In 2014, when I would hear the word libertarian, I would think about freedom, free migration, and small government. In 2024, when I hear libertarian, I think about bigotry, racism, and collectivism.
I'm not bothered by the anti-woke stuff in the modern LP - it's high time society realign from validation back towards simple tolerance. I am bothered by how rather than being an adult reigning in excessive radicalism, some local parties look like just another radicalism - internet trolls pretending they're a party. They need to stand for something, they need to be decent, and they need to ditch all the antivax anti-science stuff and kick all the actual racists/sexists out. Otherwise they're just a voice for pointless rage.
I met RFK Jr. once. I was in Charleston, WV at the premeire of "The Last Mountain" ca. 2011. FWIW I would guesstimate the attendance was half wokies and half future Trump voters.
If Kennedy is the final nail that is needed for the LP coffin, by all means anoint him. The party has rarely been anything but an embarrassment, and it is the only part of what is laughably called "the libertarian movement" that lays any claim to being grassroots.
I'm not sure if the LP ever had a "heyday" - Weld was extremely old news (he hasn't been in office for like 20 years), sticks with the CFR on foreign policy (he is a member), and sat on the board of Acreage, an anticompetitive cannabis company that has worked hard to regulate their competition out of existence, leveraging former politicos like John Boehner and Weld to get the job done. Less bad than Kennedy, but still not exactly "libertarian." And Gary and the people at the top of his campaign proved to be completely unprepared for the task of running a national Presidential race, as they showed when he was running as a Republican prior to his nomination in the LP. At least NSON made some money.
I think this is the problem of a true ideological party in a first past the post system - parties don't stand for ideas, they stand for dispositional coalitions, and the ideas that motivate a party can change completely over time. The 2020s Democrats and Republicans are nothing like the 1990s Democrats and Republicans. It's why I think single issue campaigns are the only place that libertarians can have a real impact, by leveraging whatever preexisting political organizations out there depending on the issue you're working on.
To say nothing of his old moon bat crazy stint at unfreash Air America Radio🤪…I still get relapses from tuning in and dropping out on his freak show with fellow crazed ambulance chaser psycho path Mike Papatino Thanks for topping my tank off with more Americas royal family gas bubbles Andy. Gotta run on. Peace through superior mental firepower.
In 2014, when I would hear the word libertarian, I would think about freedom, free migration, and small government. In 2024, when I hear libertarian, I think about bigotry, racism, and collectivism.
Very well-written analysis of the psycho courtship between RFK Jr. and the MAGA-remade Libertarian Party.
When the Japanese signed an alliance with the United Kingdom in 1902, a Japanese poet called it "The Wedding of the Moon and the Mud Turtle."
Here we go again.
I'm not bothered by the anti-woke stuff in the modern LP - it's high time society realign from validation back towards simple tolerance. I am bothered by how rather than being an adult reigning in excessive radicalism, some local parties look like just another radicalism - internet trolls pretending they're a party. They need to stand for something, they need to be decent, and they need to ditch all the antivax anti-science stuff and kick all the actual racists/sexists out. Otherwise they're just a voice for pointless rage.
I met RFK Jr. once. I was in Charleston, WV at the premeire of "The Last Mountain" ca. 2011. FWIW I would guesstimate the attendance was half wokies and half future Trump voters.
If Kennedy is the final nail that is needed for the LP coffin, by all means anoint him. The party has rarely been anything but an embarrassment, and it is the only part of what is laughably called "the libertarian movement" that lays any claim to being grassroots.
I'm not sure if the LP ever had a "heyday" - Weld was extremely old news (he hasn't been in office for like 20 years), sticks with the CFR on foreign policy (he is a member), and sat on the board of Acreage, an anticompetitive cannabis company that has worked hard to regulate their competition out of existence, leveraging former politicos like John Boehner and Weld to get the job done. Less bad than Kennedy, but still not exactly "libertarian." And Gary and the people at the top of his campaign proved to be completely unprepared for the task of running a national Presidential race, as they showed when he was running as a Republican prior to his nomination in the LP. At least NSON made some money.
I think this is the problem of a true ideological party in a first past the post system - parties don't stand for ideas, they stand for dispositional coalitions, and the ideas that motivate a party can change completely over time. The 2020s Democrats and Republicans are nothing like the 1990s Democrats and Republicans. It's why I think single issue campaigns are the only place that libertarians can have a real impact, by leveraging whatever preexisting political organizations out there depending on the issue you're working on.
So this is a bad marriage why?
To say nothing of his old moon bat crazy stint at unfreash Air America Radio🤪…I still get relapses from tuning in and dropping out on his freak show with fellow crazed ambulance chaser psycho path Mike Papatino Thanks for topping my tank off with more Americas royal family gas bubbles Andy. Gotta run on. Peace through superior mental firepower.