I got interested in the libertarian philosophy in my early 20's (that would be in the early 2000's) because it offered an alternative to the right-wing/left-wing, Democrat/Republican binaries, and it emphasizes a less intrusive government.
As with any movement, there's a mix of sane people with great ideas & insane people who repulse people away.
I was fascinated by the ideas expressed by Harry Browne (1996 & 2000 presidential candidate), wasn't impressed by Micheal Badnarik (2004) and was totally repulsed by Bob Barr (2008).
Then in 2012, I wrote a classic blog post titled "Libertarian Movement gaining maturity" back when Gary Johnson was running as the Libertarian Party candidate for president.
https://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2012/11/libertarian-movement-gaining-maturity.html
Gary Johnson was a former governor of New Mexico. He had a real track record when it came to dealing with emergencies and enacting policies with a legislature that don't always agree with him.
When you're a governor (or mayor or president), you have to pick your battles wisely. On some issues, you have to go hard. On other issues, it is best to compromise and take the "half a loaf".
Gary Johnson was willing to take "half a loaf" if it meant some of his ideas get implemented.
The problem with too many libertarians is that they view every compromise as a betrayal. They view 80% agreement as "not good enough".
And in the case of the 2004 presidential candidate Michael Badnarik, once he stated that we shouldn't need government-issued driver's licenses, that became all the press wanted to focus on. That is an example of Badnarik not picking his battles wisely.
Not only do you want to pick your battles wisely, you want to chose your allies wisely.
Some libertarians try to make alliance with the progressives due to the common interest on criminal justice reform & a less militarized foreign policy. They are known as the "cool libertarians"
However, some libertarians try to make alliance with the Alt-Right due to the shared suspicion towards political correctness & socialism. They are known as the "paleo-libertarians"
The problem with the paleo-libertarians is that they don't understand the serious harm of racism, misogyny, xenophobia or homophobia. They think that too much focus on that is "political correctness".
Some libertarians may want a big tent, but there's no tent big enough to hold white supremacists & people of non-European ancestries together. There's no tent big enough to hold homophobes and gender non-conforming people together.
But yet, we have the paleo-libertarians, who want to make common cause with the Alt-Right in the name of "fighting political correctness and socialism".
And now we have the Mises Caucus, an organization of paleo-libertarians who are attempting to take over the Libertarian Party. They have already taken over the state party for New Hampshire. While New Hampshire is a small state out of 50 states, what happens there doesn't always stay there.
https://reason.com/2021/06/23/inside-the-battle-over-the-soul-of-the-libertarian-party/
A "toxic culture has recently been harnessed in the service of a grouping with a declared goal of taking over the party and making it as repulsive as possible to everyone except themselves," Bishop-Henchman wrote in his resignation letter, referring to the party's ascendant Mises Caucus, which for the past few years has been advertising its intentions to launch a "takeover" of the L.P. to realign it more with the policy and messaging associated with Ron Paul and the Ludwig von Mises Institute. "I will not chair a party that knowingly and has now affirmatively chosen to stay affiliated with the toxic garbage that was being spewed by the New Hampshire party and similar bad actors in other states, the violent threats emanating from these people, and the deliberate destruction of the party's ability to appeal to voters and win elections."
One of those people in the Mises Caucus is Jeremy Kauffman, a totally repulsive troll who said things like this
(from https://twitter.com/jeremykauffman/status/1368700538825637893)
if 1,000 transpeople were murdered every year but there were no taxes, we'd live in a substantially more moral world for reference about 40 people transgender people are murdered in the US per year
Now imagine a young gender nonconforming person reading that tweet. Imagine that same person still learning which political philosophies are the best one. Imagine the same person learning that Jeremy Kauffman claims to be a "libertarian". Do you think the same person would ever want to ever be aligned with libertarianism if that is the first encounter with a so-called libertarian? HELL NO!
The Libertarian Party has been supporting same-sex marriage since the 1970s, long before the Democrats joined the bandwagon.
But someone who is a college freshman may not know that. The college freshman whose first encounter with "libertarianism" is the Jeremy Kauffman tweet isn't going to pursue further interest in libertarianism. Why be interested in joining a movement with someone who thinks you being dead is OK as long as everyone else pays no tax?
But there's even more from Jeremy Kauffman
Among the controversial LPNH tweets attributed to Kauffman was a call to "legalize child labor" because "children will learn more on a job site than in public school," another to keep Gitmo open "so that Anthony Fauci and every governor that locked their state down can be sent there, never again to be allowed inside of the United States," and still another to "Repeal the Civil Rights Act."
Really? This is the hill that paleo-libertarians want to die on? Really?
This is an extreme lack of maturity!
This isn't a serious attempt to teach people the values of liberty!
This is just "Hey Look at Me Everybody, I'm Being Politically Incorrect".
But that is the main driver for Jeremy Kauffman and the Mises Caucus.
And the sad thing is that this is all a major step backward from when Gary Johnson was running for president in 2012 & 2016. Johnson attracted record-breaking support for a Libertarian candidate. He attracted support from former conservatives disgusted by Donald Trump, as well as former progressives becoming skeptical of socialism. Despite his sometimes goofy moments, Johnson showed way more maturity than Donald Trump.
But sadly, the Mises Caucus want the Libertarian Party to be more like Donald Trump, nevermind that the appeal of Gary Johnson was to say "F*** Donald Trump".
The drama of Jeremy Kauffman and his goons from the Mises Caucus has caused an exodus of Gary Johnson supporters away from the Libertarian Party. In other words, an exodus of supporters who helped the Libertarian Party break records in getting votes.
Alexander DiBenedetto, who ran the Pragmatist Caucus until its post–New Hampshire dissolution, warned in a phone interview Sunday that a Mises takeover would likely mean "the majority of the people from the Gary Johnson days leaving the party." (Those campaigns got the party its highest ever national vote totals and percentages.) The L.P. should spend less time and energy perfecting the most polarizing tweet to attract the most hate-retweets, DiBenedetto said, and more time organizing such initiatives as the door-knocking Frontier Project, which actually won a state legislative seat for Libertarian Marshall Burt in Wyoming last year. If a Mises Caucus–style candidate wins the party's presidential nomination in 2024, he said, state parties unhappy with that approach might disaffiliate from the national party.
Francis Wendt, the Region 1 LNC member who resigned June 19, wrote in his farewell letter, "I will give the [Mises Caucus] credit, they have a very active base….However, activists are only part of the equation. You also need candidates, leaders, staff, and donors. Twitter trolls don't do that. Email blasts don't do that. Regurgitated messages from people that only show up for a day (convention) don't do that. Knocking doors does that. Writing checks does that. Making calls does that. Sitting up till 3 AM pouring over research does that."
In his resignation letter, Bishop-Henchman sounded a warning of his own. "Toxic people exhaust or drive out good people," he said. "Our mechanisms for removing such individuals and addressing such bad behavior are designed to be effectively impossible, and culturally, too many people who should know better passively tolerate it rather than confront it. It turns off donors, repulses allies, and makes team projects unviable."
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And the thing is that even though I'm not a full-on libertarian (I believe in having a safety net, and I do believe in some covid-era restrictions), I value much from the cool libertarians, from their emphasis
- on legalizing a lot of things
- on entrepreneurship
- on a less militaristic foreign policy
- de-escalating the police
- justice for gender nonconforming people
- treating people as individuals rather than members of groups
- a lenient immigration policy
But the paleo-libertarians like Jeremy Kauffman and the rest of the Mises Caucus are lowlife scum! I want nothing to do with them!
