Austin Peterson is a candidate for US Senate in the state of Missouri. He doesn’t have a chance. Which is a sad thing.
“I want gay couples to be able to protect their marijuana fields with fully automatic rifles.”
Unfortunately, like most libertarians, he favors unchecked massive third world immigration.
Oh!!. For. YHWH‘s. Sake….
Is it the water? Cosmic rays from Deep Space? Guv’mint satellites overhead. The break-room microwave? Why is every Libertarian Party candidate a batsh*t-crazy, tin-foil hat lunatic?
They just can’t help themselves I guess. The Party members go into the Caucus with good, sound Libertarian principles (Liberty, sound governance, low taxes), …then appoint the loosest-cannon in the room as their candidate and public-face. It never fails.
In they go, staid sober Presbyterians — and they come out praising-Xenu-knows-who in-tongues with vibrating butt-plugs inserted set to “heavy stun”.
Libertarians are basically Republicans who want to smoke pot. Like the country club conservative Republicans and limousine liberal Democrats, they want unrestricted immigration as a source of cheap labor.
What they and the Republicans don’t seem to grasp (but Democrats do) is that things have changed since 1867. Technology has wiped out a lot of unskilled labor jobs, and we now have a massive public welfare system that is a magnet for people who have no intention of working, paying taxes, or assimilating. (For the Dems, that’s a feature, not a bug, since they need an ever-continuing supply of voters who are completely dependent on the government dole.)
The Libertarian Party cannot survive when unchecked immigration allows immigrant welfare recipients to become a majority of voters.
Back in the 80s, I had some interest in the Libertarian party but, especially on immigration, they can’t grasp that culture and traditions are what allows them to pursue their idea of liberty.
I once asked Charles CW Cooke at NRO what drugs we should legalize. His response was “all of them”. I guess the human toll (e.g. children taken into state care) is zero.
Why they think millions of people from cultures with centuries of dysfunction and tyranny will turn into live-and-let-live conservatives and libertarians is as baffling to me as Republicans that think Hispandering will win them the Hispanic vote.
(The fact that we refer to the black/hispanic/gay/single-woman/married-woman/tranny/etc vote has to be one of the most offensive aspects of our age.)
This Peterson guy should get a tin foil hat. He’s the wrong kind of Libetarian.
But he’s the ideal Libertarian candidate, based on past Party performance. That’s exactly who Libertarians are in-the-voting-booth, they’re are always batsh*t-crazy.
Even the Greens sound-rational by-comparison, …at-least until they get to their thirteenth bullet-point.
I had a number of friends who, after Trump secured the Republican nomination, wrote long, flowery posts on Facebook about how the Republican Party was now unrecognizable to them (keep in mind these were college students), and that they were changing their affiliation to the only party left that respected individual liberty: the Libertarian Party. Cue the Libertarian convention, and their reactions universally ranged from “Okay, yeah, this looks bad, but honestly it’s nowhere near as bad as it looks, honest” to “I”VE MADE A MISTAKE.”
The Libertarian Party is what happens when you allow ideals to be untempered by pragmatism and realism: it becomes a race to the bottom to find the most ideologically pure and most politically unviable figurehead. Of course, there’s dangers of being ruled completely by pragmatism. But even on their worst days, I can look at Republicans and say, “Well, at least they aren’t as bad as Libertarians.”
My view is that Libertarians are not serious about advancing their ideas. For the most part, they are a debate club. And when someone like Rand Paul or Austim Peterson actually breaks through, rather than be happy that libertarian philosophy is advancing, they attack them as sellouts.
Have you ever heard of anyone calling themselves, “Libertarian Socialists.” Libertarian and socialist would be strange bed fellows.
Libertarian Sociakists sound a lot like British Fabian Socialists; a progressive debating society vaguely-interested in Social Justice as long as no-one is offended.
If libertarian means the smallest amount of government necessary to perform the necessary functions of government then I’m libertarian. If it means open borders and othe such inanities than I’m not.