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Tidewater News and Opinion Forum
A place for civil discussion of the events of the day for Tidewater residents without the limitations imposed by media forums.
Tidewater News and Opinion Forum
A place for civil discussion of the events of the day for Tidewater residents without the limitations imposed by media forums.
Tidewater News and Opinion Forum 
In my experience, prominent pundits of the Alt-Right (e.g., Vox Day) started out as Libertarians, but eventually turned away. As a result, I doubt there are many Libertarians to be recruited from the Alt-Right, but the reverse might occur.
The reasons are technical. Libertarians focus heavily on concepts derived from classical economics, but some of those concepts are questioned today (e.g., the Ricardian principle of comparative advantage). Libertarians take their name from basic Enlightenment concepts of liberty and equality, but these, too, are questioned; the Alt-Right prefers to explain the world in sociological or biological terms. This leads them to new interpretations of religious or spiritual materials that many Libertarians find uncomfortable or impractical, but which feed the desire to make sense of traditional religion.
The Hill’s writer may be correct that the Libertarian Party is collapsing, but his explanation that racism and antisemitism are the reasons is not very compelling.
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Typical, every one else is a racist according to those that try to foist race into every aspect of life for personal/political gain but can’t even spell racial equality much less define it. By definition that would make them the true racists but we knew that already. Far left wing extremist Democrats are surely a queer bunch.
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I found it interesting that it appears the GOP is out to ruin the Libertarian Party with some big bucks behind the effort. Your response indicates that you either did not read or did not understand the article.
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I find it the other way. The Virginia LP has been duped into running spoilers financed by the Democrats in recent Gubernatorial and Senate elections.
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“The Virginia LP has been duped into running spoilers . . .”
Is that your way of saying that candidates that you did not support got the Libertarian nominations? “Duped” is an interesting and telling choice of words.
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What I am saying is that our last 2 Gubernatorial candidates (one of whom later ran for Senate) were people who showed up at our convention with a campaign already begun and funds in place.
Neither of them were people we had ever heard of before but so many of our members were so desperate for a candidate who had the money to run a campaign that they were nominated by the party.
Yes. I opposed those nominations. When a well financed Northern VA lawyer shows up with no prior involvement with the party and a bag of money and pre-collected ballot signatures, I get suspicious. All Sarvis and Hyra did was help Democrats win.
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You might want to be careful about drawing conclusions about Libertarians from an article by someone who probably has never met one.
You might remember that I resigned from the Libertarian Party earlier this year because the Virginia Affiliate had been taken over by purists unwilling to find common ground with other parties when we could and determined to not allow our local affiliate to do so. Nothing to do with racism.
I have never met a racist Libertarian. But these days, many people see MLK’s dream of a color-blind society racist.
It is the Libertarian position that we are not allowed to use force, either individually or through government, for anything other than defense of life or property. That means I can’t use force to make you accept my principles, including the principle of non-discrimination.
So, if a business owner is a racist who won’t serve or employ Blacks, that is none of my business. I might find it repugnant and choose to take my business elsewhere, but we reject the concept of “public accommodations” as grounds for forcing the business to abstain from discriminating. We believe the marketplace is perfectly capable of punishing racism.
If you believe in the concept that we have a duty to be forceable “anti-racists” then Libertarianism is not for you. But Libertarianism holds that I have no right to force you to live up to my principles.
Your right of free association is also your right to not associate. And it doesn’t matter if I disapprove.
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“ We believe the marketplace is perfectly capable of punishing racism.”
How well did that work for 100 years from 1865 to 1965 without federal intervention? There were no laws or accommodations in the North, but discrimination was rampant. How long does it take for the marketplace to eliminate racial segregation?
The marketplace is not going to balance racial disparity if the vast majority segregate from the 12-15% minorities. That is why we had separate parts of town for Black businesses. And some of those were periodically destroyed whenever they got too successful.
The cost of doing business in the US must include the concept that all men are created equal otherwise that phrase is just a platitude to soothe the souls.
We decided long ago to accept immigrants from all over the world to help build our nation. In return for that, we must set the rules and businesses must adhere or go elsewhere. This is American exceptionalism. It separates us from all other nations where minorities are never blended into society and accepted as full citizens.
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The marketplace punished the South quite severely during Jim Crow, The whole area remained backward and poor compared to the rest of the nation until segregation ended.
Now, the South is more integrated than the North and it is gaining rapidly economically.
But from the Libertarian standpoint, the outcome is not the issue. Freedom is. Do we have freedom of association or not? If we do, that includes the freedom not to associate. If a racist business owner is forced to employ and serve minorities, does that make him not a racist?
Racism will end when it ends in people’s hearts, and Congress cannot legislate that.
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Kumbaya!
People on the receiving end of harmful discrimination are a little less patient that you are or than you would be if you had to put up with the bullshit that they do.
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It still doesn’t justify the use of force.
Certainly racism is repugnant, and the use of force to require segregation, as was common in the South a century ago, when businesses were required to have separate accommodations for Whites and Blacks was something that could be changed.
But requiring businesses to employ and serve minorities did not end racism, it just drove it into hiding.
It’s when people’s children are embarrassed by their parents racism that it ends.
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“It still doesn’t justify the use of force.”
Boy are you a Johnny One Note. Any time people are asked to obey the law, you spin it as government thuggery.
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“The marketplace punished the South quite severely during Jim Crow . . .”
If by the “marketplace” you mean that any people with any get up and go got up and went. Of both races.
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That may be part of it, but when you turn away a quarter of your potential customers and hire less qualified people for your company, you don’t prosper.
Particularly, after WW2, when many Blacks had received training in the military as mechanics and other skilled trades, not hiring them made companies less efficient and yes, caused many good workers to leave for better opportunity. In any case, the South lagged behind the rest of the country economically for the entire Jim Crow era.
We might have gotten that out of our system faster had there been Libertarians around then to tell them that was why they lagged behind.
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“… the South lagged behind the rest of the country…”
There are lots of reasons for that lag. Climate, agrarian society, education among others. The Confederate states were an oligarchy in many ways. There was little incentive for robust investment in an industrial economy. Cheap labor was the norm, White or Black.
Air conditioning has often been touted, with good reason, as the technology that helped the South modernize. Corporate headquarters in Atlanta was a result, for example. LBJ established a space headquarters in Houston. Oil and gas helped a lot.
And yet, even today, those same states “excel” in crime, lack of education, high divorce rates, low incomes and poverty. The old oligarchical mindset fostered corruption, both from the top and the bottom. You know that as well as anyone coming from LA.
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“In any case, the South lagged behind the rest of the country economically for the enire Jim Crow era.”
And yet nothing was done about the petty Apartheid.
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Freedom of association is all fine until you
realize that if 85% of the citizens won’t associate with 15%, withholding housing, business, education, and even movement, yet collect taxes and expect loyalty from the same, someone’s freedom is definitely curtailed.
Racism is a cultural phenomenon that fades with familiarity. Yes, this is simplistic, but there is a lot of truth to it. Hard to hate a person whom you know well, but is a different race. But if norms require separation, it takes a brave citizen to challenge that unless they have to. Which is why even a hundred years of history did not bend from racial separation, legal or de facto.
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The essence of the story was that Republicans and Republican mega-donors are encouraging, supporting, and facilitating the further marginalization of the national Libertarian Party by pushing radicals to the front. Do you believe that something like that is happening, or not? I really do not know nor do I care but I found it interesting.
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I did not see any indication of infiltration of the LP by Trump supporters. Most of them find our social tolerance positions unacceptable.
BTW, the article lists Ayn Rand as a libertarian. She hated Libertarians because of our position on victimless crime and because we aren’t capitalist enough(libertarians believe in charity, she did not)
http://aynrandlexicon.com/ayn-rand-ideas/ayn-rand-q-on-a-on-libertarianism.html
Many Libertarians, including me, found Trump to be a lesser evil. That’s not support, it’s pragmatism.
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