I won't lie.  I do NOT like Glenn Beck.  I think he makes a mockery of the entire Libertarian cause.  Judge Napolitano, on the otherhand, is one of the brightest individuals and a true patriot.  He is an ardent Libertarian and I hope Fox comes around and gives him his own daily show in their prime-time lineup.

by: Garry Reed

It's an argument as old as the Libertarian Party itself; is the primary purpose of running for office to get elected or to educate people?

When LP candidates concentrate on vote-getting rather than pushing principles they all too often end up sounding like Republicans.

Take this inventory of policy points in a pamphlet passed out by a Texas LP candidate:

• Lower Property Taxes
• Lower Utility Costs
• Lower Crime Rates
• Secure Borders
• Individual Right to Keep and Bear Arms
• Civil Liberties and Privacy

All but the last sound like traditional conservative Republican Party talking points, with that last bullet maybe plopped in as a sop to the "moderates."

Why would any longtime Republican voter read this and decide to vote Libertarian? Especially a fed up classical liberal Republican who has heard it all before and seen government only get bigger.

What is there here to attract a longtime liberal disillusioned with his wasted Obama vote?

And how exactly are "Secure Borders" a libertarian issue? Libertarians believe in a free market not only of goods and services and ideas but a free flowing market of labor. "Secure Borders" sounds like typical big government Republicanism, security at the price of liberty.

One sentiment expressed at the First Annual Government Sucks Day Rally in Hillsboro, Texas, over the past weekend was this: if people aren't going to vote third party anyway, and specifically not for Libertarians, why not just be our own radical selves and just put our principles out there?

Soft selling the real libertarian message just sounds dishonest.

At least Harry Browne took a bold libertarian position when he proposed ditching the income tax and replacing it with nothing. Forget the flat tax and fair tax nonsense – a tax is still a tax!

And Ron Paul wasn't afraid to confront the Fed.

Selling soft soap accomplishes two things: you attract people who won't support you once they get to know you, so you've gained nothing, and you repel people who would eagerly support you if only they knew you, so you've lost everything.

Many non-Party libertarians might get on board with the so-called Party of Principle program if more candidates just quit soft selling soft soaping soft shoe pussyfooting around and just put it out there like this great example from Iowa:

Headline from The Iowa Independent: "Libertarians are in it, but not necessarily to win it."

Scheduled to make their official announcement today, Eric Cooper and Nick Weltha, LP of Iowa candidates for Governor and Lt. Governor, don't even pretend that they have a chance of winning.

“Our goal in this election is to get at least 2 percent of the vote, which would give the Libertarian Party major party status under Iowa law. We also hope to draw enough support away from the major parties to encourage them to poach our issues in order to steal our voters.”

Poach our issues? Steal our voters? Cooper expanded this strategy elsewhere: "Third parties can get everything they want without winning any elections at all. The Populists in the 1890s and the Socialists in the 1910s won almost no elections, and yet most of the major planks of their platforms were eventually implemented."

Now that's what you call Honesty In Politics.

by Russel D. Longcore, DumpDC

“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.” Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, 1776

Jefferson wrote that the People had a duty to “throw off” a despotic government.

“Throw off.”

That sounds to me like a somewhat unfriendly separation. It doesn’t sound particularly cordial. It also makes me think that the throwee ain’t exactly thrilled about getting thrown off and might take exception to the decision of the throwers.

The quote above is only once sentence from the Declaration of Independence. But it is one of the most seminal thoughts and principles of the document. Let’s take it apart and consider its words, their meanings, and the consequences.

“…A long train of abuses and usurpations…” In 1776 that was the caprice of King George III as he and his Parliament created laws that affected the colonies in ways that did not affect any other Englishmen. Those laws included the Stamp Act, various taxes and tariffs, prohibitions on imports and exports, more and more taxes, Redcoats patrolling American streets, the suspension of habeas corpus, and requiring those charged with crimes to travel back to England for trial.

Today, Washington has ignored the strictures of the Constitution of the United States, and has done so for over a hundred years.

It violates the First Amendment. There are plenty of laws that abridge free speech, not the least of which is the Patriot Act.

It violates the Second Amendment by enacting laws and regulations infringing on the rights of the people to keep and bear arms, simultaneously destroying the militia and making citizens less safe and states less secure.

It violates the Fourth Amendment through internet surveillance, airport searches and warrantless searches.

It violates the Fifth Amendment by rendition of American citizens without due process and IRS double jeopardy prosecutions. You also are compelled to be a witness against yourself every time you sign your tax return.

It violates the Sixth Amendment as no one gets a speedy trial.

It violates the Seventh Amendment when it does not protect the right to jury trial, but allows judges or administrative bodies to adjudicate cases.

It violates the Eighth Amendment as excessive bails and fines are imposed regularly.

It violates the Ninth Amendment as it ignores certain rights retained by the People.

It violates the Tenth Amendment by accruing to itself powers not delegated to it, and others reserved to the States and the People.

Need I go on? There are seventeen more Amendments.

“…pursuing invariably the same object…” What was that object? The object was to milk the maximum revenue from the colonies as possible. England had won the Seven Years War from 1756 to 1763 and were heavily saddled with war debt. So the more taxes and tariffs that King George laid on the colonies, the more the colonists rebelled. Then, the King made still more laws to bring the rebels to heel.

Washington’s object today is much the same. It has a crushing war debt as well as a crushing domestic debt load. Then add the mind-boggling financial liabilities, like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae and the total comprises nearly 1000% more than the entire Gross Domestic Product of the USA. Then consider the ramifications of laws like The Patriot Act.

“…evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism…” To evince is to show clearly. Colonists could see clearly that King George’s taxes and laws, designed only for the colonies, were a design to reduce their rights as free Englishmen and confiscate their wealth without due process.

Today’s long train of abuses and usurpations coming from Washington evince a design to accomplish the same objects by turning the Constitution on its head. The Federal Government of the USA started with very limited roles and clear restrictions. Washington’s design has been to acknowledge no restrictions on its power and to accomplish anything it desires.

“…it is their right, it is their duty…” American citizens may have rights that they do not exercise. But that is different than duty. Many Americans consider that military service is a duty, and there is nothing in the Constitution that states anything of the sort. But find me a person who argues with the content of the Declaration of Independence. If you run into a person who is against secession, show them the Declaration and see what they do with fulfilling their duty.

“…to throw off such government…” The process of state nullification does not throw off government. It merely attempts to control the actions of the government, and to nullify its unconstitutional laws while staying a part of the whole. Throwing off such government can only mean secession, which is the act of withdrawing formally from the United States of America.

“…and to provide new guards for their future security.” To explain this, we return to the Declaration for another quote: “whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”

For the People to provide new guards for their future security can only mean to institute new government. That precludes and omits any continuing relationship with the old government.

That means secession.

State secession is the only reasonable, logical and pragmatic solution to overcome the absolute despotism and criminal tyranny pouring out of Washington, DC.

by: Garry Reed

Is libertarianism growing around the world in spite of the political dominance of its antithesis, big government socialistic type regimes everywhere?

A blog in the UK publication New Statesman titled "Twitter and libertarianism" proclaimed on Wednesday, "Libertarianism is the ideology of the future judging by the new Prospect/YouGov poll on the "twitterati".

The survey, the article claimed, "found that Twitter users are more concerned with civil liberties than the public at large."

But the article mentions only one other example from the poll; that while 57 percent of the public believe that increasing anti-terrorist police powers is more important than protecting civil liberties only half of British Twitters agree.

Prospect, the monthly UK magazine behind the poll, admits in its recently released, November edition that the "national poll of 2000+ people" conducted with pollster YouGov is "part of a fun feature about the politics of Twitter."

Typical for British politics, libertarianism is referred to in "liberal and civil libertarian" terms. For example, the magazine created a scale from their findings that placed Twitter users on the "More Liberal" end, far removed from the conservative "More Authoritarian" end of the scale.

Prospect quotes its own managing editor as saying, "It is clear that the urban, metropolitan, Guardian-reading ‘chattering classes’ have flocked online to become the ‘twittering classes’ —and they are now a real force in British politics.”

Just a few weeks ago back in the USA David Boaz was writing about a recent Gallup poll in the Cato@Liberty blog: "Gallup often asks people how they describe themselves. But sometimes they classify people according to the values they express. And when they do that, they find a healthy percentage of libertarians."

What Gallup found was that 23 percent of the voting-age population identifies itself as "libertarian."

But "libertarian" is more than just politics. It's a social, philosophical, intellectual, economic, and ideological movement that may or may not translate into votes, especially into Libertarian Party votes.

Beyond the polls is anecdotal evidence of libertarianism's increasing popularity and acceptance in the United States.

Boaz, again writing in cato@liberty, noted that on the same Monday night in the relatively small Washington DC area Reason.tv held an event that launched its new “Radicals for Capitalism” series of videos celebrating Ayn Rand’s continuing influence, the Future of Freedom Foundation and the George Mason University Economics Society sponsored a lecture by Lawrence W. Reed, president of the Foundation for Economic Education, and "an overflow crowd" attended the screening of a new film, "The Soviet Story," at the Cato Institute.

As Boaz put it, "It’s got to be a sign of growth and health if the libertarian movement is offering three excellent programs on one Monday night in one area."

Stories like these over the past year prompted the Dallas Libertarian Examiner to ask, "Gen Y - the Libertarian Generation?"

CampusProgress.org noted earlier this month that while young people voted overwhelmingly for Obama, "the other candidate who captured the hearts and minds of youth voters was Ron Paul," the erstwhile conservative-libertarian-Republican candidate for president in 2008.

They also report that Students for Liberty, a network of “pro-liberty student groups” comprising College Libertarians, Austrian economists, and Objectivists is the fastest growing libertarian student organization in America.

Is libertarianism the ideology of the future? Statistically and anecdotally, so far so good.

by: Garry Reed

While many libertarians decry the use of "litmus tests" to determine people's libertarian credentials, many have to ask: How libertarian can former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson be if he won't even mention the word "libertarian" on his website?

Independent Political Report (IPR) announced that, "Johnson has launched a new campaign organization to promote libertarian policy issues and back libertarian candidates for public office."

But without once mentioning the word "libertarian?"

IPR mentions the ongoing speculation that "he may run an anti-establishment Republican presidential campaign with significant support from libertarians in 2012, a la Ron Paul."

But without once mentioning the word "libertarian?"

A person can go to Johnson's new website, Our America, punch up every one of his web pages and perform a search on the word "libertarian" and never get a hit. Maybe, if a person wanted to watch and listen to every video on the website, the word might pop up in conversation at some point. Or maybe not.

Unfortunately, the same can be said for the website of Congressman Ron Paul, 14th District, Texas. Pop open every page and the "L" word never appears in the text.

Paul's son is no different. Rand's campaign website, Rand Paul U.S. Senate 2010, is large, full of text and videos, and covers a lot of political ground. He wants folks to donate money and time and effort, but he never explicitly admits to being even a little bit "libertarian" in the written prose anywhere on his site.

Wikipedia says, "Jeff Flake is known as one of the more libertarian House Republicans."

But that's Wikipedia. What does the man's own website, Congressman Jeff Flake, have to say? As with the others, the libertarian word is a no-show.

However, under the "Buzz" header there's a link to a Reason blog article that begins with the sentence, "In the Washington Examiner, John LaBeaume writes up a kerfuffle between two of the rootin-tootinest libertarian members of Congress, Reps. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.)." But the teaser text on Flake's website begins at the end of that sentence with "Reps. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.)." Suspicious, slighted, and/or paranoid Libertarians need to ask: Was it purposely done that way to prevent the "libertarian" word from showing up on Flake's website?

Typically, there are three reasons why a mainstream "Libertarian-Republican" politician won't mention libertarians. Either they're embarrassed to be associated with libertarians, afraid any mention of libertarians might scare away conservative Republican votes, or they're just not all that libertarian.

There's really little doubt that these particular politicos are by far more libertarian than any other mainstream politicians in America, so apparently they're just so embarrassed by their hick Bubba libertarian half cousins that they want to keep them in the closet like a redheaded bastard stepchild.

But don't forget: they still want libertarian's money, time, and effort.

by: Eric Dondero

Yesterday, our conservative friends at Jumping In Pools blog, reprinted my article in full, "RLC vs. LP," from Monday (scroll down a few articles). This is an excerpt from one of their writers, "Mr. K.":
Eric Dondero at the Libertarian Republican posted an interesting article last night, which deserves more attention, and a Conservative response.

The Libertarian Party serves almost no use, except to deprive Republicans of votes, and to serve as a soapbox for supposed Republicans, who just want to see the destruction of National defense from our platform.

In the end, it is best to go with Republicans, because Libertarians will never win, and voting or supporting such a lost cause, is not worth it.My Response:

Firstly, not all Libertarians are Anti-Defense. In fact, a very large segment of us are staunchly Pro-Defense, even within the Libertarian Party. For example, in 2003, at the start of the War in Iraq, then LP News Editor Bill Winter conducted an internal poll of Libertarian membership. He found fully 40% of LP members supported the invasion.

Yes, the LP is a lot less Pro-Defense than it once was, but that's only because the vast majority of Pro-Defense Libertarians have left the Party, and joined the Republican Liberty Caucus.

Secondly, to say that "Libertarians never win elections," is completely inaccurate. By some estimates 400 to 500 Libertarian Party members currently serve in public office nationwide. Just last week we here at LR reported on a Libertarian who won election to the Cedar Falls City Council in Iowa. Two weeks before that, in the off-year elections Nov. 3, 11 Libertarians won office nationwide, including Dan Halloran to the New York City Council. In fact, that's more elected officials than any other third party in the US.

Over the years, 10 Libertarians have been elected to State Legislators in Alaska, New Hampshire, and Vermont. And for the record, Congressman Ron Paul of Texas is a Lifetime Member of the Libertarian Party, a dual Party Republican/Libertarian. (Sort of like Lieberman is both an Independent and a Democrat).

Yes, for practical purposes the RLC is best. But without the Libertarian Party, we Libertarian Republicans would have no "safety valve," nowheres to escape if the GOP were to become too statist like the Democrats. The LP serves as our insurance policy. And I for one, am very glad they're around.

by: Garry Reed

Libertarians generally take it as a point of unquestioned fact that the Tea Party movement was a grassroots uprising begun at the local level by libertarians and later co-opted by the Republican Party.

But the left-eye-view can't seem to figure out who started or co-opted what from whom or what the difference is between a libertarian, a conservative, and a Republican.

A pair of Huffington Post pundits, Alex Brant-Zawadzki and Dawn Teo, teamed up to produce "a multi-part series, Reading Tea Leaves" which attempts to untangle the Tea Party beginnings and expose its political ambitions for 2010.

(The left-eye-viewpoint is derived from Brant-Zawadzki's bio, which says he became politically active "after being selected as an Obama Organizing Fellow by the President's election campaign," while co-writer Teo's résumé includes a stint as PR director of the United Steelworkers Association Rescue American Jobs campaign before "officially joining the Democratic Party in 2007.")

In Part 1 of their Reading Tea Leaves trifecta, the pair identifies Eric Odom as "the man most often regarded as the founder of the Tea Parties."

They then tell a tangled tale of how Odom left the Republican Party, joined the Libertarian Party, rejoined the Republican Party, and along the way "effectively hijacked" a Facebook Tea Party group created by the Libertarian Party of Illinois and launched his own Tea Party movement.

The Tea Party, in this version, was founded by a Republican-Libertarian-Republican hijacker.

But wait. In Part 2 of the tale we're told that Eric Odom wasn't the only Tea Party procreator. "The Fund put up a petition" on the same day as Odom's hijackery "inviting members to sign up" to support the Chicago Tea Party.

"The Fund" refers to the "Political nonprofit American Future Fund and its associated PAC, led largely by former GOP staffers and operatives."

The timing suggests the makings of another Great Rightwing Conspiracy, although the authors don't take to the bait.

In Part 3's accounting, one line in particular leaps out at libertarian readers: "From day one, well-funded libertarian groups have been commandeering the Tea Party movement for electoral gain."

This is a shocker. What libertarian has ever heard of a "well-funded" libertarian group?

But the salient question is, if the Tea Party was originally created by libertarians (the Illinois LP) how can libertarians "commandeer" their own movement?

But Alex Brant-Zawadzki, in a follow-up article under his own byline, discovered yet another Tea Party progenitor: David Koch.

"Koch claims to have founded the Tea Party movement," says Brant-Zawadzki, "at an October conference held by Americans for Prosperity."*

Koch, the ninth richest man in America, is indeed sugar daddy to countless conservative and libertarian groups, including libertarian's two iconic organizations, the Cato Institute and Reason Foundation.

Thus, since Koch and Cato and Reason are seen by many hardcore libertarians as little more than mainstream libertarian-leaning conservatives, a case might be made that the "real" libertarians who founded the movement are trying to take it back from the soft, mushy "libertarian-lite" Republican conservatives.

Still, what happened to Tea Party founders Eric Odom and the American Future Fund if billionaire David Koch is the real Founding Father of the Tea Party movement?

Which maybe means that even a lot of putative "libertarians" can't tell the difference between a libertarian, a conservative, and a Republican.

*NOTE: These quotes mysteriously appear only in a cached version of the article and can be found by searching the line, "Koch claims to have founded the Tea Party movement."

by: Coyote Blog

Some good news after years of bad decisions:

New York’s Supreme Court Appellate Division (First Department) handed down a massive victory for property rights yesterday in the case of Kaur v. New York State Urban Development Corporation. At issue was the state’s highly controversial use of eminent domain on behalf of Columbia University, which wants free rein over the West Harlem neighborhood of Manhattanville, where it plans to build a fancy new research campus.

As I discussed in an article last February, there is overwhelming evidence that the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) actively colluded with Columbia in order to produce the very conditions that would then allow ESDC to seize property on the university’s behalf. At the time of ESDC’s 2006 blight study, for instance, Columbia owned 76 percent of the neighborhood and was thus directly responsible for the overwhelming majority of blight that the report alleged, ranging from overflowing basement trash heaps to major roof and skylight leaks. As numerous tenants have reported, the university refused to perform basic and necessary repairs, which both pushed tenants out and manufactured the ugly conditions that later advanced Columbia’s long-term interests. Preliminary findings delivered to the ESDC admitted as much, noting “Open violations in CU Buildings” and “History of CU repairs to properties” among the “issues of concern.”

Thankfully, the New York court recognized this shameful mess for what it is: eminent domain abuse. As Justice James Catterson wrote for the majority:

the blight designation in the instant case is mere sophistry. It was utilized by ESDC years after the scheme was hatched to justify the employment of eminent domain but this project has always primarily concerned a massive capital project for Columbia. Indeed, it is nothing more than economic redevelopment wearing a different face.

This, from the Court’s majority decision, was especially heartening post-Kelo:

The time has come to categorically reject eminent domain takings solely based on underutilization. This concept put forward by the respondent transforms the purpose of blight removal from the elimination of harmful social and economic conditions in a specific area to a policy affirmatively requiring the ultimate commercial development of all property regardless of the character of the community subject to such urban renewal.

This was pretty unexpected given how the Atlantic Yards case went.  I am not sure how to reconcile the two decisions.  Damon Root at the link above has the same concerns.

by: Matthew Avitabile

Especially in the wake of Ron Paul's 2008 bid for the Republican nomination for the Presidency, talk of the split between conservatives and libertarians has heated up. In fact, some libertarians voted for Libertarian Party Candidate Bob Barr and some even voted for Barack Obama himself.

But over a year since the election, it can be seen that this was faulty thinking.

The Libertarians who voted for Obama did so because they believed that he would end the war. In fact, he is sending more troops to Afghanistan and has kept troops in Iraq. This voting was a poor choice, seeing that the President will not only send in more troops, but is still dangerously ill-informed on foreign affairs.

Some voted for Obama because of privacy rights. Candidate Obama railed against Bush Administration policies of eavesdropping to catch terrorists. When actually in power, Obama has expanded these powers, while still talking against them.

Libertarians must remember what they have in common with the conservative movement. Both sides support gun rights and will likely work together to stop any potential efforts of the new Administration to restrict firearms.

Libertarians also believe in property rights. They believe that the right of a citizen to own and use their own property is absolute. Voting for a statist system is likely to restrict these rights. Even the most liberal Republicans support guns and property. Many in the DNC would like to restrict our rights.

We must make sure we set America right. Fighting each other will only strengthen Obama's hand and will assist in his bid for reelection. We must band together for our joint interests and against the hypocrisy of the modern statist Democratic Party.

by: Gary Reed

"Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it." – Mark Twain
"No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while Congress is in session" – Mark Twain

On November 6, The Market Oracle posted Robert Murphy's lengthy article, "Freaking Out over Global Warming," a review of Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner's book Super Freakonomics

The whole argument in the book and in the review seems to be centered on the science and economics of climate change.

Unfortunately, climate change isn't about science. Climate change quit being about science almost from the beginning.

Climate change is about raw, naked, unabashed political power.

Climate change isn't, and has never been, about economics either.

Proponents of raw, naked, unabashed political power don't care about science or about economics.

Originally, the climate changers began howling about the Coming Ice Age. First a frozen global hell was proclaimed, and then the proclaimers went looking for "science" to prove their proclamations. They had books to sell and interviews to do and power to accumulate and careers to build and reputations to make and egos to inflate.

When the time of the Coming Ice Age came and went and nothing froze over they turned the thermometer upside down. No more Coming Ice Age. Coming Global Warming.

But it still was never really science. The "scientific consensus" was built on scientific conjecture and flawed computer modeling and government bribe money and true believer's wishful thinking and the virulent human-hating of the environmental messiahs.

A "scientific consensus" is not science. "Consensus" is a political word. Politicians reach "Consensus." Scientists reach "factual conclusions" based on evidence, no matter what the politicians or the opportunists or the true believers want them to reach.

Cherry picking scientific data is not science. Cherry picking is political. Yes, the other side, the warming deniers, can also be charged with cherry picking evidence to prove that man-made climate change is bogus. But that just strengthens the argument; cherry picking, no matter who does it, or why it's done, is not science. It's still just politics.

Once any issue becomes politicized its no longer about that issue. It's then all about politics, and politics is always about power.

Government healthcare isn't about health, it's about power. The drug war isn't about drugs, it's about power. The government takeover of banking and lending institutions isn't about the economy, it's about power. Environmentalism isn't about the environment, it's about power.

Capitalism has won in every successful country in the world except in America where it's maligned and attacked and crippled. Our society, in ways it never should have been, has become deeply politicized, which means it's not about freedom and markets and trade and prosperity, it's about power.

And it's also why libertarians should be worried about the Libertarian Party. Is it really about libertarianism, or is it really just all about the Party?

The only way to ever know if anything is true about climate change is to totally divorce the science from everyone and everything that could possibly benefit from it in any way.

And it's also true about everything else that's been politicized.

Today we can merge Mark Twain's two amusing quotes:

"When power-mad politicians pretend they can do anything about the weather no man's life, liberty, or property is safe."