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Cha-cha-cha-changes (Or One Man's Life) [1]
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Date: 2025-02-25
Life is full of changes.
In 1976, I voted in my first Presidential election. I had just moved to New York, but I had spent the last three years in Georgia. The governor of Georgia was a bright individual who was a good governor of the state, so I voted for Jimmy Carter. This was the last time I voted for a Democratic candidate for President and the last time I voted for a winning Presidential candidate.
By 1980, I had realized just how intrusive the state was and have been voting for the Libertarian candidate ever since. There’s often only a Libertarian in the Presidential race, but when a Libertarian managed to get on my ballot on a local race, I’d vote for the Libertarian there, too. I’ve also been an off-and-on dues paying member of the national party for most of that time. I’ve been a registered Libertarian in Florida since 1990. (I honestly don’t remember how I registered in New York; it’s been way too long.) I got involved in the local and state parties during the last decade or so. I’ve been sending the Libertarian Party of Florida $100 every month, providing the party with over 3.5% of their annual contributions in 2024 according to the Florida Department of State’s Division of Elections Campaign Finance Activity web page. I’ve been to state and national Libertarian conventions as a voting delegate.
During much of this time, the Republican Party would provide a lot of lip service to the ideas of limited government and the rule of law. Their policy proposals and platforms were usually closer to my views than the Democratic Party’s, which meant that (generally) if there wasn’t a Libertarian on the ballot, I’d vote for the Republican as a lesser of two evils. They rarely ever followed up on the ideas of limited government and rule of law, but they at least acknowledged their existence. However, just because I generally voted for the Republican didn’t mean that Democrats didn’t occasionally get my vote and/or support. Heck, I was even the Campaign Treasurer for a local Democratic candidate. (He lost, but I still think he would have done a better job than the guy who beat him.)
Then came the rise of Right-Wing Populism, Donald Trump, and the MAGA movement. What these movements have done to the soul of the Republican Party is well documented. It is now extremely difficult for me to support anyone running as a Republican. There may still be one or two worthy of support, but the vast majority are, at best, cowards, and at worst, authoritarians and hustlers.
But the changes in the overall body politic also affected the Libertarian Party.
Within any national party there will be different groups of individuals pushing different issues. In the Libertarian Party, those groups are called “caucuses”. Generally, those varying viewpoints would fall within the overall libertarian philosophy of the party. Some are more doctrinaire, while others are more pragmatic. Some push single issues, while others are just for fun, an excuse to have a party at the national convention. (These are probably the best caucuses. Going to a party after a long day on the convention floor is probably necessary to maintain sanity.)
One of the issues with the Libertarian Party is that while the party is generally focused on freedom for all, it also tends to attract those who want freedom for themselves and are fine with everyone else being subject to the government. (In the survivalist movement, these are the people looking forward to the fall of civilization because they’re positive that they would end up on top after everything settles down. The more guns, the merrier.) They tend to focus on the evils of taxation not because of the governmental actions the taxation supports or the adverse effects on the economy that the taxation produces but merely because taxes take money from their pockets. Contrary to the libertarian platform, they tend to dislike immigration because immigrants might reduce the money they can make. Simplistically, they tend to believe that “they’ve got theirs, why should anyone else take it away.” Some also fit very nicely into the racist and sexist categories, which are antithetical to fundamental libertarian principles.
These people tended to congregate within a group within the Libertarian Party called the Mises Caucus, named after the Austrian-American economist Ludwig von Mises. This group took over the Libertarian Party at the 2022 national convention, electing Angela McArdle to the national chair along with most of the leadership seats.
After the takeover, the national party joined with other (non-libertarian) groups to demonstrate in favor of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. At the 2024 convention (which I attended), the national leadership invited Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to speak and to try to nominate either of them as the Libertarian Party Candidate for President. Despite my vote, Angela McArdle was reelected to the position of Party Chair. The good news (for me) is that Trump and Kennedy were soundly rejected by the convention. The Mises Caucus’ Presidential candidate also lost in the last round of voting. Instead, Chase Oliver was nominated at the national convention. However, two state parties formally refused to endorse Oliver, and one actively attempted to replace him with RFK, Jr. The Libertarian Party Chair then released a video stating that she was endorsing Oliver as a vehicle for Trump’s eventual victory.
Early this year, the Libertarian National Party announced that they had honored Donald Trump with a lifetime membership in the Libertarian Party. Soon after that and under an investigation of her tenure as Chair, Angela McArdle resigned “in order to pursue opportunities within the Trump Administration.” One of the newly elected Chair’s first actions was to declare the honoring of Donald Trump’s lifetime membership null and void based upon his interpretations of the Bylaws.
Prior to this, I was already having some serious misgivings about further support for the Libertarian Party. However, the actions of the new Chair gave me hope that perhaps the Party was moving away from the MAGA movement and back towards the principles that had brought me to the party all those years ago. Being optimistic and hopeful is a good thing, right?
And then the Libertarian Party posted a congratulatory message to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., for his appointment as HHS Secretary.
In many cases, the actual triggering incident may not be all that important in the overall scheme of things. Archduke Franz Ferdinand wasn’t all that important to the overall scheme of things, but his death led to the death of 15 to 22 million people and a wholesale re-writing of European borders. A congratulatory message to a man promoting pseudo-science as the head of a scientific agency isn’t, on its own, all that important. And yet…
In the last week, I’ve made a few changes in my life. I’ve cancelled my monthly contribution to the Libertarian Party of Florida. I’ve changed my party registration to No Party Affiliation. (I’m not sure if I should register as a Republican to support any non-MAGA Republicans brave enough to run or as a Democrat.) I’ve resigned from the national Libertarian Party, the Libertarian Party of Florida, and the Libertarian Party of Volusia County.
And it’s not just because it seems the party has lost its way. (Or maybe I’ve moved away from the party; the result is the same either way.) It’s also that in today’s political climate, the libertarian movement seems like it's beginning run by Crazy Eddie.
OK, that probably needs a bit of explanation. There’s a book by Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven called The Mote in God’s Eye. (If you are at all interested in science fiction and haven’t read it, you need to get it now. Do not wait until tomorrow. According to Robert Heinlein, it is probably the best first contact novel ever written.) In the alien society, there are stories about Crazy Eddie. According to Alistair Young, “Crazy Eddie is a cultural anti-hero who keeps trying to solve problems (‘doing the wrong things for excellent reasons’) and always fails, making things worse.” One example is in a society on the brink of disaster, where all their resources are used for waste disposal. When it takes everything the society has just to avoid being buried in waste, Crazy Eddie organizes a strike of the trash haulers for better working conditions.
For a long time, the Libertarian point of view was that both the Democratic and Republican Parties were equally bad. It didn’t really make all that much of a difference which one was in power since they merely differed in the details of their badness. And perhaps that’s been true for most of the time since the Libertarian Party was organized. Let’s call that time “normal” time. But we’re not in normal times anymore. One of the two parties – the Republican or MAGA Party – has thrown away any limitations on governmental power. It doesn’t matter if their goal is the correct one or not, by throwing away the limitations on governmental power, when another party comes into power they will have no limitations on imposing their views of government. What’s good for the goose will be good for the gander.
By splitting the anti-MAGA forces into various camps, it weakens attempts to return to a normal time. The Democratic Party is currently doing a poor job of fighting MAGA, but the Libertarian Party can’t even figure out if MAGA is a bad thing or not. The very existence of an America with limited government and individual rights for all is at stake. This is no time to try for perfection; the perfect is the enemy of the good.
Maybe in four years, MAGA will no longer be in power. Maybe the Democrats (or perhaps the few remaining honorable Republicans) will be in power. And maybe the people who are in power in four years will honor limited government, rule of law, etc. And maybe the intervening four years will just be a bad memory in American history. Or it might take longer to return to normal, like Scudder’s Theocratic America. Or Imperial America might last as long as the Roman/Byzantine Empire, hopefully with a better aftermath.
But for me, even though a libertarian state is the ideal solution, support for the Libertarian Party at the current time helps support the authoritarian state.
[END]
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