The controversial Mises Caucus wins control over the Libertarian Party https://t.co/NOE2sQ6iqF
— reason (@reason) May 29, 2022
The coda used to be ‘… who want to smoke dope’, but nah. These guys just wanna hurt people, and to hoard the power & money that will enable them to do so.
The Reason crew is saddened to find themselves new members of the Leopards Eating Peoples’ Faces coalition:
… [Angela] McArdle’s first tweet after winning was characteristic of her caucus’ style: It mocked the L.P.’s recent past, quote-tweeting a March 2020 post that mentioned social distancing. She told the convention Friday she would not allow the party to “humiliate ourselves and alienate everyone” when faced with the next COVID-style crisis.
McArdle, a paralegal and current chair of the Libertarian Party of Los Angeles County, said in her speech to the convention Friday that the government response to COVID has left many working-class Americans thirsty for personal liberty, and “we don’t want to ignore them.” They have, she argued, “low-resolution views of freedom…and we need to bring that vision into focus by communicating our message clearly and by supporting our candidates and affiliates.”
While McArdle was the Mises Caucus candidate, the behind-the-scenes mastermind of its victory was caucus founder and leader Michael Heise. His disapproval of William Weld, Gary Johnson’s running mate in 2016, was an initial inspiration for the caucus’ launch. He found Weld painfully lacking in libertarian orthodoxy, especially when it came to issues such as war and gun regulations.
The caucus’s official platform is plumb-line libertarian, but its foes say that too many Mises Caucus members and fans downplay libertarian positions that might offend the right, are intentionally obnoxious and bullying, and are often racist. For example, the New Hampshire L.P., a powerful vector of Mises Caucus messaging, tweeted on Martin Luther King Day that “America isn’t in debt to black people. If anything it’s the other way around.” (The tweet was later deleted.)…
Both Heise and Mises Caucus stalwart Joshua Smith, who won the vice-chair election Saturday, denied the charges of racism and said in phone interviews prior to the convention that the basic vibe they are seeking is online young men into edgy comedic podcasts, a new counterculture for whom the old L.P. holds little appeal. Heise believes that the current rumored frontrunner for a Mises Caucus–approved presidential nominee in 2024, comedian and podcaster Dave Smith, is so well-connected to the Joe Rogan world that legacy respectable mainstream media will be meaningless for party messaging moving forward.
In his nominating speech for McArdle before the vote, libertarian antiwar author and podcaster Scott Horton insisted that he’s seen thousands of new convention-attending members energized by the Mises Caucus in the last couple of years. (The last non-presidential L.P. convention I covered, in 2006, had only slightly more than 300 delegates and I doubt more than 20 of them were under 30 years old. This convention drew more than 1,000, and while this is only a guess based on pacing around a huge packed room for a couple of days, I’d say one-third of them might have been under 35.)…
The Mises Caucus’ foes have accused the faction of planning to stop running candidates against Republicans they like. Heise denied this in a phone interview before the convention. The Mises-run party will continue to try to run local candidates especially, he said, with a preferred strategy of straight-up localist nullification of federal laws. “Decentralization” is a mantra of Heise’s, and the caucus’s Twitter feed has openly been against the long-held legal principle that the 14th Amendment means that states and localities also have to obey the federal Bill of Rights. Most libertarians might see decentralization as an often useful tool that often can increase liberty, but nonetheless agree that the federal government forcing states and localities to respect rights is perfectly fine. Heise in a phone interview suggested that federal pressure even to honor citizens’ liberty is an unacceptable violation of the decentralization principle…
Heise thinks the most important connection between the Ron Paul revolution and his caucus is its interest in uniting excited young activists with a sense of real community, an idea he stressed over and over. His people enjoy hanging out and trying to save/piss off the world together. “If you want to win elections,” Heise says, “you better damn well start getting people to think or care about the principles of liberty. And you have to have a home in order to, from that point of stability, build the culture, build the base. And I think we can build that through the party.” The Mises Caucus has taken control of an estimated 35 state L.P.s and now the national party as well, so that project now rests in its hands…
Rants are out, snortlaughs are in
— PeachtreeDishHat (@Popehat) May 29, 2022
These guys run the libertarian party now, in part because right-wing anarchism has a lot more in common with national socialism than is often realized. https://t.co/DYgcS6LH8I
— Peter Wolf (@peterawolf) May 29, 2022
I wager you would be able to find a disproportionately high number of Ron Paul fans among militia members, capitol-occupiers, and Trump Putsch insurrectionists.
— Peter Wolf (@peterawolf) May 29, 2022
Tap…Tap…Is This Thing On….
SpaceUnit
The political right is sprinting all-out towards fascism.
Meanwhile, MSM and social media mostly concerned with their meaningless fashion disputes.
Brachiator
I have never quite understood how a libertarian could believe that everything was about individual liberty, but also live in a community with other people.
Also, many years ago a libertarian tried to explain to me that he was not racist because there was a natural law that compelled people to only be attracted to “their own kind.”
ColoradoGuy
It’s trolls all the way down.
JWR
When I read this…
…I thought oh, the Joe Rogan crowd, which thought I found hilarious. And then they mention the Joe Rogan crowd, and my eyeballs rolled clean outa my skull. Screw these Fascist a-hole White boys.
Steeplejack
@JWR:
Yes, “online young men into edgy comedic podcasts” to “the Joe Rogan world” was quite the shot-chaser combo.
TriassicSands
If ever there was a political philosophy (Did I actually just write the word “philosophy?”) made to order for selfish adolescents, it is libertarianism.
Eventually, a good libertarian will probably have to kill everyone else in the community so he can have everything for himself. See, problem solved.
TriassicSands
That would come as a real shock to my pasty white nephew and his extremely unwhite wife. That “law” is as imaginary as Marjorie Taylor Greene’s brain.
There are no laws of attraction. Sure, people are attracted to whomever they find attractive. If you were raised to believe that someone is not only inferior to you, but perhaps not quite fully human, then you aren’t likely to be attracted to that person. But that is pure racist indoctrination.
On the other hand, lots of people have types. I have a gay friend — Anglo (as in English and Scottish) — who has only ever dated Hispanics and is now married to a man from Mexico. If he had ever dated a Caucasian, I would have been stunned.
On the other, other hand, that’s the kind of thinking to expect from a libertarian. Deep. You know, like bullshit deep.
Mwangangi
I’m fortunate because in NorCal I saw the Ron Paul-ites drift into the Bernie-stans so I already knew what was up. Y’alls mileage might vary — but the vote returns are what they are.
Betty Cracker
@JWR: I also immediately thought of Rogan, who is basically Limbaugh with memes.
Gvg
Edgy seems to mean rude and no substance. It’s a marker for cons too. Anyway, I haven’t liked anything marketed as edgy. I hope it continues to mean a small audience.
Baud
Finally, someone who will take the threat to abortion rights seriously.
Or maybe not. States rights over individual rights.
Ten Bears
Smoking pot. Libertarians are Republicans smoking pot.
Nice to see y’awl again …
wetzel
When I discovered this morning that I couldn’t tell if the fantastically high basal stress scale I feel comes from yesterday’s trauma, today’s catastrophic personal emergencies, global crisis or that high stress has become my basic stimulus-response habit it disappeared. Attribution of stress is impossible. I don’t think it deserves support in cognition or to become fully formed emotions. I thought I would share. I don’t know if this is helpful.
Geminid
Today is a crucial one for two Texas primary runoffs in the Rio Grande Valley. County election offices are required to complete counting mail-in ballots and either qualify or disqualify provisional ones. On Friday, Henry Cuellar led Jessica Cisneros by 177 votes in the 28th CD, out of 43,000 votes cast, while in the 15th CD two Democratic candidates were separated by 23 votes. Although counties have until Thursday to report totals to the state, we’ll probably know the results by end of the business day. The losing candidates will almost certainly request recounts, which Texas law allows if the margin of victory is less than 10% of the winner’s total vote.
The winner between Cuellar and Cisneros will face Cassie Garcia, a former staffer for Ted Cruz. Both seats are big targets for Republicans, who saw their share of votes in the Valley rise sharply from 2016 to 2020.
Baud
@Geminid:
Wow. 177. Amazing.
Steeplejack
@Baud:
“Find me 178 votes and we’ll do the rest. . . . This thing’s not on, is it?”
Richard Hershberger
I have for many years now described self-identified “libertarians” as Republicans with intellectual pretensions. I guess I can drop that latter bit now.
Geminid
@Baud: There were a lot of provisional ballots cast in Bexar County, up near San Antonio. That was a Cisneros stronghold, and her campaign has been working hard to get those voters to “cure” their ballots.
eclare
@Ten Bears: That describes a guy that I dated for a few months to a T. I finally realized he was just a selfish asshole.
Liminal Owl
@wetzel: You might want to look at the psychology sub-genre of interpersonal neurobiology. I recommend, for a less technical discussion, Deborah Dana’s “Anchored: Befriending Your Nervous System.” Very helpful for understanding how this works (if that interests you—I’m sorry; this is really my jam) and good self-care for dealing with the results.
Kay
Ah, yes – the edgy opinions of Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnell:
Liminal Owl
I first heard of libertarianism from a RWNJ on whom I had a tremendous crush in college. He made it sound almost reasonable. And I suspect he’d be right on board with all the current unreasonableness. Gaa. Decades later, I’m still embarrassed to think about that crush, though I understand why it existed then.
Geminid
According to a recent Politico article, former White House aide Peter Navarro says that last week he was served with a grand jury subpoena requiring him to come and testify and also turn over records relating to communications with his former boss. There has been little word from the Justice Department regarding the scope of their January 6 investigation, but this is a sign that prosecutors are now looking at conspiracy among the highest levels of the last administration.
Navarro says he will resist the subpoena by suing a lot of people including Speaker Pelosi.
Kay
In order to be a guest on Joe Rogan’s podcast, you’re apparently required to do this fawning, embarrassing ass kissing:
All his brave contrarian free thinking guests do it. In lockstep.
Benw
Please please let these a-holes run a candidate in 2024 who siphons off 2% of the Republican votes.
Joey Maloney
Libertarians are like housecats: Completely dependent on others for their existence yet unshakably believing in their own independence.
Geminid
@Benw: The Libertarians had a role in the 2020 Georgia Senate races. David Perdue came in first in November, but the Libertarian candidate helped hold Perdue barely below 50%. Georgia Republicans typically do better than Democrats in runoffs, but that time Perdue’s vote dropped by 250,000 while Ossoff’s vote dropped only 105,000 so he won.
Georgia has long been one of the Libertarian Party’s strongest states.
Expatchad
Oy,vey. Waring blender political orthodoxy!
Baud
@Kay:
That’s a completely original thought, Kay. I’ve never heard those arguments before.
Keith P.
@Kay: It’s worse when comedians have to go on and kiss his ass, knowing he’s not in their league in terms of actual on-stage talent.
Jinchi
Well she did win almost 9% of the vote in CA-18 in 2018. All she has to do is triple that and she’ll have reached the crazification factor!
Is there any chance Angela McArdle is related to Megan?
Cameron
One of the greatest sagas of modern libertarianisn:
https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-into-bear-book-review-free-town-project
Victor Matheson
Just a note that this new libertarian party is also dropping the pro choice plank for the party platform – because nothing says personal liberty like having the government have total control over a person’s body once they become pregnant.
stinger
@Joey Maloney: Stealing this.
Another Scott
A couple of things:
It sounds like TeaParty 2.0 to me. They’re all Republicans with different labels.
Cheers,
Scott.
Matt McIrvin
In my experience libertarians have had a huge racist streak going as far back as I can remember. One of their main grievances has always been that civil-rights reforms should be limited to ending de jure discrimination, and all private entities should be free to racially discriminate. Sometimes they insist that it’s OK because the free market will take care of it, but that particular position was why Barry Goldwater, the early standard-bearer for Republican-style libertarianism, won the Deep South while losing everywhere else. Robert Heinlein was whining about it in the Sixties and Seventies.
They also often dip into the “scientific” racist stuff, going on about brain measurements and genetic group heritability of IQ. The idea that they’re the brave realists who will unflinchingly accept the unpleasant truth of African-American inferiority, and that it’s the liberals who are anti-rational here, hanging onto hippie notions of equality in the face of inconvenient scientific evidence, is like catnip to them.
West of the Cascades
@Jinchi:
My google-fu is weak before my second coffee, so I couldn’t find a quick answer, but did find this delicious breakfast morsel on McMegan (from 2018): “Megan McArdle Is the Poster Child for Failing Upward in America” — https://www.pastemagazine.com/politics/megan-mcardle/megan-mcardle-fails-upwards-again-this-time-to-the/#is-mcardle-a-lively-voice-
MisterDancer
Good god. Libertarians. What WANKERS.
@Liminal Owl: I fear the point of Libertarian ideas are to “sound reasonable”. They end up being another vector to dismantle the social safety net and allow the powerful to grab, well, more.
That’s it. That’s the whole game. And it’s always been a game that put White Men first, telling them they can have their weed and sex workers while paying no taxes and not giving a fuck about anyone but them and their buds.
Again: WHAT WANKERS.
JayR
The Libertarian party has always just been preschool for hyperactive Republicans.
RSA
@Joey Maloney:
Comic version
trnc
@Baud:
I read it more as individual rights to do anything they want to other people, and fuck those other people if they don’t like it. “Gubmint can’t make me treat them like they have rights.”
MarkPainter
My first experience with libertarians was some 20 years ago. I was part of an email discussion list on the rights of children and youths, when this libertarian loudmouth joined the list and immediately began posting 2000 word screeds about how the Civil War was a disaster for America because it gave us an oppressive central government. Abraham Lincoln was history’s greatest monster, and the South’s crimes trivial by comparison.
I posted back that his post was obnoxious and had nothing to do with the list topic, which subjected me to an even longer screed about how the list was about human rights, his post was about human rights and I was a BULLY trying to CENSOR HIM.
I quit the list.
But it demonstrated something I’ve been marveling at ever since: you would think one thing the so-called “libertarians” could be counted upon to condemn would be slavery, that it would be antithetical to their belief system. Have you ever tried to get a condemnation of slavery out of a libertarian? It’s like pulling teeth, and it comes with all sorts of caveats, and a minute later they’re back on their “actually, the Confederacy wasn’t so bad” shtick.
tl;dr: Libertarians are scum.
RSA
@MarkPainter: I once argued with a libertarian who’d posted an essay about the Civil War; he argued that it was unnecessary, in that slavery would have died out after a couple of generations anyway.
I won’t rehearse the arguments, but I will say that he seemed to have little ability to empathize with people who were enslaved.
trnc
Libertarians are, first and foremost, contrarians. All you can do is say, “I believe that clean air and water and traffic regulations are important in a functioning society, and none of those things actually oppress you.” There’s no point offering them any reasons for your beliefs.
trnc
Because he thinks he is enslaved by literally anything that contributes to a functioning society.
Barbara
@MarkPainter: Libertarians lack empathy of any kind. They also lack imagination, especially moral imagination. I had a BF once upon a time who was not especially political but he lived with a woman who was a radical free marketeer libertarian, idolized Ayn Rand, etc. He used to spout her ideas, and once told me that the government shouldn’t do things that private enterprise could do, like building roads. He thought committees of interested parties could plan and pay for roads — I asked him how much time he would be willing to personally devote to such committees and what he would do if he ended up sitting in endless traffic jams or paying outrageous tolls. Nothing, he had no response. I mean, how much imagination does it take to figure out that his proffered policy for road building is problematic? Like none at all, but he didn’t have it.
In my view, you can’t even imagine slavery in a libertarian society unless you think that slaves are not people like you. And with that, I think with that you have the complete answer as to where libertarians who don’t grasp the wrongness of slavery — even from their own theoretical perspective — are coming from. Slaves are things not people.
different-church-lady
@Brachiator: well, he’s right, at least in the “asshole recognize asshole” kind of way.
different-church-lady
@Kay:
Why don’t we start with taking Ramos’s guns, and see what happens?
Eunicecycle
@Cameron: I remember that story. Sometimes almost comedy-in the Keystone Kops variety-but mostly sad.
gvg
@Barbara: Um, libertarianism is suped up capitalism. It is not liberty, it is property rights. They have not always said it out loud but slavery or debt peonage is perfectly within that philosophy. People have property rights not people rights. And the Civil War stole southern property rights. They also ignore all the capitalism/labor rights fights and history. I am referring to things like mines that collapse, factories that catch on fire, rats in food and other nasty facts.
Frankly, they all seemed like idiots, every time I have had to listen to them. I can’t even keep track of all the things they don’t think about, that seemed obvious when I heard about it in high school. A couple of guys I was friends with who were really smart academically thought it was cool then. I thought it was stupid, but that they imagined it would work out that they were the cool ones……it wouldn’t have though.
A lot of people look for their niche, where they are the pond king. some people choose a certain church, others a certain hobby but politics is another pond and subsets within the big parties give some people a chance to think they are better than other people.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Kay: This UFC coach I watch on youtube was talking about Rogan, said the Rogan is basically a paid shrill whose job is to tell the match producers narrative to an audience. (In other worlds UFC, which claims to be the most authentic martial art, is just another reality show) So most of the smirking meathead Rogan does is an act. But I am sure after 20- 30 years Rogan’s stage persona will replace Rogan’s real one.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Kay: This UFC coach I watch on youtube was talking about Rogan, said the Rogan is basically a paid shrill whose job is to tell the match producers narrative to an audience. (In other worlds UFC, which claims to be the most authentic martial art, is just another reality show) So most of the smirking meathead Rogan does is an act. But I am sure after 20- 30 years Rogan’s stage persona will replace Rogan’s real one.
Jake Gibson
@Brachiator:
I point out that to have complete individual liberty you would need to move to the woods and never interact with any other human.
They seem to not like that idea.
Another Scott
@Kay: It used to be legal for people to own machine guns. Now, it still is, but there are lots and lots of rules (gotta be registered and get a “tax stamp” and those can be hard to get).
https://regulations.atf.gov/479/03-1657
It’s not complicated. Rules can be tweaked. E.g. You are under 25 and want a gun? You need to get a “tax stamp” and follow all the rules that implies. If you don’t do that, you’re looking at huge fines and jail time. You’re over 25 and want to buy or sell a gun? You need to register that transaction, pay the transfer fee, etc., etc. Don’t to that? You’re looking at serious fines and jail time.
But the SCOTUS??!! Yeah, Fight for 15!!, and point to the first 4 words of the 2A – “A well-regulated militia…”.
Cheers,
Scott.
Barbara
@gvg: Yes, people have property rights, which is to say that people are not themselves property. “Slaves” who receive payment for their services (even if it is upfront accompanied by a contract) is not the same as being kidnapped and forced to remain enslaved without any compensation. The latter can only be okay even theoretically if slaves are not considered to be people.
Matt McIrvin
@MarkPainter:
Some of the really hardcore ones have actually argued that some form of legal slavery is necessary for there to be true freedom. The theory is this: freedom means you own your own body, but truly owning something means you have to be able to sell it, which means you must be able to sell yourself into slavery if you so desire, which means it must be legally possible to own somebody else. It’s amazingly bonkers–basically having inalienable rights is depriving you of the right to alienate your rights.
waspuppet
@Matt McIrvin: Siri, tell me all libertarians are well-off white people without telling me all libertarians are well-off white people,
cain
@Geminid:
My hope is that this new libertarian party will start competing for Republican votes in the various states causing the GOP to attack the Libertarian party in a war for control of shit human beings.
Barbara
@Matt McIrvin: But slaves in the American South did not sell themselves. They were sold — others were paid for their labor, not them. And obviously this was doubly true for children born into slavery. Peonage — borrowing money and then being forced to work to pay it off — might be consistent with this view but slavery is not. Not the way it was practiced in the U.S., and really, most other places. Slavery in nearly all eras was the opportunistic use of the labor of people who were defeated or not permitted to resist.
Barbara
@cain: The Dude Bros who have no use for the sexual restrictions implicit in the views of culture warriors . . .
matt
McArdle is a proven vote getter:
Libertarian
Angela McArdle
0.8%
319
RepubAnon
@Baud: Libertarians are people who hate the idea of government telling them what they can or cannot do – but love the idea of using the power of government to force others to comply with whatever that libertarian wants enforced.
Raven Onthill
Perhaps he had always known, somewhere in the deepest recesses of his mind, that he would indeed eventually take that last step into Satanism, but if so, he had very successfully suppressed it. – James Blish, The Day After Judgement
Villago Delenda Est
Libertarians seek a neo-feudal order, and they see themselves as the new feudal lords. Like Horatio Hornblower, they revel in their individual freedom, purchased at the expense of the freedom of their subordinates.
Jinchi
From a distance libertarianism looks like a an extreme version of liberalism : maximum freedom without restriction, which seems to imply they’d support civil rights and certainly opposition to slavery.
But close up, it’s obvious that they don’t believe there should be any way to enforce individual rights. There’s no restriction on what a person can do, other than what a more powerful person can compel them to do. Why that’s somehow better than a state enforcing it’s laws is beyond me.
I didn’t quite realize how extreme they are until I read a column by a libertarian arguing unironically that your boss should be free to demand sexual favors as part of your job requirements. These people have no interest in civil liberty or personal welfare. Slavery would be just fine.
GoBlueInOak
@West of the Cascades: Love this quote from the article: “…a shallow, mean rich kid is hired by billionaires to abuse poor people and praise kitchen implements.”
Jinchi
That wasn’t the opinion of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case of 1857. They repeatedly referred to slaves as property in the decision.
Lacuna Synecdoche
Anne Laurie @ Top:
“Libertarians are Republicans who want to hurt people” doesn’t really do much to differentiate them from the rest of the GOP.
Just sayin’.
Of course, maybe that’s the point.
Captain C
@RepubAnon: So, basically Wilhoit conservatives.
BruceJ
@Matt McIrvin:
That would be Murray Rothbard who is a founding intellectual of modern libertarianism. He also believed that it a parents right to sell their children, which seems to me to be rather a significant violation of their liberty, but fascists gonna fash.