Gary Johnson will lose the election for Trump.

What is Aleppo?


lol

 

Ethereal is right - libertarians (and conservatarians) are playing long ball, and the Libertarian Party isn't the only avenue for libertarians to promote and advance their agenda.

Ron & Rand Paul and their candidacies for president are both examples of the rise of libertarians and conservatarians within the Republican Party, and with more and more young RWers embracing libertarianism I expect this trend to continue in the future. Furthermore, many of the people who originally constituted the TEA Party are very libertarian, and those folks have already entered the GOP, too.

Parallel to the rising number of young libertarians in this country is the matter of how the court decisions involving abortion and gay marriage are increasingly taking the social conservative agenda off the table. With the focus shifting more towards limiting the size, intrusiveness and expense of government the GOP is going to become increasingly libertarian.

You mentioned that "libertarians aren't going to stay libertarian", but libertarians aren't a monolithic ideological and political bloc. That's why the Libertarian Party isn't more popular and why many libertarians are opting to work within the GOP to make it more libertarian, just as "progressives" rejoined the Democratic Party in the late 1960s and began making it more socialist. The "progressives" in this country didn't need the now-defunct Progressive Party that broke away from the Democratic Party in 1948 to achieve their political goals, and the same thing goes for libertarians and conservatarians and the Libertarian Party.

Our political parties have a long history of changing and transforming. Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson wouldn't even recognize their political party today...

 

Wasnt he one of the Marx brothers?

 

Libertarian Johnson isn't intelligent enough to know who they were. lolololol

 

Actually admitting a lack of knowledge (i.e. Johnson didn't happen to know that Aleppo was a city in Syria) is not a reflection of being misinformed. Making false statements, which is what Trump does so often, is a reflection of being misinformed.

Arguably true but we must remember that Gary Johnson is a life-long Republican and not actually a Libertarian. He was selected by the Libertarian Party because he's qualified to be president and has some libertarian leanings. The Libertarian Party doesn't actually have any members with the experience to be president because that requires prior experience in high levels of government and no Libertarian has held a position in "high levels of government" so far. Libertarians are pragmatic in that first a person must be qualified for the position and then they should be the best possible candidate available for the office. Johnson is certainly qualified and he was the best choice even though he was a Republican and not a real Libertarian. We've seen this before with Bob Barr and Ron Paul that were also Republicans that were Libertarian candidates for president in the past. I didn't support Bob Barr in 2008 because he was just way too Republican for me to endorse.

The Democrats picked Hillary Clinton that is unquestionably qualified to be president but she was far from being the best possible candidate from the Democratic Party. Elizabeth Warren was far superior to Hillary Clinton and even Bernie Sanders, that isn't really a Democrat, were both superior as candidates and both were certainly qualified.

Republicans picked Donald Trump that's neither qualified or the best possible person to represent the Republican Party. Trumps a four-time loser as a self-appointed corporate executive and wouldn't even be selected by any independent board of directors to run a corporation because of his record of bankruptcies when he was a self-appointed corporate executive. Worst of all for Republicans is thatTrump isn't even a Republican and holds little in common with traditional Republican political beliefs.

 

Starting at the bottom and working up Thomas Jefferson was a highly progressive "libertarian" (referred to as "classical liberalism" historically) while Andrew Jackson was arguably a White Nationalist/White Supremacist based upon his actions related to Native-Americans.

The Tea Party Movement and even Ron and Rand Paul have little in common with Libertarianism. One of the greatest differences they have is the belief in the following statement that is reflective of Republican political ideology:

"That government is best which governs least..." Henry David Thoreau - contained in an essay titled "Resistance to Civil Government (Civil Disobedience)"

Libertarians, and Thomas Jefferson, believed in government based upon another quotation:

"Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one." Thomas Paine - from his booklet Common Sense

There is a huge difference between the two and we know what Jefferson believed because in the Declaration of Independence he established that the purpose of government was to "secure" (protect) the Natural ("unalienable"/inalienable) "Rights" of the people. A minimalistic government, that Ron Paul, Rand Paul, Republicans, and Tea Party Republicans advocate, is incapable of protecting our Rights or mitigating the effects of violations and the failure of any government to do that represents the "intolerable evil" that Thomas Paine refers to just as much as a tyrannical government that over-extends it's power on the people. Remember tyranny from society is just as bad, if not worse, that the tyranny of government.

What Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and the Libertarian ideology advocate for is the "necessary" government to protect the Natural (unalienable/inalienable) Rights of the Person and one that will also mitigate any violations of those Natural Rights if the government is incapable of preventing the violation.

It's "Necessary Government (Paine) v Minimalistic Government (Thoreau)" that would be a major difference between Libertarian political ideology and the Republican ideology that Ron Paul, Rand Paul and the Tea Party movement have embraced.

 

Disagree. The original Tea Party platform was all about shrinking Govt with maybe some term limits support but nothing about social issues.

Which is in agreement with Libertarianism but they add in the freedoms of social issues.

I'm not a Tea Partier, but was on board with their original belief system until I starting seeing cracks in it with the "cut Govt programs just dont cut MINE!"

I believe that those kinds of schisms as well as adding in other non-big Govt 'stuff' caused its eventual downfall as a major movement...

 

First, please permit me to clarify my reference to Jefferson and Jackson. That was made in reference to the Democratic Party, not libertarianism. Neither one of them were Big Government types, and neither was the Democratic Party during their times. The same could be said of Jackson's protégé James K. Polk, as well.

As for Thomas Jefferson being "highly progressive", he was a slave holder, which would also qualify him as a white supremacist. Jefferson was certainly no James Otis, Jr., who asserted that blacks possessed the same natural rights as whites while he was arguing against general writs of assistance in Paxton's Case in 1761.

For the record, I said many of the people who initially formed the TEA Party before it was co-opted by social conservatives were libertarians who promoted the limited, fiscally responsible government that libertarians embrace.

As for Ron and Rand Paul having "little in common with Libertarianism", I'm sure many would disagree with you on that (some passionately so, I suspect). Personally, I see Rand as more of a conservatarian than a libertarian, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that the man and his beliefs have little to do with libertarianism.

Of course, that begs the question, what is libertarianism? As I pointed out to Mr. Swedish Guy, it is different things to different libertarians.

That's a distinction without a difference, in my opinion.

What separates many Republicans from libertarians is that many of them aren't true to individual freedom and limited, fiscally responsible governance.

I would also submit that a lot of libertarians would not consider Thomas Paine a libertarian, either:

That Paine would support "the program of Babeuf" seriously casts his libertarian credentials into doubt. As you may know, François-Noël Babeuf was the godfather of socialism, who believed that "Nature has given to every man the right to the enjoyment of an equal share in all property". Clearly, there's nothing libertarian about such a philosophy or program.

Well, Jefferson was a hypocrite, was he not? And as I pointed out, Paine's libertarian credentials are dubious, at best.

I disagree with you on the Pauls and the libertarians in the TEA Party movement. While our current form government of government does indeed do more to trample on our individual rights than secure them, that doesn't mean the Pauls and the libertarian TEA partiers don't wish to halt and reverse this problem.

Sometimes, they're one and the same, but I agree with you that tyranny is bad in any form.

Certainly, Paine's idea of "necessary" would not be consistent with what most (if not all) libertarians consider necessary, which is minimalist, so if I'm reading you correctly I would agree with you here. Of course, that goes for the many Republicans who pay lip service to limited, fiscally responsible government, as well.

I see that you describe yourself as a "Progressive Libertarian". In light of how there is little to nothing libertarian about today's "progressives" (or those of yesteryear, for that matter), I'm curious what your definition of a "Progressive Libertarian" might be.