Is 2016 THE Opportunity for Libertarians?

[Vyb]

I think the message of "smallest government possible and social libertarianism" could bring voters back from the Democrats. Where Republicans lost it is with their alignment with the "moral majority," Tea Party, anti-gay, anti-choice, hard-line religion nonsense. They need to re-align with the old conservative intellectuals like William F. Buckley and distance themselves from the Sarah Palins of the new (losing) right-wing.

IN OTHER WORDS, get back to what they used to call Goldwater Republicans. You familiar with that term? When I voted republican, that's what I was. This screaming right-wing dogma of the Christian right is what has turned me--and I would guess others--off to the party. Smallest government possible and keep THE FUCK out of people's lives.

Can the Libertarian party POSSIBLY swoop in and be a serious alternative to the Democrats? What are your thoughts (expressed in a serious manner)?

[Vyb]

This popular and important thread should be global.

[newcastlefan]

nope; the libertarian party is too fragmented: each member thinks the other is an asshole and claims the right to declare their true feelings in public. you can't get popular support when a party is completely disorganized. The "The Rent's Too Damn High" party has a better chance than the libertarians.

[booybob]

I agree. I voted for Gary Johnson this election and will be voting Libertarian in every presidential election until the republicans get their head out of their asses on the social issues. the Religious Right has taken over the primary elections in this country and no candidate that does not share their views will make it through the primary. Economic issues they are right about but they want us to live like it is still 1940.

It is now 2012 and the next election in 2016 Abortion, Gay Marriage, Contraceptives should not be an issue. I really believe that if Romney wasn't forced to change his position on these issues to win the primary he would have won this election in a landslide.

[Vyb]

nope; the libertarian party is too fragmented: each member thinks the other is an asshole and claims the right to declare their true feelings in public. you can't get popular support when a party is completely disorganized. The "The Rent's Too Damn High" party has a better chance than the libertarians.

Yeah I agree. They are completely fragmented and some seem like loonies. They'd need a complete overhaul.

Short of a complete overhaul of the Libertarian party, what about something like a "Goldwater Republican" party?

I agree. I voted for Gary Johnson this election and will be voting Libertarian in every presidential election until the republicans get their head out of their asses on the social issues. the Religious Right has taken over the primary elections in this country and no candidate that does not share their views will make it through the primary. Economic issues they are right about but they want us to live like it is still 1940.

It is now 2012 and the next election in 2016 Abortion, Gay Marriage, Contraceptives should not be an issue. I really believe that if Romney wasn't forced to change his position on these issues to win the primary he would have won this election in a landslide.

Zactly. Seems like SOMEBODY in the leadership has got to see this.

[booybob]

Yeah I agree. They are completely fragmented and some seem like loonies. They'd need a complete overhaul.

Short of a complete overhaul of the Libertarian party, what about something like a "Goldwater Republican" party?



Zactly. Seems like SOMEBODY in the leadership has got to see this.

Never Happen, the dumb asses in charge of the party are talking about giving away amnesty as a way to get the Hispanic vote and doubling down on their extreme positions on social issues to win back the "true conservative base" that sat out this election because Romney was the candidate.

[Goo For You]

Here's my thoughts on the subject.

Libertarians take pride in their (purportedly) educated and methodical thinking. As such their intellectual home should be close to modern-day Democrats who take science seriously (and therefore can engage in constructive discussions on, say, modern economic research on poverty, the relative efficiency of fiscal and monetary stimuli, etc.). There was a time when GOP was strong on this stuff, but the passing of Milton Friedman pretty much marked the end of that era; today, a competent person has a hard time trying to read WSJ without cringing (check out Art Laffer using Estonia as an example for why Keynesian policies fail).

Part of the reason why Democrats don't appreciate Libertarian concerns is because the latter have failed to live up to their ideals and articulate these concerns in an educated manner. Moving from Sarah Palin and Ron Paul to William F. Buckley would be a big improvement, but even Buckley was more of a talk show guy than a serious thinker. As a person with GOP sympathies, I hate to say it but when you look back on his shows, it is obvious that he was no match for real academics:



As much as I dislike Chomsky's worldview, he obliterated Buckley in a way that should have opened every soi-disant intelligent Republican's eyes.

[racerx]

nope; the libertarian party is too fragmented: each member thinks the other is an asshole and claims the right to declare their true feelings in public. you can't get popular support when a party is completely disorganized. The "The Rent's Too Damn High" party has a better chance than the libertarians.

right.
if only we could get dishonest libertarians to run, then we'd have something

[Goo For You]

I agree that fragmentation is an issue in the sense that there are many legitimate types of libertarianism out there (across the political spectrum), and that because of this, the prominence of the most adamant natural-rights types makes it hard to form a Libertarian consensus on most issues. The first step towards intelligent discussion is to recognize that the right-wing hardliners are not in any meaningful sense truer/purer/more righteous than other types of Libertarians. More fitting words for their extreme views include anarcho-capitalism, voluntarism and paleo-conservatism (which they should more readily embrace, since they invented them themselves).

Gary Johnson is a major step in the right direction. He is the best thing that has happened to the movement in a long time.

[SiriusDawg]

Smallest government possible and keep THE FUCK out of people's lives.

Can the Libertarian party POSSIBLY swoop in and be a serious alternative to the Democrats? What are your thoughts (expressed in a serious manner)?

No because time and time again we see that having a government that puts in place rules/regulations whether it is for Wall Street, Consumers, building things, FEMA, etc...is not the end of the world.

Should we have government that is extremely involved in our lives? Absolutely not.

But the smallest possible? No thanks. I would take more rules/regulations with the government then none at all.

[Goo For You]

If the goal is to win over Democrats, pushing for extremes like "smallest government", "THE FUCK out of people's lives" is definitely not the way to go. I think the way to do it is to find a way to condense "smallest possible government that takes into account Democrat concerns" into a slogan; and in fact, this has already been done at www.bleedingheartlibertarians.com, one of my favorite academic blogs.

[Vyb]

Ah, well don't get me wrong about "smallest government possible". I'm actually a Keynesian, in the strictest original J.M. Kenyes sense, so it's the "possible" part of that description that probably separates me from most true libertarians. I think sometimes expansionary fiscal policy is definitely required to stimulate aggregate demand; but I also believe (like Keynes) that it must be paid back. Our seemingly endless appetite for deficit spending was never what Keynes had in mind. It is as far from his original theory as anarcho-capitalism is.

[Goo For You]

The worst mistake any libertarian can make is purporting to teach people economics while denouncing Keynes (many do this out of reflex when they first hear about digging ditches and never get past it), Friedman (surprisingly many regard the greatest of libertarians as a statist ogre), and even Hayek (which is flat out ridiculous) in favor of people like Rothbard (whose work is interesting but needs to be read with massive grains of salt because it is full of bad logic).

What's funny about these people who ignore the mainstream of economics in their argumentation is that they are often vocal atheists who chastise religious people for not believing in the consensus of scientists.

PS. My personal opinion is that Keynes would be very much on board with the Keynes-Friedman amalgamation known as New Keynesianism, which is now the mainstream of macroeconomics and holds that the current rate of spending is sustainable under the current regime (fiat money + independent central bank + debt denominated in USD).

[MatthewT]

nope; the libertarian party is too fragmented: each member thinks the other is an asshole and claims the right to declare their true feelings in public. you can't get popular support when a party is completely disorganized. The "The Rent's Too Damn High" party has a better chance than the libertarians.

that dude really stayed on message

[MatthewT]

The worst mistake any libertarian can make is purporting to teach people economics while denouncing Keynes (many do this out of reflex when they first hear about digging ditches and never get past it), Friedman (surprisingly many regard the greatest of libertarians as a statist ogre), and even Hayek (which is flat out ridiculous) in favor of people like Rothbard (whose work is interesting but needs to be read with massive grains of salt because it is full of bad logic).

What's funny about these people who ignore the mainstream of economics in their argumentation is that they are often vocal atheists who chastise religious people for not believing in the consensus of scientists.

PS. My personal opinion is that Keynes would be very much on board with the Keynes-Friedman amalgamation known as New Keynesianism, which is now the mainstream of macroeconomics and holds that the current rate of spending is sustainable under the current regime (fiat money + independent central bank + debt denominated in USD).

If we drive off of the cliff, it will be in a vehicle fueled by Maynard Keynes

[Stew Nod]

I think the message of "smallest government possible and social libertarianism" could bring voters back from the Democrats. Where Republicans lost it is with their alignment with the "moral majority," Tea Party, anti-gay, anti-choice, hard-line religion nonsense. They need to re-align with the old conservative intellectuals like William F. Buckley and distance themselves from the Sarah Palins of the new (losing) right-wing.

IN OTHER WORDS, get back to what they used to call Goldwater Republicans. You familiar with that term? When I voted republican, that's what I was. This screaming right-wing dogma of the Christian right is what has turned me--and I would guess others--off to the party. Smallest government possible and keep THE FUCK out of people's lives.

Can the Libertarian party POSSIBLY swoop in and be a serious alternative to the Democrats? What are your thoughts (expressed in a serious manner)?

Totally agree with this...hope it happens

F the repubs.....they sold out to the idiot fringe

[MatthewT]

6,000 years of recorded history, and one country, this country, was founded by "right wing christian radicals."

and now their progeny are ashamed of them

[Goo For You]

If we drive off of the cliff, it will be in a vehicle fueled by Maynard Keynes

EU countries face the cliff because the European Central Bank is neither independent nor has a powerful enough mandate to do much even if it were (we are already three years into the crisis and ECB has barely begun purchasing sovereign debt)(member countries have pretty much zero say in their monetary policy, if you can imagine; the problem countries were forced off the cliff because of tight money); in contrast, Fed has them both; the only way for America to end up in the same situation is if people take GOP's stance on fiscal austerity or Ron Paul's stance on monetary austerity seriously and sabotage the system. Either way, the vehicle you referred to will be red and shaped like an elephant.

[MatthewT]

that's ridiculous to blame one American political party for worldwide economic collapse. you do see that's what your doing, yes?

[Goo For You]

I'm not blaming the 2008 crisis on any one political party; everyone contributed. If there's one party I can point my finger at, it is the Fed (Bernanke did not cut rates to zero fast enough and also did not do quantitative easing fast enough... But even these failures are understandable considering the circumstances...)

What I referred to with my previous comment was the worry that there will be a fiscal cliff in the US like there is now in Europe; and here, the economic implications of GOP's last year's debt ceiling debacle -- the catastrophe that it could have caused -- are clear, unambiguous, and bipartisan (in academic circles). Their actions were completely indefensible from an economics perspective.