Archive for the ‘Libertarian’ Category

Iowa Libertarian Party condemns IUB verdict on eminent domain for private pipeline – Globe Gazette

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The Libertarian Party of Iowa vehemently condemns the Iowa Utilities Board decision, which grants a private company the power to seize land through eminent domain for the construction of a carbon dioxide pipeline.

In a statement, party leaders said this decision not only violates the property rights of Iowans but also represents a fundamental betrayal of the principle that all individuals have the right to be secure in their property.

"Eminent domain, whether invoked by government or facilitated through regulatory bodies like the IUB, is an egregious violation of individual rights," said Libertarian Party of Iowa Chairwoman Jules Cutler. "Forcing property owners to relinquish their land against their will, whether for public or private gain, undermines the very foundation of property rights and personal freedom.

Despite overwhelming public opposition, with 78% of Iowans opposing the use of eminent domain for carbon capture pipelines (Source: Des Moines Register), the IUB has proceeded with this contentious decision, reflecting a blatant disregard for the will of the people and sets a dangerous precedent for property rights in Iowa. Landowners have reported aggressive tactics from the pipeline company, including threats and lawsuits, and some company representatives have even faced charges of trespassing.

The Libertarian Party of Iowa went on to say that the IUB, comprised of appointees from Republican governors, has ignored both public sentiment and the precedent set by the Iowa Supreme Court, which ruled against granting eminent domain to entities that are not common carriers. This decision comes despite significant public and legal challenges and is supported by major political donors and former elected officials, raising serious concerns about conflicts of interest (Source: Iowa Capital Dispatch).

"While other companies with similar projects, like Navigator CO2 Ventures, have halted their plans due to regulatory challenges and public resistance, this company has persisted with the backing of powerful political figures and financial interests," Cutler pointed out. "The decision highlights the significant influence of these entities wield over regulatory bodies and raises further concerns about democratic principles in Iowa."

Moreover, this pipeline project is being funded by substantial "green economy" tax credits from the current Democratic administration in Washington, aimed at further manipulating market economies to promote an agenda. (Source: AP News). This bipartisan assault on property rights underscores the Libertarian Partys stance that both major parties are complicit in eroding the freedoms of Iowans.

The Libertarian Party of Iowa is committed to Americas heritage of freedom: individual liberty and personal responsibility, a free-market economy of abundance and prosperity, a foreign policy of non-intervention, peace, and free trade. Find out more at https://www.lpia.org.

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Iowa Libertarian Party condemns IUB verdict on eminent domain for private pipeline - Globe Gazette

Opinion | What Chase Oliver, the 2024 Libertarian Candidate, Believes – The New York Times

In 2016 the Libertarian Party presidential candidate, Gary Johnson, received more votes than any of the partys other candidates in history and the most of any third-party candidate since Ross Perot and arguably, the Libertarian Party has never recovered.

Much like the conservative movement, the libertarian movement has been divided between more normie libertarians who have embraced criminal justice reform and social freedoms (like immigration and the rights of L.G.B.T.Q. people) and the harder-line libertarians who tend to lean more to the right on cultural issues.

In 2022 the hard-line Mises Caucus took control of the Libertarian Party, promising to gain more votes from disaffected Republicans and conservatives (and annoy a lot of people on the internet, including me). And in 2024 the Libertarian Party Convention featured appearances from people like Donald Trump.

But in a major surprise, the winner of the partys presidential nominating process was not the Mises Caucuss favorite but Chase Oliver, a 38-year-old gay antiwar activist who had left the Democratic Party. I spoke with Mr. Oliver about what libertarianism means to him today, how he plans to fight for independent votes this year and why the Libertarian Party failed 2020s libertarian moment.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity and is part of an Opinion Q. and A. series exploring modern conservatism today, its influence in society and politics and how and why it differs (and doesnt) from the conservative movement that most Americans thought they knew.

Jane Coaston: What does libertarianism mean to you now?

Chase Oliver: Libertarianism to me has always meant the freedom for peaceful people to make their own decisions about their own lives without government interference. Ive always said that if youre living your life and not using force, fraud, coercion, theft or violence, your lifes your life, your bodys your body, your business is your business, and your property is your property; its not mine, and its not the governments.

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Opinion | What Chase Oliver, the 2024 Libertarian Candidate, Believes - The New York Times

Meet Chase Oliver, the presidential nominee you’ve never heard of – NPR

In this file photo from 2022, Libertarian Chase Oliver, then a candidate for Georgia's U.S. Senate seat, listens during a debate in Atlanta, Ga. The Libertarian Party nominated party activist Oliver for president as the party's candidate in the 2024 election, rejecting former President Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. after they each spoke at the party's convention. (AP Photo/Ben Gray, File) Ben Gray/AP hide caption

PORTLAND, Maine For voters who aren't excited about a rematch between President Biden and former President Donald Trump, Libertarian presidential nominee Chase Olivers pitch is strikingly simple.

I'm under the age of 80, I speak in complete sentences, I'm not a convicted felon, he says on the campaign trail. It's a very low bar, but I've managed to clear that.

Oliver is 39, an anti-war activist and the new public face of the Libertarian Party, the countrys third largest political party and one that could influence who wins the White House in November.

Hes not going to win the election, but thats not his only measure of success. Getting the party more media attention, better ballot access and more Libertarian candidates into local office is also on the docket.

There are concrete things we can do to build our party foundation up that don't require us to win the White House this November, Oliver said. And I think a lot of those things, if done correctly, will be seen as a victory in my eyes and a victory in the eyes of libertarians across the country.

In the aftermath of the chaotic Libertarian Party national convention where Oliver eventually secured the partys nomination after seven rounds of voting (winning with 60.6% against 36.6% for none of the above), his campaign schedule has seen travel across the country to boost his own name recognition and that of the party.

Libertarian presidential nominee Chase Oliver wants to grow the party's base of support, but is facing backlash from a reactionary wing of the party over differing social and cultural views. Stephen Fowler, NPR. hide caption

At a low-key campaign kickoff at a brewery east of Atlanta, Oliver told friends, family and running mate Mike ter Maat that he believes the Libertarian Party can reach a younger generation disillusioned with the current status of America.

One of the things Ive heard most is, I became a libertarian when I was a young person, he said. Right now, there are 40 million-plus Gen Z voters who are ready to hear a message outside the two-party system.

As a millennial politician, Chase Oliver has a different energy on the campaign trail than the buttoned-up Biden or meandering Trump, and is quite vocal about his ideas of what liberty means in theory and in practice.

Broadly speaking, liberty means the right and the ability to live your own life as you see fit, in peace, he said. If you're not harming someone with force, fraud, coercion, theft or violence, if you're not doing any of those bad things, your life is your life. Your body is your body. Your business is your business, and your property is your property. It's not mine, and it's not the government's.

In this 2022 photo, Libertarian challenger Chase Oliver, left, and Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., participate in a U.S. Senate debate in Atlanta on Sunday, Oct. 16, 2022. Republican challenger Herschel Walker was invited but did not attend. Oliver's candidacy in the race is largely responsible for forcing the two leading candidates, Warnock and Walker, to a runoff. Ben Gray/AP hide caption

Oftentimes, libertarians are seen as spoiler candidates in close races - including Oliver himself, who ran for Georgias U.S. Senate seat in 2022 and helped force incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock into a runoff against Republican Herschel Walker.

Still, Oliver wants the party to grow up, and grow into something thats appealing to a larger swathe of people.

Its a golden opportunity with Donald Trump versus Joe Biden 2.0, voters are looking for something different, and in particular, they're looking for younger voices to rise up and really start speaking up in our political system, he said.

But the Libertarian Party is having an identity crisis, exacerbated by Olivers own identity.

Oliver is gay, and his support for gay rights including issues that affect transgender people has widened an existing rift within the party.

I don't run as just the gay candidate, but it is certainly a part of my identity, he said. It's something I am not ashamed of being. I'm proud of being who I am and living as my authentic self, and so I'm just hoping to inspire other people to live as their authentic selves.

Chase Oliver is gay, and his support for LGBT rights has led several state parties to oppose his selection as the Libertarian presidential nominee. Stephen Fowler, NPR. hide caption

At the Portland, Maine pride festival earlier this month, Oliver took breaks from waving an American flag bedecked in marijuana leaves and rainbow stripes to hand out campaign literature, practice his stump speech and shoot the breeze on ballot access with a canvasser for a rival campaign.

So Maine and Alaska are two states where people dont have to fear the spoiler effect, he said. One of the reasons why I'm here in Maine and one of the reasons why I want to be going up to Alaska is to let voters know, Hey, you can put me first and don't worry about it, you put your lesser of two evils next.'

But some in the party see Oliver's viewpoints and selection as the nominee as the greater evil.

Oliver is a more traditional libertarian aligned with the Classical Liberal caucus, as it's known. Theres a growing wing of the party the Mises Caucus that has decidedly non-Libertarian views on social and cultural issues.

The Mises Caucus is a more hardline, edgy and sometimes inflammatory take on libertarianism that is more compatible with the Republican Party under Trump which is partly why the former president spoke at the partys convention this year.

Trump suggested the Libertarian Party back his campaign, instead.

You know, only [back me] if you want to win, he said to boos and jeers from the audience. If you want to lose, don't do that. Keep getting your 3% every four years.

Former President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump salutes to the audience after addressing the Libertarian Party National Convention on May 25 in Washington, D.C. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images hide caption

Historically, Libertarian candidates have pulled more voters from Republican candidates, though this time some are explicitly seeking the opposite.

That includes Libertarian Party Chair Angela McArdle, who has said explicitly she endorses Chase Oliver as a vehicle for Trumps victory.

Donald Trump said he's going to put a libertarian in a cabinet position, she said in a recent social media livestream. He came out and spoke to us. He said he's a libertarian. He has basically endorsed us. And so in return, I endorse Chase Oliver as the best way to beat Joe Biden."

She quipped: "Get in, loser. We are stopping Biden.

Oliver remains an optimist, and amidst the vitriol is still convinced theres a pathway to reconciliation over a shared view of liberty.

He dismissed some of the homophobia and opposition to his campaign as loud voices in the Libertarian Party who arent representative of the partys voters as a whole.

Oliver also declined to speak ill of the Mises Caucus or their beliefs.

Honestly, I'm hoping to heal the divide in the party so that we can have more of them involved in this process of this campaign, he said contemplatively. I will continue to extend my hand, even if some people might want to smack it away. And I have to continue that work to try to heal the divide within our party.

So far, four state parties have publicly denounced Olivers nomination to differing degrees: Montana, Colorado, New Hampshire and Idaho. In the swing states that will decide the election, though, and where margins really matter, hes their guy.

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Meet Chase Oliver, the presidential nominee you've never heard of - NPR

It Didn’t Start With Trump…or Libertarians – Reason

When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s, by John Ganz, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 432 pages, $30

When the Clock Broke, by the progressive essayist John Ganz, is a solidly educational and entertaining work of political history. While Ganz winningly doesn't bash you over the head page by page with the larger point he's trying to make, the stories he chooses to tell about the early 1990s are meant to hit home how elements of American political, cultural, economic, and ideological life back then laid the groundwork for Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" (MAGA) movement today.

His title derives from an obscure 1992 speech by a figure most progressive readers have likely never heard of: the libertarian-movement founding father and gadfly Murray Rothbard, an economist who also explored political philosophy and history as he built a case for a totally stateless society.

Most libertarians' amour-propre might be wounded seeing their movement fingered as having meaningfully paved the way for Trumpism. But in May, the management of the Libertarian Party, dominated by a caucus that sees itself in the Rothbardian tradition, invited former President Donald Trump to speak at their presidential nominating convention, where he tried to make the case that their votes rightfully belonged to him. Whether or not it makes philosophical sense, there is something to Ganz's attempts to link anarcho-capitalist Rothbard with big-state caudillo Trump.

MAGA does at times seem to wear the mantle of smash-the-state anarchism in its rage against the modern progressive state, though Trump's regime managed a state pretty much as big and intrusive as its predecessors' (except for some tax and regulation reductions that were GOP orthodoxy long before Trump). And the Rothbardians' state-hatred can make any punctiliousness about the institutions of democracy and peaceful change of power that Trump threatened seem besides the point: If the state is pure rapine and murder, who can get too upset about whether or not power is exchanged politely?

Since most of this book about the tumult of the early 1990s has nothing to do with Rothbard or libertarianism, readers may wonder why they are hearing quite so much about things like what that eccentric economist in Las Vegas thought about Woody Allen's love life, or why his statement underlies the book's title. Ganz's choice here seems to imply that the clock-breaking Rothbard advocated actually happened.

What Rothbard called forin a talk to the John Randolph Club, a mixed gathering of libertarians and reactionarieswas to "break the clock" of "social democracyGreat Societywelfare stateand New Deal." That clock-breaking obviously did not happen. The best one can say for such a thesis is that Rothbard in the last few years of his lifeafter his "paleo" turn led him to reject most of the libertarian movement and ally himself instead with Pat Buchananstyle conservativesbegan dreaming of a Trumpian-styled right-populist champion on the horizon, one who would aggressively and with no politesse punch left-liberalism in the metaphorical nose. But When Obscure Agitators Who Wanted To Break the Clock Sounded Political Notes That Trump Later Magnified and Succeeded With isn't as catchy a title.

Rothbard and the paleos did accurately foresee something looming in American political culture that the libertarian comrades he left behind did not: that political success could be had by linking rhetorical anti-statism (about some things at least) with a gleefully rude appeal to white resentment.

More Trumpy than Rothbard were the other major characters in Ganz's narrative. Certainly, Buchanan's 1992 presidential campaign, detailed here at length, was a dry run for Trump, as were Buchanan's later books obsessed with defending the white European character of America by putting the brakes on immigrationthough Buchanan was more conventionally educated in politics and economics than Trump is.

Another obscure writer whose story Ganz tells, Samuel Francis, presaged Trump in an almost eerily on-the-nose manner. Francis' columns in The Washington Times and Chronicles advocated an American right that was more open to bully-boy violence and even terror, more obsessed with closed borders, more furious at cultural elites, and more willing to use the government as a nationalist tool to prop up a white working-class constituency, reverse progressive cultural change, and tame "woke" corporations (long before that term was in use, of course).

Underlying Ganz's story is a narrative also believed by his ideological enemies on the nationalist right: that Reagan-era deregulation, deindustrialization, tax cuts, loosening of trade restrictions, and union-busting annihilated any chance for America's former middle classes to thrive, drove them insane, and led them to Trump.

But most evidence indicates that Trump voters are driven more by cultural insecurities and resentments than by economic ones. Besides, Ganz's story of American economic life in its focus only on decline is misleading and overly pessimistic. His book gives the impression that from the early 1990s to Trump's rise, an unrelenting economic disaster settled over the American working man. In fact, from 1992 to 2016 per capita gross domestic product more than doubled, as did median personal income; the median hourly wage nearly doubled; and while the homeownership rate declined, it did so by less than 1 percent (and was by 2023 nearly 2 percent above the 1992 rate). In that quarter century, more of the middle class disappeared into upper classes than tumbled into eternal penury, with the percentage of Americans in the lower middle class or poor shrinking by around 8 percent and the percentage in the upper middle class or rich going up by around 10 percent.

This is not to deny that there were individual voters who fell on the bad end of economic change or had other reasons to feel aggrieved. But it does blunt the idea that economic devastation explains Trump.

The bulk of Ganz's book tells the early-1990s stories of Jesse Jackson, Rush Limbaugh, Ross Perot, Bill Clinton, Daryl Gates, Randy Weaver, and John Gotti, drawing more or less convincing or interesting parallels between their activities then and Trumpian modernity. The Jackson chapter, with its focus on Bill Clinton's "Sister Souljah" moment, reminds us that in a pre-woke age even a liberal Democrat could sound tough on racial politics in a way that reads as MAGA now. The Limbaugh chapter highlights one clear aspect of Trump's appeal, as the paladin defending middle Americans who feel disrespected and mocked by those who control their culture and government. (Trump, Ganz demonstrates, is a walking embodiment of early-'90s right-wing talk radio.) The Gates chapter reminds us that in an era of far more prevalent crime than the one Trump portrayed as "American carnage," worries about street crime didn't necessarily have a racial valence, as even many black citizens and leaders wanted tougher policing. (Not that this was the point Ganz was trying to make.)

The Perot chapter shows that many Americans (though not nearly an electoral majority) were already in the early 1990s hungry for a non-status-quo strongman and didn't care exactly how that would play out in policy terms. And the Gotti chapter, at the book's end, is intended to make the reader think of Trump as more organized crime figure than politician, wrapping up the narrative with a small frisson of fear about what might await America next year.

The 1990s are a fresh area for Ganz to make his writerly mark. But if you read Rick Perlstein's work on the American right in the 1970s (an obvious influence on Ganz in both style and intent, though Ganz can't quite pull off Perlstein's effortlessly delightful readability), you'll see there was nothing uniquely germinal in the '90s for the Trump movement. It was a longer time coming.

Racial and ethnic resentment, revolutionary activity on the part of a tiny margin (with a larger audience of fascinated admirers), a conservative America that feels mocked and disrespected by an elite class, fear of clandestine government agencies, worries about the working class losing economic ground: They were not new in the Trump era, nor did they begin in the '90s. They are persistent parts of the modern American experience.

While Ganz wants to blame free markets for destroying widespread American prosperity, as always, the path to consistently creating wealth (and eventually spreading it more evenly) lies in halting government practices that have slowed down wage growth and productivity, particularly barriers to practicing professions and creating businesses and building living spaces. As always, the most state-encrusted parts of the economy, such as health care and higher education, are the most sclerotic and expensive.

As Ganz makes clear, the fascist-adjacent philosophers that his villain Francis doted on, the likes of Georges Sorel and Vilfredo Pareto, tended to analyze all social issues and crises in terms of who has power and who they wield it against. This is the mindset that leads tribalists such as Francis to try to make the American right a more explicitly race-based operation, as well as one eager to use state power to crush its cultural enemies. In a multiracial, multiethnic republicsomething that America will continue to be no matter how many immigration restrictions the right tries to imposethat's bad for peace and prosperity.

Ganz launches his book with the political saga of David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader who became a Louisiana state legislator from 1989 to 1992, a story that hits home how much the author centers racial conflict in the modern American story. Trump is certainly more circumspect on race issues than Duke. But to the extent that he and his epigones make politics more race-conscious, the worse things will get for America. The same goes for race-conscious Democrats.

Despite Rothbard's embrace of right-wing populism in his declining years, the libertarian project he did so much to further for most of his careerthe project of limiting and decentralizing power rather than frantically striving to use it against your perceived enemiesis all the more vital for civic peace and prosperity in the Trump and post-Trump eras.

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It Didn't Start With Trump...or Libertarians - Reason

David Boaz, leading voice of libertarianism, dies at 70 – The Boston Globe

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In practical policy terms, that means small government, low taxes, free enterprise and school choice, among other positions associated with the political right. It also means robust civil liberties, the legalization of same-sex marriage, the repeal of bans on drugs and prostitution, and the rejection of censorship, among stances traditionally taken by the left.

There are only a few rules: You cant hit other people and you cant take their stuff, Mr. Boaz once quipped to The Washington Post. After that, you have to make the important decisions for yourself.

Mr. Boaz said he was drawn to libertarianism during his adolescence in western Kentucky, where he acquired a twang that never fully left him. His mother had studied economics and kept on her bookshelf a copy of Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt, a best-selling 1946 volume that articulated in laymans terms the case for an unfettered free market.

The young Mr. Boaz also consumed works such as the 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, a cult classic among libertarians, and The Conscience of a Conservative (1960) by US Senator Barry Goldwater, the Arizona Republican who lost the 1964 presidential election in a landslide but invigorated the conservative movement.

(In his office at the Cato Institute, Mr. Boaz kept a Goldwater poster and two busts of Adam Smith, the 18th-century Scottish philosopher associated with laissez-faire capitalism.)

By the end of his life, Mr. Boaz was one of the writers to whom people of his persuasion turned for their political moorings. He was the author of books including The Libertarian Mind: A Manifesto for Freedom (2015) and The Politics of Freedom (2008) and edited the volume The Libertarian Reader: Classic and Contemporary Writings from Lao-tzu to Milton Friedman (1997).

Mr. Boaz helped shape the course of libertarian thought from his longtime intellectual home at the Cato Institute, which he joined in 1981.

He quickly scaled the leadership ranks and was widely described as one of the key leaders who helped grow Cato from a scrappy operation into a significant presence in the Washington policy world.

Mr. Boaz contributed prolifically to newspapers including the Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. He drew wide notice with a 1988 commentary published in the Times in which he argued against the criminal laws, immigration regulations, and other policies enforced under the umbrella of what was often described as the war on drugs.

An antiwar song that helped get the Smothers Brothers thrown off network television in the 60s went this way: Were waist deep in the Big Muddy, and the big fool says to push on, Mr. Boaz wrote in the op-ed. Today were waist-deep in another unwinnable war, and many political leaders want to push on. This time its a war on drugs.

In his personal life, said Tom G. Palmer, a longtime friend and colleague at Cato, Mr. Boaz was a teetotaler. He drank no alcohol, smoked no cigarettes, used no pot. His only vice, Palmer said, was Coca-Cola, which he preferred so strongly that he avoided restaurants that offered Pepsi products.

But Mr. Boaz saw anti-drug laws as a violation of civil liberties and the right to privacy. He compared them to Prohibition, which officially banned but failed to actually stop the manufacture and sale of alcohol in the United States from 1920 to 1933. He argued that alcohol and tobacco both legal accounted for many more deaths per year than illegal drugs did.

For libertarians, the growing contemporary movement toward the legalization of marijuana represented a significant victory; the drug is now legal for medicinal purposes in 38 states and the District and for recreational purposes in 24 states and the District.

Mr. Boaz counted another victory in the expansion of rights for same-sex couples most notably the US Supreme Court decision in 2015 finding a constitutional right for gay couples to marry, a cause that he had worked toward for decades.

But mainstream American politics, on both sides of the ideological spectrum, remained, in his view, woefully distant from foundational notions of liberty.

He criticized Democrats for seeking to raise taxes and Republicans for attempting to censor books and television. Liberals who oppose school vouchers, as he interpreted their position, would deny parents the right to send their children to the schools of their choice, while conservatives opposed to gay rights would constrain an individuals right to marry and build a family.

He conceded that the Libertarian Party was not a very successful political party but posited that most Americans support at least some libertarian ideals.

Millions and millions of Americans, if you ask them, What do you think about drug laws; what do you think about Social Security; what do you think about taxes? theyre going to come out in a libertarian direction, he said. But theyre not going to call themselves libertarians, because libertarianism really is the basic theme of America.

David Douglas Boaz was born in Mayfield, Ky., near the Mississippi River, on Aug. 29, 1953. His mother was a homemaker. Mr. Boaz described his father, a circuit court judge, to the Washington Examiner as a Jeffersonian conservative Democrat. Reflecting on his own political evolution, Mr. Boaz said that he was a conservative before he was a libertarian.

Mr. Boaz enrolled at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, where he received a bachelors degree in history in 1975. He landed one of his first jobs with the Young Americans for Freedom, a conservative youth organization, before working as a campaign staffer for Ed Clark, a libertarian who unsuccessfully ran for California governor in 1978 and for US president in 1980.

Besides Miller, of Arlington, Mr. Boazs survivors include a brother and a sister.

Mr. Boaz did not join the Libertarian Party, telling NPR in 2002 that he preferred to think of himself as an independent.

He found stark flaws in the Democratic Party platform and during the 2016 presidential campaign, in which Democrat Hillary Clinton lost to Republican Donald Trump, remarked that among libertarians, the view was that if someone puts a gun to your head and says you have to choose between Clinton and Trump, the correct answer is, take the bullet.

But in that election, Mr. Boaz also condemned Trump for making racial and religious scapegoating so central to his campaign and for vowing to be an American Mussolini, concentrating power in the Trump White House and governing by fiat.

Mr. Boaz expressed deep distress about Trumps efforts to overturn the 2020 election, in which he lost his reelection bid to Democrat Joe Biden, and opposed the appearance of Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, at the Libertarian Partys 2024 national convention in May.

I have friends who say Biden is the biggest spender ever and hes regulating and hes woke and how can anyone consider voting for him over Trump? Mr. Boaz told CNN in April.

And Ill say that one reason is that Biden has not tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power. Thats a very fundamental issue. You can add up all these [other] issues and weigh them. But the big freedom issue that Biden has over Trump, he continued, is that Trump tried to steal an election.

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David Boaz, leading voice of libertarianism, dies at 70 - The Boston Globe