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By Libby Palanza | January 10, 2020

On November 8, 2016, Americans were glued to their televisions, watching as the election results rolled in and waiting to find out who their next president would be. No matter which news station they turned on, they undoubtedly heard news anchors going back and forth about Donald Trump and Hillary Clintons respective chances of winning the election. But there was something missing from the coverage that night. Two names were left out of the conversation: Gary Johnson and Jill Stein.

Although 22 percent of Americans do not identify with either of the two major parties, the third-party option is rarely taken seriously. Outsiders have occasionally managed to gain traction on the national stage, but more often than not, they struggle to gain even a percentage point or two in national elections. Since the beginning of the 20th century, only four third-party candidates have managed to win any electoral votes in a presidential election; the last time was in 1968, over 50 years ago.

Instead, third parties typically receive little attention on the national stage. Gary Johnson and Jill Stein, 2016s third-party presidential candidates, only managed to scrape together a combined 6 percent of the popular vote. Furthermore, there are currently only two senators and two representatives from third parties serving in Congress.

Third-party candidates struggle to gain traction in American elections for a variety of reasons, but they are not out of the game altogether. These outsiders work tirelessly to challenge the ways in which people think about the problems facing our country, and they have not given up the hope that one day one of them will sit in the Oval Office.

Logistical Struggles

Ironically, it is during presidential election years that Americans hear the most about third-party candidates, as the media rushes to cover anyone who even vaguely hints at the possibility of a third-party run. These outside bids, however, are usually short lived. In the 2020 cycle, one potential third-party candidate, Starbucks CEO Howard Shultz, entered the race only to drop out about nine months later.

Third-party candidates often find themselves falling behind in the race for the presidency due to logistical struggles. Running a political campaign, especially on the presidential level, is difficult and complicated. In an interview with the HPR, Alice Stewart, the communications director for a number of Republican presidential campaigns, explained that the party system is critical for campaigns because of the infrastructure that [the parties] provide, the network of people, and the resources If you are running in an independent or a third-party campaign the many years of built up infrastructure is just not there.

The two major parties have established such significant campaign infrastructures and funding bases that it is nearly impossible for a third party to be competitive in a national election. Stewart explained that all the money in the world is still not going to help you with the logistical challenges that any candidate will have to do what needs to be done to run for president.

Another significant barrier to success for third-party candidates that Stewart identified was ballot access. One of the biggest challenges that these third-party candidates face is in regards to ballot access, which is so hard. It is a state-by-state process Sometimes it is about money, sometimes it is about polling, sometimes it is about getting names on a list to support you. These third-party candidates rarely make it on the ballot in all 50 states It is impossible to get the delegates if you are not even on the ballot.

Searching for Acceptance

Despite their electoral shortcomings, third parties provide a space for those who have alternative worldviews to collaborate and align themselves with like-minded individuals. Marc Mercier, current chairman of the Massachusetts Libertarain Party and former Libertarian candidate for the Massachusetts Governors Council, recounted his own journey towards becoming a Libertarian in an interview with the HPR. For a long time I was always part of one of the major parties, one or the other, and I probably joined the Libertarian party maybe five years ago. I was just tired of interacting with people who were not aligned with my vision of how society should be, explained Mercier. At some point I just decided that if I was going to continue to be politically involved, I was going to have to be politically committed.

Although third parties can be a great space for those with unique worldviews to find community, there are many people who have a hard time taking them seriously simply because they lie outside of the mainstream. Americans are so used to the two-party system that it becomes difficult for many to accept an alternative.

Mercier explained that the biggest challenge [for third parties] is that as an instinct or by nature, humans are not accepting of anything different or out of the ordinary because it introduces uncertainty into their life. Any third party who expresses views that are not of the broad accepted norm on a physiological level, on an emotional level, their message will be rejected. Thus, simply because third-party candidates do not identify themselves within the established two-party system, human psychology hinders their ability to win elections.

An Ideological Mission

According to Mercier, running as a third-party candidate is less about winning the race than getting out the partys message and representing its principles. I went into [my campaign for the Governors Council] with eyes wide, knowing that it was not very likely that I was going to convert voters to my view and win that race, he recounted. The purpose of my race was to spread the message of Libertarianism and to offer an alternative point of view and to best represent the principles so that the people who heard them might consider an alternative sometime down the road. Although third-party candidates do not currently have a realistic chance of winning major elections, the mere act of running helps the partys message reach audiences that they otherwise might not.

In an interview with the HPR, John Aldrich, a professor of political science at Pfizer-Pratt University, identified messaging as one of the major goals of third-party campaigns. He explained that if third-party candidates keep plugging away, they will lose over and over again, but their message will get across and they will slowly build support, and in the long run [they will] be able to win. And for that, you need people who are effective campaigners who do not mind losing and never holding office.

He explained that third parties efforts are focused on affecting policy on the part of one or both of the current major parties or on being on the right side of history and eventually being able to win office. While Democrats and Republicans work towards short-term goals, third parties are focused on making gains both ideologically and practically in the long term.

Paths to Victory

Although the electoral landscape often seems bleak, third parties have not yet given up hope, and Mercier discussed strategies that would help the Libertarian party to get ahead politically. One idea for immediate results is to get somebody that people already trust and are already familiar with, somebody who does not present all that much uncertainty because their views are already known And what I think that would do is get people comfortable with the candidate to the point where they can ignore the unfamiliarity of the party and just focus on that one candidate so that they trust that person rather [than] the party they are affiliated with.

But this is not the only way for the Libertarian party, or any third party, to secure a foothold. By running candidates in local elections, third parties are able to build a strong foundation of support. Mercier explained that in local elections, voters are more focused on who the person on the ballot is than what letter is next to their name.

Mercier said that the Libertarian party encourages candidates to run for the local level offices so that you are running and winning based off of your personal relationships in your community, and people trust you for who you are And then the fact that you happen to be Libertarian might just be an introduction to them to that party and their comfort level allows them to be more accepting of what you have to say from the Libertarian perspective. By using those personal relationships as a foundation, third-party candidates are able to gain the traction they need to win on a small scale. If enough third-party candidates are able to do this, then there is potential for them to seek office at a higher level and actually have a chance of succeeding in the future.

Political Outsiders in America

Third-party candidates are some of the countrys most visible political outsiders. Almost everyone knows that they exist, but they face a variety of electoral challenges from a lack of party infrastructure and a struggle for ballot access to a need to battle the electorates aversion to someone outside the accepted two-party system. Any effort by a third-party candidate to run for a major office is almost inevitably futile at this point in time. This is not to say, however, that the efforts of these outside parties are without merit.

Winning is not their main goal, at least for the time being. Spreading their messaging, raising awareness about issues that are important to them, and affecting the policies adopted by the two major parties are all far more significant and realistic goals that third parties aim to achieve. By slowly acclimating the American public to their views and their existence, they hope to one day break into the system and succeed electorally. Third parties are playing the long game.

Continue reading here:
The Third Party Mystery - Harvard Political Review

The Libertarian Party fired shots at former 2016 LP Presidential candidate Austin Petersen on Twitter on Friday, accusing him of abandoning the principles of liberty.

The insults came as a response to Austin posting on Twitter about how he wished President Trump would keep his campaign promise of bringing U.S. troops home from the Middle East. Petersen was making reference to President Trumps decision to deploy more troops to the region after an American led air-strike killed Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani, although U.S. officials say the decision to deploy more troops wasnt a result of the strike, according to NBC News.

I know its not PC to admit, but I dont give a shit about the Middle East or what happens there and wish the president would keep his promise and bring the troops home, Petersen said on Twitter late Thursday night.

The LP National Twitter account decided to take this opportunity to troll Petersen in the thread due to his decision to leave the Libertarian Party before running for Senate in his home state of Missouri in 2018.

Well respectfully have to disagree with the gentleman that left us for electability, yet placed a distant third in his primary, losing to a man who takes conservative populism to radical new heights. Should you ever wish to work towards genuine liberty again, well be around, the LP tweeted early Friday morning.

The LP also accused Petersen of running fringe outsider campaigns in a party that has gone so far populist that liberty is no longer on the radar.

As a supporter of Austins since his 2016 Presidential campaign, I can tell you that the LPs attempt to shame Austin for his decision to leave the party (which he made after calling over 4,000 of his supporters) is nothing more than an example of the same disgusting tribalism that we find in both major political parties.

I have begun to believe that the Libertarian Party as a whole couldnt care less about truly trying to advance the principles of individual liberty and limited government. Instead, they want to bicker about government overreach and the problems big government creates while shaming other liberty-minded folks both inside and outside of the LP because he or she doesnt fall in line with every single plank of the party platform.

I say this as someone who made the decision to register as a big L Libertarian in November of 2018 instead of remaining a small l libertarian unaffiliated with any political party as I had been for the majority of my adult life. I must say this constant childish behavior and attempted browbeating of anyone who decides to leave the LP while still remaining true to the principles of liberty has me heavily considering becoming a small l libertarian once again. As Austin pointed out on Twitter, the party seems to be just as corrupt as the two major parties without any of the recognition.

I cant stand by and watch a party run by clowns attempt to tarnish the good name of a man who does far more to advocate for liberty on a daily basis than the Libertarian Party as a whole has done for years. I have no malice in my heart toward the LP or any of its members, but I will not allow anyone to try to jab at a man whom I personally believe is the best person to come out of the Libertarian Party since Former Congressman Ron Paul (who was not elected to serve until he ran as a Republican).

Instead of bickering about government waste and corruption, Austin works every weekday to use his platform as a commentator on the KWOS Morning Show in Jefferson City Missouri, to make the case for limited government to the people of his state and around the world. That doesnt count all the debates and speaking engagements he has participated in around the country and the fine people he has trained and given platforms by founding The Libertarian Republic.

On a personal note, Austin has mentored and trained me, a man born with cerebral palsy and given me a pathway to work to achieve my lifes dream of becoming a successful member of the media so that I can work and get out of the clutches of the Welfare State instead of remaining tangled in its webs due to circumstances I had no control over. What in the name of Patrick Henry could be more libertarian than that?

Whoever is in charge of the National LPs Twitter account and public relations shouldnt throw rocks when they live in a glass house. The LP seems to chase away and shame every single candidate/ former candidate who has a gift for making the libertarian message appealing to the average voter. Instead, they favor folks like Gary What is Aleppo Johnson and his gun-grabbing buddy Bill Weld, naked guys dancing on stage at conventions, and shaming other members of their party who believe abortion kills an innocent life.

The Libertarian Party as a whole will never be taken seriously by the rest of the nation until its members practice a bit of self-governance and civility to others both inside and outside of the LP.

A party that would shame one of its former members simply for listening to his supporters and the voters of his state while still walking the path of freedom is not capable of governance, and has no room to speak about corruption within the GOP and Democratic Parties when it is guilty of the same corruption and tribalism.

Austin is one of the boldest voices we have in the modern liberty movement. I will gladly stand arm in arm with him any day of the week. I am grateful to call him my boss and mentor, but even more so, one of my greatest friends.

I want to encourage all friends of liberty, regardless of the party to which you belong, to stop the fighting amongst ourselves. A house divided cannot stand, and if we are to defend the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity, we must stand together or all our efforts will have been in vain.

Read this article:
The Libertarian Party's Attack on Austin Petersen Shows Why They Lose - The Libertarian Republic

Former Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee launched his Libertarian bid for the presidency Wednesday, calling for the country to have an active, opened-minded discussion about criminal justice reform that includes the decriminalization of drugs.

If he wants to learn more about how to get it done, he might want to take a trip to his home state this afternoon.

Thats because a group of lawmakers and advocates are hosting a conversation at the State House with Dr. Joo Goulo, who is known as Portugals drug czar. Goulo helped craft his countrys plan to decriminalize all drugs and administer administrative penalties in most possession cases.

The Portuguese policy has been widely hailed as a success, helping to curb drug use and overdoses in that country.

Chafee stopped short of saying whether he was referring to all substances, telling Marijuana Moment that it starts with a broad conversation and getting everybody involved - law enforcement, health officials, and thats the process.

And there are other models around the world, whether its Portugal or Uruguay or Holland, and we can learn from them, Chafee said.

Todays discussion at the State House library is hosted by Representative Scott Slater, the Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) on Opioids and Overdose, the Substance Use Policy, Education, & Recovery Political Action Committee, and the Family Task Force.

Governor Gina Raimondo is widely expected to include in her budget next week a proposal to legalize the recreational use of marijuana, but House and Senate leaders have said they will not support it.

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More here:
If Chafee wants to decriminalize drugs, he should take a trip to R.I. today - The Boston Globe

9. State Capacity Libertarians are more likely to have positive views of infrastructure, science subsidies, nuclear power (requires state support!), and space programs than are mainstream libertarians or modern Democrats. Modern Democrats often claim to favor those items, and sincerely in my view, but de facto they are very willing to sacrifice them for redistribution, egalitarian and fairness concerns, mood affiliation, and serving traditional Democratic interest groups. For instance, modern Democrats have run New York for some time now, and theyve done a terrible job building and fixing things. Nor are Democrats doing much to boost nuclear power as a partial solution to climate change, if anything the contrary.

10. State Capacity Libertarianism has no problem endorsing higher quality government and governance, whereas traditional libertarianism is more likely to embrace or at least be wishy-washy toward small, corrupt regimes, due to some of the residual liberties they leave behind.

11. State Capacity Libertarianism is not non-interventionist in foreign policy, as it believes in strong alliances with other relatively free nations, when feasible. That said, the usual libertarian problems of intervention because government makes a lot of mistakes bar still should be applied to specific military actions. But the alliances can be hugely beneficial, as illustrated by much of 20th century foreign policy and today much of Asia which still relies on Pax Americana.

marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/01/what-libertarianism-has-become-and-will-become-state-capacity-libertarianism.html

More:
What libertarianism has become and will become State Capacity Libertarianism - Hot Air

How could we create a digital equivalent to cash, somethingthat could be created but not forged, exchanged but not copied, and whichreveals nothing about itsusers?

Why would we need this digital currency?

Dr. Finn Brunton, Associate Professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at NYU, discussed his new book Digital Cash: The Unknown History of the Anarchists, Utopians, and Technologists Who Created Cryptocurrency on November 19th, 2019 with CITPs Technology and Society Reading Group. Footage aired on C-SPANs Book TV.

Through a series of how and why questions, Finn constructed a fascinating and critical narrative around the history of digital currencies and the emergence of modern cryptocurrency. How much currency should be produced? How do we know if currency is real? Why gold, relative to digital gold currencies (DGCs)?

Beginning with the $20 bill, as analog beautiful objects of government technology made possible in a digital era by the rose engine lathe, and ending with the first ever tweet about Bitcoin (Running bitcoin), posted by Hal Finney (@halfin), Finn described the unexpected sociotechnical origins of Bitcoin and blockchain. His talk, and the book on which it was based, identify seminal articles (e.g. The Computers of Tomorrow by Martin Greenberger) and discussion communities (e.g. Extropy), key figures from David Chaum and Paul Armer to Tim May and Phil Salin, and digital currencies, from EFTs to hashcash, that served as stepping stones toward contemporary cryptocurrencies. Yet, Finn also importantly acknowledged that while names and dates are memorable and compelling in constructing a timeline and pulling continuous threads through this history, there are n+1 ideas about and versions of digital currency.

In this sense, Finn provides, more so than an attempt at acomprehensive chronology, a sense of the recurring objectives that motivatedthe evolution of cryptocurrency: trust in value, exchangeability, multiplicity,reproducibility, decentralization, abundance, scalability, sovereignty,verification, authenticity, fungibility, and transparency. In addition to thesemany, often fundamentally conflicting, values and objectives, very realconcerns about privacy, surveillance, coercion, power asymmetries, and libertarianfears of crises and the coming emergencies led individuals and communities todevelop their own digital currencies. Finn also identified some of theproblematic narratives around digital currencies, such as the assertion that cryptocurrencyis as real as math, and real challenges that have stymied and limited variousexperimental currencies.

Many of these challenges were highly apparent as Finndescribed the rise and fall of DGCs. The strange union between futuristicdigital currency and precious metals, particularly gold in its magnificent,stupid honesty, emerged in many parallel libertarian communities in the US andaround the world, as digital and analog receipts of ownership in preciousmetals were distributed to document remote stored value in a decentralizedsystem. Finn explained how these DGCs (e.g. eLiberty Dollars or The SecondAmendment Dollar) challenged the power and authority of state currencies andmodern banking and how the abrupt seizure of precious metal stockpiles, asevidence, by Federal Marshals foreshadowed some of the inaccessibility problemsof cryptocurrency, as well as the relationships between illicit activities anddigital currencies which now exist on the Silk Road.

Finn ended the discussion answering audience questions,including about power dynamics and the libertarian origins of cryptocurrency.His assertion that money and crisis are linked, not only in the economy ofemergency preparedness, but also in key points of progress toward the futureof money is compelling in identifying how digital currencies fit into thishistorical pattern in a larger monetary history.

See the rest here:
The Unknown History of Digital Cash - Freedom to Tinker