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Is there room for another heel in the Illinois governor's race?

Former pro wrestler Jon "The Illustrious One" Stewart says yes and he's looking to put his rivals for the Libertarian Party nomination in a half nelson, then body-slam Bruce Rauner and whoever the Democrats select in the general election.

"Politics is wrestling with suits and ties on," Stewart, 50, told Chicago Inc. "I'm comfortable on a mic, and I'm not afraid to tell the truth."

It isn't The Illustrious One's first run for elected office. Back in 1997, he unsuccessfully ran as a Republican for the state House on the North Shore with a little help from President Donald Trump's counselor Kellyanne Conway.

"I was her first political client," said Stewart, who lives in Deerfield and now runs his family's used-car dealership. "She's probably one of the smartest people I've ever met so I'm not surprised she has got to where she is.

"I'm a little like her we both speak our minds, and sometimes we might speak out of turn, but we are not afraid."

But by Stewart's own admission, the best-known episode of his colorful life came in 2006 when he was mistaken for longtime "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart by a high school in Utah that accidentally booked him for a fundraising gala.

Stewart later took an unsuccessful stab at running for Congress as a Republican, before a falling-out with the late then-Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka led him to join the Libertarians in 2011.

Like Conway, Stewart remains a fan of Trump, who himself has dabbled in the pro-wrestling world. Stewart said he voted for Trump after previously backing Barack Obama because Trump is a necessary "Molotov cocktail thrown into the system in Washington, D.C."

That could cause problems for Stewart at the state Libertarian convention in March 2018, when party members will select their candidate in a caucus and might hold Stewart's failure to support Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson against him.

Two other Libertarian candidates, Matt Scaro and Kash Jackson, have also announced runs, and Illinois Libertarian Party Chairman Lex Green said Stewart "has to overcome" the irritation of party workers who spent $100,000 getting Johnson on the ballot in Illinois.

"But Jon is a good candidate, and there are many pragmatic libertarians who may be able to look past that," Green said.

Stewart is hoping that policies including a Trump-like plan to send 300 federal officers into Chicago's Englewood neighborhood to combat violence and replacing pensions with 401(k)s for new government hires will sway voters.

And he pointed to the 1998 election of former wrestler Jesse "The Body" Ventura as governor of Minnesota, as well as Trump's recent victory, as evidence of an enduring appetite for outsider candidates.

"When I first ran in the North Shore, I think most people were expecting a bleached blond guy in a leather motorcycle vest to show up, so they were surprised to find someone in a shirt who was engaged on the issues," Stewart said.

Though his campaign doesn't have much money, car dealers across the state have vowed to back him, he said, adding that people who underestimate him will be "surprised."

"The state's politics aren't working it's surreal at this point," he said. "How can the Democrats and the Republicans say, 'Give us one more chance?'"

kjanssen@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @kimjnews

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Former pro-wrestler with ties to Kellyanne Conway seeks Illinois governor nod - Chicago Tribune

Im paying too much to be forced to read ideological garbage

After he cut the microphone for the high school valedictorian who criticized the authoritative attitude of administrators, guaranteeing the suppression would go viral, Wyoming Area Secondary Center Principal Jon Pollard told the new graduates to watch what you put on social media.

Its advice that would have been better directed to another young person who showcased her narrowmindedness and disinterest in hearing other perspectives on Twitter.

University of St. Francis student Jennifer Martin tweetedWednesday that her professor (an adjunct, it turns out) gave her an assigned reading on national health care systems from the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank that is widely respected in D.C. for the quality of its research and thought-provoking events (one such event covered here last fall).

Cato also got tens of millions in fundingover the years from Charles and David Koch, the billionaire brothers who are active in Republican politics, and it was co-founded by Charles four decades ago.

This was enough for Martin to declare that her professor had committed an academic sin, and she would get this person in trouble for giving her ideological garbage from a conservative propaganda machine to read. (Never mind the Kochs sued Cato for control of a board seat five years ago, and the settlement protected Catos independence.)

She even pinned it to the top of her Twitter feed.

What followed was a mostly civil back-and-forth between Martin a self-described liberal lover who claims repeatedly she would feel the same about reading a liberal think tank and some names that might be familiar to College Fix readers.

Former Fix writer Nick Pappas quipped: If I had to read the writings of communists, and listen to the words of terrorists, you can read what a few liberatarains [sic] think.

They argued a bit, with Martin saying Cato was not a reputable source and its article omitted data to push the limited govt agenda, and Pappas saying that Martin was setting an unrealistic standard for any article. (Current Fix writer Kayla Schierbecker joined in with a quip, too.)

Group blog Popehat, a great source of First Amendment-related posts, joked that If its any comfort its pretty clear you wont be able to understand [the article] well enough to be corrupted by it.

Various professors and young academics joined in to encourage Martin to broaden her reading to things she disagrees with and formulate thoughtful critiques.

The student kept insisting that political think tanks are not educational, but that she read the Cato article and it confirmed her view that Cato is political propaganda.

Philosophy professor Francis Beckwith of Baylor University (with whom I have a past connection via another think tank, the Discovery Institute) thanked Martin for giving him a good example of the genetic fallacy for his class.

Most responses were simply bemused. Charles Cooke is National Review Onlines editor, by the way, and the Niskanen Center (Will Wilkinson) is a much younger and explicitly activist libertarian think tank.

Before I go any further: The universitys website has no record of this professor Fran Steel that I could find, nor does Google, and USF (a Catholic institution) has not responded to my query as of late Wednesday.

But Martin refers to the professor further down the thread as an adjunct, and this could be an online class. USF is based in suburban Chicago, but it also has a healthcare-focused campus in Albuquerque, which would explain why Martin was offered a reading on healthcare policy.

We werent all sure at The Fix whether this was even a real argument by Martin, or if it was a prank or parody. It fits every stereotype we have of students who refuse to engage with an argument based on some wholly subjective standard (its not responsible, as Martin says).

And we do have trouble believing shed really object to reading an article in, say, a Center for American Progress publication. Heres another Martin tweet that is posted on her front page.

What is encouraging about this thread is Martin keeps engaging with critics even as she says she shouldnt have to engage with Cato because of its (complicated) Koch relationship.

And given everything you hear about trolling and the inability of people of different views to have a civil conversation on anything, this is a pretty damn civil argument.

Lets hope Martin learns from this experience and becomes eager to explain why an argument is wrong, using her own responsible data, and not simply why the source of the argument invalidates it.

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Student tries to get professor in trouble for assigning her libertarian reading - The College Fix

who wants diabetics to die as punishment for their sins of sloth and gluttony, the Trump Administration makes clear that this will be Administration policy too.

It needs to be clearly understood that the American Taliban Christians in the ranks of Trump defenders will support the denial of health care to every person whose illness they deem to be a divine judgment for sin. As court prophets to the rich and powerful, such prolife Christians will tell cancer victims, diabetics, the obese, pregnant women, STD and AIDS victims and a host of others that they are parasites who brought it on themselves and who should be punished with denial of health care because a just and righteous God wills it.

And all the while they pronounce death and judgment on the lebensunwertes leben in the name of a false Jesus, these Christians lie that it is a state social safety net and not their own brutal and vindictive hearts that keeps them from otherwise being as generous to sick as St. Francis of Assisi. Who do they think they are kidding?

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On the heels of my conversation with the Good Catholic Libertarian - Patheos (blog)

The Three Languages of Politics

First released in 2013, and now available as a newly revised Cato ebook and paperback, Arnold Klings The Three Languages of Politics could not be any more timely, as Americans talk past one another in a growing swirl of volume, heat, and disinterest in contrary opinions. An insightful guide on how to lower the barriers coarsening our politics, this isnt a book about one ideology over another. Instead, it is about how we communicate issues and our ideologies, and how language intended to persuade can too often divide. Kling offers a way to see through our rhetorical blinders so that we can incorporate new perspectives and thinking into the important issues we must together share and resolve.

To encourage people everywhere to better understand and appreciate the principles of government that are set forth in Americas founding documents, the Cato Institute published this pocket-size edition.

The Libertarian Mind, by David Boaz, longtime executive vice president of the Cato Institute, is the best available guide to the history, ideas, and growth of libertarianism, and is the ultimate resource for the current, burgeoning libertarian movement. This acclaimed book is now available as a fully unabridged audiobook, ready for immediate downloading, on Audible.com.

Cato University, the Cato Institutes premier educational event of the year, will now be presented as a compact 3-day program several times a year, each with a different focus. This years inaugural program is based on the conviction that economics is a way of thinking, a tool for decision-making, and a basis for action. Discussions by Nobel Laureate Vernon Smith and top scholars and professors from Harvard University, Northwestern University, and the Cato Institute will solidify your expertise on basic economic principles, and then help you apply those tools to todays most pressing issues.

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Cato Institute | Individual Liberty, Free Markets, and Peace

The Libertarian Party of Jasper County recently celebrated its official recognition by the Libertarian Party of Indiana. Though the local party's precise number is small, members are planning events to spread the message of libertarianism, and several initiatives for county politics may be arriving in the near future.

Loren Berenda, a Shelter Insurance Agent and former law enforcement officer, is the local party chairman. He believes that the party first began to find momentum in Jasper County during the 2016 presidential election, if only due to the unpopularity of the major party candidates. Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson collected 620 votes from the county, according to courthouse records.

"I know there's a lot of locals who weren't happy with Gary Johnson," Berenda said. "But it was an alternative to Hillary Clinton. And then, obviously President Trump had a lot of negative publicity that was coming out...A lot of people just pushed Gary Johnson's box as a protest to the other two."

The number of voters doesn't have to reflect the exact number of registered party members, and it did show potential interest in Libertarianism from locals. So, local party members decided to try for official recognition from the state-level party. Read the full story in the print edition or by subscribing to the e-edition.

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Jasper County Libertarian Party gains official recognition - Newsbug.info