Archive for the ‘Libertarian’ Category

Based Stickman Shows Libertarians That Bold Grassroots Leadership Is Necessary – The Liberty Conservative

In a time where naked parasitic leftism is running wild, libertarians are faced with a choice. They can either stand and fight against this menace, or wave the white flag of surrender. This seems like it would be an easy choice for any lover of liberty, but if you listen to certain voices within the movement, cowardice is the most noble of options.

The left-wing combatants claim to be anarchists, and yet are furthering the state, commentator Dan Sanchez wrote in a FEE column. The right-wing combatants claim to be for liberty, and yet are putting liberty in danger. If these conflicts continue to escalate, no matter which side wins, liberty will lose.

Sanchezs commentary is indicative of the academic, elitist, ivory tower mindset that plagues the libertarian movement. This mindset fosters passive inaction and stagnation. It has gotten especially pernicious since Ron Paul retired from public life. Isolated in his bubble, Sanchez and others like him have forgotten what the people need right now. They dont need a piddling crybaby making excuses for inaction; they want a brash, decisive leader. Political street fights are where these leaders can arise.

One ascendant libertarian leader has already emerged from these battles. Kyle Chapman a.k.a. Based Stickman is a Ron Paul-loving libertarian. He showed his love for liberty by slamming a stick into the skull of a communist thug amidst a chaotic violent mob, and is now a beloved national icon as a result. He is working closely with Liberty Hangout, with whom he recorded a podcast last month. He has also started a legal guild with Libertarian Party iconoclast Augustus Invictus to protect the rights of patriots against ANTIFA and their allies. Stickman has big things prepared, and he is emboldening people to stand up for their rights when it matters most.

While Stickman makes power moves, other libertarians are more tolerant of stagnation. They are not only intent to sideline themselves, but also want to inspire young minds to join them in their craven inaction. A textbook example of stagnatarianism comes from the Chief Executive Officer of Students For Liberty, Wolf von Laer. At his organizations international conference this year, he repeatedly told the impressionable audience, More Milton, Less Milo. This incredibly dull catchphrase did not even come close to going viral. It is a slogan that gives a glimpse into the entire pathology of the phony Beltway astroturfed libertarian movement.

Although he is still laying low after a nasty media hit job tried to derail his career, Milo Yiannopoulos is relevant, hip, interesting, charismatic, funny and controversial. He has the skill set desperately needed to grow a right-leaning political movement with young people in this day and age. On the other hand, Milton Friedman peaked in relevance over three decades ago, served as a regime economist, supported all kinds of government interventions into the private economy, and there is not a kid on Earth who could give a damn about what his supposed accomplishments are.

Perhaps Wolfs lousy advice was disingenuous blather meant to pigeonhole youthful activists to keep them from becoming too dangerous for his corporate masters. That seems to be the usual modus operandi of Koch-funded organizations, but I digress. Thankfully, a charlatan like von Laer never got the ear of Stickman when he was college-aged. Otherwise, he would have likely wallowed in isolated intellectual bubbleslistening to stuffed shirt bores pontificate endlessly and eventually been swallowed up by the establishment like so many other well-intentioned libertarians have throughout the years.

Having not been properly indoctrinated, Stickman failed to understand that it was improper for him to do anything but sit on your hands in the face of virulent leftism. He didnt realize that the big money donors come first, and fighting for freedom comes second. He simply acted like a man, and heeded the call to stand up for his rights. By inflicting righteous violence onto the skull of a lowly communist, Stickman emboldened many others to stand with him as well. Now, he is branching out with Alt Knight chapters across the nation. He is sparking a revolution in the hearts and minds of the American people.

Its worth noting that Stickman has accomplished more for the cause of liberty through his bold leadership in three weeks than Jeffrey Tucker has for three decades as a booze-addled scribbler. While CATO Institute analysts produce white papers that will sit on shelves and collect dust for eons, Stickman rolls up his sleeves and makes an immediate impact. His in-your-face leadership style exposes the true colors of leftists, who regularly attack women and the elderly while hiding behind masks. Stickmans leadership also exposes weak, cosmopolitan libertarians for what they are. By sitting on the sidelines, they pretend as if they are above the fray; but really, they are just cowards.

Libertarians needs to realize that the public demands strong leadership. They can whine and complain about that reality, or they can work to fill that void. Some libertarians are satisfied with being uninfluential but self-important outsiders accomplishing jack squat in actual terms. Others have had enough of tyranny and are willing to fight back. This is the line in the sand. It is time for libertarians to become more realistic, and realize that Jeffrey Tuckers idea to float away to a beautiful anarchy is the liquor-soaked delusion of a washed up old sophist. To regain lost liberties, we all must get our hands dirty. That may very well mean heading out to the streets and taking on the enemy face-to-face.

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Based Stickman Shows Libertarians That Bold Grassroots Leadership Is Necessary - The Liberty Conservative

Wisconsin Libertarians gather in Northwoods – Stevens Point Journal

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Libertarian Gary Johnson was his party's presidential candidate last fall.(Photo: Gina Ferazzi, TNS)

MADISON The Democrats were sent into the wilderness after the November elections.

The Libertarians can relate. Theyve been there since their founding in 1971.

But thats changing because of demographics, according to Nicholas Sarwark, the chairman of the national party who will be in northern Wisconsin this weekend for the state partys annual convention.

The Democrats and Republicans are just shrinking and dying, he said in an interview.

My top goal for 2018 is to have every disgruntled voter who is tired of both parties lying to themhave an option on the ballot.

Ideas that Libertarians have long embraced such as allowing same-sex marriage and legalizing marijuana now enjoy mainstream support, he said.

The partys presidential nominee, Gary Johnson, received more support than any Libertarian presidential candidate before him. That said, Johnson still took only a little more than 3% of the vote.

Its getting better, but its slow, said Sarwark, adding it may take 20 years to elect a Libertarian as president.

The Wisconsin Libertarian Party convention began Friday and runsthrough Sunday at Treehaven Education and Conference Center in Tomahawk.

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Wisconsin Libertarians gather in Northwoods - Stevens Point Journal

The Chief’s Thoughts: Cutting Through the Nonsense on Borders – Being Libertarian

I am an open-borders libertarian.

That is bound to trigger a substantial amount of readers, because upon reading that statement various preconceptions may arise in their minds. I am a cuck who wants to see our values be raped by foreigners; and I am a left-libertarian who naively believe in tolerance when authoritarian Muslims will never reciprocate.

Except, neither of these things are true.

On the contrary, I firmly identify myself with right-libertarian values. Murray RothbardsThe Ethics of Libertyis what I consider to be a libertarian bible of sorts, and I subscribe to Hans-Hermann Hoppes argumentation ethics in principle. I regard Western values as vastly and unquestionably superior to anything else available, and I regard Islamism and Islamic law as one of the greatest threats to human freedom.

However, I regard several other things as greater threats to human freedom than even Islamism and Islamic law. Full disclosure: I am a South African. South Africans do not have the luxury of debating the petty differences between the major parties who propose to increase taxes. In various parts of Africa, the choice is between Ultimate Marxism, Advanced Marxism, and Lite Marxism. Classical liberalism or even American liberal Keynesianism are not even on the menu. And if there was any doubt: This Marxism is the very same Marxism which was thought up, developed, and exported from Europe. Marxism is a Western ideology. And Marxism, not Islamism, is what is actively leading to South Africas imminent economic and social collapse.

Socialism and all its branches and associates, which in the United States and Europe, arecomingfrom within, is the biggest threat to the continued survival of Western civilization and Western freedom. Subtract mass immigration or refugee intakes, and this problem remains unchanged. In Europe, especially, it does not even matter who immigrants vote for: Socialism has been part of the European politicalfabric for centuries to greater and lesser extents.

Closed-borders libertarians propose to focus much time and effort on a minor itch when there is a massive, gushing wound which deserves more attention. But we oppose both! is the inevitable answer except, this is largely false. Individuals like Donald Trump, Geert Wilders, and Marine Le Pen, despite their blatantly-obvious socialist, or welfarist at least, credentials, received widespread moral, if not practical support from closed-borders libertarians. That is to say, these individuals purposefully made the gushing wound bigger in order to try and solve the itch. This, in America, while they were actively condemning Rand Paul and Gary Johnson for relatively superficial (but not unimportant) imperfections.

Do not get me wrong: I agreewholeheartedlythat refugees should not benefit in the slightest from welfare. In fact, I dont think anyone should benefit from welfare. I have in discussions proposed that instead of telling individuals fleeing for their lives to fuck off, perhaps support very strict legal barriers to them receiving welfare. But in these discussions, my opponents inevitably move on to absurd positions like They use our roads! Taxpayers not refugees paid for those roads! At this stage, it becomes astoundingly clear that there is a reasonableness deficit, for even when I point out that the absolute poor citizens of a nation also often do not contribute tax revenue to the maintenance of roads, they are still, according to closed-borders libertarians, entitled to use the roads. It is obvious from that stage onward that the concern is not about the ethical principles of private property, whereby those who do not contribute must not benefit, but rather about a primitive nativism which is wholly unrelated to libertarian theory.

All this is to say that we need to ensure that we are not talking past each other on the debate about borders. Fundamentally hopefully both open and closed-borders libertarians are on the same side, and differences are to be expected. The problem arises when malicious strawmen are erected whereby open-borders libertarians are accused of enabling communism, supporting the death of Western civilization, or, the most common strawman, that we oppose any and all kinds of vetting. Open-borders libertarians almost unanimously agree on what Austin Petersen would call the Ellis Island model of immigration: a criminal background check and a health check. What open-borders libertarians do oppose, however, is when government has the audacity as a fundamentally anti-economic institution, to tell an immigrant that their skills arent needed or some other lame reason which government has no right to rely upon.

The borders debate has led to much unnecessary tension in the libertarian movement, but has led to necessary debate. My concern is that both sides are talking past each other and, if the strawmen can be set aside, we might be able to discuss the topic with some more understanding. We do, after all, believe in the very same principles.

This post was written by Martin van Staden.

The views expressed here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect our views and opinions.

Martin van Staden is the Editor in Chief of Being Libertarian, the Legal Researcher at the Free Market Foundation, a co-founder of the RationalStandard.com, and the Southern African Academic Programs Director at Students For Liberty. The views expressed in his articles are his own and do not represent any of the aforementioned organizations.

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The Chief's Thoughts: Cutting Through the Nonsense on Borders - Being Libertarian

A Poll to Check if You Believe in ‘Libertarian Capitalism’ – People’s Pundit Daily

The true test of libertarianism is Professor Bryan Caplansfamous 64-question quiz. Though if you dont have time for that many questions, theres also a very simple circle test.

Now we havea new pollfor those of us that are tempted by such things. I dont know who put it together, but I was intrigued by the four-axis approach.

8values is, in essence, a political quiz that attempts to assign percentages for eight different political values.You will be presented by a statement, and then you will answer with your opinion on the statement, from Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree, with each answer slightly affecting your scores. At the end of the quiz, your answers will be compared to the maximum possible for each value, thus giving you a percentage. In addition to matching you to the eight values, the quiz also attempts to match you to a political ideology.

But before getting to results, I feel obliged to nitpick about the methodology.

Some of the questions dont make sense. Or, to be more specific, ones answers might be radically different depending on how the question is interpreted.

For instance, statists would probably answer strongly agree to this question about education, based on the assumption that government should spend more money, regardless ofdismal results.

I wound up picking neutral because I wantuniversal school choice, which would producebetter-than-adequate education, but I also dont like the notion that people have rights that are predicated on access to other peoples money.

I also didnt like this question on foreign policy. I like peaceful relations with other nations, but in some cases peace is more likely if the United States is strong. In other words, Reagans position of peace through strength.

Last but not least, I also answered neutral to this question about surveillance. I dont want pervasive spying by government on ordinary people (money laundering laws, for instance), but I also dont object to effective monitoring with proper judicial oversight of bad people.

Anyhow, with those caveats out of the way, here are my results.

The good news is that Im in the Libertarian Capitalism category. Though Im a bit chagrined that I only got 72.4% on the wealth-equality axis. Though maybe equality in this case captures my support for the rule of law and my opposition to cronyism. In which case Im happy.

I dont have any strong reaction to my scores on the might-peace and tradition-progress axes. But Im disappointed to only have 70 percent on the liberty-authority axis.

For what its worth, my overall score was the same in this quiz as it was forthe definitive political orientation test.

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A Poll to Check if You Believe in 'Libertarian Capitalism' - People's Pundit Daily

Libertarian State Convention this weekend | News | WSAU – WSAU

Thursday, April 20, 2017 10:58 p.m. CDT

Libertarian Party logo.

TOMAHAWK, WI (WSAU-WXPR) -- The Libertarian Party of Wisconsin is bringing their convention and liberty retreat this weekend to Treehaven near Tomahawk.

Founded in 1971, Libertarians run on the platform that the government should not interfere in any personal, family, or business decision.

Phillip Anderson ran in last year's U.S. Senate race and is the interim Wisconsin party Director. He believes Libertarians have positioned themselves for the future.

Anderson said, "We had a lot of people that joined the Libertarian Party. We had a lot of people who identified as Libertarians already but hadn't been engaged in politics. In particular, because of the two candidates that were offered up by Republicans and Democrats, was an opportunity to open up people's eyes to see what's wrong with government, what's wrong with the two big parties. We were able to do that relatively successfully, grow our ranks and increase our visibility."

Anderson says the party is being seen more frequently on the ballot.

"Not because the ballot access laws have changed, that's the unfortunate part, but we're getting better organized and people are more willing to have more choices on the ballot. As I was campaining for U.S. Senate, there were a lot people who identified as Republicans and Democrats but were happy to sign my petition because they felt that regardless of how they voted, they wanted more choices for everybody on the ballot."

Anderson says they will be electing new state officers and representatives this weekend for the state's Congressional districts. The convention is Friday evening through Sunday.

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Libertarian State Convention this weekend | News | WSAU - WSAU