Ron Paul Revolution 2.0: Angela McArdle's Plan for the Libertarian Party
Ron Paul’s "Giuliani Moment" is the kind of "bold messaging" the party needs, says new incoming chair Angela McArdle.
HD Download"The main function of the Libertarian Party is to try to make the United States a freer place," says Angela McArdle, who won her election for Libertarian National Committee chair with an overwhelming 70 percent of the vote at the party's national convention in Reno, Nevada, last May. "People disagree on what strategy to take to achieve that purpose. I believe there's room for both strategies: to send out strong messaging campaigns and to win elections."
McArdle had the backing of the Mises Caucus, whose candidates swept all the leadership positions at the convention. Reason's Nick Gillespie sat down with her in Reno a day before she became the party's new chair to better understand what changes she wants to make to the party's messaging, political strategy, and official policies.
Produced by Nick Gillespie and Zach Weissmueller; editing by Adam Czarnecki and Danielle Thompson; sound editing by John Osterhoudt; camera by James Marsh and Weissmueller.
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"The main function of the Libertarian Party is to try to make the United States a freer place"
This is where they loose me. As I learned from reason the main function of the LP is to run cover for the dems. no matter how horrible they are the LP must always equate things the dems do to how it's both sides. E. G. I know the progressives have turned public education into Marxist trading camps, But the Republicans would let teachers pray in school
The LP has been around a half century, and that half century has seen the US descend into a much less free place
This. At some point people need to look past the rhetoric and note what they are actually doing.
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Not sure how dumping the no racism clause from the platform helps in either making the US a freer place or win elections. Sounds more like a dog whistle.
a group is necessary to tell you to not racist?
That group also tells you not to steal shit from people. You think that is necessary? The platform isn't there to give you a bunch of rules. It's there to say what the Libertarian Party believes in. And it does NOT believe in racism. Or at least didn't use to.
If removing that plank is what the Mises Caucus thinks will win it votes, then what votes are they seeking? Obviously they're catering to racist fucks.
"Obviously they're catering to racist fucks."
Sounds like Brandy's been huffing the CNN, again.
They didn't have a plank about fucking kids and puppies either, so I guess they're pandering to Pluggo.
Also, the phrase "dog whistle" is doing all the work for Brandy.
It let's him ascribe to them a position at odds with what they actually proposed.
Basically it allows him to lie about their position through inference. The ultimate in bad faith arguments.
Funny thing about dog whistles, dogs can hear them but people cannot. Brandy can metaphorically hear the dog whistle of racism here, so what does that say about him?
If they used to have a plank about fucking kids and puppies, and a newly dominant Cosmo Caucus removed it from the platform, it would be a pretty easy inference that they were (at the minimum) courting the votes of dog fuckers, kiddie fuckers, and the fucker-adjacent.
Draw your own conclusions about what removing the anti-bigotry clause from the platform is meant to accomplish.
Given the Mises Caucus's reputation as a safe haven for race realists, MAGA lites, anarcho-paleocons, Hoppeans, sovereign citizen types (like McArdle herself), and alt-right sympathizers within the LP, I don't think it's unfair to question the motives for removing the bigotry plank. They wouldn't have gotten rid of it if they didn't think it was keeping their prospective allies on the Right from backing the party.
When people call the Mises folk "Alt-Right" it tells you they learned all they needed to know from Salon. It is the quickest identifier of people who knew nothing about Mises prior to May.
Anything more conservative than Bernie Sanders is alt-right to a lot of the media.
Well now that you've got that panicky horseshit out of your system, you want to explain why and how those people you listed are racists and bigots?
calling all cosmo wokes and slate/vanity fair "libertarians"..
Hahahahahahaha, goddamn man. Just wow.
There wasn't a "bigotry plank." It was a sentence in the Rights and Discrimination plank, which was replaced by this: "We uphold and defend the rights of every person, regardless of their race, ethnicity, or any other aspect of their identity."
"Bigotry" is a thought crime. To police "bigotry", you police not just actions, but words. As Angela said, no one can agree on what a bigot is. The Left thinks JK Rowling is a bigot; I do not. Who's right? To figure that out, the Left has decided we use an arbitrary hierarchy of victimhood to decide who has precedence. Is that libertarian?
And it does NOT believe in racism. Or at least didn't use to.
I don't have an "In This House We Believe" sign on my front lawn or a Black Lives Matter sign on my front lawn, does that mean that in this house I DON'T believe or I think that Black Lives DON'T matter?
Yeah, that's kind of my point. I want to make it distinct from the arguments I'm seeing that it's no one's business if someone is racist. I disagree with that as I think racism is odorous. I just think that not only should the government not have the powers to censure folks for racism (obviously not including actually acting upon said racism with violence), I am not convinced that the government action we've seen has been a driving force in decreased racism in our country.
Mises Caucus's time has generally being spent countering the Pandemic State over the last 3 years, while the Libertarian Leadership sat on their asses.
They reject Woke politics out of hand if asked. But they by far have spent the most of their time arguing against the completely authoritarian institution of Pandemic regulations.
But Brandy doesn't know about this. Largely because Brandy, reason, and many of the other usual suspects, know only these small anecdotes and have therefore made up their mind. Exactly as the people trafficking in this narrative wanted Brandy to do.
There are a significant number of Libertarians who sat out the pandemic with mumbled half protestations, desiring instead to shout about trump and other woke nonsense. Those people have received the "Truth" that they can hang their condemnation onto, and nothing will back them off of it at this point.
And I have no idea myself. I don't follow Libertarian Party issues at all.
Then I recommend actually going to the Mises Party Platform, and reading what they have to say. Go listen to David Smith's podcast.
If you don't actually care what the Mises Caucus (or the LP in general) does, then fine. But if you do care, Reason is the last place you are going to get a fair shake, and Brandy- who knows only the caricatures provided by the LP leadership and Brian Doherty- is the last commenter to engage for a reasoned discussion on the issue.
Seriously, go listen to Smith's podcast, Part of the Problem. Just look at the past years of podcast titles. They are largely about Anti-Pandemic, Anti-War, and Anti-Fed with a healthy dose of No Woke Here. Fuck: Smith has even posted responses to Reason's articles because he is especially pissed off that no one at reason seemed interested in interviewing them before running their initial stories.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RkMZ0PB_9c
Then I recommend actually going to the Mises Party Platform, and reading what they have to say. Go listen to David Smith's podcast.
I'm a libertarian, you think I'm going to leave the house for politics? Hell no, there's TV to be watched.
The problem is a condemnation becomes a rule, becomes a mission, becomes a purpose, becomes a sacrament.
A libertarian party should be about promoting liberty, not fighting racism. But include a rule and that quickly takes over.
Brandy knows this, but wants to call names.
I'll just go with the lefty logic but applied to the dems. There is no plank in the DNC platform condemning pedophilia and cannibalism so apparently all Democrats are cannibalistic pedophiles.
It isn't that the Mises LP lacks a bigotry plank in its platform. It's that the Mises LP made it a priority to remove the bigotry plank that was already there. It sends a terrible message.
That is untrue. The LP has a Rights and Discrimination plank. It's still there.
Yep, that’s the only option.
No wonder everyone gives you stupid nicknames.
Obviously they're catering to racist fucks.
Not obviously. In fact, nowhere near obviously. We see every day how the left expands and manipulates the claim of racism to impose the term on things no sane person with an IQ above room temperature would consider racist. Hell, even believing that IQ is a useful measure of intelligence now being claimed to be racist. Not wanting that lever imposed on libertarianism in no way suggests to me that the person who doesn't want it imposed is racist.
Eliminating part of a platform that is codifying thought policing is exactly making the US freer
The plank was not advocating legislation or regulations against bigotry. It was to promote a certain culture within the Libertarian Party, one in which people don't just see LP success as their license to discriminate along racial lines or what have you. If the inclusion of such a plank constitutes anti-freedom "thought-policing," then the whole platform does, including Spike's plank that replaced the original.
I'm open to the idea that the term racism has become so overbroad as to be useless, and thus changing the language to have a positive statement of the underlying principles (individuality) vs. a negative statement against a consequence of that principle being abridged (racism) seems fine to me.
Though, if they hand't done so, I also wouldn't have cared. So, Iunno.
The academics and intellectuals may be confused as to what it means, but the average voters knows damned well what "racism" means. It's race based bigotry.
Adding a positive plank is good, but adding it at the same time it dumps the opposition to racial bigotry is a dog whistle. It tells every racist fuck out there that they have a home in the LP.
It's why the newsletters were such a big deal. It's why the LP should not be dog whistling. They need to make it clear they are NOT a haven for racist fucks.
No it's not at all. Best has it right we've really watered down and made the term an attack word for anything someone doesn't like. Guns - racist, zoning- racist, taxes - racist. You want it to be what it was. That shipped sailed along time ago when you let the anchor be pulled up.
Racism is now marxist critical theory designed to cause strife in the population.
Critical theory is "push all the buttons and see what gets a response."
Race
Gender
Whatever
Brandy thinks his personal ox will never get gored. That's what makes Brandy (at present) a useful idiot. Sooner or later his plaintive bleats will mark him as just another plain old idiot.
And I think your argument is entirely reasonable as well. I think it's entirely reasonable for parties to have aspirational planks. I also think that if a party would not advocate for government interference to achieve those aspirational planks (which the libertarian party probably should not do) that it is fine to state it as a directional moral outcome. Particularly because the libertarian movement has, at its heart, many classical liberal tenets.
My main point is, this is real inside baseball and I can imagine reasonable arguments either way. But, I comment on basically everything and these are the posts coming up these days.
Also, going off what you wrote, the Libertarian party doesn't exist to be the final say in libertarian philosophy. It's an institution built with the goal of getting officials elected to office. So, your point of the change possibly putting the electorate off is an entirely reasonable concern.
The academics and intellectuals may be confused as to what it means, but the average voters knows damned well what "racism" means. It's race based bigotry.
Right, which would include the consideration of race as a primary marker when making decisions on who, what, when and where things might be done, or people that might be recruited to do them.
I wonder if there's a major political party in this country which espouses anti-racist rhetoric that does literally this?
I really dislike that we live in a time and place where I've had to avoid using the word "anti-racist" because that now has a meaning quite separate from its plain reading.
In this thread alone I've had to rewrite a few times to not use that word.
Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a way to be anti-racist without right-wingers assuming you're woke or to be anti-woke without left-wingers assuming you're racist.
Damn, brandybuck must be incredibly racist.
The iron law of woke confession via projection proves 100% accurate.
But the plank that was removed spoke not about "racism" but about "bigotry". "We condemn bigotry as irrational and repugnant" is what it said. That sounds pretty basic to the libertarian position to me. It was removed because the MC people thought it had too much cultural association with "woke anti-racism" or something like that. But part of the point of the LP should be to cut through "cultural associations" and adopt policies that promote liberty regardless of whether they are associated with the "right" or the "left". Hopefully, the recent focus on "cultural associations" will fade, and Libertarians will be seen to still be broadly in favor of equality for all. But time will tell.
>>That sounds pretty basic to the libertarian position to me.
is it not inherent without Express Written Consent of LP? once it's up there, we're being told what to think to be on the team.
"Condemning bigotry" is entirely "cultural"
Also, it's worth noting that condemning bigotry is itself a bigoted position...
Debatable, insofar as bigotry can be argued to stem from ignorance.
But it is a claim to an absolute truth.
NTTAWWT, in fact I wish more politicians and political organizations were willing to make such actual commitments.
Sure, Nardz. Because words don't mean anything anymore.
Of course they replaced that plank with better language, but don’t let that part ruin anything.
Pointless messaging. We have more than enough of it.
How does anti racism make someone more free than supporting free speech?
It's possible to condemn actual racism while supporting free speech. Shocking.
* Being racist is not the government's business, or anybody's business, any more than whether one is a vegan or prefers pies to cakes.
* Acting racistly is a personal choice with costs imposed by society. If you don't want to bake cakes for whites, that's your business alone. You will probably lose more customers than you gain, but that is your calculation, not society's and not the government's.
* Government acting racistly is an entirely different matter, since government has taken upon itself a monopoly on legal violence in pursuit of its policies, including taxation, and any favoritism or bigotry it engages in undermines its excuses for authorizing monopoly violence to itself. Private people have taken no such monopoly onto themselves. That is the difference. That you cannot see the difference makes you an active bigot.
While the primary focus of any political organization should be the purpose of governance (rather axiomatic), and any political organization that purports to support liberty should also heavily focus on the limits of governance (should also be axiomatic, but...), it is unrealistic to expect such entities to limit their concerns to only that which falls within government purview.
So I do not oppose such statements of morality, but in the case of a 'libertarian' party I do think they must make it clear that while they may espouse and otherwise rhetorically promote certain positions, they firmly oppose any government imposition of those beliefs.
WHy is this so important to you? Was it important circa 2016 when the Libertarian Party didn't have this plank?
Did you walk around decrying the party as Racist because it didn't have a strong condemnation of Racism on the platform? If not, why not?
You know the answer to all of those questions Overt.
All parties already have racists and non racists. The Libertarians just admit it.
"Not sure how dumping the no racism clause from the platform helps in either making the US a freer place or win elections. Sounds more like a dog whistle."
They also did not say "Hey, do not kill Jews". So, CLEARLY, they are angling for a new Holocaust.
Being a racist isn't objectively immoral so you have the right to do it.
It's objectively immoral and you have the right to do it. I don't know any Libertarian who argues racist speech should be illegal.
I think the party had no choice but to abandon "no racism" if it wanted to avoid alienating people who really agree with them. The problem, of course, is the woketards' redefinition of racism, such that people who want a color-blind society are now called racist and only those who want white people to go away are "anti-racist." The only real alternative to abandoning that plank would be to directly call out and reject woketardism, and the LP isn't willing to go there yet. I see this as the weakest area in their new plans.
ZACH WEISSMUELLER Senior Producer
Who do you plan to vote for this year?
...I'll be voting for Joe Biden, primarily for three reasons: (1) A feeble president Biden seems like an opportunity to erode the power and glamour of the dangerous cult of the presidency and also push socialists, nationalists, and identitarians back to the margins, creating space for a more libertarian-friendly coalition to emerge...
(3) The Libertarian Party doesn't have a clear electoral strategy or even sense of purpose and continually seems to miss golden opportunities.
https://reason.com/2020/10/12/how-will-reason-staffers-vote-in-2020/
His reasoning is at least reasonable, pardon the pun, unlike those who just wanted to get rid of the mean tweets. There was even a reasonable chance of it working, at least as much as any other political gamesmanship, and it has worked, to an extent. Its failure was assuming no damage could be done in the meantime.
His reasoning is at least reasonable, pardon the pun
His reasoning is reasonable if you're nine years old. If you understand the world, history, and how enfeebled leaders are often taken advantage of by deep state or court intrigue actors, you'd know that having a feeble president does the opposite of what he proposed.
9 years old, and with a really low IQ
"unlike those who just wanted to get rid of the mean tweets."
Oh no, he went there too. Mean Tweets! were number two on his manifesto.
I just left parts of the quote out in my post because they weren't germane to this article.
Here's Zach's mean tweets bit:
"2) Trump was an even more selfish and incompetent leader than I thought he'd be, he seems willing to stoke chaos to hold onto power, and I'm sick of talking and hearing about him."
difficult to believe a vote was cast for a feeble president because reasons. mind somewhat blown.
He should be smacked across the nose with a rolled up newspaper and forced to sit in the corner for a few hundred years.
This is the last thing I'll say on this, but in all of history, how many collapses and bloody civil wars have broken out during the reign of an "enfeebled" leader?
I mean if that's what you want then fine.
And if a bloody civil war results in a better country, maybe it's a pill worth swallowing. But if you thought for a fucking minute that the state would slow its roll while Biden fumbled around looking for the exit to the Oval Office, you're sorely mistaken. If anything, it emboldened the state.
As I mentioned above. It is well past time to start judging people, not on what they say, but what their actions bring about.
Foreseeable consequences and all that jazz...
Weissmueller, and all the rest are getting exactly what they really wanted.
(1) A feeble president Biden seems like an opportunity to erode the power and glamour of the dangerous cult of the presidency and also push socialists, nationalists, and identitarians back to the margins
Yeah, I remember that one. Turns out, a feeble president did literally exactly the opposite. It emboldened them because they keep handing Biden papers to sign that he has no idea what he's signing.
Fucking think the long game here, Reason staff. The shit is checkers, it ain't chess.
The shit is checkers, it ain't chess.
"You're thinking checkers, not chess"
No it's checkers, or tick tac toe. There is little strategy here, and the left isn't engaging in clever traps or forks. They are straight up saying we are implimenting a 2 tier goverment system, one for us and one against our political opponents.
would you like to play a game?
Go away, Google.
Saying "Taiwan is a country" is siding with the warmongers because the warmongers say the same?!? Where does the sun rise? I double dog dare you to say it out loud. Go on, you claim you want bold messaging.
That's where I stopped listening. I had hopes for the Mises takeover, but if this is the result, good grief.
The sun rises everywhere, every 24 hrs. We do not owe it to Taiwan to protect them, but it is in our interests over the log haul. You never profit from not opposing totalitarian governments.
Speaking plainly based on the facts on the ground is important, I agree. We can debate as much as we want about how our nation wishes to engage with China/Taiwan relations, but the long standing of thing of denying what's obviously in front of us does not help.
Not just saying it: using an official public communication to broadcast it.
If a political party says "Taiwan is a country" with no other qualifiers, it is indeed siding with other warmongering political parties that say the same thing. They mean that they will use the resources of government to assist Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion. It is an implicit warning to the CCP.
https://twitter.com/SarahHopeWeaver/status/1539306098448117760?t=9RsoR3sUtnd0Unq3RfxKOQ&s=19
Megan Rapinoe defended biological males competing in female sports in an interview Sunday.
“Your kids’ high school volleyball team just isn’t that important,” the soccer star told Time Magazine.
[Link]
“Your kids’ high school volleyball team just isn’t that important,” the soccer star told Time Magazine.
High school?
Didn't her Olympic team get beaten handily by some middle school students?
Let's see, oh yes...
FC Dallas under-15 boys squad beat the U.S. Women's National Team in a scrimmage
I guess Rapinoe's Olympic soccer team just isn’t that important either.
nor Rapinoe.
She’s retired now. So this doesn’t affect her. That’s all that matters to this bitter, Marxist, man hating cunt.
so, the under 15 squad should be paid more than the US women's team? 🙂
She's made her money so she's fine with ruining opportunities for women to stay in the cult's good graces for a bit.
I was a menmebr of the LP for years. Lying wasn't a problem. Leaving out the details of how things would happen was.
They wanted open borders but failed to mention their plan requires there to be no govt programs to make people come here. There is no way they could ever get rid of those programs.
They want to get rid of SS, Medicare etc, but have no plan on how that would be replaced. All i ever heard was charity would just take over. Why? What are you basing that on?
Their entiore election strategy is bad. They push for national wins when if they won five seats in the House and 1 or 2 Sentate seats they would currently rule the day. Winning the President without winning Congress is meaningless.
No, it wouldn't be meaningless, but it wouldn't be realistic either.
A Libertarian winning the presidency out of nowhere would pull a considerable number of Libertarian congressmen into office. It would also convince non-L congressmen that a new wind was blowing from a new direction. Some, from safe districts, would go ballistic, of course. And I doubt the Libertarian winner would even survive until Inauguration Day. The non-realistic part doesn't even need to be discussed, does it?
When you uncover a massive Ponzi scheme, you don't ask what the poor saps are going to invest in now, you just shut it down.
And pocket the money they put into the scheme while telling them that.
lol... Hilarious you think there is any money left in the ponzi scheme. They ALREADY pocketed the money.
As you say open borders might work IF we had no public medical care, public school, jobless benefits etc. But there is almost zero chance of that ever happening.
What tends to happen in practice is that open borders policies benefit the Democrat party as new immigrants tend to vote Democrat and it benefits some Republican business leaders who want cheap labor.
Except when they don't.
They want to get rid of SS, Medicare etc, but have no plan on how that would be replaced. All i ever heard was charity would just take over. Why? What are you basing that on?
What a dumb thing to say... 'get rid of' does NOT equal 'replace'...
Why not a strawberry National Socialism instead of a Raspberry one?
Here's a thought; Why keep supporting the threats of Gov-Guns to STEAL like an armed bank robber from those people to support these people??????? Where's your ethics????
It's as F'En simple as; If you didn't ***EARN*** something don't pretend it's yours anyways just because you 'neeeeeeeeeeed'.......
Why should those things be replaced by anything from the government?
The LP needs to focus on one issue, stopping government from initiating force you know, liberty. Was it Rand who said you can actually get people to agree on one issue.
As I learned from reason the main function of the LP is to run cover for the dams' no matter how horrible they are the LP must always equate things the deems do to how it's both sides. E. G. I know the progressives have turned public education into Marxist trading camps, But the Republicans would let teachers pray in school
As I learned from reason the main function of the LP is to run cover for the dems. no matter how horrible they are the LP must always equate things the dems do to how it's both sides. E. G.
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Interesting theories.
2020 reality: vote libertarian, get fascism.
The democratic party platform is a clear plan to destroy the USA in economic, political, and diplomatic terms in service of a world wide totalitarian government.
Voting for Libertarian candidates will not stop that. Voting republican will.
Deal with it.