Raw Story reports former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura said in an interview with Alex Jones this week that he may run for president in 2016, possibly as a Libertarian — but that he would not join the LP.
Ventura said, “The Libertarians have put out a gesture to me to come to their convention and that I would have a very good chance of getting their nomination for president. But one thing will have to be clear on: I do not want to join them as a party.”
Ventura said he wanted to be the first president since George Washington to be a member of no political party. Regarding the LP, he said, “I need that from them, that they won’t require me to be in their party to receive their nomination.”
Some comment(s) appear to have been erased in this one as well.
This may have been covered earlier in the thread, but anyone want to make bets on whether Ventura will show up in Orlando for the convention or not?
Oh. I thought it was either machine guns on the subway, or private nukes.
But I’ll take peace – I’m a big fan of peace myself.
Because it’s absurd!
My single issue is peace.
I have better uses for my time. The only times I can recall ever even discussing the question is when you bring it up, which you keep doing. Perhaps you are the one who should start a single issue group.
The setup now is that the government serves as the citizenry’s agent in establishing acceptable behavior on the public’s property, like Disney’s board and management does on behalf of shareholders.
You could create a single-issue advocacy group to allow free and open totage of machine guns on subways, with the hope that in some decades from now, such behavior would be acceptable and commonplace. It would be a vanguard-type issue that AC seems to relish.
I can’t recommend it, but then again I don’t care for NASCAR racing, though millions do! 😉
Which brings us right back to what we as members of the public think is good policy. Saying that the property owner should make the decision has not answered our question.
Right. I’d say the public is the owner.
The real question is what happens when there is no private property owner.
Of course not. Do you deny other companies’ right to have different policies? I am assuming no, given that you say I’d defer to the property-owners’s wishes.
pf: Given that a crazy person can shoot people on a subway regardless of whether it is legal or not, do you think that the chances that such an event if it were to ever happen would be stopped would be better if other non-crazy and mostly law abiding people on that car were armed, or if they were all disarmed because, unlike the crazy killer, they generally obey laws?
me: As a L, I’d defer to the property-owners’s wishes.
Again, laws and rules are set by the owners. They make the calculation, knowing that sometimes people will break them.
Disney excludes guns because in that company’s judgment, they want their parks to be gun-free zones. Surely you don’t deny them their right to exercise their property rights?
You or I may want to tote at Disney World, so you or I can either choose not to go there, or to hide what you are toting.
Yes, which could happen whether or not it is illegal. There are lots of crazy people, and lots of guns on the street (including those sold illegally, stolen, etc). Obviously laws against carrying guns aren’t going to stop someone who is willing to kill people. Having actually myself illegally carried guns on the subway many times, I can assure it is not impossible. So why aren’t massacres more common?
If you had a gun and you saw someone start shooting people, wouldn’t you shoot that person? In fact, many massacres have been stopped that way in real life (none that I know of were on the subway, but then again I haven’t heard of many massacres that were on the subway; many were in various “gun free zones.”)
Given that a crazy person can shoot people on a subway regardless of whether it is legal or not, do you think that the chances that such an event if it were to ever happen would be stopped would be better if other non-crazy and mostly law abiding people on that car were armed, or if they were all disarmed because, unlike the crazy killer, they generally obey laws?
Interesting map, although I note it does not scale for population. A similar map of county by county vote would show that the US is overwhelmingly Republican today, although of course we know that is not the case, since Democrats are disproportionately concentrated in urban areas.
A different view:
http://www.redcoat.me.uk
http://www.ushistory.org/us/11b.asp on the other hand estimates that both loyalists and rebels were relatively smaller groups, perhaps 20%, and most colonists at the time were fence-sitters.
So, apparently estimates vary.
pf: If every fifth person was armed they would shoot the shooter down long before they mowed down the whole subway car. On the other hand, if the crazy person is the only one sneaking the gun on illegally and no one else is armed, it’s likely they would all be dead.
me: Sorry, mine were separate scenarios. You might be comfortable with machine guns in close proximity in an enclosed space, but I suspect most do not.
The other scenario involves a maniac with automatic weaponry in the same sort of confined space. Whether others toting can stop the maniac in mid-carnage, yes, spose that’s possible. The idea is that many would die.
I don’t think the public owners of public property would stand for too many incidents like this, with good reason.
In order for such a check-in to be anything like effective, you’d have to not only police thousands of miles of land borders and coasts and thousands of small airstrips with 100% effectiveness, but you would also have to hold up every tourist, every load of cargo arriving by land, sea or air, every American returning to the US from any other country for weeks while they are thoroughly tested. The economy would grind to a halt if you did that.
However, the ridiculous security theater of pretending to stop these problems from crossing some borders and harassing and inconveniencing people in the process is a relatively minor problem when compared with trying to keep millions (perhaps tens of millions) of people from supplying an existing demand for their labor. Much like contraband goods, they manage to find their market anyway, but in the process are driven into an undrground existence where they are exploited, ripped off, killed, left without legal protection, harassed, ripped from families, relegated to a second-class existence, sometimes driven into criminal occupations – or at least, massive fraud in order to be able to participate in otherwise legal occupations and many other aspects of life. It also creates yet another excuse for the burgeoning police state to spy on, harass, intimidate, and incarcerate people, along with the “wars on” drugs and terror.
No one here made any such assumption.
It would be inappropriate for the regime to filter immigration on the basis of ideology, and if they did, it likely wouldn’t be to let in libertarians. It would be just as stupid and insane for the regime to conduct ideological quizzes as a condition of entry into a nation-state as it would when crossing regime borders at the state, county, city or ward/precinct/neighborhood level.
Claiming that only libertarians should be allowed to enter a country, state, county, city, ward, precinct, etc. would be like saying only libertarians are allowed to have freedom of speech, or association, or petition of redress of grievances, etc. It would be like saying that only libertarians can have a radio or TV show, publish a newspaper or run a website: a contradiction in terms, since it would be anti-liberty to enforce any such policy.
Een if the Libertarian Zone concept is valid – and maybe some people would in fact choose to live like that, most likely on a very local level – it’s not rational to extrapolate it to anything nearly as large as a nation-state which already exists, nor would it be practical.
If every fifth person was armed they would shoot the shooter down long before they mowed down the whole subway car. On the other hand, if the crazy person is the only one sneaking the gun on illegally and no one else is armed, it’s likely they would all be dead.
ns: Shaking the confidence of others will not fill the void in one’s own lack of confidence in the correctness of one’s own path.
me: True dat.
Some may find that the highest and best use of their time is to play on a ledge. I respect that. Suggesting that they step back from the ledge is not intended to “shake confidence,” it’s to me an obvious statement of fact of the dangers therein, offered with compassion.
Ayn’s “check your premises” was some wisdom she imparted that I continue to embrace. Others may fear doing so for what they might find.
ac, thanks. Can they immediately get government benefits, too?
All things considered, I’m not sure Europe is on net moving in the liberty-oriented, peaceful direction; my impression is no, it’s going in the other direction. And I wonder whether the Greece situation and high UE (especially among the many non-European immigrants) in most of Europe might be leading them in an increasingly dysfunctional direction.
The idea of Canadians and Mexicans crossing the border to vote in the US doesn’t give me a warm and fuzzy feeling, either. You?
” Can a Portuguese go to Germany and start working tomorrow?”
Yes. They can even vote in local elections.
ac: If there should be some limits beyond just screening out violent criminals or contagious diseases- what should those limits be?
me: Above my paygrade, actually. I’ve no position on the matter. Politically, I’m heavily biased for keeping the limits as low as possible, whatever they are.
AC: There was a time when open borders among European nations would have sounded far-fetched. And yet today you can drive from Estonia to Portugal without once showing a passport at a border checkpoint.
ME: Right. These Europeans decided that they maximize their domestic tranquility by making it easy to travel among nations. I’m not sure: Can a Portuguese go to Germany and start working tomorrow?
I don’t see “travel” and “residence” as being the same things. You may, which is valid enough for you.
ac: I don’t think the idea of removing border controls- first with Canada, probably, but eventually with Mexico too- is a perpetual impossibility.
me: Nor do I. I like the idea generally.
ac: A system that still condemns most law-abiding, peaceful, economically productive immigrants, in the name of central economic planning and social engineering? That’s an entirely different question, and I’m going to oppose that as a matter of principle regardless of popularity.
me: I respect your view. But I believe there is much wisdom in the saying “discretion is the better part of valor” and keeping “one’s own counsel” and “first things first.” This is especially the case in politics as contrasted with single-issue advocacy.
Do you see the difference?
ac: Being on the leading vanguard of a currently-unpopular position would hardly be an unprecedented position for Libertarians to be in, after all. We were advocating marriage equality and marijuana legalization and concealed/constitutional carry long before those things became popular enough to secure actual legislative changes, and yet here we are today with those things becoming actual law in some/all states. All of those things would have polled in the 20s-30s or lower when Libertarians started advocating them.
me: I can work with the 20s and the 30s. That’s not fringe territory. Nonetheless, I think Ls kid themselves that they were instrumental in bringing about marriage equality. Ls probably get a cameo in legalizing weed. Of course, the plumbline position is to advocate immediate legalization of ALL drugs.
Whether that’s the “vanguard” or self-marginalization…YMMV.
As for the “right” to carry in public, I am definitely an outlier in the LM, since I think the public can decide what it allows to be carried on public property…pretty straightforward property rights analysis, I dare say. My extreme example is machine guns in the subway…I don’t think there’s a “right” to do so. Somehow, other Ls feel otherwise…vociferously so, to my chagrin!
Imagine a subway car where every fifth person is brandishing a tommy gun. Imagine the fallout when a lunatic or two mow down an entire subway car of people.
It’s a self marginalizing vision, yet some insist it’s the “principled” position!
Andy Craig said: “Being on the leading vanguard of a currently-unpopular position would hardly be an unprecedented position for Libertarians to be in”
Here is the problem, and that is that you are automatically assuming that all immigrants are free market and civil liberties loving libertarians, and unfortunately, this is far from reality. A bunch of socialists, fascists, communists, and theocrats, who’ve got little to no regard for individual freedom, or any of the constitutional restraints on government which we are supposed to have does not make us more free, it actually makes us less free if anything. These people can all end up becoming registered voters, and not only can they become voters, they can also lobby the government. If they are of what I’d label as the wrong political ideology, they can further the destruction of liberty in this country.
I have been all over this country, and I’ve spoken to thousands of immigrants, and it is rare to find one who could be described as a libertarian or constitutionalist.
The right to keep and bear arms is a great litmus test here. What percentage of them support the right to keep and bear arms? Not too many.
I certainly understand that there are many natural born Americans that are not libertarians or constitutionalists either, but a much higher percentage of natural born Americans do support the right to keep and bear arms (unless they are lefty “liberal” types, particularly found in major metropolitan areas).
Immigration can be a good thing, IF it is the right kind of people immigrating. There was a libertarian from England and another one from Russia who spoke at last year’s LP National Convention in Columbus, OH. They would represent the right kind of immigrants. Lily Tang from China who is the current State Chairwoman of the LP of Colorado represents the right kind of immigrant.
Some socialist or communist or fascist or theocrat are not the right kind of immigrants.
All of this helped lead to my creation of The Libertarian Zone concept. The Libertarian Zone would not have an “open border” per say, as immigration to The Libertarian Zone would be based on signing The Libertarian Zone contract (and even then, perhaps The Libertarian Zone could become too crowded depending on how large it was, and if it was small and crowded, it might depend on signing the contract and having somebody lined up who’d rent or sell you property; if it was as large as the present day USA this would obviously not likely be an issue). Given that The Libertarian Zone would have no welfare state, no Affirmative Action programs, no foreign aid programs, no military (as we know it), no gun control laws, and no vice laws, the type of people who’d be interested in immigrating to The Libertarian Zone would not be likely to be the type of people who’d want these kinds of things anyway, and even if they lied to get in there’d be no political offices for them to lobby, and they’d never become registered voters because there’d be no government elections, since there’d be no government as we know it (the only thing there’d be would be contracts, and the mechanisms for contract enforcement which I described in the article).
The Libertarian Zone contract applies not only to immigrants to The Libertarian Zone, it also applies to people who were born in The Libertarian Zone, as in both immigrants and the natural born could face exile from The Libertarian Zone, or even death, depending upon the severity of their contract violation. I actually doubt that exile would happen that often, and death would probably happen even less frequently, but all of this would be covered in The Libertarian Zone contract, which all residents of The Libertarian Zone would have to sign (don’t sign it, then move somewhere else).
Just in case anyone missed it here before, or needs a memory refresher, here is The Libertarian Zone concept:
https://independentpoliticalreport.com/2014/07/andy-jacobs-the-libertarian-zone/
Now let me ask, do we have anything resembling this in the present day land we call the United States of America? Do you really believe that the government is really trying to attract freedom loving people to come to America, and that they are really doing a good job at teaching them about the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution?
I think that the answers to these questions are pretty clear.
What if there was a fight for human freedom, for nothing less than a world set free in our lifetime?
What if you quit that fight? What if you deserted the field, leaving your erstwhile allies behind to fight on without you?
Do you think you might spend a shocking amount of time and energy trying to get others to quit?
Perhaps it’s because success in that fight would reveal that you had quit too early, that you had bought high and sold low on liberty. Perhaps your fear of that realization would cause you to actively discourage others from seeking human freedom, rather than seeking your own flourishing life without the difficulty of fighting for the freedoms of others.
Shaking the confidence of others will not fill the void in one’s own lack of confidence in the correctness of one’s own path.
“Given that you seem highly educated and up on many subjects, I take these to be rhetorical questions, not actual ones, yes?”
The part about you deciding yourself was rhetorical. But asking what standard you think should be applied was not.
“All laws are imperfect, and few people expect they will be 100% effective. Murder is illegal, and yet murders happen”
Yet I have no problem defining murder. You’ve talked about “open borders” not being the solution- so I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask your definition of who should be a prohibited immigrant. If there should be some limits beyond just screening out violent criminals or contagious diseases- what should those limits be?
“We can test it today, though. Commit yourself to making the case for completely open borders over the next 5 years. My guess is that — even if you are well funded — the general will will still be that at least some filters are appropriate.”
I don’t need to commit myself to advocating for human freedom, I was planning on doing that anyway.
There was a time when open borders among European nations would have sounded far-fetched. And yet today you can drive from Estonia to Portugal without once showing a passport at a border checkpoint. I don’t think the idea of removing border controls- first with Canada, probably, but eventually with Mexico too- is a perpetual impossibility. In fact I’m quite confident it will happen eventually. The question is just how long it will take. Maybe 30 years, maybe 100 years. But it’s going to happen eventually. It’s having a militarized border with heavy restrictions on who can enter, that is the historical aberration from the norm. The American border with Mexico has only been “controlled” like that since, as pf noted, the LBJ & Nixon administrations.
But back to the point- “some filters”- what filters? I think that matters. If we’re just talking a few categorical prohibitions on criminals or the contagious and the like, then I think that would be futile but at least it would be a reasonable compromise. But “No more Ethiopians or Taiwanese allowed, we’ve hit our quota for this year.” ? A system that still condemns most law-abiding, peaceful, economically productive immigrants, in the name of central economic planning and social engineering? That’s an entirely different question, and I’m going to oppose that as a matter of principle regardless of popularity.
Being on the leading vanguard of a currently-unpopular position would hardly be an unprecedented position for Libertarians to be in, after all. We were advocating marriage equality and marijuana legalization and concealed/constitutional carry long before those things became popular enough to secure actual legislative changes, and yet here we are today with those things becoming actual law in some/all states. All of those things would have polled in the 20s-30s or lower when Libertarians started advocating them. In March of 2003, only 22% still said they opposed invading Iraq, to name another example. I think it underestimates how fast public opinion can evolve and change, to dismiss a position with that level of support as being permanently nonviable.
ac: The point being, there’s nothing more sophisticated or nuanced about the pro-immigration argument that makes it inherently harder for people to understand.
me: Let me make more explicit then what I’ve been inferring in this thread: There’s a difference between being “pro immigration” and “pro open borders.” I’m sure neither of us know what the average person thought in 1776, particularly since we are not mind readers and communications then were almost entirely verbal and many lived rather isolated lives on small farms, iirc.
We can test it today, though. Commit yourself to making the case for completely open borders over the next 5 years. My guess is that — even if you are well funded — the general will will still be that at least some filters are appropriate.
This may be poor judgment on the part of the multitudes. That, I submit, is the human condition since Adam and Eve! What’s also the case is that the curve of history can and does bend.
ac: who gets to decide who’s good enough to legally immigrate? Are you volunteering for that job? And what makes you think the government would be any more effective at keeping out those people who are rejected, under whatever standard?
me: Given that you seem highly educated and up on many subjects, I take these to be rhetorical questions, not actual ones, yes?
All laws are imperfect, and few people expect they will be 100% effective. Murder is illegal, and yet murders happen. Laws signal either the general will or the will of a powerful elite. Sometimes the general will shifts.
My sense of the general will in the US in 2015 is that most want some sort of check on entry and residence in this cooperative venture.
Perhaps the general will is wrong-minded in this instance. In an ideal world, perhaps anyone should be able to enter the US, take up residence, and live their lives here…with no check in or other filters to restrict criminals, the mentally ill, or those with communicable diseases.
A theorist could make that case, attempting to persuade the intellectual classes over time.
A politician making that case, however, condemns him or herself to the fringes, in my judgment.
A completely open-borders position will attract very few. Add to that a few more fringe positions and you get the sub-1% that Ls generally do. Politics is the art of the possible in the context of election cycles. To be appropriate to the context is not to be unprincipled, it’s playing the game appropriately.
Jesse Uncensored: Presidential Debates & The Fight for Third Party Inclusion | Off The Grid – Ora TV
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrDqCZuhOiE
The famous “third each for/against/neutral” quote from John Adams is taken out of context. He was talking about the breakdown of votes in Congress for/against declaring independence at the time he said it, not the general public opinion in the colonies among those who did or did not support the revolution. I don’t know if that’s what you’re referring to, but your use of “third” reminded me of that.
The Tories were a substantial minority, but they were never evenly matched. If you apply a narrower definition of people who actively supported the revolution in some way, you might come up with a plurality figure instead of a majority. And it’s not like there were regular opinion polls. But I think it can be inferred from the evidence, that the Patriots had pretty broad majority support in most areas outside of a few Loyalist strongholds- mainly the NYC area, some in NJ, and the inland highlands of NC and SC. The idea of a large chunk of the population that was “neutral” is misunderstanding the dynamic, I think, and actual Loyalists were probably never more than 10-15%. In other words, any hypothetical election between the two factions would have produced a Patriot/Revolutionary victory by a very healthy margin, which is in fact exactly what happened preceding 1775/6 in the elected colonial legislatures.
http://classes.maxwell.syr.edu/his101/pix/loyalist.jpg
Not really. The analyses I have seen that have actually tried to come up with some sort of breakdown have generally put them at a third or less.
Otherwise you are correct.
Right again!
There was nothing put into the Declaration that wasn’t a common and widespread political sentiment in the colonies, at least among the Patriots, who constituted a clear majority. That was, after all, its purpose. Among those Tories opposed to the Declaration and the revolutionary cause, “It’s a good thing the King doesn’t block immigration and naturalization” wasn’t among their arguments. Nor was preventing immigration a complaint reserved to the intellectual elite.
The point being, there’s nothing more sophisticated or nuanced about the pro-immigration argument that makes it inherently harder for people to understand. There have been times- including later times- in American history were supporters of immigration being legal have had popular opinion on their side. It wasn’t until the 1880s that the nativists started winning any policy victories on the federal level (other than perhaps the Alien and Sedition Acts), and they haven’t always been able to muster a majority since then.
“It is, in my judgment, unwise and highly unlikely that the borders should be opened completely to anyone who wants to enter the US, just as I think it would be unwise to read 2A to mean that anyone can tote a machine gun on the subway.”
I don’t think immigrating is akin to toting a gun on the subway, but setting that aside: who gets to decide who’s good enough to legally immigrate? Are you volunteering for that job? And what makes you think the government would be any more effective at keeping out those people who are rejected, under whatever standard?
Having a large bureaucracy just to sort between those who can enter legally, and those who will still be able to enter illegally, doesn’t seem like a wise use of taxpayer dollars to me. Having a law that excludes, just at the narrowest, violent criminals, won’t do any more to stop them from entering the country than gun control laws keep them disarmed.
I also don’t buy that among the benefits of liberalizing legal immigration, are that it will make border enforcement easier or more effective. Preventing America’s borders from being porous is a geographical and practical impossibility, regardless of what the immigration laws are like. People don’t seem to understand this when they talk about “securing the border” as if it was possible, but America’s a big place, with long borders over thousands of miles and lots of people coming and going in lots of different ways. The government couldn’t control that, and I shudder to think what kind of totalitarian measures would be imposed in pursuit of that goal if they were to seriously try.
pf: There’s also things like construction and factory jobs. If you haven’t noticed the “stealing jobs” BS you haven’t been around enough.
me: Good point on construction jobs. That I DO hear. Factory jobs…not so much. That I DO hear, but more in the context of foreign trade.
ac: ncome taxes alone are a woefully incomplete measure of the burden of government. It isn’t even a complete measure of the tax burden.
me: Completely agree. That’s why I wrote the next sentence: “The full tax burden as a percentage of income hits I believe the upper middle and lower high income folks hardest.” When I used the word “full,” I mean income, FICA, state, local, gas, etc. taxes. Sorry if that wasn’t completely clear for you.
ac: When the Declaration of Independence complained about King George blocking immigration and naturalization, the idea that doing so was economically harmful and unjust didn’t seem that controversial among Americans. It was a long time after that before people started accepting those arguments, and I don’t think it’s because they got any less “sophisticated.”
me: Hmm, where to begin. First, the Declaration WAS controversial, as many of the then colonists remained loyal to the King, or were ambivalent to the cause of Revolution. Second, the Declaration’s authors WERE sophisticated, but whether all those committed to the cause of Revolution understood the totality of the document, my guess is not so much. Do you have reason to believe otherwise? Third, the colonies were extremely sparsely populated then, with more work than workers. The US in 2015 has some very densely populated areas and has relatively high un- or underemployment.
I am for liberalizing legal immigration, just as I am for the right to keep and bear arms (on one’s property). It is, in my judgment, unwise and highly unlikely that the borders should be opened completely to anyone who wants to enter the US, just as I think it would be unwise to read 2A to mean that anyone can tote a machine gun on the subway.
Income taxes alone are a woefully incomplete measure of the burden of government. It isn’t even a complete measure of the tax burden.
It also isn’t so sophisticated as to beyond public acceptance. When the Declaration of Independence complained about King George blocking immigration and naturalization, the idea that doing so was economically harmful and unjust didn’t seem that controversial among Americans. It was a long time after that before people started accepting those arguments, and I don’t think it’s because they got any less “sophisticated.”
ac: Immigrants- including illegal immigrants- are not a net drag on either the economy as a whole or the government’s balance of taxes and spending, even with all the existing “public goods” and welfare programs.
me: It’s a great point, but one that requires patience and sophistication to understand.
ac: Poorer people are those hit hardest by taxes and the unseen cost of regulation and the failure of socialized government services.
me: Interesting, but likely impossible to prove. Clearly untrue when it comes to income taxes. The full tax burden as a percentage of income hits I believe the upper middle and lower high income folks hardest.
The unseen costs though is, as you say, unseen. Might be true, but requires MUCH sophistication.
It’s closely associated with the myth that people at the lower end of the income ladder, are also net drags on both the economy and the public fisc. I emphatically reject that as well. Poorer people are those hit hardest by taxes and the unseen cost of regulation and the failure of socialized government services.
I don’t think it’s true that, absent the crumbs thrown back at them after the welfare bureaucracy has taken its 80% for middle-class civil servants, they get more back out of government than they pay into it. Both sides of that balance would be negative figures: first they’re hit by regressive taxes (and taxes hiding by another name, like obscene court fees and tickets for selectively-enforced petty violations). Then they’re hit again by the government wasting that money and not providing the services they otherwise could have bought with it. It makes us all poorer, and the political theater of transfer payments is just a fig leaf for that.
Exactly!
I recall there being some kerfuffle when Sotomayor was appointed, that some media sources described her as a “first-generation American” and “daughter of Puerto Rican immigrants” – which isn’t any more true than if you were talking about somebody from Hawaii or Tennessee. You wouldn’t talk of “Arkansan immigrants to New York.” – or so the argument went.
re: common popular anti-immigrant myths, basically none of them hold up under scrutiny, even the ones surrounding the welfare state or public schools/hospitals that might have more facial intuitive appeal to libertarians. Immigrants- including illegal immigrants- are not a net drag on either the economy as a whole or the government’s balance of taxes and spending, even with all the existing “public goods” and welfare programs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtRmS7q9DlM
Milton Friedman is also often misquoted as using the welfare state as a justification for immigration prohibition. What he was actually saying, in context, is that illegal immigration is *a good thing* and *preferable* when we have a welfare state, because illegal immigrants are more likely to be excluded, more comprehensively, from the welfare state than legal immigrants. I don’t think that’s actually correct, and it was a somewhat tongue-in-cheek argument anyway. The law has also changed since then, broadening the exclusion from welfare to legal resident non-citizens as well. But Friedman was emphatically *not* supporting or endorsing the successful enforcement of laws against immigration, as his quote is often misused.
http://openborders.info/friedman-immigration-welfare-state/
It’s been a much more gradual influx, and mostly in NYC, which is always getting waves of newcomers.
There’s also things like construction and factory jobs. If you haven’t noticed the “stealing jobs” BS you haven’t been around enough.
Overcrowding is an age-old theme of past waves of migrant bashers. Government “services” didn’t exist as much, which is why I mentioned the closest corollary, poverty.
It would be, and it also would not address a lot of their real problems with immigrants.
pf, yes, mass influx on LI…not really, although there were pockets.
Overall, though, NYC did have a pretty big influx, as I said, the PR pop is now 9%. Was tiny before 1940.
And the “stealing jobs” angle doesn’t seem all that prominent now. Most natives don’t aspire to be migrant workers, gardeners, and housekeepers, last I checked.
I DO hear of some concerned about Asians in US colleges, though, especially in the sciences.
It’s one thing to be concerned about “poverty,” and let’s say ghetto-ized blight. That’s different than concerns about immigrants getting social services and overcrowding the schools.
Now, you might want to take the opportunity to expand the subject, to abolish welfare and public schools to “solve” those problems. But that’s a LOT for the average citizen to grok, much less get behind.
I don’t think there was a huge influx of Puerto Ricans on Long Island; nothing like the massive increase in migrants from Mexico and Central America all over the country in the last few decades, particularly in places not used to regular waves of immigration.
Seriously, look up some old anti-migrant propaganda; many of the same exact themes were sounded over and over. Crime, disease, poverty, “stealing jobs”…the song remains the same.
PF, yes, Puerto Ricans are citizens with limitations now, but they weren’t until 1917. I suspect when they came in waves, they were viewed as “immigrants.” Growing up on LI, I recall recent Puerto Rican immigrants in my area, and they had heavy accents and looked different than most of my neighbors. I recall a white kid moving to my town from OK, but he wasn’t viewed as an “immigrant,” though he had a heavy drawl.
Yes, NY is probably more accepting of immigrants generally, as it’s a port of entry.
NY also tends to have ethnic ‘hoods, but other immigrant communities in other cities do, too, so I’m not sure what your point is.
The big beefs that today’s anti-illegal immigrant-istas have is that some are criminals; some are receiving government benefits; and some choke the schools and hospitals. These don’t strike me as unreasonable concerns.
Puerto Ricans are US citizens, not immigrants. NYC is just one metro area, which is more diverse and constantly getting waves of all kinds of different imigrants than the US as a whole, and Puerto Ricans generally have their own neighborhoods in New York, which existed before the 50s and 60s although some have expanded or shifted. As with Mexicans before Nixon’s drug war, Puerto Ricans to this day go back and forth between the mainland and PR freely.
ac: I do think he’s on to a grain of truth, in that the illegality probably promotes a greater pushback than would otherwise exist.
me: Extremely well put, thanks!
There was a “Great Migration” of Puerto Ricans to NYC in the 50s and 60s. By 2010, Puerto Ricans made up 9% of NYC’s pop. I’d say that was pretty significant compared with the Central American migration of more recent decades throughout the US.
I don’t recall prevalent a “let’s send them back” to PR sentiment among working-class whites when I was coming of age. I don’t think they were embraced, either.
The drug dealing issue depends more on which drugs we are talking about and how society views them. Marijuana is becoming more acceptable, so in some places the dealers are starting to step out of the shadows, but still face a lot of obstacles to doing business legally, local areas trying to keep them out, etc.
Legal pimps? You mean the few legal brothels in Nevada? Or the escort services…they are in a very grey area. Even strip club and massage parlor owners, or those operating adult entertainment businesses of any sort, have somewhat of a stigma.
The other factor in that is that the Mexican border began to be enforced seriously for the first time. Prior to Nixon’s ramping up of the drug war people came back and forth across the border mostly freely; most Mexicans came in as seasonal workers and went home when the seasonal work ended. After the border became more heavily patrolled, they started staying in the US in larger numbers year round, often bringing families with them or starting new families in the US.
I do think he’s on to a grain of truth, in that the illegality probably promotes a greater pushback than would otherwise exist. Compare with popular hatred of “drug dealers” and “pimps” that doesn’t exist for their legal equivalents. But those laws didn’t arise in a vacuum, and the effect on current opinion is fairly marginal I think. At some point, obviously, there was enough outright anti-immigrant sentiment to get the laws banning it passed- from the Chinese Exclusion Act to the present day.
re: the 60s/70s, that period actually saw the lifting of the strictest of 20s-era immigration controls, based on the notoriously racist quota system which mostly excluded all non-Europeans. It’s generally credited with the sharp increased in immigration after 1965, from Asia and Africa, which has generated some, but relatively little, resentment and protest. However one effect of that was that it imposed quotes on Latin American immigration for the first time in an effort to equalize treatment, leading ultimately to mass illegal immigration from those nations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Act_of_1965
There wasn’t a big wave of immigration then.
The rhetoric, aside from the occasional “illegal” fig leaf thrown in, is exactly the same as it was during past major waves of immigration.
I mean really, take a look at the old propaganda some time … it’s eerily familiar themes that you will recognize from what is being put out now.
I’m also willing to bet that most of the people who get worked up about gay marriage would want to have sodomy laws enforced again as well. Not all, but I expect there would be a majority overlap, just as there is with those bashing “illegal” immigration who want legal immigration curtailed more as well.
The polls that AC provides are interesting, but not proof. For proof you’d have to have an alternative universe where legal immigration was more liberal to see what attitudes would be like had most of the illegals were here legally.
I don’t deny that there was, is, and likely will always be an element in society who are xenophobic and/or racist. Using my observations (which are admittedly just one person’s perception), there was some dis-ease with “foreigners” in the 60 and 70s when I grew up and came of age, but I don’t recall the sort of venom about illegals that I hear nowadays.
It used to be more of a West Side Story kinda thing…in that case, the Puerto Rican immigrants were looked at sideways by many, but I don’t recall the desire to deport them.
The illegal factor is — I believe — a MUCH bigger issue now than in times past. My hypothesis is that it inflames the mistrust into a far more vociferous hatred.
Just as with the minimum wage, most people don’t think about secondary and tertiary effects that wrong-minded government policies lead to. Expecting people to see that the solution is more legal immigration requires more sophisticated thought.
I’d like to respectfully suggest you get out more, RC. You don’t seem to have a good handle on what’s going on. Perhaps that’s a good thing as far as your blood pressure, but there really is a much more tumultuous world out there than you seem aware of.
On the other hand, I suppose it’s possible that I’m more surrounded by immigrant haters than others, since I’m in Southern CA. I don’t think so, though, since much of the hateful immigrant bashing I’m seeing on Facebook seems to be coming from Texas and other places.
It seemed like many of the same haters went from going bonkers over the SCOTUS gay marriage ruling (Tom Woods himself said on a thread of mine that “everyone in the country will be profoundly affected by this”), and now they’re able to express hatred of “illegals” (I really, really dislike seeing human beings called that) through a bizarre admiration of Trump.
I am newly horrified at the state of our country.
The polls bear out my own observations. “Illegal” is just a convenient excuse. Xenophobia, racism (and pull-up-the-ladderism) are the real issues in play….now as then.
You hardly need to be a mind reader here. The propaganda is the same as it was in the know nothing era and the turn of the last century with “illegal” thrown in as an afterthought and of course different ethnic groups this time.
Then they should be calling for allowing a lot more people to come in legally, but I hardly ever hear any of them say that.
I don’t doubt it. Why do I hear them calling for stepped up enforcement, deportations, employer sanctions, and bigger and badder walls instead of letting more people in legally? When I discuss the issue with them in places where it comes up such as conversations on facebook, or in person, I hardly ever find any of them are in favor of letting a lot more people immigrate legally.
We disagree.
There are plenty of polls that back the notion that not only do the anti-immigrant crowd not support increased legal immigration, that’s actually a fairly minority opinion among Americans as a whole.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/171962/decrease-immigration-increase.aspx
I usually wouldn’t cite the notorious FAIR, but straight from the horse’s mouth is them touting this as a positive:
“Only 26% of U.S. adults want to see an increase in legal immigration if the federal government successfully prevents illegal immigration. 38% want to see a decrease in legal immigration along with the prevention of illegal immigration (Rasmussen, May, 2013).”
http://www.fairus.org/facts/legal-immigration-polls
pf, I don’t get that sense, since I’m not a mind reader. I can imagine that the idea of people coming into the US completely unchecked is disturbing for many.
Whether those upset by large numbers of illegal aliens would be upset if the laws and rules over the past 4 decades were different (e.g., more liberal quotas) and all the illegals were legal, I can’t say. I doubt most would be upset to the extent they are now, if at all.
In short, I don’t think most hate immigrants; I think they seem afraid of illegal immigrants, as most natives generally report.
Never mind that they actually commit fewer crimes than native born Americans.
It’s the same exact migrant-bashing crap that was being pushed in the know-nothing era. The “illegal” part is just a new excuse.
This Trump thing has brought out people who hate undocumented immigrants simply because they hate them. The conversations on Facebook are unbelievably hateful and irrational. Some people just assume that any crime committed anywhere in the country had to have been done by “illegals” (I HATE referring to human beings as “illegals”). I am disgusted and newly frightened for our country.
I get the sense that most of the people who are so upset by “illegal” immigration really, truly would not more legal immigration either, and would be happy if there were less. Am I wrong?
pf: why aren’t they clamoring to make it legal?
me: Why do many advocate raising the minimum wage to “help” the poor? Why do most support the Drug War? Why do most want “something done” about ISIS? Why do some Ls advocate extreme positions with no prospect for results any time soon?
We’re living on Planet Crazy, where people don’t think things through much of the time.
Yes and no. I think a lot of the people who propagandize against “illegals” know full well that it leaves a lot of people with reinforced prejudice agains all people from cetain ethnicities, and are perfectly fine with that.
If the illegality was the problem, why aren’t they clamoring to make it legal?
NewF? How DOES that happen?
“Draw your own conclusions! I’m gonna make a margarita.”
Good for you! I make a mean margarita myself! Who cares about Jesse Ventura when you can drink a margarita!
pf: They might stipulate that, but it’s not the impression they end up conveying to a lot of people.
me: Yes, it’s similar to the challenge Ls have on economics. Being for free markets gives some the impression that we are against the poor and for fat cats.
Rhetoric and positioning are at least as important as substance in the Public Square.
I found this delightful comment at the end of a Tweet I got from Jesse Ventura:
“Hats off to Bernie Sanders. I’ll help him anyway I can, although I’m not quite as socialistic. Bernie believes in power to the people and the people controlling the government, and I believe in that also. So I hope Bernie’s successful and I wish him well the whole way. It will be interesting to watch it all happen.
And if Bernie fails, maybe next year Jesse Ventura will pick up the gauntlet…
-Jesse Ventura”
Draw your own conclusions! I’m gonna make a margarita.
They might stipulate that, but it’s not the impression they end up conveying to a lot of people.
I don’t have much of a problem with either one, although fleeing an impoverished, war torn nation seems to me to be more of an imperative than finding creative ways to cut through red tape, as annoying as that red tape is.
True, although there are a lot of turf wars, for example, between hispanic vs black gangs. A lot of police are racist and commit racist hate crimes that are never prosecuted, also.
Those are relatively rare, as far as I know, and the ones that act on it are thankfully even more rare. But less virulent but nevertheless pernicious forms of racism are distrurbingly widespread. And I still think they have a lot more to do with migrant-bashing than people like to admit.
It’s a form of scapegoating, which accomplishes two things. First, it distracts from the negative effects of state action. Second, it causes people to clamor for “protection” by the government.
For example, whenever the cops beat the shit out of some black guy, you have the media and politicians immediately rush in and proclaim that it’s because of racism, which ignores the fact that the cops also frequently beat the shit out of white guys (not to mention Latin guys, Asian guys, and so on). This cry of “racism” serves to distract people from the real root cause of the problem, which is the institutional acceptance, and even encouragement, of police brutality.
In addition, it also helps to establish the narrative that America is teeming with violent bigots, which means that when one of these (in reality, quite rare) violent bigots actually does commit racially motivated violence (e.g. Charleston), instead being treated as a tragic but isolated occurrence, it is instead blown out of proportion and used to justify draconian gun control laws. After all, the occasional lone nut isn’t that much to worry about. But if there are armies of these trigger-happy, hate-filled white supremacists out there, “something” has to be done, right?
L, I’m trying to get to motive. I would agree that some govt policies effectively pit groups of people against others. The question is: Is “the State” doing so on purpose, or is it addressing what it believes are wrongs and attempting to right them?
Or are they PURPOSELY pitting group v group?
…the State is an abstraction.
So are all the other groups I mentioned. So what? I’m not a Randian. I have no problem with speaking in abstract terms, as long as they’re useful in communicating my ideas.
I need more details as to how this pitting is executed.
Then I suggest you do some research. Personally, I don’t know that much about the details, nor do I care that much about them. One does not need to know the exact details behind a phenomenon to be aware that said phenomenon is, in fact, occurring. For example, I know very little about meteorology, but I can still tell you whether it’s raining.
L, the State is an abstraction. It’s made up of people, people you believe are pitting race v race; gender v gender; sexual preference v sexual preference.
I need more details as to how this pitting is executed. Is there a “racial unrest” czar who comes up with psych-ops to fan the flames of inter-racial conflict? A committee? Some kind of secret society?
Who is the “they” that’s doing all this pitting?
Can you identify the puppeteer?
I already did. It’s the state and its appendages (by which I mean certain nominally private businesses, that benefit greatly from the existence of the DC Leviathan).
ac: Exactly. If you really want to watch a “strict constitutionalist’s” head explode, challenge them to find the strict textual basis for immigration prohibition.
me: Yes, the challenge is that most of the what the govt does doesn’t pass the strict constitutionalist test. (Although there are passages in the Constitution that allow the state to do just about anything.)
This kluge state that we now have is quite a beast. Undoing it is a rather massive task.
“Also, that the immigration “laws” are not about naturalization, so not constitutional to begin with.”
Exactly. If you really want to watch a “strict constitutionalist’s” head explode, challenge them to find the strict textual basis for immigration prohibition.
“””Not until the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 did Congress adopt a significant law banning migration as such, as opposed to restricting eligibility for citizenship or excluding individuals who posed a specific threat that Congress could address under one of its other enumerated powers. And, even then, there was considerable controversy over the law’s constitutionality, despite the fact that the Act was popular due to widespread anti-Chinese prejudice.”””
http://openborders.info/blog/immigration-and-the-us-constitution/
pf: For instance Donald Trump says some of the Mexican immigrants may be good people. If you think a lot of other people don’t share that sort of belief you are way too optimistic.
me: Misanthropy comes in many, many forms, and seems quite common to me.
It’s not my job to fix the misanthropist, but if it feels right, I do try to use tact to help the misanthropist see his or her error.
L: It’s really the oldest trick in the book: divide and conquer. If they can manage to successfully pit black people against white people, gay people against straight people, men against women, Christians against Muslims, and so on, none of these groups will realize that their real enemy is the state (and its partners in the MIC).
me: Who is the “they” that’s doing all this pitting?
Can you identify the puppeteer?
L: It depends on which media. In many cases, “some” would be correct, but in many other cases, especially involving conservative magazines, websites, etc., “most” would be more appropriate, and in a few cases, “all” is not that much of an exaggeration.
me: That may well be your impression. Mine is that they generally stipulate that they have no problem and in fact applaud legal immigration. They also generally stipulate that it’s understandable that illegal immigrants do what they do for economic opportunity. The criminal and “leech” element is rare, but it happens enough to be concerned.
pf: the vast majority of the fraud is only because of the unjust laws which seek to interfere with the natural flow of the market for labor and their entirely too predictable lack of success.
me: Sounds about right. It’s quite similar to tax evasion in that sense. We likely agree that the tax and immigration laws are unjust. Whether a fraud to counter injustice is wise and justified, it’s hard to say with certainty.
Politically, it’s dicey. Unless one wants to play to a tiny minority of absolutists, OR if one wants to pander to aggrieved minorities.
Then there are a lot of things you haven’t seen. There are racially based crimes between street gangs and prison gangs all the time. A lot of police are racist and abuse people on a racial basis frequently. Hate crimes aren’t just the few publicized instances like the man who was dragged behind a truck in Texas. There are many less well known instances.
I’m talking about what I have personally witnessed. I have never been to prison (except a few hours in a holding cell), so no, I haven’t seen how prison gangs interact with one another, but it hardly seems relevant to my basic point. As for street gangs, the vast majority of violence that occurs between them (and the vast majority of violence in general) is intraracial, rather than interracial. For example, over the 4th of July weekend, in Chicago alone, 9 people were killed and 53 others were wounded, mostly as the result of suspected gang violence: http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2015/07/06/9-killed-53-wounded-in-holiday-weekend-shootings/
But because these crimes are believed to be intraracial, rather than interracial, then these nine victims receive infinitely less attention than the nine victims in Charleston did. That’s because these crimes don’t fit the narrative that claims that America is a racist powder keg, just teeming with violent bigots, who are just looking for any excuse to start a race war, or whatever.
It’s really the oldest trick in the book: divide and conquer. If they can manage to successfully pit black people against white people, gay people against straight people, men against women, Christians against Muslims, and so on, none of these groups will realize that their real enemy is the state (and its partners in the MIC).
Of course, that’s not to say that there aren’t any genuine bigots that really do want to use violence to wipe out the object of their animosity. There are, just like there are actually terrorists in the Middle East that would like to do harm to Americans. But in both cases, the extent of the problem is greatly exaggerated, and most of the proposed solutions would do far more harm than good.
That’s part of it, but let’s be real here: a lot of it is just racism/prejudice, plain and simple (or pull-up-the-ladder mentality among people from the same ethnic groups or who are immigrants themselves). It’s not socially acceptable to advertise such feelings, so most people don’t (except to like-minded friends, anonymously, and other circumstances where they don’t see a high chance of consequences). Instead, they’ll resort to cover stories such as worries about the legality, economic concerns, and so on. And to some extent they also internalize and buy into those concerns, and spread them to others, so the motives become tangled. But pretending that prejudice doesn’t play a major role in it is wrong. If you think that most racists are out of the closet with their racism you are deeply mistaken.
Sure, there are some people who are prejudiced, but “prejudice” and “hate” are not the same thing, even though many people like to try to conflate them. Just because someone might tell the occasional racist joke, or might not be thrilled if his daughter decided to marry a black guy, that doesn’t mean he views Hitler as a hero, or that he wants to go back to the days of slavery.
(To be clear, I’m not saying that prejudice is a good thing. At best, it’s an irrational mindset. But it doesn’t mean that the person who holds the prejudiced views is evil, or even that they hold any true animosity toward the group that they are prejudiced against. I have personally known people who expressed mild forms of prejudice, but did not act on it in any way. For example, I once knew an elderly man who occasionally used racial slurs against blacks. When he died, the eulogy was delivered by one of his former coworkers, who was a black guy. He said that when they first started working together, this man was the only guy at the place they worked that treated him as an equal, and often stuck up for him. Obviously, that doesn’t excuse the racial slurs, but it does demonstrate that actions speak louder than words.)
Just like so many other things, putting it behind the facade of the state and uniforms and voting, doesn’t make the actual things done any less inhumane, violent, and immoral.
That’s absolutely true. But it does allow people to advocate violence against people that they don’t necessarily hate, without experiencing the cognitive dissonance that they normally would. People internalize the propaganda, and they say to themselves, “Well, the law is the law, and it’s there to protect us, so people who break it deserve to get punished.” It’s much the same mindset that allows people to support war, without really thinking about all the awful things it necessarily entails.
Can you point to one example of the media claiming “all” immigrants are criminals or leeches?
Or did you mean “some immigrants”?
It depends on which media. In many cases, “some” would be correct, but in many other cases, especially involving conservative magazines, websites, etc., “most” would be more appropriate, and in a few cases, “all” is not that much of an exaggeration.
I’m not sure how saying If people’s real concern was the illegality of the migration itelf, or the fraud that results from immigrants being “illegal”, they would be pushing to make them legal, not to crack down on them “makes it sound like” anyone is forced to migrate.
But yeah, since you bring it up: if you were looking at the very real possibility of starvation or violent horrific death for yourself and your children you might feel forced to migrate, whatever some regime says about its legality.
I wouldn’t use scare quotes. Leave those for terms that are more deserving, such as “illegal”…
On balance, the subsidy is not in the direction that the migrant-bashers suppose it is.
And, again, the vast majority of the fraud is only because of the unjust laws which seek to interfere with the natural flow of the market for labor and their entirely too predictable lack of success.
Some have a process which they can reasonably hope to follow, others don’t:
See http://reason.com/archives/2014/09/17/make-legal-immigration-easier for some details.
It’s pretty absurd to tell people to wait 130 years, especially in a war-torn impoverished nation within walking distance of dramatically improving their situation. It just ain’t gonna work. You want people to follow your regime’s edicts? Have it issue edicts that are not completely, absurdly insane and virtually impossible to follow.
pf: If people’s real concern was the illegality of the migration itelf, or the fraud that results from immigrants being “illegal”, they would be pushing to make them legal, not to crack down on them.
me: You make it sound as if the “undocumented” are forced to immigrate. You make great points that they have INCENTIVES to immigrate, but clearly they aren’t forced.
The fraud also involves the use of (often subsidized) resources. And the general notion of fair play, equity. Some immigrants follow the process, others end run it.
Also, that the immigration “laws” are not about naturalization, so not constitutional to begin with. And no, they are not about “invasion”, either.
Well, duh, when you have a 130-year average wait time to immigrate legally from Mexico to the US, an average 10-1 wage disparity between the two countries, and a massively violent drug cartel war in Mexico and Central America fueled by the US appetite for various substances that the US pushed to ban worldwide, you’re going to get people knowingly braking immigration laws; the alternative could well mean starvation or gruesome violent death for themselves and their families. The vast majority of the fraud you refer to has to do with basic survival. It almost all stems from the unjust migration restrictions.
If people’s real concern was the illegality of the migration itelf, or the fraud that results from immigrants being “illegal”, they would be pushing to make them legal, not to crack down on them. Nor is there a shortage of people calling for a moratorium on legal immigration, either.
Exactly. It’s a pogrom by proxy.
It doesn’t have to be that literal, but that is the impression a lot of people take away. For instance Donald Trump says some of the Mexican immigrants may be good people. If you think a lot of other people don’t share that sort of belief you are way too optimistic.
I still don’t believe the legality is the crux of the issue. Had there not been an influx of Irish and German immigrants in the 1840s there wouldn’t have been as much of a know-nothing reaction in the 1850s.
Then there are a lot of things you haven’t seen. There are racially based crimes between street gangs and prison gangs all the time. A lot of police are racist and abuse people on a racial basis frequently. Hate crimes aren’t just the few publicized instances like the man who was dragged behind a truck in Texas. There are many less well known instances.
Are we counting police here? In which case, all to many times. Or if you don’t count police: How about the burning of Korean businesses during the LA riots? We could discus other examples.
Yep.
That’s part of it, but let’s be real here: a lot of it is just racism/prejudice, plain and simple (or pull-up-the-ladder mentality among people from the same ethnic groups or who are immigrants themselves). It’s not socially acceptable to advertise such feelings, so most people don’t (except to like-minded friends, anonymously, and other circumstances where they don’t see a high chance of consequences). Instead, they’ll resort to cover stories such as worries about the legality, economic concerns, and so on. And to some extent they also internalize and buy into those concerns, and spread them to others, so the motives become tangled. But pretending that prejudice doesn’t play a major role in it is wrong. If you think that most racists are out of the closet with their racism you are deeply mistaken.
What kind of fraud are you talking about? If it’s fraud with a victim, that can already be punished on its own just like any other crime. A lot of drug offenders probably committed other crimes also, some of which a libertarian would recognize as such. That doesn’t mean we should be advocating three-strikes and mandatory minimums for drug offenders.
It’s worth remembering, that “illegal” immigration isn’t even a criminal offense. It’s a civil matter- in theory like a parking ticket. That’s because if it was a crime, they’d have to give people due process of law and a jury trial and a competent defense before punishing them for it. Instead they get to push people through the deportation process assembly-line rubber-stamp style, without any of those protections (which is partly why actual U.S. citizens being mistakenly deported is not unheard of).
ac: But we do have an angry mob demanding that millions of peaceful people be attacked in their home, forcibly abducted by armed agents of the state, and transported against their will to some other country where they have no home, may have no contacts, probably have no resources, might not even speak the language, and where some of them will no doubt be killed.
me: That’s one way to look at it. It’s my understanding that many illegal aliens have committed fraud, falsified documents, and knowingly broken immigration laws. Personally, I have many problems with the laws as written, but I also am not a big fan of fraud.
@langa
You’re right about all that. But we do have an angry mob demanding that millions of peaceful people be attacked in their home, forcibly abducted by armed agents of the state, and transported against their will to some other country where they have no home, may have no contacts, probably have no resources, might not even speak the language, and where some of them will no doubt be killed. There are people who cheer every time the Border Patrol shoots somebody. There were angry mobs throwing a screaming fit not that long ago of the idea of *children* being voluntarily housed with people who wanted to care for them in their community. There is an angry mob demanding that people who voluntarily hire foreigners without government permission, or rent them a home, or even provide them food and water, should be locked up in prison as criminals.
Just like so many other things, putting it behind the facade of the state and uniforms and voting, doesn’t make the actual things done any less inhumane, violent, and immoral.
to clarify,,,
Me: Had there not been a massive influx of illegals in decades past, I wonder how much hate there would be for “wetbacks.”
pf: The same could have been said in the 1850s with the original know-nothings, too.
me: To my knowledge, there were no “illegals” in the 1850s. There had been an influx of immigrants, yes, but they were “legal” immigrants, iirc.
___
Langa: all the media-driven propaganda that portrays all immigrants as criminals and/or leeches.
me: There’s that “all” word again!
Can you point to one example of the media claiming “all” immigrants are criminals or leeches?
Or did you mean “some immigrants”?
It’s also the same combination of factors that leads people to participate in lynch mobs.
Perhaps, but when was the last time you saw a real lynch mob? I have lived in the Deep South, supposedly the Cradle of Hate, for my entire life (almost 40 years). For approximately the last 15 years, I have lived in very racially mixed neighborhoods, including many with high numbers of immigrants. Yet I have never witnessed a single example of racially motivated violence — not even a fist fight, let alone a lynch mob. In reality, so-called “hate crimes” are exceptionally rare.
It’s also the same combination of factors that leads people to participate in lynch mobs.
In most cases, I think “hate” is a little strong. I think most of the prejudice against immigrants is caused by a combination of economic illiteracy, misguided patriotism, and all the media-driven propaganda that portrays all immigrants as criminals and/or leeches. It’s the same combination of factors that leads people to support protectionism.
The same could have been said in the 1850s with the original know-nothings, too.
pf, yes, people are definitely complicated.
I consider it progress that haters are less overt than in times past.
Had there not been a massive influx of illegals in decades past, I wonder how much hate there would be for “wetbacks.”
What wasn’t clear? I said I don’t kow what percentage of the modern-day know nothings are motivated by prejudice or pull-up-the-ladderism and what percentage have deluded themselves with the cover stories. For most, I suspect it’s some mix, with the prejudice or pull up the ladder part existing to a greater or lesser degree unacknowledged. I’m sure more than a few acknowledge it to themselves but don’t feel comfortable expressing it except when they “feel safe” that they are among like-minded people. I won’t hazard a guess to percentages, because as I said people are complicated and the real motives are buried to a lesser or greater extent. If that’s not clear, I can’t make it clearer.
pf, I assure you I never WANT to misinterpret anything. I happen to really believe that the truth will set us free!
So, I’m guessing that it’s a “yes,” you believe that (probably a significant subset if not a majority) those concerned about illegal immigration are just like the Know Nothings.
Generally, I find you to be reasonably clear in what you write, so it’s disappointing that that’s not the case here. 🙁
You can msinterpret what I wrote as much as you want. I think I explained it adequately. If I didn’t, we have exceeded my capacity for explanation.
pf, I see. So these “lot of people” you talk to…do they reveal their hate for ALL immigrants?
Of course, anecdotal evidence can be quite misleading, I’m sure you agree.
Not that good. Try looking through the anti-immigration propaganda from past eras. It’s been remarkably consistent in its themes. I’m not sure to what degree most of them are haters and to what degree they are parroting the disingenuous propaganda of haters. People are complicated. But then that’s how it always was. We just have a thin veneer of “political correctness” in most of our political discourse these days, bt the underlying realities haven’t changed.
No, I’m not a mind reader, and I don’t need to be. I do study history a lot and talk to a lot of people, though.
pf, so are you a mind reader, or do you have evidence that the mass of those concerned about illegal immigration are actually haters?
If they are haters like the Know Nothings, they’ve done a pretty good job for me at hiding their real intentions.
I don’t think they are fundamentally honest. The real motivation is a mix of racism/xenophobia and pull-up-the-ladder mentality among those from immigrant groups who already immigrated. Everything else is just window dressing to make it seem palatable, and in some people’s case self-delusion. I don’t believe I am mischaracterizing or demonizing here.
pf: Legality is just an excuse. The real issues haven’t changed. If legality was the issue, making legal immigration mcuh easier would solve all or almost all of the problem.
me: I agree that legal immigration should be made much easier. But I do believe the “real issues” have changed. Most of what I hear from (mostly) the right wing is about 1) not granting amnesty for those who have immigrated illegally, and 2) criminals and terrorists entering US soil unchecked, unaccounted for, and doing damage in the US.
Isn’t that your observation, too?
It seems reasonable to me to create barriers to entry to the US for the dangerous, criminal element, and those with communicable diseases. As to what to do about the long-term undocumented, I have no position. It’s a tough one.
But, mostly, my point is that mischaracterizing and demonizing those one disagress with undercuts one’s credibility.
I’m not an anarchist, I don’t think borders are meaningless. It’s pretty important that the government of Mexico knows where Mexico ends and the government of the United States knows where the United States ends- it wasn’t so clear once and that didn’t turn out so well.
I just don’t think borders need to be a barrier to the movement of people (or goods or capital or ideas). I also don’t think we’d be any better if we went down the path of the massive police state that it would take, to enforce government prohibition of Americans having unauthorized voluntary interactions with foreigners.
Legalize immigration.
There are also complaints about excessive legal immigration, often centered on H-1B (I may be out of date on the numbering) visas.
Legality is just an excuse. The real issues haven’t changed. If legality was the issue, making legal immigration mcuh easier would solve all or almost all of the problem.
GP, to be fair, I recall that the Know Nothings were against immigration per se, mostly Irish and German immigrants.
There may well be people who are actually anti immigration, but my sense is the contemporary issue is over illegal immigration, not all immigration or even legal immigration from certain countries.
Among Ls, the anarchist element seem to find the notion of “illegal immigration” to be of no meaning, IIRC, since they don’t believe there should be States. Borders to the anarchist are illegitimate. A chaming construct that, but not an especially useful one, IMO.
You think it will lead to another “civil” war?
Readers interested in 1840-1860 politics would be well advised to read Potter The Impending Crisis or the first two volumes of Nevins The Ordeal of the Union.. Note that there where multiple issues going on. There was a separate Unionist position. There was also the Order of the Star Spangled Banner and its American Party, oft referred to as the know-nothings. Even then, anti-immigration was viewed as dubious to indecent by large numbers of Americans, which made it challenging for Republicans to handle, a position that has not changed. After the parties split over slavery, you had large bodies of sentiment that wandered between party tags, the northern Whigs in the 1850s and the southern Democrats now southern Republicans today.
Of considerable modern interest was the polarization of the 19850s, recycling today.
So, if Jack Ryan wasn’t such a pervert and/or Jeri Ryan wasn’t such a prude, there’s a decent chance that Obama would have never been elected President.
Strange world we live in…
Very interesting…
ABTW the Republican who ended up running against Obama was…Alan Keyes.
As wikipedia explains:
In 1990, while dealing blackjack at a charity event, the actress met investment banker and future Republican political candidate Jack Ryan. The couple married on June 15, 1991 and had a son, Alex, on August 15, 1994. Throughout the marriage, they took turns commuting between Los Angeles and Chicago for their careers but divorced on August 27, 1999. Although Ryan mentioned in an interview for Star Trek that the frequent separations had been difficult for the marriage, the reasons for the divorce were kept sealed at their mutual request.[25] A couple of years after she joined the Voyager cast, Ryan began dating Star Trek: Voyager producer Brannon Braga.[26] Between February and November 2000, they were stalked by Marlon Estacio Pagtakhan, who was convicted for harassment and threats in May 2001.[27][28][29] According to the May 7, 2009, episode of the UK Crime channel series Crime Stories, Pagtakhan had letters stating that he was going to sexually assault Ryan and torture Braga.
When Jack Ryan’s campaign for an open United States Senate seat in Illinois began in 2003, the Chicago Tribune newspaper and WLS-TV, the local ABC affiliate, sought to have his records released. Both Jeri and Jack agreed to make their divorce, but not custody, records public, saying their release could be harmful to their son.[30]
On June 18, 2004, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert Schnider agreed to release the custody files.[31] The decision generated much controversy because it went against both parents’ direct request and reversed the decision to seal the papers in the best interest of the child. It was revealed that six years earlier, Jeri had accused Jack Ryan of asking her to perform sexual acts with him in public,[32] and in sex clubs in New York, New Orleans, and Paris.[30][33] Ryan described one as “a bizarre club with cages, whips, and other apparatus hanging from the ceiling.”[34] Jack denied these allegations. Although Ryan only made a brief statement,[35] and she refused to comment on the matter during the campaign, the document disclosure led Jack to withdraw his candidacy;[36][37] his main opponent, Barack Obama, then won the 2004 United States Senate election in Illinois.[38]
Jeri Ryan played an important assisting role in our ballot access in Illinois in 2004. The Republicans were too busy dealing with the public fallout from her divorce from Jack Ryan, who was going to be their candidate for US Senate, to challenge the LP petitions. The number of signatures we turned in leads me to believe that if they had challenged us they would have knocked us off.
So long? Not for me. I watch it on Hulu. Two more episodes tonight!
Oh yes that’s what I heard, the borg chick? It’s been so long.
It got SO much better when Jeri Ryan joined the cast!
Man I couldn’t get too far into Voyager. I’m sure it gets better or whatever but…
But you are right and I’m not too concerned about libertarianism in itself. So yes that is something to consider. For Libertarians libertarianism is more important than other issues, naturally.
C’mon guys… I have watched every episode of Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and am currently three quarters of the way done with Star Trek: Voyager so “if”????? Give me a break!
“But the reality is there are a lot of third-party and independent candidates who I don’t think would make this a better country if they were elected, and in many ways some would even be dramatically worse than the establishment status quo.”
True. At least a bit of typology is in order. I don’t mean to suggest absolutely anyone is better than D or R. I wouldn’t vote for Vermin Supreme because although he is funny, he has given me no reason to think he cares about any issue other than maybe homosexual equality of some sort, which at this point is not something I see changing for better or worse regardless of who is in office or that I care much about.
“run solely as “We’re not Republicans and Democrats!” (as Ventura wants to)”
That is untrue. Ventura for example likes Bernie Sanders (indeed perhaps another reason for party-line libertarians to be against him), although Sanders runs as a democrat. Me too. He seeks an alternative to corporate-backed candidates, as do many.
“If?”
Grammatically and within the context of the rest of the sentence, I don’t care whether it is or it isn’t. There are UFO cults no doubt but that is another subject.
There are unidentified flying objects. It’s a matter of conjecture whether they have any connections to other stellar systems or oter intelligent species from those other stellar systems.
“If UFO were a religion…”
If?
“so it is he who mentioned that himself. ”
Fair enough.
I don’t actually agree with the idea that any non-D/R is better than any major-party candidate. I typically end up voting that way, in races with no Libertarian candidate. But the reality is there are a lot of third-party and independent candidates who I don’t think would make this a better country if they were elected, and in many ways some would even be dramatically worse than the establishment status quo.
The Libertarian Party is, first and foremost, libertarian. Being anti-duopoly is secondary and subordinate to that. It’s important, and I’m all for cooperation with the enemies of our mutual enemies. But an LP that junked its libertarianism just to run solely as “We’re not Republicans and Democrats!” (as Ventura wants to) would not be worth supporting in my view. I don’t think it would work, but even if it did we’d be no closer to any libertarian changes in law and government policy.
His UFO beliefs are also exaggerated by others. If UFO were a religion, Ventura would be an agnostic (probably like many non-christians and non-atheists), and his conclusion regarding shape-shifting repitilians was that it was false.
Just offering an outsider’s view and later a pro-Ventura view (disclosure I am not a libertarian): I liked the Libertarian Party in 2008 because of Ron Paul, and was introduced to those ideas through that manner, and if not for Ron Paul I would not have heard of Barr and probably would care a lot less for Johnson later, who should of course get the nomination because at this point there will be no more successful conversion of people to libertarian ideologies than that which comes from the Pauls. That is, he should get the nomination if people at the conventions care about libertarian principles more than they do more generalized independent principles.
Ventura is someone I support due to this same idea he has – any independent who is not in pockets of the military-corporate complex is better than the establishment candidates. Thus that is his thinking and probably the thinking of many independents who do not choose a party.
“Ventura does his best to push it down the memory hole, but right after 9/11 he totally bought into the flag-waving existential-threat anti-civil-liberties panic.”
I’m not attacking you, just thought I’d offer a reply to that specifically: It is through Ventura (not personally) that I learned of that – so it is he who mentioned that himself. I had the same sort of thinking after the event too, though, but I was young, and I also preferred Kerry in 2004, though I was young, but I’ll say his views and support followed the path of many like-minded people. (I also supported McKinney in 2008, did not know that Ventura did, just that he supported any third party – much like Ron Paul at the time or many of that sort – whichever third party you most agree with.) Nonetheless I know that’s not the point, Bob Barr changed his mind too, and did it earlier. Naturally it ultimately turns out he doesn’t find it a very important issue considering his support for candidates who would flip on the Paranoia Switch again and again.
Kind of like Democrats who somehow don’t find foreign policy any sort of indication of their candidates’ true economic affiliations.
“He should go host another TV show about conspiracy UFOs or whatever his day job is now.”
He has a pretty interesting show called Off the Grid now, short segments just about any political topic.
Right, so I’d see an electable libertarian party start winning seats mostly in pockets on the coasts and suburbs where mostly economic conservatives can’t stomach the knuckle-dragging elements in the GOP and where the GOP almost vanished from Congress in recent years (in the Northeast).
Whether that would lead to a collapse, some sort of major realignment, or something else, I can’t say. But certainly L/l’s in Congress would be more likely to have an impact on policy than the current path of mostly extremist plumbline L-ism that garners (mostly) low-single-digit results for lower offices and at best 1% nationally.
Three to 10 Ron Paul-ish figures in Congress starts to get people’s attention, I reckon.
Playing the dogmatic soapbox lunatic routine might be kinda fun for some, but it seems tedious and largely ineffective to me.
It took about four years for Whigs to collapse and Republicans to take over. I don’t see that as analogous here. I don’t see how it would work now, either. Which of the two establishment parties has a base that is mostly libertarian-leaning? Where would all of the anti-liberty elements of that party’s base go? It just seems far-fetched. And it relies on a collapse scenario that is out of our hands, whereas I believe we have it in our ability – not depending on outside forces – to oganize the party marginally better to where we start having a big impact on policy, although we would still be a long way from being a major party.
Looks like the the 34th Congress (1855-57) started with 19 of 62 MCs elected as Whigs, with 0 Repubs and 4 Free Soilers. By ’56, it looks like most were R and some called themselves the Opposition Party. That looks like some overlap to me.
Back then, we did see 3rd party candidates win seats in Congress sporadically.
I can’t think of an inherent reason why that could not happen now.
Pretty much.
From wikipedia:
The election of 1852 marked the beginning of the end for the Whigs. The deaths of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster that year severely weakened the party. The Compromise of 1850 fractured the Whigs along pro- and anti-slavery lines, with the anti-slavery faction having enough power to deny Fillmore the party’s nomination in 1852. The Whig Party’s 1852 convention in New York City saw the historic meeting between Alvan E. Bovay and The New York Tribune’s Horace Greeley, a meeting which led to correspondence between the men as the early Republican Party meetings in 1854 began to take place. Attempting to repeat their earlier successes, the Whigs nominated popular General Winfield Scott, who lost decisively to the Democrats’ Franklin Pierce. The Democrats won the election by a large margin: Pierce won 27 of the 31 states including Scott’s home state of New Jersey. Whig Representative Lewis D. Campbell of Ohio was particularly distraught by the defeat, exclaiming, “We are slain. The party is dead—dead—dead!” Increasingly politicians realized that the party was a loser. Abraham Lincoln, one of its leaders in Illinois, for example, ceased his Whig activities and attended to his law business.
In 1854, the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which opened the new territories to slavery, was passed. Southern Whigs generally supported the Act while Northern Whigs remained strongly opposed. Most remaining Northern Whigs, like Lincoln, joined the new Republican Party and strongly attacked the Act, appealing to widespread northern outrage over the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. Other Whigs joined the Know-Nothing Party, attracted by its nativist crusades against so-called “corrupt” Irish and German immigrants. In the South, the Whig party vanished, but as Thomas Alexander has shown, Whiggism as a modernizing policy orientation persisted for decades.[4] Historians estimate that, in the South in 1856, former Whig Fillmore retained 86 percent of the 1852 Whig voters when he ran as the American Party candidate. He won only 13% of the northern vote, though that was just enough to tip Pennsylvania out of the Republican column. The future in the North, most observers thought at the time, was Republican. Scant prospects for the shrunken old party seemed extant, and after 1856 virtually no Whig organization remained at the regional level.[12] Some Whigs and others adopted the mantle of the “Opposition Party” for several years and enjoyed some individual electoral successes.
And:
Founded by anti-slavery activists and members of the Whig Party in 1854, the GOP …
pf: I don’t see the LP as being nearly as rigid as the mini-Marxist sects. We have a pretty wide variety of opinions, backgrounds and personality types.
me: My take as well. Unfortunately, the Founders locked in plumbline NAPsolutism to the foundation. It’s difficult for non-plumbliners to maneuver when the rules and founding principles are what they are.
There’s nothing to say that a libertarian party could not be a force at first like the Progressive Party until the Republican’s internal schisms caused it to collapse, as is my hope, inviting larger and larger swathes of the electorate to consider the peaceful path of liberty as a means to undo political dysfunction.
My recollection is that the Whigs and Republicans overlapped for some years in the mid 19th century. Am I wrong?
We would have been better off is she had been willing to be on the ticket, or if Kubby had been on it (he was willing). But I can understand why she didn’t want to be.
The Republicans did only after the Whigs collapsed, by essentially absorbing most of them. I don’t think absorbing most of either the current Republican or Democratic Party support base would be the best thing for the LP.
I don’t see the LP as being nearly as rigid as the mini-Marxist sects. We have a pretty wide variety of opinions, backgrounds and personality types. Internal dissent is pretty widespread and open. We don’t have constant expulsions for not being 100% in line with leadership – the people that leave us, with very few exceptions, leave of their own free will. We are a lot bigger than any of those tiny sects. Your comparison does not strike me as apt.
pf: The closest organizational model for the LP to emulate would be the Socialist, Progressive, Populist and Prohibition parties from about a century ago.
me: I see the LP as being more like the Communist Party or other extremist, highly rigid parties than the ones you mention. Being a leading-edge counter-force like the Progressive Party might have utility in bending political history. Being latter-day Gus Halls doesn’t have a lot of value that I can see.
Of course, the more attractive model for me is the Republican Party, which replaced the Whigs as a major party.
And she was right!
She didn’t consider Barr to be a real libertarian and didn’t want to be on the same ticket with him.
“Is Ruwart CIA? Or is she just a dysfunctional ego freak like many (most?) LP activists?”
Ah, conspiracy theorists!
I know at least some of the money went to ballot access, also.
And Ron told me they did spend quite a bit on radio ads.
A lot of spending by the campaign is only noted as “political advisers” but in fact went to a lot of different things. I do wish they were more transparent, but that is not the same thing as spending almost all the money on staff. Also, I’ve spoken to most of the staff, and they all say they are low paid. Ron himself told me he lost a lot of money, but is not rating his chances of recovering it as worth any significant effort to pursue it. Even disgruntled former associates of the campaign have confirmed these impressions.
I guess all of the travel and outreach materials just materialized out of thin air and no one paid for any of it?
I didn’t see the Barr campaign produce and distribute nearly that much in the way of yard signs, bumper stickers, handouts etc.
For that matter I don’t think they did as much travel.
I’d probably have to go back to Browne for a campaign that did as much or more in those areas.
It is something deeper, but not what you think.
There have been centrist alt parties too, and they either got nowhere or were a personality-driven flash in the pan.
The closest organizational model for the LP to emulate would be the Socialist, Progressive, Populist and Prohibition parties from about a century ago. We are within striking distance of that level of organization and electoral outcome yielding policy change from larger parties to head us off at the pass.
Clearly, we don’t have billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of elected officials at all levels, legacy voting, etc. As low as our vote totals are, they are still higher than any sustained alt party since that era.
Ruwart may have been more successful at that.
There were more than enough delegates who would have voted for Kubby over Root for VP to have changed the outcome, but left and didn’t vote after Barr was nominated. We only needed about 20 more votes.
Good point, Robert.
Dear Mark,
The issue is not that staff were paid…my 2008 campaign had a paid staffer, the accountant…but how much they were paid, and how little went to anything else. Harry Browne, post-nomination, raised a million, and hundreds of thousands of it appear to have gone into advertising. Badnarik raised even more, and some of it went into advertising.
George
>Blaming Ruwart, when we were down to three choices for President, for the Barr election is rather silly. You can equally blame Root for the Barr choice.
In fact, Ruwart was blameless as she refused to take the deal.
George–
Assuming all of the above to be true, how did paying staff in 2012 not advance the Party? Johnson got more votes than anyone else who ran for Pres. as a Libertarian (Andy, pls don’t bring up Clark and percentages which is not material to my point). We currently have more states with ballot access than four years ago and that “L” word gets lots of press (albeit often incorrectly applied to Rand Paul).
Personally, I would have liked to see a lot more advertising in 2012, but it’s not as if Johnson and Gray just sat around either. They travelled around a lot, made a ton of appearances, did radio and TV shows when they could and garnered good publicity. Perhaps it was not enough but then it never is.
As a contributor to their campaign, I may object to the way they spent what money they had (I would not have hired Stone), but clearly they advanced the Party.
The membership issue is a real problem in my opinion (as it is in yours too), but it was not caused by our 2012 candidates.
Could it be that we had a long series of Presidential candidates who were Republicans, Constitutionalists, and Gold bugs, none of whom did much in the way of campaign organization and whose campaign spending patterns left much to be desired? That;s the show.
Johnson — almost all money went to staff.
Barr — most money went to staff, weak campaign organization. See July Liberty for America
Badnarik — no campaign organization, no volunteer effort until Labor Day.
Browne 2000 — see my book
Browne 1996 actually advanced the part.
Blaming Ruwart, when we were down to three choices for President, for the Barr election is rather silly. You can equally blame Root for the Barr choice. Blaming Ruwart for jumping in to the race in the last months is much more to the point. Blaming the people who recruited her and Barr might actually do something. Tossing the lot of them off the LNC pour encourageur les autres would be a fine idea, and we are almost there.
jc: Let’s hope the LP has learned its lesson from the Bob Barr joke.
me: Strikes me that most permutations have been tried: No name with a deep-pocketed running mate; no name “pure” ideologue; former R congressman 2x; niche author; former elected L legislator; Constitution “expert”; former R guv. Not many options left. All yielded the same result: 1%.
Could it be that the candidate is not the source of dysfunction, but rather that it’s something deeper?
@Andy — It’s is delusional to think a Ruwart for President campaign would have done any better than Badnarik or Browne.
Barr did everything he could to get the Paul vote, but Paul himself just wasn’t into it, so that didn’t work out too well.
And as outlined by Phillies above, the only person responsible for putting Root on the ticket as VP was Mary Ruwart. Is Ruwart CIA? Or is she just a dysfunctional ego freak like many (most?) LP activists?
It was Barr who secured all those sunset provisions in the PATRIOT Act that gave Rand Paul his big spotlight back on Memorial Day this year..
Let’s hope the LP has learned its lesson from the Bob Barr joke.
You should have continued the rest of the quote.
Thank you for that list of Jesse’s endorsements. That is a hilarious list for its bizarre range and shows just how off kilter he has become. And Cynthia McKinney? Wow. Can you begin to imagine the daily crazy coming from that ticket? Now I have a fantasy of them running together with Roger Stone as campaign manager just for the entertainment value.
Paul said: “I’m well aware of this. However, he claimed to have changed his views when he ran as a Libertarian ”
A person can claim a lot of things, but this does not make them true.
Also, as a candidate, Bob Barr was a Libertarian Lite at best, and it appears that he was not even sincere about this.
I think Barr’s campaign would have been marginally less of a disaster with either Ruwart or Kubby on the ticket. Couldn’t have been worse than Root.
@Simon ” Barr is most certainly worse than Ventura would be. Barr voted for the Patriot Act”
Ventura does his best to push it down the memory hole, but right after 9/11 he totally bought into the flag-waving existential-threat anti-civil-liberties panic. It wasn’t until later (starting with the Iraq War in 2003) that he started to take the positions we’d associate with him now on Bush-era war, civil liberties, 9/11, etc. He didn’t even come out as a 9/11 Truther (not that I count that as a positive) until 2006. In other words, his conversion on those topics dates to later than Bob Barr’s. And it’s true, that Barr was active speaking out about his concerns and securing concessions in the Patriot Act in 2001.
Ventura’s record of endorsements includes Trump (2000), Kerry (2004), Nader (2008), Kinky Friedman, Angus King, and his stated desired running mate is Cynthia McKinney. He’s actually been fairly prolific with endorsements, and on the whole list you’ll only find two libertarians, only one of whom was running as a Libertarian (Paul 08/12 and Johnson 2012). Not only does he obviously not think much of Libertarian candidates, he thinks less of us than even other third-parties and independents. Except for Roger Stone, whom he really seems to like. Make of that what you will.
I don’t think they would fall for it either, but he really would be a better ideological fit for the Greens at this point, if he insists he has to latch onto a party with established ballot access (instead of the one that doesn’t have such access because he helped destroy it). They’ve also shown themselves willing to fall for the whole “nominate me even though I won’t join you” nonsense before, and his positions on economic topics (single-payer, light rail, etc.) lines up with them a lot more comfortably than it would Libertarians.
Barr first offered the VP to Ruwart, and she declined. We can be sure of this because it was not a backroom deal…Ruwart’s end was on live television.
langa wrote in part:
>On the other hand, in both 2008 and 2012 (especially in 2008), I saw a lot of signs and bumper stickers promoting Ron Paul…
I still smile every time I drive past the Stop sign near my property in northeast Ohio which has had a Ron Paul bumper sticker pasted to it since 2008.
Since the RP sticker obliterates the word “Stop”, the anarchist in me usually just slows down before applying more gas. 🙂
Robert wrote:
>RP was mostly dismissed as a crank. RP2, being smoother and less extreme, is in many ways more threatening, esp to the neocons.
Interesting point, and I believe quite apt.
Also, as noted by others above, in the end Rand will urge support for the Republican candidate (Bush III?) unlike his father. But that should not stop us from going after his supporters who really don’t want a Republican, they want a Paul, and reminding them that our candidate represents their values better than whomever the Repubs select.
Bondurant wrote:
>Worst decision the LP every made. But from what I hear about Denver from a few folks that attended the convention in ’08, there was shady business going on.
I don’t know about shady business as it seemed pretty obvious to a lot of us what happened: As the several candidates got down to three, the Root and Barr people cut a deal wherein Root supporters voted for Barr for Pres in exchange for Barr supporters voting Root for VP.
Those of us who voted for Mary Ruwart on all six ballots did not leave with dirty hands.
Alabama is right next to Georgia, where Barr is from, yet hardly anybody I encountered knew who he was, and like I said above, out of the few people who did know who he was, most of the these people that I encountered had a negative opinion of him.
I actually live in Barr’s old congressional district, and yet, in 2008, I didn’t see a single sign or bumper sticker promoting his candidacy. On the other hand, in both 2008 and 2012 (especially in 2008), I saw a lot of signs and bumper stickers promoting Ron Paul, and in 2012, I saw quite a few bumper stickers (although no signs that I can recall) promoting Gary Johnson.
L, do you have any rules for voting? Are there bright-line tests for you, where if you disagree with any candidate on enough issues you will not vote for him/her?
In a way. Basically, the question I ask myself is, “If this candidate were to get elected and then accomplish everything on their agenda, at the end of their term, would the world be a better or worse place (all else being equal)?” If the answer is that things would be worse, then I will not even consider voting for that candidate. Note, however, that just because a candidate passes this test, that doesn’t necessarily mean I will vote for them. It just means I will consider it. But if the candidate fails the test, I won’t even consider voting for them, no matter how much worse the other candidates might be. I just don’t do the “lesser of [X] evils” thing.
And please tell us more about your “character” test and how you make your judgments about another’s character.
Well, there really is no formal “test” that I use to judge character. It’s more of a subjective evaluation that incorporates many factors. When it comes to politicians, probably the biggest red flags are lying and flip-flopping. It’s very hard to vote for someone if you have no idea whether they would actually do the things they are promising to do. On the other hand, I give a lot of credit for taking unpopular positions, and especially for not backing down in the face of criticism from the media/public. Basically, the bottom line is that there are many situations where politicians have to choose between standing up for what they believe is right, or simply saying or doing whatever seems politically expedient. In these cases, doing what seems right shows character, while doing what is popular shows a lack of it.
Same here.
Yep!
I’m well aware of this. However, he claimed to have changed his views when he ran as a Libertarian and even lobbied to get that same law in regards to DC repealed. As ar as the usapatriot act he claimed to have voted for it in order to pass a provision to amend the law for the better.
Many including me were skeptical of his conversion at the time, and I did not vote for him on any ballot at the convention, nor was I very active after the nomination (I did help him get on the ballot in a couple of states after the nomination, but then I was helping Nader and Baldwin too; I did strive to provide fair coverage here, and I did allow my name to be used as an elector for him for the college of electors, but only as a favor to the state party office administrator and only because I knew full well that I would not actually have to vote for him in the electoral college.
He signed off on a big tax increase and called himself the teachers union pet. I’d say those are some pretty big issues.
How does this relate to the rest of your comment or to this discussion?
Paul said: “Barr’s libertarian conversion was and is questionable, but Baldwin – while more libertarian than many in the CP – is not as libertarian as some people here think he is. ”
Even if this is the case, Chuck Baldwin is still more libertarian than Bob Barr.
I didn’t see Baldwin endorsing Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romeny in the 2012 election like Bob Barr did (for just one example).
Yes, but most people still have no idea who he is or that he was ever the LP nominee. It’s entirely possible that even many people who knew who he was in the 1990s didn’t realize that it was the same Bob Barr who was on the ballot as the LP candidate, even if they noticed that.
Very different dynamic. For one thing, Rand Paul is not getting the support of some of the better Ron Paul supporters. And he is getting instead support from more establishment Republicans. For another, unlike Ron, he will himself be personally working hard to get all his supporters to vote for the Republican nominees in the general election. Hatred and fear of Hillary Clinton among Republicans and most libertarians will help him in this.
Barr’s libertarian conversion was and is questionable, but Baldwin – while more libertarian than many in the CP – is not as libertarian as some people here think he is.
Agreed again!
Exactly.
Same here.
The original point iirc was about whether other measures beyond just vote totals are of any importance. Browne’s vote results were in the same 0.3-0.5% range as all LP presidential candidates from 1984 to 2008, yet I would say he was more successful in terms of building the LP.
It shouldn’t be a tough process of elimination, Andy.
”
George Phillies
July 6, 2015 at 11:51 am
Andy,
Barr did not just magically walk in. He had a stack of supporters, including some on the LNC, some of whom are still there. Also, to my recollection the “he will raise $30 million” or something similar came from the mouth of a high-ranking LNC member who is also still on the LNC.”
That is true that Bob Barr had his supporters in the LP, and that some of them are still around. I do know that a lot of people who voted for Barr for the nomination have since said that they regret that decision.
Can you divulge whom it is that you are referring to who is the LNC member who is still on the LNC who put forth the claim that he was going to raise $35-$40 million?
Andy,
Barr did not just magically walk in. He had a stack of supporters, including some on the LNC, some of whom are still there. Also, to my recollection the “he will raise $30 million” or something similar came from the mouth of a high-ranking LNC member who is also still on the LNC. That claim, however, is much less impressive — in some direction — than the LNC’s strategic plan of the late 1990s.
George
Mark Axinn said: “The LP was a natural place for the Ron Paul Revolution supporters to end up after the Republican Party snubbed their hero.”
This is why I suspect that “they” (the CIA, the Republican Party, etc…) sent in Bob Barr and Wayne Root (this could have been the case even if one or both of them had not been aware of it). “They” wanted to make sure that the Libertarian Party did not become more successful, so “they” made sure that the LP had a Presidential ticket that alienated much of the Ron Paul r3VOLution crowd.
I don’t know for sure if anyone planned it that way or not, but that was the way it worked out, and it sure looked like it had been planned that way.
“Bondurant
July 6, 2015 at 9:42 am
Barr may have some recognition due to his role in the Clinton impeachment proceedings and getting outed by Larry Flynt as a hypocrite. Didn’t he also have a significant role in DOMA?”
Bob Barr’s name recognition among the general public was not anywhere near as high as his supporters made it sound like it was. Most of the public did not know who he was, or they did not remember him. Out of the name recognition that he did have, a lot of it was negative.
I actually did work on the petition drive to get Bob Barr on the ballot in Alabama, and since the LP has not had party status in Alabama since 2002, we had to get Barr on the ballot as an independent, so the petition had Bob Barr’s name on it.
Alabama is right next to Georgia, where Barr is from, yet hardly anybody I encountered knew who he was, and like I said above, out of the few people who did know who he was, most of the these people that I encountered had a negative opinion of him.
Incidentally, I also worked on the petition to place Gary Johnson on the ballot in Alabama as an independent, and most of the people that I encountered did not know who he was either, however, unlike with Barr, out of the people who did know who Gary Johnson was, everyone had a favorable opinion of him.
I’ve run into plenty of people over the years who don’t like Libertarians in general, or who don’t like minor party or independent candidates in general, but I never encountered as much personal dislike for a candidate running under the Libertarian Party banner than I did for Bob Barr.
“Worst decision the LP every made. But from what I hear about Denver from a few folks that attended the convention in ’08, there was shady business going on.”
I attended that national convention. I was a Bob Barr skeptic early on, as in from before that convention. I did give Barr a chance to win me over prior to the convention and he failed to do so. I saw several “red flags” about Bob Barr, and I was among the people at the convention who tried to warn others, but unfortunately, not enough people listened. A lot of people bought into the propaganda about Barr, and they thought that he was going to be the “2nd coming” of Ron Paul. The Barr campaign put out this meme that if he won the nomination, he was going to raise $35-$40 million. I was highly skeptical about this claim, but there were delegates at the convention, including several who I would have thought would have known better, who bought into it. There was also the backroom deal between Bob Barr and Wayne Root, which led to Root endorsing Bob Barr from the podium on the convention stage and he urged is supporters to vote for Barr, and he said that he wanted to be Barr’s Vice Presidential nominee so he could “learn at the feet of the master,” whatever this was supposed to mean (maybe he meant that he wanted to learn how to be a weasely politician from somebody who had mastered that art).
MA: we will also welcome all the Rand Paul supporters as well next year after the Repubs. treat him as poorly as they did his father.
me: In some ways, RP2 has gotten rougher rhetoric already. RP was mostly dismissed as a crank. RP2, being smoother and less extreme, is in many ways more threatening, esp to the neocons.
@paulie Barr is most certainly worse than Ventura would be. Barr voted for the Patriot Act, but what is probably most disturbing about his reprehensible record was his integral role in blocking the District of Columbia from legalizing medical marijuana AND made sure the vote on the referendum was kept sealed.
From a Libertarian (notice the big L) perspective, Ventura is probably not the best, but at least he does not have such a vehemently anti-libertarian record like Barr does. It is true that he is not libertarian on some major issues (like being against privatization of municipal water supplies), but on issues like the wars (of terror and on drugs) he is right on the dot.
Throughout history, generally speaking, those who had the courage to speak out and tell important truths were ridiculed by those of their time (re Martin Luther King, were he alive today, would likely be in prison for his words and actions against this criminal government).
PJO: Yes and no about Nader. He ran on the Green Party’s ticket in 1996 and 2000, but not 2004 or 2008. However, in 2904, several state Green parties chose to back Nader over the national Green Party’s nominee.
Barr may have some recognition due to his role in the Clinton impeachment proceedings and getting outed by Larry Flynt as a hypocrite. Didn’t he also have a significant role in DOMA?
Worst decision the LP every made. But from what I hear about Denver from a few folks that attended the convention in ’08, there was shady business going on.
Andy wrote:
>Also, I’d be willing to bet that a large percentage of new LP members who came to the party in 2008 actually came in because of Ron Paul and not Bob Barr or Wayne Root.
Very true. Most people associate libertarianism with the Pauls. Some do with Gary Johnson. A few of us remember Harry Browne (say 0.000000001% of the general population). Virtually no one outside our circles knows who Bob Barr or Wayne Root is (except of course many in Barr’s former Congressional district).
The LP was a natural place for the Ron Paul Revolution supporters to end up after the Republican Party snubbed their hero. So if we’re smart, we will also welcome all the Rand Paul supporters as well next year after the Repubs. treat him as poorly as they did his father.
L, do you have any rules for voting? Are there bright-line tests for you, where if you disagree with any candidate on enough issues you will not vote for him/her? And please tell us more about your “character” test and how you make your judgments about another’s character.
I did reluctantly vote for Barr in 2008. However, Baldwin was not on the ballot in GA. If he had been, I’m not sure who I would have voted for. On the one hand, if they were both running as independents, I would have definitely voted for Baldwin, as he seems to be a person of much higher character than Barr. On the other hand, I would find it very hard to vote for a candidate from the CP, given that I disagree so strongly with certain aspects of their platform.
Bob Barr is not a libertarian either. I just said that Chuck Baldwin is closer to libertarian than Barr.
Also, I’d be willing to bet that a large percentage of new LP members who came to the party in 2008 actually came in because of Ron Paul and not Bob Barr or Wayne Root.
Yes, I have encountered some who have cited Gary Johnson, but not nearly as many as people who cite Ron Paul or Harry Browne. Some is better than none though.
I don’t think you’ll find any. You will find plenty who point to Gary Johnson, though. Which is good, because we won’t be running Ron Paul or Harry Browne in 2016.
Just going by my own anecdotal evidence from talking to thousands of people all over the country, both in person and online, the two names I hear the most in regard to bringing new people to libertarianism are Ron Paul and Harry Browne.
I have yet to meet one person who said that they became a libertarian, or joined the Libertarian Party, because of Bob Barr or Wayne Root.
>Our responsibility is to choose a candidate who will be better than the Democrat and Republican choices, so the bar is really not that high.
Marc–That is so true!
A great theme for you to campaign on.
“If the LP can play spoiler…”
Which it can only do if it gets enough votes to beat the spread, or at least enough to threaten the possibility.
“Harry Browne did run TV/Radio ads. He also increased membership. Granted he didn’t raise that kind of money, but do you think his Presidential campaign was a failure?”
Browne didn’t spend $100 million. If he had, and got no more votes than he actually did, I would call that a failure. I wouldn’t call what he did with what he actually had available a failure, but we were talking about a hypothetical candidate with a lot more resources and yet who got no more votes.
“Then why both running candidates for elected office at all? There are plenty of other avenues in the movement where one can engage in pure advocacy or education without having to worry about vote totals. If you don’t care about vote totals and percentages, then “political party” is a misnomer for what you’re doing. “..
Not true. See Median Voter Theory.
It’s all about getting the wrong people to do the right thing. If the LP can play spoiler and force other two parties to repeal government, it’s better than electing 100 Libertarians to Congress to pass measures that maintain the status quo, or even expand government.
@Andy,
It’s Mike, not Mark.
“If a candidate did all those things and then still got 400k votes (0.4%)- I wouldn’t regard that as successful, nor do I think that would actually happen. If it did, it would be evidence that they reached a lot of people- and alienated them into not voting Libertarian. How is that a success? And a candidate who did those things would, more likely, be well on their way to a record-breaking LP vote total. For what purpose do think our hypothetical donors would have kicked in 100 million? ”
Harry Browne did run TV/Radio ads. He also increased membership. Granted he didn’t raise that kind of money, but do you think his Presidential campaign was a failure?
I think we have a great group of candidates.
As far as I have seen, each one is dedicated, honest, and has something to say.
We are all human beings, just like Hillary and Jeb. We have our strengths and our weaknesses.
I think it is a shame that people here like to spend so much time picking and criticizing instead of complimenting and building.
What makes a man great is when he stands for something, and a lot of great people join him.
There is no perfect candidate.
The election is not a contest or a race to be won. It is a decision for the people to make, or to let others make for them. Anything can happen and only a fool or a prophet would be certain of the outcome.
The most important thing for the Libertarian Party to do is to survive. I am confident that at the moment, we are our own worst enemies.
Let’s choose a candidate who can help to unite the party.
Let’s choose a candidate who loves the Libertarian Party.
Let’s choose a candidate that we can feel good about.
Our responsibility is to choose a candidate who will be better than the Democrat and Republican choices, so the bar is really not that high.
In dealing with the general public as well as in going to a lot of Libertarian conventions, I have had a lot more people tell me they were influenced towards libertarianis and the LP by Johnson than by Barr. In fact, they mention Browne, Ron Paul, Badnarik, Ed Clark, but hardly ever Bob Barr.
It may be that they are only leaving now. There’s a lot of neocon/theocon pushback commentary on our FB posts, for example.
I addressed this point earlier. For starters, looking at year to year numbers doesn’t tell you how many were brought in because it doesn’t tell you how many left.
It doesn’t tell you whether they were brought in by the LP candidate or for some other reason (for example, frustration with how the Republicans treated Ron Paul at their convention, or some local LP campaign, etc).
More importantly, it doesn’t tell you how many of those members are active.
That was my point with the quote from Marc earlier.
What influences people is a mix of personality and saying a few of the right things. Ron Paul, Gary Johnson, Jesse Ventura, or any candidate would all influence people in some ways that deviate from strict libertarian (or other independent) principles, and in some ways that bring them closer (even if just by virtue of attaching their name to the party). Ventura certainly has charisma and influence among a large segment of the population, whereas Johnson seems good-natured but lacking this force.
(Merely a bit of character analysis)
Could one, however, make the argument that Barr “brought in” the wrong people? What good are the numbers when they’re neo-cons? Perhaps the post Barr drop means undesirables left?
Sean, This will happen when real Libertarians tell Republican-Libertarian turncoats that that they get to earn their claim that they have repented.
I dug up the membership numbers for the National party going back into the past. The number is for the end of the indicated year, except 2015, where the indicated number is the end of June 2015.
You will see that 1992 brought in a lot of people, 1996 brought in a lot of people, 2000 lost ground, 2004 brought in 873 people, 2008 brought in 1177 people, and 2012 brought in 281 people.
Remember that the Presidential campaign is not everything in terms of member recruitment, but it can help. The the extent we credit the Presidential campaign: Note that Barr was more effective than Badnarik or Johnson at bringing in people, and Badnarik was more effective than Johnson, but all of them were more effective than the second Browne campaign.
For 2009 and after, there are three columns. The second column counts people who signed the oath and sent us some money during the year (or are life members), while the third column lists “sustaining members” as defined in the Bylaws. 2006 is an anomaly because dues changed several times in different directions.
1988 – 6253
1989 – 8211
1990 – 9130
1991 – 9162
1992 – 11416
1993 – 9539
1994 – 10641
1995 – 13658
1996 – 21580
1997 – 23345
1998 – 30007
1999 – 33007
2000 – 32922
2001 – 27731
2002 – 22871
2003 – 19410
2004 – 20283
2005 – 15575
2006 – 11014
2007 – 14181
2008 – 15358
2009 – 14076 – 14096
2010 – 14077 – 14309
2011 – 13468 – 13589
2012 – 13749 – 13824
2013 – 13670 – 13869
2014 – 12053 – 12526
2015 – 11640 – 11723 (June)
Johnson must be credited for staying within the LP when many other former major party office-holders who flirted with LP simply when back of origin. As soon as the Tea Party showed up in 2009, it was safe (and cool!) to be a Republican again. At some point, libertarians are going to have to realize you can’t just jump back into the GOP whenever it suits you. It’s too far gone to have much influence over it anymore.
re: Johnson/Ventura’s electoral records. It’s true that Ventura was elected as third-party, and if not for all his other baggage that would be a big plus. However, Johnson finished his first term popular enough to be re-elected, whereas Ventura finished his only term so unpopular he was incapable of being re-elected.
@Mark Kane
” Raising 100 million dollars as an LP candidate, running TV and Radio spots, increasing membership at all 3 levels, all could and WOULD be considered successful.”
If a candidate did all those things and then still got 400k votes (0.4%)- I wouldn’t regard that as successful, nor do I think that would actually happen. If it did, it would be evidence that they reached a lot of people- and alienated them into not voting Libertarian. How is that a success? And a candidate who did those things would, more likely, be well on their way to a record-breaking LP vote total. For what purpose do think our hypothetical donors would have kicked in 100 million?
“I’m tired of Libertarians using vote totals and percentage totals as some kind of metric to measure success. ”
Then why both running candidates for elected office at all? There are plenty of other avenues in the movement where one can engage in pure advocacy or education without having to worry about vote totals. If you don’t care about vote totals and percentages, then “political party” is a misnomer for what you’re doing.
@Andy
“You must not remember Charles Jay, the Boston Tea Party nominee.”
Neither does anybody else. Like almost everywhere else, he wasn’t on the ballot in my state. And if I want to cast a meaningless uncounted write-in, I’ll come up with something more creative than that.
“I would say that Chuck Baldwin is more libertarian than Bob Barr.”
I would say that Chuck Baldwin and the theocratic party he chose to associate himself with, are not libertarian at all.
“Any campaign that doesn’t measure its success in votes, won’t have any success to measure by other metrics. “.
Bullshit. The biggest bullshit I’ve ever heard. Raising 100 million dollars as an LP candidate, running TV and Radio spots, increasing membership at all 3 levels, all could and WOULD be considered successful.
I’m tired of Libertarians using vote totals and percentage totals as some kind of metric to measure success. The fact is, if you want to go down that road, one’s only successful if winning that particular office. Most LP members understand that is flawed logic, so why would we use that same metric but only to a certain point…
“George Phillies
July 5, 2015 at 8:37 am
‘…it did a lot for my state…’
Readers may be aware that the United States is a tad larger than Alabama.”
“paulie
July 5, 2015 at 9:02 am
And that Alabama wasn’t the only state where this happened, as I mentioned earlier.”
Paul and George both have valid points here.
Paul is right in that the Gary Johnson campaign did bring in some new people, and it did get more people to become active.
George is right in that the Gary Johnson campaign did not have anywhere near the effect that a Libertarian Party Presidential campaign could have had in terms of increasing the number of party members and the amount of activism that takes place.
I will say that I’ve heard more positive feedback from the public about the Gary Johnson campaign than I did about the Bob Barr campaign (of which I basically did not hear any positive feedback).
And that Alabama wasn’t the only state where this happened, as I mentioned earlier.
“…it did a lot for my state…”
Readers may be aware that the United States is a tad larger than Alabama.
“I would say that Chuck Baldwin is more libertarian than Bob Barr.” – Andy
I agree! I would have voted for him over Barr in a heartbeat if he had been on the ballot in PA.
“I’m much rather have ”
Should read, “I’d much rather have…”
“I don’t know a hole lot about the Hospers campaign ”
Should read, “I don’t know a whole lot about the Hospers campaign…”
Andy Craig said: “or that it was some kind of pure Machiavellian disingenuous play to harm the LP, or neuter what would have been a stronger LP campaign, etc. In that regard, I do have a more charitable interpretation of his motives than many,”
I suspect that it was a Machiavellian disingenuous play to harm the LP.
The other most likely scenario was that Barr was just an opportunist who wanted to be on the ballot for President, and he knew that he was not a big enough name to win the Republican nomination, and he also knew that getting on the ballot as an independent is too difficult, so he used the LP for ballot access.
It could have also been a combination of intentionally trying to harm the LP and using the LP for ballot access to further his own ego.
“and I think in general the convention should defer to that selection unless there is a real deal-breaker, which I don’t see with Gray.”
Police boot licking is a deal-breaker for me, as is the Fair Tax.
“and many people our on our side…”
Should read, “and many people are on our side…”
Andy Craig: “Johnson will, almost certainly, go with Gray again for his running mate. I’ve heard the Judge say so himself that he expects that, and he’s willing to do it. He brings a lot of strengths to the ticket: he’s a compelling speaker (his experience in the courtroom is a real benefit there), he brings at least some modicum of governmental experience and resume, and while his personal cultural conservatism and legalistic thinking might not satisfy some who want all-radical all-the-time, I think it makes a decent balance for the culturally-liberal more-informal Johnson, and it shows a thoughtfulness that people appreciate. I’ve disagreed with him on some things”
I strongly disagree with Gray’s attitude about the police, whom he defends and says that we should all respect, admire, and thank.
The police being abusive and corrupt is one of the hottest issues in this country right now, and many people our on our side on this issue. Gray appeases the “Law and order,” and the “I support my local police department.” types who are people who are not likely to ever vote Libertarian no matter what we do. His attitude alienates a lot of the public who knows that the police are abusive and corrupt, and this is something that could lose us a lot of potential supporters.
I’m much rather have somebody on the ticket with an “F the police” attitude. They do not have to literally say, “F the police” (as in they can be more eloquent), but I’d much rather have a candidate on the ticket who understands just how bad the problems are with the police in this country, and who does not try to curry favor with or suck up to the police.
Man, I wish that we had some better candidates. If I was rich I’d run right now myself because I am so frustrated with the choices (or lack thereof), or I’d at least try to recruit some better candidates.
Andy Craig said: “I think he actually did mostly believe them. Not all of it, but mostly. I think he had genuinely evolved from more of a standard conservative with a relatively strong smaller-gov’t streak, into what could fairly be called a conservatarian or even a right-libertarian.”
Yeah, right, and then after the election he left the party and in 2012 he endorsed Newt Gingrich for the Republican nomination (he even put out a release saying that Libertarians should vote for Newt Gingrich), and then he endorsed Mitt Romney for President when Newt failed to win the nomination.
Endorsing Gingrich and Romney, that’s a real libertarian for ya (sarcasm).
“He never become really libertarian enough for the LP, but I would argue he was still the most libertarian party nominee running in 2008 (including Baldwin), and I voted for him on that basis.”
You must not remember Charles Jay, the Boston Tea Party nominee.
Also, given Barr’s post election actions, I would say that Chuck Baldwin is more libertarian than Bob Barr.
I did not vote for Bob Barr for President. I instead cast a write in vote for Ron Paul for President and Gail Lightfoot for Vice President.
“Andy Craig
July 5, 2015 at 2:59 am
@Andy
Ventura would never accept and Johnson would almost certainly not offer. Say what you want about Johnson’s supposed deviations (and I think they’re overblown), he’s quite clearly both a much more libertarian, and much more credible, candidate than Ventura.”
Perhaps you are unaware of this, or perhaps you do not recall this, but Jesse Ventura endorsed Gary Johnson for President, and he even made some TV commercials for him with Wes Benedict’s Super PAC. Ventura also opened some campaign events for Gary Johnson when he was on the campaign trail. The two have known each other since both were sitting Governors and they are on friendly terms.
So I don’t think Jesse Ventura being Gary Johnson’s VP running mate is as far fetched as you are making it out to be.
I think that Jesse Ventura would bring in a lot more campaign donations and a lot more votes to the ticket because Jesse Ventura is a well known person who has a cult following. He’s also a former Governor of Minnesota, which is the 21st most populated state (note that New Mexico, where Gary Johnson was Governor is ranked number 36 in population), plus, Jesse Ventura was elected as a third party candidate. Jesse Ventura being elected Governor of Minnesota as a third party candidate is actually a more impressive electoral accomplishment than Gary Johnson being elected Governor or New Mexico as a Republican candidate is.
One thing is for sure, and that is that Jesse Ventura would be a more exciting VP nominee than boring Jim Gray (who is not a hardcore libertarian either, and given that police abuse is a red hot issue right now, his sucking up to the police is not something that resonates well with a lot of potential Libertarian voters).
Once again, I’d prefer to see a more hardcore Libertarian ticket. Andrew Napolitano for President, and say Doug Casey for Vice President would be a dream ticket, in my opinion.
“Andy Craig
July 5, 2015 at 2:39 am
Ventura as the nominee would be the least libertarian nominee in the party’s history, I think that’s pretty clear, even including Barr, and Hospers (who was more of an Objectivist).”
I don’t think that this is really clear. I think that it is pretty apparent that Barr lied to get nominated, and even so, he still advocated anti-libertarian and libertarian lite positions.
Some of the same things can be said about Wayne Root.
I don’t know a hole lot about the Hospers campaign back in 1972, but I do know that Hospers was a rabid warmonger who endorsed George W. Bush for President in 2004, and that he even wrote an open letter urging Libertarians to vote for Bush.
“But he would not be the least libertarian officeholder to seek the nomination. Gravel, anybody?”
There have been others who sought nomination to the LP Presidential ticket who were less libertarians. I don’t know every candidate for the nomination President and Vice President in the entire history of the party, but there have been some real oddballs, including several who were not very libertarian. Robert Milnes and Daniel Imperato come to mind.
Depending on how you weight the issues, Jesse is actually pretty libertarian in several areas, and some may consider these areas to be more important than others. Jesse Ventura has taken stands against US military imperialism, domestic spying, and the TSA. Stands like this would resonate with a lot of convention delegates.
Is Jesse Ventura a hardcore libertarian? Certainly not. I’ve said on here before that he’d fall somewhere close to the border between Centrist and Libertarian on the Nolan Chart.
I wish that Jesse would spend some time reading some free market economics books and then maybe he’d drop his attachment to some of his non-libertarian views, such as his support for the Minimum Wage.
Jesse Ventura could be an excellent candidate IF he would move further north on the Nolan Chart on the few issues where he deviates with Libertarians.
@Andy
Ventura would never accept and Johnson would almost certainly not offer. Say what you want about Johnson’s supposed deviations (and I think they’re overblown), he’s quite clearly both a much more libertarian, and much more credible, candidate than Ventura. It’s also poor strategy to put a loose cannon on the ticket who will potentially over-shadow the top-of-the-ticket by going off-message, and is more likely to embarrass the party and nominee than earn votes for either. see: Palin, who I would argue had her stuff together a lot better than Ventura does.
Johnson will, almost certainly, go with Gray again for his running mate. I’ve heard the Judge say so himself that he expects that, and he’s willing to do it. He brings a lot of strengths to the ticket: he’s a compelling speaker (his experience in the courtroom is a real benefit there), he brings at least some modicum of governmental experience and resume, and while his personal cultural conservatism and legalistic thinking might not satisfy some who want all-radical all-the-time, I think it makes a decent balance for the culturally-liberal more-informal Johnson, and it shows a thoughtfulness that people appreciate. I’ve disagreed with him on some things, but to his credit he did more active campaigning, more running around and spreading the message and conducting interviews doing local events than most, if not all, past VP nominees, precisely because he was an active part of the GJ team, not just a random afterthought foisted on the nominee by the convention.
I think it is also a good precedent for the frontrunner and likely nominee, to name a desired running mate before the convention, and I think in general the convention should defer to that selection unless there is a real deal-breaker, which I don’t see with Gray. If the convention really wants to select a different VP, they can, but it would have to be somebody who could make a very strong case and have a lot of support to have a serious chance of bucking the nominee’s endorsement. I could see Gray stepping aside for a genuinely-stronger running mate if one could be recruited, but I wouldn’t place any bets on that actually happening, and definitely not for Ventura.
Ventura as the nominee would be the least libertarian nominee in the party’s history, I think that’s pretty clear, even including Barr, and Hospers (who was more of an Objectivist). But he would not be the least libertarian officeholder to seek the nomination. Gravel, anybody?
I also don’t think Ventura would do much better at the convention than Gravel did.
“Barr, for all his many faults, at least did a decent job of saying (mostly) libertarian things, regardless of whether he believed them or not (which I doubt he really did).”
I think he actually did mostly believe them. Not all of it, but mostly. I think he had genuinely evolved from more of a standard conservative with a relatively strong smaller-gov’t streak, into what could fairly be called a conservatarian or even a right-libertarian. He never become really libertarian enough for the LP, but I would argue he was still the most libertarian party nominee running in 2008 (including Baldwin), and I voted for him on that basis. When he talked about the Patriot Act, or tax reform, or Republican deficit spending, or even his change-of-heart on marijuana laws and DOMA, I don’t think that was just insincere fakery. People could attack his non-libertarian record in Congress, and rightfully so, but there really wasn’t relatively much of him saying un-libertarian things during the campaign between the 08 LNC and the election (it happened, but not that much). He also benefited in his bid for the nomination, from the lack of relatively strong opponents without their own baggage.
Barr’s ideological problems started him off on the wrong foot, with the divisive convention, but remember that wasn’t really what sunk his campaign. It was the National Press Club fiasco with Ron Paul. Which, say what you want about it (and I have little good to say)- that was at least motivated by Barr trying desperately to dump Root (who was much worse than Barr) and to present a more satisfactory ticket to libertarians by picking up Ron Paul for VP. Horribly and unprofessionally executed, without a doubt, but the motivation there wasn’t the worst, and it wasn’t an attempt to buck the Libertarian platform.
I do think it’s true his intention was to emulate Ron Paul, and use an LP campaign as a springboard to get back into Congress as a Republican. It was probably also an up-yours to the GOP for redistricting him out of his seat. A real long-term commitment to the LP was probably never in the cards, and serves him right how well that worked out for him. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t see himself as a reasonable ideological fit for the LP, or that it was some kind of pure Machiavellian disingenuous play to harm the LP, or neuter what would have been a stronger LP campaign, etc. In that regard, I do have a more charitable interpretation of his motives than many, even though you won’t really see me defending the choice to nominate him.
I suggested this in a previous thread here on the same topic, and now I’ll mentioned it again, but since the LP has already thrown commitment to principle and ideology out the window at that last couple of Presidential National Conventions, how about Gary Johnson for President and Jesse Ventura for Vice President in 2016?
Is Jesse Ventura flawed from a Libertarian perspective? Sure, but so is Gary Johnson, and so is Jim Gray, and so was Bob Barr, and so was Wayne Root.
I’d prefer to have a more hardcore Libertarian ticket, but there doesn’t seem to be anybody running who fits this description and who really has their act together as far as campaigning goes, so how about go for some pizazz in 2016 with a Gary Johnson / Jesse Ventura ticket?
I heard a rumor that Jesse Ventura was maybe kinda thinking about possibly maybe running for POTUS….as maybe a Libertarian, kinda, sorta. Anyone know if it could maybe possibly be true?
Possibly, although I am not sure how genuine Barr’s conversionn ever was given how quickly he reverted.
That’s a fair point. I probably should have said that Ventura would run on the least libertarian platform in LP history. Barr, for all his many faults, at least did a decent job of saying (mostly) libertarian things, regardless of whether he believed them or not (which I doubt he really did).
I don’t think he is ideal or close to ideal. I’ve pointed out some of the weak spots. I don’t think he is nearly as bad as some make it out, either.
“Some people” wasn’t specifically referring to you. Even though you are clearly a bigger fan of Johnson than I am, you also have been willing to admit that he has some flaws as a candidate.
L makes a good point…like in everything, there are trade-offs. It tends to be the case that a pure NAPsolutist candidate might run a campaign of holding high the banner that other NAPsolutists would find “exciting,” but would alienate 99.6% of the population and get maybe 300K votes. A charismatic, deviationist with a strong resume might get 3MM votes.
A few thousand plumbliners might not vote for the deviationist, but hundreds of thousands L leaners might vote for the deviationist because they appreciate the deviations and for other reasons.
Finding the optimal balance is a function mostly of who seeks the nomination.
I believe Prof. Hospers WAS very libertarian in 1972. Later he must have fallen and hit his head because he did make a remarkable conversion to idiocy.
Jesse Ventura is more libertarian than Bob Barr.
He’s done this in quite a few states.
Possibly, although I am not sure how genuine Barr’s conversionn ever was given how quickly he reverted.
I don’t think he is ideal or close to ideal. I’ve pointed out some of the weak spots. I don’t think he is nearly as bad as some make it out, either.
Good point. However, I do think vote totals and party membership are important goals as well.
Hospers?
Harry Browne brought in a lot of people who remained hardcore Libertarian activists to this day.
I have to agree with langa. Gov. Johnson was far better than Rep. Barr but probably not as libertarian as any prior LP nominee. I hope if he doesn’t drop the “Fair Tax” nonsense the party will NOT nominate him again.
I think the discussion of vote totals ignores the most important goal of an LP presidential campaign (and, indeed, of the LP itself): spreading the libertarian message to as many potential libertarians as possible, and converting those potential libertarians to actual libertarians. True, getting a large vote total (or growing the party in terms of membership), might be a result of such evangelizing, but then again, it might not be.
For example, imagine that, in 2008, Hillary had been so mad that she had approached the LP with the same kind of offer as Ventura: Give me your ballot access, and let me do my thing. Obviously, I highly doubt the LP would have taken her up on that offer, but hypothetically, if they had, is there any doubt that she would have achieved by far the highest vote total in LP history? At the same time, is there any doubt that her campaign would have been the biggest disaster in LP history?
Of course, Johnson, and even Ventura, are much more libertarian than Hillary. But compared to past candidates, I would say Ventura would probably be the least libertarian presidential candidate the LP has ever run, and even Johnson is, in my opinion, less libertarian than most of his predecessors. Having said all that, I agree with Phillies that most of the other possible candidates have their own problems, and I don’t see any of them as a clear improvement over Johnson. But that doesn’t mean that Johnson is anywhere close to the ideal candidate that some people make him out to be.
In November 2013, a full year after the Presidential campaign and with no benefit to himself, Gary Johnson spoke at an LPNY fundraiser attended by approx. 80 people.
Gary’s appearance, at no charge to LPNY except for some vegetarian Ukrainian food (I tried to buy him a drink, but he only wanted seltzer!), helped raise over $3000 and made for a great afternoon for many of our members.
I arranged Gary’s appearance with Ron Nielson. It was supposed to be a bit earlier in the year, but Gary was off climbing another mountain. 🙂
Understatement of the millenium 🙂
That concern is grossly overblown, and the much larger synergy/long term growth effect potential is basically ignored. A real shame.
It would be a good start. You are, however, correct. The lack of proper knowledge of how to use the Raisers Edge system by everyone who is using it, especially at state and local levels, plus the fact that a lot of old data fields were simply not imported into the new database, has meant that the switch – which did have the potential to improve things a lot – has actually been a big negative in practice, and cost us a lot of money both in initial acquisition and ongoing licensing and maintenance fees to boot.
And the lack of cooperation between national and state and local parties recently hasn’t helped. A lot of states have the idea that national is useless or worse and that they are better off not promoting national at all and not cooperating. It’s a shame. People really don’t get how all of the pieces of the machinery work together.
Yes.
Inadequate negotiating skill, I guess?
Ah, bylaws defined sustaining memberships (BDSMs) 🙂
It did a lot for active membership, for example almost the entire leadership of my state LP (and a few others) since that time.
But yes, it could have done a lot more for BDSM numbers if it did what I mentioned earlier. A lot more. More even by far than Harry Browne did.
These are sustaining members as defined in the Bylaws.
December 2011 –13589
December 2012 –13824
December 2013 –13869
December 2014 –12526
The Johnson campaign did extremely little for National Party membership.
I try to post pro-membership posts on the national Facebook page, and promote it for our state party. The rest is LNC’s job, but I tend to agree that we should promote membership more, and it would be nice if Gary included a line or two about joining the party in his appearances.
I understand the point about data-sharing, and I don’t see any real reason why it could be a problem. I imagine the concern is that a list that’s being simultaneously worked by LNC, would produce less for the campaign, but I wouldn’t know for sure how big an issue that really is.
However, it seems that LNC isn’t using the data it has to utmost, so giving them another bigger list might not be a silver bullet either. The point also goes the other way- does the LNC generally share all of its data with the campaigns? And if so, why has LNC not secured reciprocity for that?
I don’t believe real time data sharing as outlined by Marc would have hurt the campaign’s other activities. On the contrary, I think we would have experienced synergy.
Marrou and Browne’s campaigns come to mind. Marc already provided the stats for the Marrou membership bump, but Browne’s was a lot bigger: see the 20-year revenue and active donor charts at http://hq.lp.org/pipermail/lnc-business_hq.lp.org/attachments/20150628/7e1383c0/attachment-0001.pdf
I agree. I don’t think it’s because a lot of people hate Johnson. Obviously a few do, but I don’t think that’s the problem.
What Johnson’s campaign could do better is real-time data sharing, and frequent emphasis on joining the LP as was done by Harry Browne. Some ideological fine-tuning (again Browne would be a good guide) would help as well. Johnson’s business and mountain climbing experience and his status as a former governor is a better media hook than anything Browne had, but Browne made more of what he had to work with.
Financial transparency is another area where I think the campaign has a lot of room to improve. Unfortunately, that’s another lesson Ron has not learned, and I think that will work to our detriment.
As for LNC/HQ, we do need to re-emphasize active membership prospecting. Asking for monthly pledges should be emphasized much, much more as well.
My point is not that those other points don’t matter- they do, and are part of why the LP runs a presidential ticket- but rather that it’s a mistake for a campaign to prioritize those things over running the strongest campaign possible and earning the most votes. The rest doesn’t follow automatically, but without a strong vote-earning campaign the rest doesn’t follow at all.
It’s certainly conceivable in theory that a candidate who gets 400k votes could do more to organize the party and bring in long-term members than a candidate who gets 1.2 million votes. But it isn’t very likely, and I don’t think there are many, if any, compelling historical examples of it happening. All of the other metrics do tend to correlate pretty strongly with the final vote total.
As for membership, it seems like you say, a lot more likely that the LNC isn’t making the most of the increased interest we see by other measures, than people are refusing to contribute or become members out of dissatisfaction with Johnson 2012. If that were the case, dues-paying national membership wouldn’t be the one outlier, we’d see a decline across the board.
Comparing an odd-year to the mid-term is also not quite apples to apples. If you were to look at any month in 2015, the correct comparison would be to that month in 2013, or 2011. Not to 2014 in the middle of a national election season when interest and activity is at its peak outside of a presidential year.
I don’t agree that vote totals are the only important measure. The other things don’t just take care of themselves, and increasing them has more lasting impact than a large vote total does by itself.
Correct!
Incorrect as far as Johnson. The LP did eventually come to a two-way data sharing agreement. Unfortunately it took way too long to hammer it out and it did not involve real-time full data sharing as Marc described Marrou and Browne doing.
You are correct about Barr. Also correct about Badnarik, but end of the campaign is qualitatively a lot different than in real time.
True. I did see Browne at the Atlanta convention in 2004. I think that was the last time I saw him in person. But the earlier points were about his involvement after his 1996 campaign.
Political Advisers = Nielson.
I’m not aware of any unpaid staffers and Ron denies it. The FEC paperwork issue has been addressed in many past threads. As far as “others,” Ron denies that any remaining claims are accurate, although there are some FEC paperwork things from “others” that are of the same nature as the paperwork things with staffers; i.e. not real money that real people are upset about being owed, but accounting gimmickry. If anyone has evidence to the contrary, please present it.
The closeness of the 2000 election between Bush and Gore was the biggest factor in that. The other candidates – Nader and Buchanan peeled off bigger ideological slices from more different segments of what could have been the LP vote than Perot had. Bush in 2000 made some noises that made a lot of people fall for the notion that he was some sort of quasi-libertarian (“humble foreign policy,” among other things), unlike Dole in 1996.
Some did better the first time around, others did better subsequently.
To take a few examples:
Reagan went from a long shot for the presidential nomination in 1968 to a close runner up in 1976 to winning the nomination and the presidency both in highly competitive races in 1980 to an unchallenged run for the nomination and a landslide general re-election in 1984.
Ron Paul went from a few hundred thousand votes as the LP candidate in 1988 to somewhere around a million votes in Republican primaries in 2008 and iirc about 2 millon in 2012.
Nader did better in 2000 than in 1996, and while he didn’t do as well in 2004 or 2008 they were still all better than 1996.
I’m sure there are many other examples of presidential candidates whose best result was not on their first try.
What were those objectives?
1. . 1000 candidates in 2016
2. Take action to see that each state has operational affiliate by June 1, 2015
3. 300 candidates by 2016 trained in Who’s Driving
4. Updated issue-based outreach literature this term
5. 38-state party-status ballot access as of Dec 1, 2016
6. 200 elected Libertarian officials in Dec 2016
Of these, 1, 3, 5, and 6 won’t happen during the current LNC term, though there may be indications of success.
It appears to me that (2) has failed, for reasonable interpretations of ‘operational’. YMMV. Go through state web pages and facebook pages and look for updates.
4? Kudos to individual members for starting to get us Spanish-language Literature.
These objectives do not follow the classic SMART criterion, though they are better that the LNC 2002 plan, let alone the Bergland 1999 or so plan.
https://independentpoliticalreport.com/2014/09/2014-alexandria-lnc-meeting-discussion-thread-for-sunday/#comment-917196
Revenue and membership were both rejected as goals. Wes replied at some point that this vote was helpful in helping him prioritize what to work on more on what to work on less (membership prospecting). It seems that the available evidence is in, and it shows that membership prospecting doesn’t just take care of itself, and that financial contributions aside from membership aren’t replacing membership dues at an adequate rate.
Montoni is right.
If I had been our 2008 candidate, I would have done the same thing, though I am a firm believer in keeping data transfer as simple as possible.
Badnarik did share his information, at least with states, at least at the end of his campaign.
Barr and Johnson did nothing of the kind. I have seen multiple reports about Browne 2000.
With respect to Browne after 2000, he appeared at the 2002 NatCon and gave a vigorous speech in favor of Eli Israel’s National Chair campaign. The campaign lost. Israel soon thereafter left our party. Browne was unwell, and tragically died within a half-decade.
With respect to Badnarik, his Congressional campaign was a disaster for our party. His 2006 NatCon speech, well, the reaction I heard was less than enthusiastic.
The statement that the Johnson campaign owes money to the campaign manager appears to refer only to the Republican campaign. The campaign owes money to Political Advisors, which appears to have a list of unpaid staffers and others.
The notion that “Browne did worse in 2000 than in 1996” is based on statistical sampling is remarkably obtuse. Of far more importance: Browne did worse in 2000 than in 1996, even though he had rather more money, and the quality of he competing third party candidates was far weaker in 2000 (Nader, e.g.) than in 1996 (Perot, e.g.) However, there are other examples of people running several times in a row. Hubert Humphrey comes to mind.
Phillies via LP statechairs:
Financial contributions are also down.
Many other indicators are up: LP voter registration … number of people calling themselves libertarians … ballot retention … strong results in statewide races … FB fans … policy movement in our direction on a wide variety of issues (see http://fee.org/anythingpeaceful/detail/america-isnt-getting-more-liberal-its-getting-more-libertarian for lots of details) … presidential vote total …
So why the membership and donation slump? I think the biggest reason is that we are not asking enough.
Earlier this term, the LNC picked six goals out of a larger proposed list. Membership growth was conspicuously absent. I think that was a big mistake.
https://independentpoliticalreport.com/2014/09/2014-alexandria-lnc-meeting-discussion-thread-for-sunday/#comment-917194
At the end of the day, we don’t have to speculate over different subjective measures of how successful a campaign was. We have a very precise figure- it’s called an election result. Some Libertarians seem to miss this forest for the trees, but that’s kinda the whole point. Any campaign that doesn’t measure its success in votes, won’t have any success to measure by other metrics. It isn’t the presidential nominee’s job to sign up new members or register Libertarian voters or fundraise for the LNC- it’s his job to go out and earn votes for President running on a Libertarian platform. Every other goal you could name for the presidential ticket, is best served by earning more votes.
With the exception of one other outlier (1980), Johnson not only got more votes than all our past nominees (both absolute and %-wise), he got 2 to 3 times as many votes. Johnson himself may see that as a disappointing result compared to what he hoped for, and he’s been fairly blunt about that and what he intends to do differently to improve on it. But coming from the LP’s perspective- the historical record of past nominees- we seriously have nothing to complain about.
We could have, and probably would have, nominated another zero-name-ID no-experience party-activist candidate for President (who no doubt would have been very nice and sincere and talked a good libertarian message), walked away with half as many votes and less than half as much party growth as we actually got, and today we’d be hearing the exact same complaints about that person’s campaign.
The not-Johnson is not some other hypothetical dream candidate who can smash through 5%+ with ease while transforming the LP single-handedly into a major party. The alternative- as Phillies does a fine job of laying out in his review of the other candidates- is another <0.5% nominee who does little more than tread water for the party. There's a very short list of names that could potentially do better than Johnson's 2012 result, much less improve on it, and none of them are going to run for the LP's 2016 nomination regardless of if Johnson does or not.
As far as vote totals, he was first numerically and a close second to Clark in percentage terms. As far as staying involved in the LP he has been above average compared to our past nominees; Browne had about the same level of involvement after his first run, in preparation for a second; Bergland is a long time party activist before and after his presidential campaign; Barr, to my knowledge, attended one LNC meeting and spoke at one national convention right after his presidential run; Badnarik had a rather disastrous run for Congress and has spoken at at least one convention, telling us how much we all suck; most departed completely from the LP soon after their run.
In ideological terms, we’ve had more pure/radical/extreme libertarian nominees. However, we’ve also had some that are or were worse than Johnson in this regard (Barr, Hospers).
In terms of sharing his list with the LP in real time, Marrou and Browne were better. That helped the LP national and state dues paying membership and financial base grow, which in turn helped our presidential and other candidates, etc. See http://freevirginia.blogspot.com/2015/05/how-to-maximize-lp-presidential-campaign.html for details.
I’ve tried to make this point to Ron Nielson with no success.
Unfortunate facts. Luckily, there is stil almost a year left for candidates to improve and others to jump in.
The new people he brought into the LP rejuvenated my then dying state LP and several others, so I don’t agree with the above statement. He’s spoken at many LP events since then, bringing out people who would not have been there otherwise and allowing the party to benefit as a result. He has publicly endorsed downticket LP candidates during and after his presidential run.
I’m not aware of any that are holding it against him. All I’ve heard so far as unverified and/or disputed reports, plus the debt to Ron Nielson which Ron is apparently not very worried about and doesn’t see much chance of recovering.
What exactly would you like him to do? He does tours, speaks at LP conventions and events, does media interviews where he is frequently referred to as LP candidate or some variation thereof. There’s a good chance he will run again, with an announcement rumored for the third quarter of this year. The lawsuit, which is now supposedly going to happen later this month, will help whoever the LP nominates in the future if it succeeds, and will draw attention to the media exclusion of other voices from the national presidential debates even if it fails.
Do I really need to remind a professor emeritus that one is not a representative sample for the purpose of statistical evidence, or are you referring to other offices?
“He had not been prominent since 2012 in advancing the party.”
Seriously? He’s spoken at many state conventions, other events, endorsing Libertarian candidates, and has continued to speak out on issues in the news from a Libertarian perspective, getting more coverage in doing so than any other member of the party.
What nominee other than Browne ’96 (who also intended to run again) remained more active in promoting the party after their respective elections? Paul and Barr and MacBride and Hospers all left for the GOP. Clarke’s faction got the boot at the next convention. Who does that leave? Bergland? Badnarik? Marrou?
Vote totals for lower offices were at historic highs in 2014, and our ballot access situation is the best ever post-midterm. I don’t see how a case can be made the the LP post-2012 isn’t doing better than the decade preceding Johnson’s campaign.
I agree with some of your criticisms of Johnson, and disagree with most of them. But this one in particular rings hollow and smacks of grasping at straws.
“Our historical record is that 2nd time candidates do worse than they did the first time.”
We have all of one data point on the question. That’s not exactly a “historical record.”
Comparing Johnson 2012 to past nominees puts him in about the most favorable light possible. If you really want to make the case that he was a weak and uninvolved candidate, reminding people of how he stacks up against the party’s historical record is about the least convincing way to make that case.
The first step to finding a solution is to admit that there is a problem.
However, the other alternatives are not much better. In my opinion:
Darryl Perry will only take bitcoins and precious metals
Marc Feldman will only take token donations
Cecil Ince is a Confederate apologist who defends the Confederate battle flag.
Steve Kerbel has not before been active in the party.
Ditto the gentleman who was here a few days ago, but Kerbel is at least polite to people
Joy Waymire is a very nice person but thusfar not convincing
Gary Johnson already ran once and did very little for party-building. His campaign is still badly in debt to a variety of people. By all reports, he is still firmly attached to his last campaign manager. He had not been prominent since 2012 in advancing the party. Our historical record is that 2nd time candidates do worse than they did the first time.
It’s worth remembering (per the picture paulie posted above) – Jesse Ventura played a decent role in destroying the national Reform Party. He played the same maybe-I’ll-run nonsense in 2000, building up a large draft movement in the RP, but then ended up throwing his weight behind Trump. Trump lost to Buchanan, IPMN and some other states disaffiliated, and a few death spams later no more Reform Party for all intents and purposes.
We can shrug his ramblings off as a joke, but Ventura has the potential to do real damage if he wanted to. Luckily, I don’t think he wants to, nor is he competent enough to do so deliberately. Instead his pseudo-campaign will consist of popping up in occasional interviews where he strings together a few sentences that include the words “President” and “Libertarian Party” before he goes back to hiding under his rock for another couple of months. He’ll never have the support in the LP that he had in the RP as a sitting Governor, enough support to provoke a real schism. But if got serious about it, that would be a possible concern. He doesn’t strike me as a gracious, conciliatory loser.
Agreed!
Paulie, sorry for including you in Peter’s decision (a good one by the way) to run this article. Clearly topical and of interest to many of us.
My July 3 joke was kinda flat, but the point remains: We have dealt with lots of charlatans before, both at national and state levels (we had Howard Stern and William Weld pretend to be Libertarians in New York in 1994 and 2006 to get LPNY’s nomination for Governor).
Ventura is just another delusional opportunist in a long line. Let’s hope he doesn’t delude too many others who think the voice in his head is real. I think AC above is correct that he probably will have an 80% negative rating with delegates at Orlando, which is why ultimately he won’t show up.
Happy Independence Day!
Exactly.
LOL. Ventura’s honesty?
No maybes about it, that’s exactly what he is doing and it’s not exactly some new revelation either.
I find Ventura’s honesty to be refreshing. Much better than a candidate who lies about being a libertarian.
That said, I still wouldn’t want Ventura as the candidate.
I wouldn’t object Ventura coming to Orlando to state his case but I’d never vote for him.
I think Andy Craig has it right about Ventura. Maybe it’s possible he wants us to beg him to run, but I think it’s more likely that he just says things that will get him in the news.
Ventura can keep saying this all he wants, the reaction among Libertarians every time something about this is posted anywhere, is ~80-90% negative, with a rump remainder grumbling something to the effect that they don’t really like Ventura but could maybe support him over Johnson because they dislike Johnson even more.
That isn’t the sort of thing he could overcome, even if he did make a serious effort to seek the nomination in the normal way (becoming a member, etc.). That he keeps saying this nonsense about being too good to join the party, when no doubt it’s been explained to him by now why that wouldn’t work, is evidence to me that he’s just looking for an out to blame the LP when he doesn’t run.
That’s how this will end: him badmouthing the LP (partisans! ideologues!) for not giving him a nomination he doesn’t really want and refuses to actually seek.
“George Whitfield
July 3, 2015 at 10:56 pm
At least Bob Barr and Wayne Root were willing to join the party.”
Anyone can join the party and sign a membership oath and lie.
“On some issues I agree with Jessie Ventura and on some I don’t. But if he is not willing to join the LP then he certainly does not deserve to be nominated by the LP for President.”
I agree that if Jesse Ventura wants the nomination then he should join the party, and he should also read some economics books and brush up on a few issues.
At least Bob Barr and Wayne Root were willing to join the party. On some issues I agree with Jessie Ventura and on some I don’t. But if he is not willing to join the LP then he certainly does not deserve to be nominated by the LP for President.
Mark, in case you didn’t know, PJO is Peter Orvetti, not me, and I don’t pre-approve or even know what he will publish ahead of time.
They were (and still are if they haven’t explicitly asked to revoke their membership pledge) Libertarians. Whether they were libertarians is a separate question.
How many fools thought that Bob Barr and Wayne Root were Libertarians? Enough to get them the nomination.
Why would you include me in that?
You are partially correct however; I did have an Aprils Fool post about Ventura:
https://independentpoliticalreport.com/2015/04/jesse-ventura-will-not-run-for-president-not-now-and-not-ever/
PJO/Paulie–
Tell us the truth:
You guys ran this as a sorta late April Fool’s joke ’cause only a fool would think that Jesse (a) is a Libertarian or (b) will be nominated in Orlando.
Paulie – you are correct. Nader continued to get support from prominent Green Party members in 2004 and 2004. In both years he picked Green Party members for Vice-President – Peter Camejo and Matt Gonzalez.
In 2004 Peter Camejo tried to get the Green Party to endorse Nader; Nader wanted the Green Party endorsement, and ballot status where needed, but he wanted to campaign as an Independent, much like Jesse Ventura. The Green Party was not willing to put itself into that kind of position.
It turns out he has already made a campaign ad for 2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOlqoKHFNRI
There was a move to have Nader nominated for the Green nomination in 2004. It failed narrowly.
I don’t have a problem in principle with The Libertarian Party nominating someone who is not a party member, but Jesse Ventura has completely marginalized himself with his conspiracy theory tv show and other things he has said. I basically agree with almost everything Sean Scallon said in regard to Ventura.
PJO – Ralph Nader did not join The Green Party when he ran for President – the Green Party was happy to have someone with his name recognition. The break came in 2004 when he insisted on running for President as an Independent. Ralph Nader was a member of The Labor Party when he ran as the Green Party candidate in 1996, but I don’t think The Labor Party exists anymore.
George – who reached out to Jesse Ventura? I would guess a voice in his head is the culprit.
Freud would have a field day with either of them!
LOL–I was going to compare him to Trump. I don’t care for him either.
“The more I read of Jesse’s egotistical nonsense, the more I dislike him. I think he’d be a terrible candidate for us.” – Jill Pyeatt
I totally agree! He should sign on as Trumps running mate on the BAITU party ticket!
http://www.history.com/topics/federalist-party
(see the third paragraph)
“The Libertarians have put out a gesture to me to come to their convention…”
Who was the idiot who did that?
It’s actually a smart move. It will get the convention more media coverage. And since Ventura can’t find someone to read him the bylaws, or actually join the LP, there’s no risk of him actually being nominated.
So BSing him into showing up would be a very smart move, although it’s not likely to work since he can’t even get what month the convention will be correct. And, chances are, he’ll still be in Mexico and will forget to get back to the US on time.
The more I read of Jesse’s egotistical nonsense, the more I dislike him. I think he’d be a terrible candidate for us.
Much much worse than Johnson. In some ways better than Barr, but in some ways worse.
Luckily, this is all just talk, since we all know he won’t actually show up much less run.
Ventura would significantly embarrass the Party and make it a laughingstock among a huge segment of America. That is the difference.
“The Libertarians have put out a gesture to me to come to their convention…”
Who was the idiot who did that? Hey, if he wants to join his state party and be elected as a delegate, fine. I look forward to seeing him.
Having said that, Ventura would be at least as bad a candidate as Barr or Johnson.
What’s the point of rehashing this over and over when pople can’t even remember a simple thing such as: it’s against LP bylaws to nominate a non-member for president, and bylaw changes don’t happen until the end of the convention?
Jeez people…read the old threads, please. It’s not like we don’t have a search box. Or any lack of past threads on this exact same topic.
Perhaps Jesse Ventura should familiarize himself with the Libertarian Party’s bylaws first before thinking he can possibly make up his own way towards gaining the LP’s nomination – this is from Article 5 section 6: “Only sustaining members shall be eligible to hold National Party office or be a
candidate for President or Vice-President.”
for which Article 5 section 1 defines sustaining member as having to do two things:
“Members of the Party shall be those persons who have certified in writing that they oppose the initiation of force to achieve political or social goals.” and
“‘Sustaining member’ is any Party member who has given at least $25 to the Par
ty in the prior twelve months, or who is a life member.”
NEXT – Former Gov. Ventura is on written record advocating for government run single-payer health care as well as mandates for a “maximum income” cap – both things which run completely contrary to the LP’s platform.
As such – Jesse is much more of a populist than a libertarian – and if he was trying to actually find a better fit should either seek the Reform Party’s ticket (even though this would likely give him much more limited ballot access based on the Reform Party’s current resources) or run as the independent he prefers to be (even though this would likely make gaining ballot access even more difficult).
“The Libertarians have put out a gesture to me…” – Jesse Ventura
I have a gesture of my own for you, Governor!
“@bruuno – Johnson ran las time and he lost. Picking a known loser would be the mistake here; moreso picking said loser over someone who has proven to be able to win a major election as a third-party candidate.”
Well, that is 1) some amazingly high standards for a 3rd Party that had never broken the million vote barrier before and 2) a very wrong take on Jesse Ventura’s chances.
“– The “point” is to win an election and put someone pro-liberty in the White House.”
Then you’re not going to do it with Jesse Ventura. This is not the Jesse Ventura of 1998, who came across as a reasonable alternative to the major parties not just because of his celebrity, but because he held political office before. The Ventura of 2015 is simply too politically toxic and too compromised with a lot of nonsense for a serious political party to partake in. It would be like the GOP nominating Donald Trump (and trust me they will not do so). Does LP want to be a serious national political party or go back into the same fever swamps they spent decades getting out of? We’ll find out.
@Scanlon – The “point” is to win an election and put someone pro-liberty in the White House. If enough LP delegates have that as their goal, Ventura can when the nomination. If the “point” for a majority of LP delegates is only to flatter their own egos and play big-fish-small-pond, Ventura will not get the nomination.
Although Ventura’s request that he not be required to join the party is ridiculous, If he did and ran for the Nomination, I would certainly support him over Johnson.
“The Libertarians have put out a gesture to me to come to their convention and that I would have a very good chance of getting their nomination for president. But one thing will have to be clear on: I do not want to join them as a party.”
Then what’s the point Jesse? You want their ballot line but FU when it comes to membership? Why, do they have cooties or something catching? You don’t think people will notice? “Vote for Jesse, I’m a Libertarian only when it comes to running for President!” You think people are going to vote for a party whose top-of-the-ticket candidate wants nothing to do with it?
It seems Jesse just figured out running as a pure independent will be pretty tough work for someone as politically lazy as he is. So why not grab someone’s ballot line in the hope it puts him in the field? After all, it worked in Minnesota, right?
Well yes it did, for a little bit. But instead of taking the Reform Party nationally to another level it he basically allowed it to implode when he took the Minnesota wing out of it and formed the Independence Party of Minnesota. That worked for a little bit too until its basically became a spoiler party which only elected candidates one of the two major parties to state or local office, a centrist party filled with the disgruntled fringes of Republicans and the DFL, hardly something new. As politics became more polarized, the IP vaporized. But Ventura did it no favors. Party building, recruiting candidates, raising money all these things Ventura left for Dean Barkley to do on his own while he refereed professional wrestling matches and did XFL commentary. And when Ventura left office in 2003 and basically exiled himself to Mexico, who or what did the IP have left to draw people to it? Barkley? Tim Penny? Not quite “The Body” when it came to getting attention. So Barkley’s dream of anti-establishment, left-of-center third major party died when the celebrity candidate chose obscurity rather than to do the grunt work of building a political party from scratch.
And that’s what will happen to the LP if they sucker themselves once again into supporting a celebrity candidate. LP members should realize they have the opportunity now to establish a niche for themselves in the major party milleu. It’s not much but it’s better than where they’ve been when the LP brand was politically toxic (it’s why Ventura chose to run for the Reform Party for governor instead of the Libertarian line even though he agreed with much of it). So much has changed culturally since 1998 to give Libertarians the chance they’ve waiting for (especially if the Paul Revolution is rejected again by the GOP). But they’ll blow it if they let Ventura come sweeping in promising an attention-grabbing Presidential campaign only to have smothered in conspiracy theory and 9-11 Truth because that’s exactly why Ventura wants the LP line, to have a platform to spout off with. LP members beware of the man with the dreadlocks telling you what you think you want to hear. Ventura’s political track record is a warning to reject his entreaties to join him. He just going to use you because what you have is valuable to him. Take it from people who live in the Upper Midwest and know him well politically, it’s definitely not worth it.
@Winger — You’re just wrong. Gen. Washington never joined the Federalist Party. Bernie Sanders has yet to join the Democrat party either. Hanging up a portrait is not evidence, nor is a distaste for the guillotine. Is everyone flying a rainbow flag necessarily a Democrat?
@bruuno – Johnson ran las time and he lost. Picking a known loser would be the mistake here; moreso picking said loser over someone who has proven to be able to win a major election as a third-party candidate.
I’m having a sense of deja vu here. It’s almost like I read him say the exact same thing before. I even feel like I read it on IPR. And not only that, it seems that some of the same people made some of the same comments, including some that haven’t been posted yet, but something tells me they will be. Nah, couldn’t be. Must be just my mind playing tricks on me again.
Ventura has turned himself into a joke, unfortunately. He should go host another TV show about conspiracy UFOs or whatever his day job is now.
Really none of my business since I am not Libertarian but seems like it would be a pretty big mistake to pick Ventura over Johnson.
George Washington was a member of a party. He was a Federalist. He was very careful to have members of both parties in his cabinet, and he warned against “the spirit of party”, i.e., partisanship. But he was clearly a Federalist. The biggest issues separating the parties during his presidency was foreign relations. Washington was very hostile to the French Revolution, and that was the hallmark of the Federalist Party during the 1790’s. Washington so disliked the French Revolution, when the ambassador of the French Republic called on Washington, Washington had a portrait of the dead Louis XVI hanging in his office. The Democratic-Republican Party headed by Thomas Jefferson loved the French Revolution.