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In a political first, Pueblo County delegates played a part in the Libertarian Party's first online convention recently.

This convention marked the first time that any American political party that is organized and active in all 50 states has held all or part of its national nominating convention online.

About 1,000 Libertarians from across America convened in the first 3-hour session to determine who will be the Libertarian presidential candidate in the November election.

I am John Pickerill, one of the registered Coloradans from the area who took part.

Some parts of this session were difficult since the whole online process was entirely new to all of us, but today, we established our schedule and procedures for the rest of the weekend and got to practice how to interact with each other online.

Everything was uncharted territory -- all of our partys previous 20 national conventions since 1971 were conducted face-to-face.

I am a Libertarian because I want people to be left alone to live their lives peacefully in whatever manner they choose. A vote for a Libertarian is a way to tell the world that you dont consent to the theft of your liberties or wallets by the parasitic political class.

Whenever our ideas are given a fair hearing, we win. Thats why the Democratic and Republican parties never allow Libertarians into debates -- because they know that on the day the philosophy of limited government is allowed to be heard, that is the day their grip on the American voter will slip away.

The daunting odds dont deter Libertarians. There are two times as many Libertarians now than five years ago. There are now almost half a million voters registered Libertarian across the country.

In another five, years we will be even bigger.

The big-government parties will eventually have to deal with us. And when they do, they will lose.

We will continue to persuade more of their supporters that less government is always better. The contributors and voters they depend on are going to continue abandoning them to join us.

In the last century, all of the ancient ideas for governing societies with huge, bloated, bossy, expensive governments have been tried. They have all failed.

Big governments dont protect their own people very well; nor can big governments and their teeming bureaucracies be trusted to mind their own

business. In the last century, governments were the biggest killer of people -- with about 200 million deaths to their credit -- most of those being their own citizens.

Its time to turn away from that Leviathan. Time has proven that only a frugal, limited government that is asked to do almost nothing is the only kind that brings about more justice, more peace, and more prosperity.

Only Libertarians are working toward those things.

Voters interested in learning more about the Libertarian Party are invited to visit the website at http://www.LP.org.

Those interested in finding out more about libertarianism in general can find several bibliographical resources at https://lpedia.org/wiki/List_of_Books.

Here are the top seven Libertarians who have been seeking the Libertarian Party nomination for president:

Jim Gray http://www.GraySharpe2020.com/

Jacob Hornberger https://JacobForLiberty.com/

Jo Jorgensen https://JOJ2020.com/

Adam Kokesh https://KokeshForPresident.com/

John Monds https://Monds2020.com/

Vermin Supreme https://VerminSupreme2020.com/

Arvin Vohra https://www.VoteVohra.com/

John Pickerill is a Pueblo County resident who has run for public office.

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Less government is the solution - Pueblo Chieftain

WASHINGTON From Harvard Law School comes the latest conservative flirtation with authoritarianism. Professor Adrian Vermeule, a 2016 Catholic convert, is an integralist who regrets his academic specialty, the Constitution, and rejects the separation of church and state. His much-discussed recent Atlantic essay advocating a government that judges the quality and moral worth of public speech is unimportant as a practical political manifesto, but it is symptomatic of some conservatives fevers, despairs and temptations.

Common-good capitalism, Sen. Marco Rubios recent proposal, is capitalism minus the essence of capitalism limited government respectful of societys cumulative intelligence and preferences collaboratively revealed through market transactions. Vermeules common-good constitutionalism is Christian authoritarianism muscular paternalism, with government enforcing social solidarity for religious reasons. This is the Constitution minus the Framers purpose: a regime respectful of individuals diverse notions of the life worth living. Such respect is, he says, abominable.

He would jettison libertarian assumptions central to free-speech law and free-speech ideology. And: libertarian conceptions of property rights and economic rights also will have to go, insofar as they bar the state from enforcing duties of community and solidarity in the use and distribution of resources. Who will define these duties? Integralists will, because they have an answer to this perennial puzzle: If the people are corrupt, how do you persuade them to accept the yoke of virtue-enforcers? The answer: Forget persuasion. Hierarchies must employ coercion.

Common-good constitutionalisms main aim, Vermeule says, is not to minimize the abuse of power but to ensure that the ruler has the power needed to rule well. Such constitutionalism does not suffer from a horror of political domination and hierarchy because the law is parental, a wise teacher and an inculcator of good habits, wielded if necessary even against the subjects own perceptions of what is best for them. Besides, those perceptions are not really the subjects because under Vermeules regime the law will impose perceptions.

He thinks the Constitution, read imaginatively, will permit the transformation of the nation into a confessional state that punishes blasphemy and other departures from state-defined and state-enforced solidarity. His medieval aspiration rests on a non sequitur: All legal systems affirm certain values, therefore it is permissible to enforce orthodoxies.

Vermeule is not the only American conservative feeling the allure of tyranny. Like the American leftists who made pilgrimages to Fidel Castros Cuba, some self-styled conservatives today turn their lonely eyes to Viktor Orban, destroyer of Hungarys democracy. The prime ministers American enthusiasts probably are unfazed by his seizing upon COVID-19 as an excuse for taking the short step from the ethno-nationalist authoritarianism to which he gives the oxymoronic title illiberal democracy, to dictatorship.

In 2009, Orban said, We have only to win once, but then properly. And in 2013, he said: In a crisis, you dont need governance by institutions. Elected to a third term in 2018, he has extended direct or indirect control over courts (the Constitutional Court has been enlarged and packed) and the media, replacing a semblance of intragovernmental checks-and-balances with what he calls the system of national cooperation. During the COVID-19 crisis he will govern by decree, elections will be suspended, and he will decide when the crisis ends supposedly June 20.

Explaining his hostility to immigration, Orban says Hungarians do not want to be mixed ... We want to be how we became eleven hundred years ago here in the Carpathian Basin. Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes, authors of The Light that Failed, dryly marvel that Orban remembers so vividly what it was like to be Hungarian eleven centuries ago. Nostalgia functioning as political philosophy Vermeules nostalgia seems to be for the 14th century is usually romanticism untethered from information.

Last November, Patrick Deneen, the University of Notre Dame professor whose 2018 book Why Liberalism Failed explained his hope for a post-liberal American future, had a cordial Budapest meeting with Orban. The Hungarian surely sympathizes with Deneens root-and-branch rejection of classical liberalism, which Deneen disdains because it portrays humans as rights-bearing individuals who can fashion and pursue for themselves their own version of the good life. One name for what Deneen denounces is: the American project. He, Vermeule and some others on the Orban-admiring American right believe that political individualism the enabling, protection and celebration of individual autonomy is a misery-making mistake: Autonomous individuals are deracinated, unhappy and without virtue.

The moral of this story is not that there is theocracy in our future. Rather, it is that American conservatism, when severed from the Enlightenment and its finest result, the American Founding, becomes spectacularly unreasonable and literally unAmerican.

Will is a columnist for The Washington Post Writers Group.

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Will: The rise of conservative authoritarians - Roanoke Times

Two Republicans and three Democrats are seeking their respective parties nominations for Indianas Sixth Congressional District in Tuesdays primary.

The seat is currently held by Rep. Greg Pence, R-Indiana, who is seeking a second term.

Pence is being challenged in the GOP primary by Mike Campbell of Wayne County, according to candidate filings.

In 2018, Pence defeated Democratic challenger Jeannine Lee Lake, winning his first term in Congress.

In Bartholomew County, Pence received 16,161 votes (60.86%), while Lake received 9,607 votes (36.18%), and Libertarian Thomas Ferkinhoff, 56, of Richmond, received 782 votes (2.95%). All sought political office for the first time in 2018.

Lake is running for the Democratic nomination again. She is being challenged by Barry Welsh of Hancock County and George T. Holland of Rush County, according to candidate filings.

The winners of the Republican and Democratic primaries will face each other in Novembers general election.

The Republic reached out to all five candidates to talk about why they are running and how they would address major issues affecting voters in their district. Only Pence and Lake responded.

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Candidates seek party nominations for Indiana's Sixth Congressional District - The Republic

Media executive, investigative journalist, and U.S. Senate candidate Jon Ossoff announced Thursday that his campaign raised $738,539 between April 1 and May 20 for his bid to unseat Senator David Perdue (R-Ga.), who, during that same period, raised $544,940.

In the seven-week span, Ossoff received over 15,500 contributions, with an average contribution of just $46, highlighting his grassroots support and momentum all without accepting any contributions from corporate PACs.

Since launching his campaign, Ossoff has received 17,491donations from within the state of Georgia, and Ossoffs campaign has more than 8,525Georgia donors in 132 counties.

The Ossoff campaign says the efforts and statewide outreach have made the race with Perdue neck-and-neck. Ossoff must first make his way through a crowded Democratic primary on June 9th before facing Republican David Perdue and Libertarian Shane Hazel in the November election.

Arecent Civiqs pollfound Ossoff leadingPerdue 47-45 percent. GOP internal pollinghas found the race is a dead heat, while expert political analysts likeThe Cook Political Reporthave upgraded the race for Democrats in light of Ossoffs strong polling against Perdue.

Ossoff outraised Perdue without accepting any contributions from corporate PACs and Ossoff says Perdue has been fined by the FEC for excessive corporate fundraising.

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With Average Contribution of $46, Ossoff Reports over $735K Raised in Pre-Primary FEC Filing - All On Georgia

No surprise: Republican Florida House Speaker Jos Oliva, who has pushed a conservative to libertarian agenda through the state House, got one of the lowest grades of all in an analysis by the Progress Florida organization.

Oliva got a 37 percent an F.

The more moderate Republican Senate President Bill Galvano got a grade of 64 percent, which is D.

The only grade lower than Olivas grade went to Pasco Republican Amber Mariano, who earned a 33 percent. Thats the lowest F among lawmakers graded in the annual People First Report Card by Progress Florida. The Florida Phoenix contacted Mariano and is waiting for a response.

The organization describes itself as promoting progressive values and its grading system for lawmakers sways toward Democrats getting higher grades in the A-F analysis.

In fact, 55 Democrats got As, with 27 of those lawmakers getting 100 percent. The other A grades were listed as 90 to 95 percent.

The analysis factors in major floor votes in the 2020 legislative session, around issues including a parental consent for abortion bill, vouchers for kids to go to private schools and other measures.

Since the 2017 legislative session, the organization has released the report card, which aims to identify which Florida lawmakers are voting for people first instead of powerful special interests, according to the groups website.

With Florida battling a health and financial crisis its more important than ever to know how our legislators are voting on major issues that impact our lives, said Progress Florida Executive Director Mark Ferrulo in a written statement.

Three Democrats got a B (86 percent); two got a C; two got a D and one got a F. State Rep. James Bush, a Miami Democrat, got 57 percent, getting the only F grade for Democrats.

Bush voted yes on bills related to parent consent for a minor getting an abortion, school vouchers and terms limits for school board members, among other measures.

Rep. Kimberly Daniels, a Democrat representing part of Duval County, received a 61 percent the second lowest to Democrat Rep. Bush.

According to the People First Report Card, she didnt vote on four bills, but she did vote for bills on abortion, vouchers and school board term limits.

In all, 73 Republican lawmakers got Fs; 20 Republicans got Ds. One got a C Sen. Anitere Flores, who represents Monroe and part of Miami-Dade County.

With a score of 71 percent, Flores was the highest-scoring Republican in the People First Report Card analysis. She voted favorably for several environmental protection bills.

On the Republican side, besides Oliva and Mariano, the lowest percentage figure in the analysis was 43 percent.

Overall, 53 Republican lawmakers got that 43 percent figure. That included Erin Grall, who sponsored the parental consent bill. She represents part of St. Lucie and Indian River counties.

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Lawmakers get A through F grades -- from a progressive point of view -- and many GOP members flunked - Florida Phoenix