Tell Me About the Libertarian Party

I consider myself a moderate conservative but have been voting libertarian ever since Palin was announced as a running mate.

Fiscally conservative, socially liberal. I do think the party goes overboard with some of the government spending they want to cut, board of education for example, but they're still a better alternative than supporting the tea party candidates... Or whatever the hell trump is.

Personally I side with Bill Weld more than Johnson. I actually think he would be a better candidate, but Johnson has been the face of the party for much longer so I understand why he is the nominee. Read up on him, he was a solid choice for VP.

My hope when voting libertarian is one day, possibly this election, they will steal enough votes from the Rs to get them to mellow out on their social stances to attract the millennial vote. Why the heck should a party that supports small government care if gays get married, if someone wants to smoke pot, if a woman wants to choose what to do with her body etc.

 

1) Repealing any right to compulsory or government funded public education, which would both decrease literacy among the poor and resegregate it away from blacks, Hispanics and Middle Easterners for social reasons and Indians and East Asians for early 20th century Harvard faculty reasons.

2) Replace enforcement of the Civil Rights Act with organic, free-market solutions including "ostracism."

3) Legalize all drugs, further validating ethnic gangs as a viable economic model for young, poor minorities.

 

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...ds_to_leave_the_libertarian_party_behind.html

 

Libertarians like to focus their mass appeal on liberal social policies because their economic policies are so hardcore ridiculous. True libertarian political philosophy replaces government with corporations. It is essentially a decentralized series of zones governed by different corporate cultures where people can "buy into" the one they like.

Obviously not all libertarians are that crazy but that is the foundation so it still colors economic positions - get rid of government interference and let magic markets and corporations solve everything.

 

That's wrong. Johnson supported a voucher system (which is public funded education) as governor. As president he would support states handling education however they wish.

Also dishonest. They support the part of the Civil Rights Act that ended government segregation. They disapprove of the part that punishes a private enterprise/individual for racist behavior.

just dumb. if drugs are legal , why would somebody buy from a punk on the street?

 

Johnson isn't the party, he's a misdirect or aberration like Trump. They've been spouting this crap since the '70s after infecting the GOP in '64, and it's easily inferable from all their commentary and party platform points.

 

Johnson's views that education should be handled at a state level is pretty universal among the libertarian and conservative groups. Basic 10th amendment. The Civil Rights Act views as well.

If you don't know libertarian positions, don't confuse the OP with bad information.

Simply put: Libertarians believe in economic freedom (like conservatives), but far less national defense (unlike conservatives), and differ on some social issues (they are all over the map on abortion).

 

Which precludes minorities from getting hired in any company, going to any private school (after you goofballs defund public school), staying in any hotel, renting any kind of apartment or buying any kind of house in any neighborhood, opening any kind of bank account or getting any kind of loan, or patronizing any kind of retail entity.

 

The Libertarian Party platform states that all funding for education should be the family's responsibility. No one including you would ever pay for a poor or black, Hispanic or especially now East Asian or Indian kid's education, and everyone would probably pay and work extra to keep their kids away from them in any large numbers, so cut the act.

 

I think people like tallnover don't understand that if you allow businesses to practice segregation it can lead to a situation where minorities have much fewer choices in products and services than the majority. Tallnover will try to justify it by using the 'invisible hand' argument but did the 'invisible hand' prevent denying services to black people at a massive scale pre 1964?

Does allowing businesses to discriminate again also mean that 'redlining' is going to be rampant again?

 

of course. and all of those businesses would go out of business as soon as that got reported. who is gonna do business with some racists?

you can't protect the beliefs you like and punish those you don't. That's not how freedom works. Assuming a belief doesn't violate the rights of another then all should be equal in the eyes of the law (not the individual).

yes, if you were in a republican area where racism was frowned upon.

who in their right mind thinks a business could succeed in this country by denying services to an entire race? just dumb.

 

This isn't the best place to learn about the Libertarian Party, imo.

I've been to a few libertarian conventions and meetings (large meetings; not 5-6 male virgins gathering at a Taco Cabana for $2 margaritas) but that feels so long ago. I gave up caring because my personal and professional life became more fulfilling and rewarding, and as such the need to read/debate/think politics (and religion) just went away.

I will just say a few things:

Do not confuse the Libertarian Party with (small 'l') libertarianism itself.

To learn about the Libertarian Party you could probably just google some things and read a few Wikipedia pages. Seems to me they have a lot of washed-up Republicans and otherwise fringe politicians just trying to hang on to their political career for a little longer, before they become completely forgotten.

To learn about libertarianism itself, the far-and-away best (recent) book will be "Libertarianism Today" in 2010 by Jacob Huebert. PDF is here.

 

Pretty much what i just wrote above.

'Assuming a belief doesn't violate the rights of another then all should be equal in the eyes of the law (not the individual)'

 

This is pretty much how I feel. It also IMO most closely represents what I believe would be a system to allow for the continuation of the "American Dream".

 

Just curious... why would the invisible hand work pre 1964 when there was even less of a free market than there is now?

I don't agree with them, but you have to understand the premise of their argument, which is interestingly similar to establishment arguments as well. From my experience, I feel like libertarians:

1) Believe the market is not "free" but should be free. A big distinction here between those two. That's why you'll often find that when things go well, they will say it's because the market is freer in that area/industry. If they don't go well, it's because of tampering with free market forces.

2) I get the impression they believe the market used to be free at some point in history, then it got infested, and now it's not free but it's so infested that it's close to collapsing and creating a free market. They seem to root for that day, although in reality it would result in a lot of death, war and possibly civil war.

3) They believe it's not free because of all the intervention from the government. Oddly, corporate intervention that manipulates the market from outside the competitive arena does not seem to bother them, I don't know how they rationalize it. So when SOME things are public like education, health, etc this infests the market and examples of market failure can be ignored because it is attributed to the initial infestation of the market.

So keeping these things in mind, I don't think it's illogical to their theory that there wasn't a free market pre 1964 to help blacks. They probably think that if the market were actually free, the market would - like god himself - conjure up the perfect balancing solution for it, even if they don't know what that solution would be right now.

 

People who read enough history textbooks to know that it happened for 100 years, and that integration was violently resisted by whole communities within some of our lifetimes, and aren't so racially obtuse or subconsciously bigoted to deny those precedents.

 

Why don't you look at all the go fund me pity accounts of bigots and racist business owners who receive overwhelming support.

 

The other two parties have had their hand at helping the poor in this country to improve their status and I think if you were to poll the poor they would tell you that they suck at their jobs. As would I.

The current system is designed to maintain the poverty level and even protect it.

 

Why don't you look at the bank accounts of the non racist business owners who are kicking those pricks a$$es.

I would love to see somebody run an openly racist business in the US today. I don't think it would take long before their suppliers and banks and property owners would fix that, not to mention the customers.

Sure you might find some backwoods business that could survive with a small bunch of jerk customers but at least we would know where they are so we can avoid them.