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Title: Sorry, Gary Johnson: The libertarian movement is fringe and it will remain fringe
Source:
Salon
URL Source: http://www.salon.com/2016/06/17/sor ... nge_and_it_will_remain_fringe/
Published: Jun 17, 2016
Author: Conor Lynch
Post Date: 2016-06-30 21:09:08 by Gatlin
Keywords: None
Views: 264
Comments: 1
Last week, the Libertarian Party’s presidential nominee Gary Johnson and his running mate Bill Weld made a cordial appearance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” to pitch their libertarian message to America. With some recent surveys showing the Libertarian ticket nearing 15 percent in national polls, there is a slim chance that Johnson could end up participating in the presidential debates (third-party candidates need to reach 15 percent in five national surveys to be included). Thus, the more exposure the better. The two candidates mostly stuck to their “socially liberal” talking points, which are always a hit with the young viewers, and only briefly alluded to their “fiscally conservative” views. Reproductive rights, drug legalization, anti-militarism: what’s not to like? When Colbert asked whether they were “fringe” candidates, as GOP nominee Donald Trump had said, Johnson replied: “I think by fringe, I think what he is saying is the majority of Americans are fringe, and that’s just not the case.” Of course, libertarians can sound almost pathologically rational one minute and ridiculously dogmatic the next, and Trump is essentially correct in his claim: libertarians are on the fringe, and will always remain on the fringe in a Democracy (which is not say that all of their ideas are fringe, but their broad anti-government philosophy is certainly out there). This fanaticism was on full display a couple of weeks back, when Johnson faced a tough crowd at the party’s convention in Orlando, where the most dedicated libertarians in America came together to salivate in their collective disdain for the government. The former Governor of New Mexico was booed by the libertarian crowd for, among other things, saying that he would have voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act, saying that he supports drivers licenses, and claiming that the free market bankrupted the coal industry (which is, er, kind of true). On the Late Show, Johnson was clearly trying to stick to the common sense side of libertarianism that would appeal to many of Colbert’s viewers, but the libertarian movement is ultimately more concerned about economics than social issues. Consider the Koch brothers, who are ideologically libertarian. Both brothers have admitted to being socially liberal, but these issues aren’t nearly as important to them as deregulating the market, slashing taxes for the wealthy, and so on; and these issues don’t dictate their political spending and activism (if they did, the Koch’s would support Democrats). When it comes to economics and anti-government dogma, libertarians are even worse than Republicans. One simply has to glance at the Libertarian Party’s 1980 presidential platform (for which David Koch was the party’s VP candidate) to get an idea at how extreme libertarianism is in its economic policies. The “abolition of Medicare and Medicaid”; the “repeal of the fraudulent, virtually bankrupt, and increasingly oppressive Social Security system”; the “eventual repeal of all taxation”; the repeal of the minimum wage; the abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency; the repeal of federal campaign finance laws, and the “immediate abolition of the despotic Federal Election Commission”; the “privatization of the inland waterways, and of the distribution system that brings water to industry, agriculture and households.” Libertarians would privatize all of society if they had their way, as was amusingly imagined in Neal Stephenson’s classic science fiction novel “Snow Crash,” where everything from police forces to highways are privately owned and sovereign territories (“burbclaves,” for suburban enclaves) are run by corporate franchises.
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#1. To: Gatlin (#0)
But LF (and FR) antilibertarians insist libertarians are all about smoking dope. Who to believe? A government strong enough to impose your standards is strong enough to ban them. the libertarian movement is ultimately more concerned about economics than social issues.
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