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A judge in Illinois yesterday paved the way for the Libertarian Party (L.P.) to actually get on the ballot in her state after COVID-19 made traditional petitioning to gather signatures for ballot access impossible.

Richard Winger reports in the indispensable Ballot Access News that Judge Rebecca R. Pallmeyer, in an as-yet-unwritten opinion in the case of Libertarian Party of Illinois v. Pritzker, decided that if a third party was on the ballot in 2016 or 2018 for an office, it can be on the ballot again this year with no petition signatures required. For the L.P., this includes the presidential and Senate ballot slots.

For other legislative seats, candidates will only need to collect 10 percent of the normal requirement this year (which will mean 2,500 required instead of 25,000). The previous deadline for the petitions of June 22 has also been pushed back to August 7. The petitions can also be collected via e-signed electronic documents (although "the candidate or party must then print out the results and transport a piece of paper to election officials.")

The IllinoisHerald & Reviewreports that Illinois asked Pallmeyer to approve a proposal that would have required voters "to print out ballot petitions, sign them with a pen and return them to candidates either physically or electronically. The deadline would have remained June 22 and the number of required signatures would have been halved."

L.P. national chair Nicholas Sarwark says no longer needing to collect a huge number of Illinois signatures is a "big story" for the L.P. Actually meeting the original Illinois requirements with COVID-19 would have been an "impossible dream," but with this legal win behind them, he's confident similar arguments, either made inside or outside formal lawsuits, can be expected to win over other judges or state officials.

Winger notes that although Illinois insisted that an August 7 deadline was far too late, "The minor party petition in Illinois was due in early August in all the years 1931 through 1999. Before 1931, it was in September, and it was in October from 1891 through 1929."

The L.P. is facing COVID-19-related ballot access problems in many states, with traditional petitioning methods essentially illegal or impossibly difficult. (Ballotpedia is keeping a running tally of every election law or requirement change that COVID-19 is inspiring.)

The L.P. as of today is on 36 ballots (plus the District of Columbia), and involved in active lawsuits against Maine, Georgia, Maryland, and Connecticut over ballot access issues (though not all of them are strictly about COVID-19-related problems).

The L.P. would prefer to get concessions on impossible signature rules via negotiation, not lawsuits, and its members are in discussions with many states about these issues. However, L.P. Executive Director Daniel Fishman says some states, such as Alabama, have so far ignored their communications.

Still, Fishman says L.P members tend to get generous with donations when ballot access issues are in question. He expects the party will have the resources it needs to fight it out with various states in court if it comes to that, and "we fully intend to pursue legal action everywhere we have to."

If circumstances push the party's selection of its presidential ticket past the currently scheduled late May convention in Austin, Texas, which may have to be canceled or postponed, it could harm the L.P. in certain states, such as New Hampshire, that require the specific presidential candidate to be named on petitions. A decision on holding, postponing, or otherwise rethinking the convention and nomination process is likely to be made on May 2, and Fishman regrets the potential loss of a national C-SPAN audience if an in-person convention is ruined by COVID-19.

Many in the L.P. are eagerly awaiting a possible decision from Rep. Justin Amash (IMich.), who has been hinting at a potential run. Fishman is not afraid that falling short of 50-state ballot access will discourage professional officeholders like Amash from thinking of the L.P. as a potential home for a presidential run.

"I don't think any [such candidate] is going to try to run with the L.P. just because we have 50-state ballot access," Fishman says, though he grants that "is a perk." Rather, he says that "people run with us because we are expressing a philosophy that is neither Right nor Left that appeals to principled politicians who otherwise have no home." The recent history of both major parties have shown them to be shifting masses of personality cults (such as the one dedicated to Trump) and opportunists who respond to shifting winds (such as the Democrats' slow turnaround on gay marriage and marijuana legalization, which the Libertarians have long been for).

Regardless of whether Amash goes Libertarian this year, Fishman thinks it would be great to have a sitting elected congressperson stressing the iniquities of ballot access law, an issue Amash even as a Republican was dedicated to reforming.

Still, the L.P. does intend to fight it out, COVID or no COVID, to once again reach that 50-state prize. A typical letter requesting a secretary of state be reasonable, from Georgia L.P. Chair Ryan Graham, argued that "In light of [COVID-19], we would ask that the Secretary of State understand the effect this crisis and the states of emergency has had on people's willingness to be approached by a stranger, let alone take a pen or a clipboard. Additionally, though all of our petitioners are healthy and would stop petitioning at the first sign of illness, Corona is often spread by people who are asymptomatic[this] seriously threatens our ability to get on the ballot.In light of the states of emergency and in the interest of public health, we would ask that the petition requirement for all political body and independent candidates be waived for the 2020 General Election."

Read the original here:
Libertarian Party Wins COVID-19-Related Lawsuit Over Ballot Access in Illinois - Reason

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There is a debate between two camps Ill charitably call Reasonable Libertarians and Educated Libertarians.* Reasonable libertarians care about being respectable. Educated libertarians are concerned with being correct.

The key differences between the two groups become more evident in a crisis. In fact, the insights described in this article were developed during past crises including 9/11, weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the bank crisis/housing crash, and several mass shootings. This article was written during a global pandemic.

Reasonable libertarians believe that their ideology is a helpful guide, but they gobble up and consume reported facts to arrive at a more scientific conclusion. Educated libertarians are suspicious of first through door facts because experience has taught them that future information which appears long after the drive-by media has moved on undermines and even contradicts the earliest reported facts. To state the difference more bluntly, reasonable libertarians are reading todays New York Times, and educated libertarians are reading history books.

The two groups also look at authority figures differently. The reasonable libertarian wants to seem, well, reasonable, given that all the news seems to point in a given direction. Theyre worried that doctrinaire libertarianism will leave a bad taste in most peoples mouths. The educated libertarian often doesnt enjoy going against the tide, but theyve learned that libertarianism has predictive power to see what the media isnt telling us. Eventually, everyone comes around. When that happens, the educated libertarian wants their friends and family to ask, How did you know? To sum up the difference, as news breaks, the reasonable libertarian is more likely to cite establishment authorities, while the educated libertarian is more likely to be suspicious of them.

Both reasonable libertarians and educated libertarians are capable of nuance, and they each value precision. But the reasonable libertarian is a bit more likely to cite a statistic while the educated libertarian is a bit more likely to lean on logic. And this gets directly to how they analyze a societal challenge.

The reasonable libertarian will say that facts are your friend. They are willing to accept those facts as evidence that government action is valid. But they would insist that the resulting policies be narrowly tailored to make them as libertarian as possible. Their research shapes their response.

The educated libertarian will say that principles are your pal. They would instinctively reject any State interventions as fear-based power plays with damaging consequences. Their libertarian response shapes their research.

I happen to be an educated libertarian. I truly love my reasonable libertarian brothers and sisters. The reasonable libertarians tend to have advanced degrees and tremendous intellects. They are part of the expert class. They use their scholarly skills to make me think. During normal times, I spend a great deal of time absorbing their thinking because its so rational and sound. But in a crisis, in the dark alley of doubt, I want an educated libertarian at my side who wont succumb to the hysterical hype of the moment.

Postscript: The Educated Libertarian is confident that the Reasonable Libertarians will find evidence that the State actually failed after the crisis has passed. As a complement to this editorial, the author recommends Socialists and their Silly Stories by Donald J. Boudreaux.

* Theres also a third libertarian group, not covered here. This group presumes Emmanuels Law never let a crisis go to waste is in effect. Their views often include some degree of conspiracy.

-Jim Babka is the Editor-at-Large for Advocates for Self-Government and the co-creator of the Zero Aggression Project.

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Crisis and Libertarians - The Liberator Online

National Review founder William F. Buckley Jr.Its been raging since Milton Friedman and Bill Buckley duked it out on Firing Line three decades ago.

NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLEBetween Sohrab Ahmaris denunciations of David Frenchism, Adrian Vermeules murkily authoritarian common-good constitutionalism, and Patrick Deneens book-long broadside against the liberal tradition, much ink has been spilled about the emergent ideological fissures within American conservatism. But such debates are hardly new. In fact, theyve been going on for at least three decades.

Back in 1990, William F. Buckley Jr. published a little book called Gratitude. Subtitled Reflections On What We Owe To Our Country, the book was Buckleys attempt to propose a Switzerland-style national-service program for Americas youth, born out of his concern that the younger generation lacked responsibility and patriotism. No doubt fully aware of the controversy that his proposal would ignite among many of his fellow travelers on the political right, Buckley wrote:

The conviction of some conservatives that the state cant have a genuine, non-predatory interest in the cultivation of virtue strikes me as an anarchical accretion in modern conservative thought, something that grew from too humorless a reading of such spirited individualists as Albert Jay Nock and H.L. Mencken. . . . National service, if transformed merely into a state bureaucracy with huge powers of intimidation, is not only to be avoided, but to be fought. But we can open our minds to something other than a statist program, or one that lodges in the state the kind of power conservatives have been taught, at great historical expense, to husband for social uses.

So conscious was Buckley of the ire that his argument would provoke from the libertarian faction of the conservative coalition, he wrote an entire chapter entitled Anticipating the Libertarian Argument. Despite his support for free markets, he begrudgingly acknowledged the limitations of economic liberty. The deep wellsprings of patriotism are fed by other forces, and these do not leave fingerprints in the market, he wrote. They must be investigated by the use of entirely different instruments.

This is similar to a view that many of the more market-skeptical Burkean traditionalists have expressed in contemporary intra-conservative debates: the idea that the state has a vested interest in protecting and even proactively nurturing our civic institutions, placing some aspects of our cultural inheritance beyond the reach of the creative destruction that is inherent to any dynamic liberal society. Its a view that stems from a particular concern for what Buckley called connections between the individual and the community beyond those that relate either to the state or to the marketplace.

As Buckley expected, many prominent libertarians remained unconvinced by his ambitious case for a national-service program. Milton Friedman, the great padrino of classical liberalism and an old friend of Buckleys, was particularly upset by the proposal. In a now-famous Firing Line debate between the two, Friedman thundered: I am absolutely astounded that you, of all people, use the English language the way that you use it. Theres nothing voluntary about your program. . . . My God, whats happened to you?

Though it only lasted for about 25 minutes, the BuckleyFriedman debate crystallized the tug of war between common-good and liberty-minded conservatives that continues to this day. Friedman was the strident individualist, deeply suspicious of central planning and instinctually indignant at the prospect of expanding coercive state power. He denounced Buckleys organismic, collectivist philosophy, and, striking a characteristically Lockean tone, argued that our society is a collection of individuals who join together to achieve their common purposes, and the state is simply a mechanism through which they achieve their common purposes. Buckley, by contrast, argued that a decline in the collective virtue and patriotic duty of a people was a serious problem that could not be solved by private action alone. He shot back at Friedman that society is not a meaningless term, but rather a vehicle which will continue to protect your sons and mine, and that we have therefore an interest in the shape of.

This should all sound familiar to students of the contemporary rights internecine wars. Buckleys proposal of a national-service program that would act as a government-run promoter of good character was anathema to Friedman, who argued that the whole system of private enterprise itself functions as voluntary national service, using the terms correctly. A similar debate is occurring in our current moment: Some contemporary conservative thinkers have argued that, in our increasingly atomized and individualistic culture, the state must be more aggressive in promoting virtue, order, and the common good. Others, echoing Friedman, counter that liberty is the common good, at least insofar as the role of government is concerned.

For conservatives in both 1990 and today, the fundamental question remains the same: In a free society, how far should the state go in exercising its coercive powers to ensure positive outcomes for society? I object to it strenuously, Friedman said of such state action. I think its one of the typical cases of some people who think they know whats good for other people. Buckley, meanwhile, argued that some state action is justified by the necessity for virtuous citizenry.

It is worth noting, of course, that the two men agreed on the vast majority of political issues. Both understood themselves as advocating for freedom, republican democracy, a flourishing civil society, and a virtuous, self-governing people. The fiery nature of their debate was largely borne out of the fact that they understood themselves as being on the same side, and were thus upset at what they saw as the others betrayal of a shared vision.

Now more than ever, conservatives must take care to keep sight of what we share, however many contentious feuds may erupt over what we dont. Buckley and Friedman remain a great model of how to maintain a persistently deep friendship despite vehement disagreements. In the closing seconds of their storied 1990 debate, the two intellectual giants even flashed sheepish grins at each other. When the fight was over, there was a palpable exhalation throughout the television studio though they had been energetic rivals mere minutes before, the two men were companions once again. The lights began to dim, and the Firing Line music signaled the end of another episode.

Okay, Buckley smiled at Friedman. Ill see you in Alta, Milton.

Editors Note:This article originally misidentified the year of Gratitudes publication and the subsequent BuckleyFriedman debate. It has been amended to include the correct year.

Read more here:
The Debate Between Liberty-Minded and Common-Good Conservatives Is Nothing New - National Review

Many are familiar with the long intellectual tradition of progressivism within academia. While progressive ideas may hold true, it is important students are exposed to the full breadth of knowledge academia holds. Without ideological diversity, students lose the critical thinking skills to discern between important ideas. Who I think should be included in the libertarian canon is merely a sample, but sufficient enough for readers to get their feet wet in libertarianism. My methodology is multidisciplinary, ranging from literature, to economics and more. All of the figures in this article are a product of my own research and I have never been formally taught any of them in school, which is why it is doubly important this message is expressed. Besides, one of the main tenets of libertarianism is self-directed education.

Firstly, lets discuss literature. My favorite author, George Orwell was a libertarian socialist. Another author, Ayn Rand, was a libertarian capitalist. Ive read both 1984 and Animal Farm by George Orwell and enjoyed them, thoroughly. Both were a critique of the overreach of government and totalitarianism. Some readers believe Snowball and Napoleon from Animal Farm represent dictators, Stalin and Trotsky.

Orwell also coined such phrases as The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians, and If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. In short this man stood up for and advocated what he believed in: libertarianism.

As for Ayn Rand: I listened to half of her audiobook, Anthem. The book is written in first-person, plural pronouns. Individuality in the book is deemphasized. In fact, individuality is an important theme in her books and her philosophy, which she called Objectivism. Though I disagree with major components of Objectivism it believes altruism is evil I appreciate that it stresses capitalism, individualism and limited government. Ive been learning a lot about Ayn Rands work through her think tanks and through Yaron Brook, businessman and president of the Ayn Rand institute.

Economics is where the vast majority of libertarian theories arises. It goes without saying that I believe students should study the works of F.A. Hayek and Ludwig von Mises. As Hayek says, The argument for liberty is not an argument against organization, which is one of the most powerful tools human reason can employ, but an argument against all exclusive, privileged, monopolistic organization, against the use of coercion to prevent others from doing better. Despite these economists long accolades and contributions to society, my favorite economist is someone else, an obscure economist from Virginia.

I first became a fan of economist Bryan Caplan when I was googling libertarian quizzes, several years ago. From there, I became curious about his work, watching lectures, interviews and debates he participated in. I eventually bought two of his books, The Case Against Education and Open Borders. Caplans statistics were educational and pointed to an idea he called signalling, the idea that educations mere purpose is to convey intelligence, conformity and conscientiousness. In Open Borders, he explained a philosophical thought experiment my favorite about a man named Marvin. I had emailed Dr. Caplan last summer, out of sheer curiosity, about his positions of abolishing the FDA and anti-discrimination laws, ideas hes defended in the past. He answered my emails, thanking me for emailing him, along with a link for senior economics students, using statistics to convey why the general public is not bigoted. Overall, it was an interesting read, but Im not sure if Im ready to repeal anti-discrimination laws just yet, but he definitely deserves to be in the canon.

Overall, this is a sampling of who should be in the libertarian canon. You are free to research, enjoy and discern between opinions. I hope this article helps someone in exploring libertarianism, even if they decide libertarianism is not for them.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by individual writers in the opinion section do not reflect the views and opinions of The Daily Campus or other staff members. Only articles labeled Editorial are the official opinions of The Daily Campus.

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Who should be included in the libertarian canon - UConn Daily Campus

Dont these orders go beyond the Commerce Clause, infringe the Privileges or Immunities Clause, or violate one of the other constitutional provisions Im constantly banging on about? Surely Icant approve such extreme impositions on economic liberty, the right to travel, and just the basic freedom to go about your daily life as you choose so long as you dont get in the way of others freedom to do the same?

Well, thats the rub. As Iexplained during Catos online forum on Coronavirus and the Constitution, in apandemic when we dont know whos infected and infections are often asymptomatic, these sorts of restrictions end up maximizing freedom. The traditional libertarian principle that one has aright to swing ones fists, but that right ends at the tip of someone elses nose, means government can restrict our movements and activities, because were all fistswingers now.

This isnt like seatbelt mandates or soda restrictions, where the government regulates your behavior for our own good, becausesetting aside the issue of publicly borne health care coststhe only person you hurt by not wearing aseatbelt or drinking too much sugar is yourself. With communicable diseases, you violate others rights just by being around them.

The federal government is one of enumerated and thus limited powersat least in theory, if observed largely in the breach since the New Dealbut states have police powers to govern for the public health, safety, welfare, and morals (the last one having fallen away in recent decades). Accordingly, in light of the best epidemiological data we have, state and local executives ordered shut downs to prevent people from being around too many other people and thus spreading the disease.

Interestingly, despite the infamous pictures of springbreakers and St. Patricks Day revelers, these government actions were lagging indicators. Restaurant traffic and airline travel fell off acliff before any official action. Airports are still open, even though the president has total authority to shut them down, as George W. Bush did on 9/11.

People began socialdistancing and wearing masks without any edicts. Sports leagues canceled their seasons without so much as a dont play ball from state umpires.

Not being satisfied with this largescale recognition of the threat we face and compliance with commonsense rules for the new normal, however, governors and mayors have begun to overreach. Although Ihad been telling reporters that nobody was going to get arrested for reading in the park or enjoying wildlife with her family, police were indeed telling people to move along if they were in apublic space, even if they were nowhere near anybody else.

When we got questions at that Cato forum about restrictions on the sale of nonessential products or prohibitions on fishinga right going back to Magna Carta!I thought these were farfetched hypotheticals, but it turns out they were all too real.

Then came the bans on parking at achurch and staying in your car to hear asermon, ahead of Easter Sunday, no less, which led toone of the best district court opinionsIve read in along time, reversing such an order in Louisville. (Full disclosure: Judge Justin Walker is afriend, and Im advising the Mississippi Justice Institute on one of these cases in Greenville, Miss.)

Look, this isnt about religious liberty, or any other constitutional right in particular. Assuming that socialdistancing is required to flatten the curve and fight COVID-19, such rules are fine so long as theyre applied equally everywhere, whether to yoga studios or churches, hackathons or street protests.

But theyre not fine when theyre arbitrarily targeted at some businesses and not others, as if coronavirus spreads more in gun shops than liquor stores. Theyre also not fine when they have nothing to do with socialdistancing, as with the fatwas against drivein liturgy or closing only aisles three and five of abigbox store. Or when tennis courts are closed even if the players wear allwhite masks and promise not to both go to the net at the same time. Or that video of the cop chasing that poor guy going for arun on the beach by his lonesome.

These ridiculous examples of petty tyranny led to mymost viral tweet ever: Angered by citations for being in park with nuclear family, or in car at church, or running on the beach. Or nonessential goods roped off in stores. These things have nothing to do with fighting the virus and everything to do with powerhungry politicians and law enforcement.

Just because significant restrictions on our daytoday lives are warranted doesnt mean its afreeforall for government coercion. To borrow alegal standard from adifferent context, the rules have to be congruent and proportional to the harm being addressed. As amatter of law, judges will give executives awide berth to deal with acrisis, but their enforcement measures still have to pass the constitutional smell test.

More fundamentally, any regulations that dont make common sense, that arent seen as reasonable by most people, are simply not going to be taken as legitimate, and they wont be followed. The American people will decide what restrictions are reasonable, and for how long. Just like they decided when to shut down, they have total authority to decide when to reopen.

Go here to see the original:
The Government Has a Lot More Emergency Powers Than Libertarians Like, but It Still Can't Control Everything - Cato Institute