the left. Milton Friedman, Hayek, and the Koch brothers are or were keen supporters of rightist causes.
You’re right. My quibbling was in error.
I’ve seen you reference this several times, but if you provided an actual quote or explanation of the reference I must’ve missed it.
Well, not really. The idea is that capitalism eliminates scarcity first (this is an area where Leninism and Marxism really disagreed) and the working classes achieve class consciousness. At that point the state melts away as largely unnecessary. In the same way as you don’t need a lot of guns to persuade the middle or upper classes (or, for completeness sake, the monarch) to accept democracy and the free market, we wouldn’t need a lot of guns to make everyone accept the communist utopia. The “fully planned, self-managed economic system” isn’t a state planned system, because there won’t be a state, but one in which people intelligently apply resources. We don’t know how it will work, because we’re not at a stage yet where we can understand this stuff.
I think that Marx was wrong about this, and he wasn’t as disciplined as he might have been (he wanted to be clear that he didn’t know what the utopia would look like, but he was sometimes tempted into making guesses; also, while he was clear in theory that capitalism had some way to go first, he could also be tempted into declaring that the time for revolution had come), but his prediction was pretty close to some libertarian utopias. Although we’re not going to get there through class revolution (in the US the Middle Class became the largest class, meaning that there is no more class revolution to be had, and much of the world has followed), it’s not impossible that eventually technology will wipe out the productive utility of human work, that the accompanying surveillance will essentially wipe out the utility of crime, and that we’ll have a state that diminishes in presence to leave us something like a libertarian/ Marxist utopia.
I will write at greater length in the future, probably in the next week, almost certainly within the next two weeks.
I’m happy to concede that there were worse people in leadership roles. I meant that his was the greatest tyranny in the sense that we fought the greatest tyranny during the Cold War; Pol Pot was a worse guy than Khruschev, but he was the lesser tyrant by virtue of the power of the USSR.
I appreciate that. :-)
I’m not sure that this is right. Britain didn’t have to be America’s enemy; there were short term concerns about Britain’s efforts to draft sailors, but America managed to go most of the way through the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars without coming to blows (and some of the time it appeared that if America would enter the war, it would have been on the side of freedom, against the French). If America had acted clearly against the French, I suspect that there would have had little difficulty in resolving the issues with Britain. At a point when Britain was in an existential world war with a deeply evil empire, there’s no obvious reason to believe that the same approach as pertained in the other three instances of this phenomenon could not have applied; America should have been able to hold Britain to ransom over non-critical issues. On the draft issue, this is particularly clear; there’s no reason to believe that Britain would prefer to impress ex-pat sailors to fight for British pay against the French than to have those same sailors fighting for American pay against the French. This wasn’t a permanent concern; if America had waited two years, she’d have seen the desperate need for sailors vanish anyway, for a century at least. The ratification of the border, likewise, seems like it’d have been simple enough if it were clear that American aims were noble.
I think that we allied with the world’s second greatest tyranny to defeat the greatest, and then worked against the world’s newly greatest tyranny, promoted in part by force of our arms. Do you believe that we were on the wrong side of WWII? I agree that it might have been nice to have been a little less pro-Soviet during the war, if that’s your point.
So I held back my own response because I expected James would do a better job than I. I wasn’t disappointed.
Done! Hose them off while you are at it.
I wish the bullet system would keep the #’s in the quotes. It makes it look like I cannot count.
On WWII, I was just making a point about allies in war not always being great. I think we could have been less pro USSR, but FDR was POTUS.
The Enemy of my Enemy thing was a Scholck Mercenary Reference and the 70 Maxims #29.
I agree. Should anyone contest your numeracy, I’ll be happy to act as a character witness for you.
Right, but you agree that it would have been worse to have allied with Hitler against Stalin than it was to ally with Stalin against Hitler, right? This is like Fred arguing that Johnson isn’t perfect, so we should prefer him to candidates superior to Johnson. Avoiding making the perfect the enemy of the good should not be turned into supporting the greater evil.
I apologise for my cultureless failure to appreciate literary references.
James, that’s a fascinating and thought-provoking comment worthy of a post in its own right. It would be a shame if the handful of us still following this thread were the only ones who got to read it.
Well, I have an esoteric Nerd Card.
Actually the comic is quite good
An epic multi part post on the relationship between Marx, Leninism, conservatism, and fascism has been on the back burner for a while. Came close to publishing when the parallels between what I was describing as fascism and a particular patriarch seemed likely to make a post controversial in a regrettable way, and now I probably need to be even drier in tone if I’m going to avoid a minor meltdown. On the plus side, I think something talking about what Jonah meant in Liberal Fascism and the proper and improper use of Nazi analogies is probably helpful, since they’re not leaving the center stage any time soon.
Just do it.