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AP Government Libertarian Party Period 6

By: Menard Mayo

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AP Government Libertarian Party Period 6 - Video

TALLAHASSEE | Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Adrian Wyllie just completed a statewide tour of 30 brew pubs, discussing issues over craft beer. His campaign accepts Bitcoin. In other words, hes running a vastly different campaign than Republican Gov. Rick Scott and former Gov. Charlie Crist, a Democrat.

But a July poll by Quinnipiac University showed Wyllie with 9 percent of the vote in a three-way race, while Crist got 39 percent and Scott had 37 percent. Virtually no one knows much about Wyllie, but there are a lot of Floridians who arent keen on either of the major party candidates, said Peter Brown, the polls assistant director, at the time.

Wyllie lives in Palm Harbor. He and his wife, Dawn, have been married 22 years and have two sons. He attended Dunedin High School and served in the U.S. Army and Florida National Guard. A small-business owner, Wyllie is president of an IT consulting firm and co-founder of the 1787 Radio Network, which calls itself Floridas Voice of Liberty. Hes also been chairman of the Libertarian Party of Florida.

The News Service of Florida has five questions for Adrian Wyllie:

Youve said if elected, youll fight to repeal Common Core. Talk about why.

Well, I firmly believe in the United States Constitution. And the federal government only has the authority to do those things which are specifically enumerated in the Constitution. Education is not one of them. Education is the realm of the state and local government. And one of the problems I see with the Common Core curriculum is that its coming down from upon high. And parents and teachers and students lose input when that happens.

Right now, its very easy for someone to get their school board member on the phone and tell them their concerns or make suggestions about curriculum. But with Common Core, everything is being flowed down from the national level, and it really takes away the local communitys ability to steer the direction of their local schools. So my objective is to repeal Common Core and to give local school boards more authority over the curriculum and the course of their schools. And also work to ensure that the funding is directed locally to the correct places. Right now were spending a ton of money on education, and its not making it to the classrooms. We need to fix that.

Youre also running against cronyism. But youve only raised about $62,000, while Scott and his supporters are on track to raise $100 million and Crist about half that. Is it possible to be elected governor without contributions from cronies wholl expect a return?

(Laughs.) The reason that you see such a large gap in fund raising between our campaign and the campaigns of Scott and Crist is exactly because of the cronyism. We dont have special interests or large corporations trying to buy favors from us because they know that were not going to be granting those special favors. Were not going to be granting those single-source no-bid contracts at three times the market value. Thats the kind of influence that the big-money campaign financing buys. And were not for sale.

Yes, that is one of my highest priorities: to go after the cronyism, to go after the corruption and the waste and, in a lot of cases, fraud. And thats how we can cut the state budget. We are very pro-business, but were not pro-business in the way that Republicans or Democrats think of it. They think of it as giving special favors to the corporations that came to the table. We think of it as leveling the playing field for everyone and making sure that nobody has any special barriers to entry or hurdles in their way but by the same token, making sure no businesses have any special advantages. Thats the difference in the Libertarian free-market concept.

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Libertarian Adrian Wyllie completes brew pub tour; rants Scott, Crist

Earlier this month the New York Times wondered aloud if the libertarian moment had arrived. A good question, to be sure.

To answer it, though, Times reporter Robert Draper sought out not quite the top libertarian thinkers in the world, but instead those people most easily reached within a ten-minute walk from the Capitol or the Empire State Building.

Draper begins with an ex-MTV personality and proceeds from there. None of the people whose work and writing have shaped the libertarian movement, and who have converted so many people to our point of view, make an appearance. Ask the hordes of young kids who are devouring libertarian classics how many of them were introduced to libertarianism, or even slightly influenced, by the figures on whom the Times chooses to rely. You already know the answer.

The movements major thinkers have rather more intellectual heft behind them, which I suspect is why the Times would prefer to keep them from you. Far better for libertarianism to seem like an ill-focused, adolescent rebellion against authority per se, instead of a serious, intellectually exciting school of thought that challenges every last platitude about the State we were taught in its ubiquitous schools.

Economist and historian Bob Higgs shared my impression of the Times article:

Of course, its easy to ridicule libertarians if you focus exclusively on the lifestyle camp. Easy, too, to accuse them of inconsistency, because in truth these particular libertarians are inconsistent. Easy, too, to minimize their impact by concentrating heavily on conventional electoral politics, as if no other form of societal change were conceivable. Easy, too, to ignore completely the only ones the anarchists who cannot be accused of inconsistency or ridiculed for their impotence as players in the conventional political game, a game for which they have only contempt. Finally, its easy, too and a great deal more interesting for general, clueless readers to focus on the hip libertarians.

As Bob points out, the Time reporter says he finds inconsistency among libertarians, because some want to cut only this much, or abolish only those things. But this is what he gets for focusing on the political class and the Beltway brand of libertarianism. Libertarianism is about as consistent a philosophy as a Times reader is likely to encounter. We oppose aggression, period. That means we oppose the State, which amounts to institutionalized aggression.

We have zero interest in public policy, a term that begs every important moral question. To ask what kind of public policy ought to exist in such-and-such area implicitly assumes (1) that private property is subject to majority vote; (2) that people can be expropriated by the State to whatever degree the State considers necessary in order to carry out the public policy in question; (3) that there exists an institution with moral legitimacy that may direct our physical resources and even our lives in particular ways against our wills, even when we are causing no particular harm to anyone.

Still, I note in passing, political consultants are doing their best to make a quick buck on the rising tide of libertarianism. A fundraising email I receive from time to time urges people to get involved in the political process, since simply educating people (contemptuous, condescending quotation marks in original) isnt enough. Instead, theyre told, its more important to spend their time supporting political candidates who occasionally give a decent speech but who otherwise deny libertarian principles on a routine basis, in the spurious hope that once in office, these candidates will throw off their conventional exteriors and announce themselves as libertarians.

The Times, too, thinks primarily about politics, of all things, when assessing whether the libertarian moment has arrived. The article is fixated on the political class. But why conceive of the question so narrowly? Why should we assess the growth and significance of libertarianism on the basis of political metrics alone?

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Is This the Libertarian Moment?

Few movements in the United States today harbor stranger political ideas than the self-proclaimed libertarians. The Rand Paul school of libertarianism is at least as far outside the mainstream on the right as, say, a rather doctrinaire old-school form of Marxism/Leninism is on the left. The difference is this: The mainstream media isnt telling us that were in the middle of a Marxist/Leninist moment. Leninist politicians arent being touted as serious presidential contenders. And all the media chatter were hearing about a Libertarian moment ignores the very harsh, extreme and sometimes downright ugly ideas that are being disseminated under that banner.

Its great to have allies like Rand Paul working alongside other Americans to defend our right to privacy, restrain the NSA and reduce the military/industrial complexs grip on foreign policy. Its possible to admire their political courage in these areas while at the same time recognize that we may not care for the environment they inhabit.

Theres another reason to challenge libertarians on the extreme nature of their ideology: A number of them seem determined to drive competing ideas out of the free market for ideaswhich isnt very libertarian of them. There has been a concerted effort to marginalize mainstream values and ideas about everything from workers rights to the role of government in national life. So by all means, lets have an open debate. Lets make sure that all ideas, no matter how unusual they may seem, are welcome for debate and consideration. But lets not allow any political movement to become a Trojan horse, one which is allowed to have a moment without ever telling us what it really represents.

Obviously, not every self-proclaimed libertarian believes these ideas, but libertarianism is a space which nurtures them. Can the Republican Party really succeed by embracing this space? Why does the mainstream media treat libertarian ideas as somehow more legitimate than, say, the social welfare principles which guide Great Britain or Sweden?

Here are seven of modern libertarianisms strangest and most extreme notions.

1. Parents should be allowed to let their children starve to death.Were not making this up. From progressive writerMatt Bruenig(viaSean McElweeat Salon) comes this excerpt from libertarian economist Murray Rothbard:

a parent does not have the right to aggress against his children,but also should not have alegal obligationto feed, clothe, or educate his children, since such obligations would entail positive acts coerced upon the parent and depriving the parent of his rights. The parent therefore may not murder or mutilate his child, and the law properly outlaws a parent from doing so.But the parent should have the legal rightnotto feed the child, i.e., to allow it to die.

Note the repetitive use of the word it to describe the child. This linguistic dehumanization of helpless individuals is surprisingly common in libertarian literature. (See Ayn Rand and the young Alan Greenspan for further examples.)

Rothbard is a member of the so-called Austrian School of economics, cofounded the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and is widely admired among libertarians. He continues:

The law, therefore, may not properly compel the parent to feed a child or to keep it alive.(Again, whether or not a parent has amoralrather than a legally enforceable obligation to keep his child alive is a completely separate question.) This rule allows us to solve such vexing questions as: should a parent have the right to allow a deformed baby to die (e.g., by not feeding it)?The answer is of course yes, followinga fortiorifrom the larger right to allowanybaby, whether deformed or not, to die. (Though, as we shall see below, in a libertarian society the existence of a free baby market will bring such neglect down to a minimum.)

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The 7 strangest libertarian ideas

NEW CUMBERLAND - Like his own beliefs about the role of government, John Buckley's Libertarian campaign for the U.S. Senate is small and limited.

But he's betting that his chances of election in November will grow as more people endorse his ideas about shrinking the federal government.

"We take the red, we take the blue - the best of it - marry them together, and we've got Libertarian purple. That's what I'm trying to promote in the campaign," Buckley said during a recent campaign stop in Hancock County. "People who want less government need to have an option on the ballot. I'm the only one representing that option."

John Buckley, Libertarian candidate for the U.S. Senate, takes a break from campaigning last week at the New Cumberland Municipal Building. -- Stephen Huba

Buckley, 61, of Mathias, W.Va., is running as an insurgent, third party candidate in the campaign to fill the Senate seat being vacated by longtime Sen. John D. "Jay" Rockefeller IV.

Whether his campaign is taken seriously by the news media, whether it catches fire with the voters, whether he and other third party candidates get to participate in a televised debate on Oct. 7 - all that remains to be seen.

He admits he's fighting an uphill battle against the Republican candidate, U.S. Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, and the Democratic candidate, Secretary of State Natalie Tennant.

But Buckley takes the political realities of running a statewide campaign in 2014 in stride because he's involved in politics as much for the ideas as for the chances of winning.

"I enjoy the discussion of political ideas and philosophy," he said.

As a Libertarian, Buckley is an unpredictable amalgam of positions on the hot-button issues of the day. He's pro-life, pro-gun rights, pro-gay marriage and pro-marijuana legalization.

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Libertarian seeking Rockefeller's seat visits