LIBERTARIAN: Libertarian Party Rejects Principle, Nominates Republicans

Sunday, May 29, 2016

http://freekeene.com/2016/05/29/libertarian-party-rejects-principle-nominates-republicans-except-nh-vt/

Libertarian Party Rejects Principle, Nominates Republicans (Except NH & VT)
by Ian | May 29, 2016 | Libertarian, National, New Hampshire, Politics, Republicans

*** begin quote ***

The national LP is hopeless, yet activists across the country toil away trying to wrest control of the organization from the hands of the republicans who have had control of the party for about a decade. To those remaining principled libertarians I implore you:

GIVE UP ON THE LP!

Your party is dead and has been for years. Your efforts are being wasted on the national and even your state LP. Start planning your move to New Hampshire to get involved with the only proven successful strategy in the liberty movement: concentrating activists in one geographic area.

In New Hampshire we’ve had more political successes in a decade – meaning people being elected who are principled libertarians – than the LP has had in forty years. If you want to keep losing, stay where you are. If you want to see liberty advance, you have to get together with like-minded people and get active here in the Shire.

*** end quote *** 

Such a shame.

While Austin Peterson wasn’t perfect — who is? —  the Gary Johnson / Bill Weld is a joke. 

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LIBERTARIAN: Limited Government, Individualism, Peace, Tolerance and Free Markets

Saturday, May 7, 2016

http://www.jasonstapleton.com/a-message-to-cruz-supporters/

A Message to Cruz Supporters
By Jason Stapleton – May 4, 2016

*** begin quote ***

What is the message to the millions of Cruz supporters? To the constitutional conservative who feels their voice is no longer represented in politics today.

Many of you feel that the Republican party no longer represents your values and ideals. I’ve felt that way for many years. Gone are the old ideas of limited government, states rights, individual liberty and free markets. The majority of Republicans serving in office today are barely distinguishable from liberal progressives.

Oh sure, we get the occasional lip service paid when there’s an election. They talk about lower taxes, reducing the debt, returning to constitutional government and clawing back the regulatory spiderweb that’s keeping our economy is a perpetual malaise but what do we really get?

Time and again we’ve seen Republicans cower and fold when it comes time to make good on their promises. Whether we’re talking about the debt ceiling being raised, adding anther trillion to our debt in the last six months or the new “conservative” budget passed by a Republican Congress that boasted a half a trillion dollar deficit, the results never match the rhetoric.

The Republican party is no longer the party of constitutional, limited government. They are no longer the party of liberty. With Cruz out there is little to stop Trump from being the party’s nominee. With his assertion marks a definitive shift in the party of Lincoln. The Republican party will now take on the face of a Nationalist and populist movement. That is what Trump stands for.

In the coming months, you’re going to be given a false choice. You’re going to be told for any number of reasons that you must vote Trump. You’re going to see political insiders and media giants who once stood shoulder to shoulder with you against Trump now modify their message to make it acceptable for you (and them) to support a man who does not hold your values or your ideals sacred.

They will do this because, at their core, it’s about party not principle. They will give you the impression that you can choose left or right, but you much choose one or the other. This is the false choice. There is a third way. A way for you to maintain your principles and vote your conscience. A way for you to send a message to those who tell you to fall in line.

As I said, I came to the realization that the Republican party didn’t represent me years ago. And I went looking for a political philosophy that did. And I found it. Libertarians believe, at their core in 5 basic principles. They are Limited Government, Individualism, Peace, Tolerance and Free Markets.

Libertarians believe you have the right to be left alone. That government should be limited to protecting life liberty and property and should be no larger than is necessary to perform those functions.

Come November you’re going to walk into a voting booth and on the ballot there is going to be a third choice. The libertarian choice. What I would ask is, if you feel like you’re voice is no longer represented, if you feel like a man or woman without a country, please investigate the third option.

Don’t sit at home on election day in an attempt to punish Republicans. Stand up and be counted. Let them know that you no longer stand with the party of National Populism. Tell them you still love liberty, and you’ll fight to keep it.

*** end quote ***

Your choices are: Republican, Democrat, and Libertarian.

“But choose wisely, for while the true Grail will bring you life, the false Grail will take it from you.” Grail Knight in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097576/quotes

I’d be happy to chat with any Bernie, Hillary, or other non-Trump supporter about why there is a THIRD choice.

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LIBERTARIAN: Add an air gap, vpn, and firewall?

Thursday, May 5, 2016

http://www.dcclothesline.com/2016/05/03/scalias-dead-now-supreme-court-grants-fbi-remote-access-to-any-computer-in-the-us/

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… … the Supreme Court has approved new rules that would allow the FBI to not only hack any computer in the U.S., but around the globe. Legally.

*** end quote ***

Does anyone, other than me, see a problem with this type of intrusiveness? 

Time to “air gap” your computer?

At the very least, use your CHROMEBOOK to access the inet. Since it has no storage for the FBI to inspect, there’s nothing for them to see ON YOUR COMPUTER. (Bet they won’t even look.)

Use an SD card to capture data you want from the inet and “sneaker net” that to the computer you use and visa versa.

PIA, yes. But secure from remote inspection.

On another note, any serious computer person has best invest in a VPN and a FIREWALL. I don’t trust the ISPes either. They HAVE to be in bed with the Gooferment.

Argh!

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LIBERTARIAN: Tom Woods #608 Nullification

Monday, March 14, 2016

http://tomwoods.com/podcast/ep-608-nullification-and-the-withdrawal-of-consent/

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Here’s a talk I gave in Kansas City in 2011 about state nullification, a topic I’d written a whole book about the previous year. The audience had a good many Tea Party people in it, so listen and see how I bring them over to the idea of really breaking with the Establishment and entertaining unconventional thoughts and strategies.

*** end quote ***

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“Who would be free themselves must strike the blow”
Lord Byron quotes (English Romantic poet and satirist, 1788-1824)

With nullification, we have that tool.

Just like speed limits are “nullified” every day on the nation’s highways, we too can “nullify”.

Argh!

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LIBERTARIAN: End the “Selective Service System”

Thursday, June 18, 2015

http://cafehayek.com/2015/06/no-conscription-never-unconditionally.html

No Conscription. Ever. Unconditionally.
by DON BOUDREAUX on JUNE 16, 2015

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This market method of recruiting workers works for every other sort of business. When convenience stores (which are very dangerous places to work) need more workers, no one frets about the nation being “underserved” because of a shortage of convenience-store clerks – and no one proposes that the government, to protect against this possibility, conscript people to work in convenience stores. Instead, the pay of such store clerks rises. Problem solved. Ditto for fishing boats (also very dangerous places to work). And ditto for local police, fire-fighting, and EMS forces. Ditto for every other job you can name.

If every job other than those in a national-government’s military is routinely filled without problem or concern by market forces, I see zero reason to worry that jobs in the U.S. military cannot continue to be filled in the same way.

*** end quote ***

So why does the USA keep the “draft” aka “selective service” (meaning if you’re not rich and politically connected you’ll get “selected”!)?

Jobs for politicians’ relatives and bureaucrats!

And if we ever do have to mount a defense, then there be more than enough patriots.

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LIBERTARIAN: My little L libertarian “Litmus Tests”

Saturday, April 11, 2015

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/04/laurence-m-vance/gop-prevaricators/

The Drug War Litmus Test
By Laurence M. Vance
April 7, 2015

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The libertarian view on the drug war is simple and consistent: Since it is not the business of government at any level to prohibit, regulate, restrict, license, criminalize, limit, or otherwise control what someone wants to smoke, snort, sniff, inject, or swallow, then there should be no laws whatsoever regarding the buying, selling, possessing, trafficking, using, growing, cultivating, processing, or manufacturing of any drug for any reason.

Therefore, on both the federal and the state level, all drugs should be legalized, all drug laws and regulations should be repealed, all DEAs should be eliminated, all incarcerated drug offenders should be pardoned and released from jail or prison, and every facet of the drug war should be ended. And because the drug war is such a great injustice, this should all be done immediately.

The drug war is a great libertarian litmus test. No one who supports government at any level having any kind of a war on drugs is even remotely a libertarian. It doesn’t matter what else he believes about foreign policy, the welfare state, the warfare state, or the surveillance state. No one can “lean libertarian” and support such a gross violation of individual liberty, personal freedom, property rights, a free market, and a free society as the war on drugs.

*** end quote ***

Of course, the “(pseudo) War on (some) Drugs” is an easy one.

Shut down the DEA and the FDA. Clear out the prisons of non-violent drug offenders. 

But moving on from that, I’d propose some other “litmus tests”.

(1) The “Crony Capitalist” test to rule out: subsidies, price supports, parity payments, price floors, and any other form of translation of privilege into “campaign contributions”.

(2) The “Welfare” test to rule out: Gooferment handouts of any type that trap people into a cycle of poverty and despair. 

(3) The “Warfare” test to rule out: Gooferment propping up it’s military – industrial complex by failing to MYOB overseas. (Bring all the girls and boys home NOW!)

(4) The “gun” test to rule out opponents of Constitution Carry. Roll back the thousands of laws that only the lawful gun owner obeys anyway. 

This will be my rating system for the next Presidential election — if there is one!

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LIBERTARIAN: So libertarians don’t use government programs or entities?

Monday, November 17, 2014

RESPONDING ON FACEBOOK

>So libertarians don’t use government programs or entities? 

When you’re in a rigged game, you have to play the cards you’re dealt. Your Gooferment has stolen my wealth that I could use to provide for myself, my family, and my neighbors.

So, what happens, when the Gooferment programs don’t cover the needs?

Then, I have to help my relatives, friends, and neighbors out of the pittance that is left to me.

And we then have TV commercials for Wounded Warriors pandering for an additional 19$ per month because the politicians and bureaucrats have squandered everything they have stolen.

>Next time there’s a fire or the need for the police who will a libertarian call? 

Certainly NOT the police. Look how much worse they make things when they roll in with an armored vehicle and an attitude. 

If I could control my money, my insurance company would provide fire and security. 

Research how Ben Franklin organized fire response by selling insurance. Voluntarily. If you didn’t buy insurance, they’d respond and bill you for the actual cost. Within a year, everyone subscribed. BUT it was a PRIVATE business. What we’d call today a non-profit. 

>You confuse Congress with the government. I extend an invitation every time I give a speech for people to come by our office. Our staff has one priority- the veteran. No megalomaniacs, no insidious thoughts on how to screw people. 

Unfortunately, it’s all just one big Gooferment. Plus, you’re part of the overall problem. 

>Just good people doing a good job for a fair wage. No better or worse than any corporation who seek every tax exemption they can find. No better or worse than the honest attorney or stock broker who gets lumped into the pot with the bad ones. Certainly no better or worse than the honest IT folks who aren’t using their skills to hack systems and steal personal information from supposedly secure systems. 

Well, we can quibble about “good job” and “fair wage”. 

Austrian Economics points out that without a free market, Gooferment has a computational problem.

Without two equal entities striking a bargain, how is a price established.

>People are bad not entities. 

Individuals are good and bad. It’s when they gather together and claim a monopoly on the use of force and claim the mantle of “government”, the really bad ones seek to control others.

>The founding fathers you love were the government. Now they were megalomaniacs – and racist, misogynists who wrote the rules to favor people whose reflection they saw in the mirror.

The Dead Old White Guys were trying to to create a State of Liberty. Freedom was unknown in the world at the time. “Love” is not the verb I’d use. 

Remember they created the Articles of Confederation that had a weak Federal Government to join the States into a Union.

Call them all the names you want but they were revolutionary libertarians.

What they created lasted very well for many decades. It started to go off track with the Constitution and the Federalists creating the Big Government that was perverted to what we have today.

>

Bad people do bad things. Gooferment gives those bad people way too much power over individuals.

Argh! 

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And, stealing back (i.e., using Gooferment “services”) is all that a victim of today’s Gooferment can do.

“What do you call it when someone steals someone else’s money secretly? Theft. What do you call it when someone takes someone else’s money openly by force? Robbery. What do you call it when a politician takes someone else’s money in taxes and gives it to someone who is more likely to vote for him? Social justice.” — Thomas Sowell

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LIBERTARIAN: Forced medical care

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ebola-virus-outbreak/pentagon-dispatches-west-africa-paint-stark-portrait-ebola-epicenter-n233621

Ebola Virus Outbreak.
– Shepherd FarmerGeek

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“The group was stoned and found hidden in the village’s septic tank,” according to the dispatch, which did not say how many people died in the incident. “The reason for the killings is unknown. It is likely the villagers murdered the group fearing they would be diagnosed with Ebola and removed to quarantine…”

Hugh Adds: How does a country effectively fight an epidemic among such a superstitious population? It’s a hard position. Do you violate a person’s God-ordained rights and force them to receive medical care or do you just wall the village off?

*** end quote ***

From this little L libertarian pov, they’d have to be “ostracized”.

The human society has to be able to “quarantine” and / “ostracize” if the species is to survive.

imho

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LIBERTARIAN: Shave a child’s head?

Sunday, October 26, 2014

https://www.quora.com/If-my-3-year-old-asks-me-to-shave-her-head-as-a-libertarian-why-shouldnt-I-comply-with-her-request

If my 3-year-old asks me to shave her head, as a libertarian, why shouldn’t I comply with her request?

*** begin quote ***

Libertarians don’t preface every conversation about individual freedom with a disclaimer that we’re only talking about rules for adults, but it is usually implied.

*** end quote ***

Plus, Libertarians are not a uniform homgenous group. It’s like a clowder of cats.

Parents have a self-assumed obligation to this person.

As such, they are compelled to act in the child’s best interest.

I would ask, “why shouldn’t you comply”?

It won’t kill her. And it may well be a “learning experience for all involved?

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LIBERTARIAN: MYOB & fiscally conservative and socially liberal

Sunday, February 9, 2014

http://www.againstcronycapitalism.org/2014/02/rise-of-the-libertarians-10-reasons-why-slate-salon-and-the-progressive-media-are-afraid/

http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/rise-of-the-libertarians

Rise of the Libertarians, 10 reasons why Slate, Salon and the progressive media are afraid
By Nick Sorrentino on February 7, 2014

*** begin quote ***

1. Libertarianism is the new “center.” At the risk of raising the hackles of the hyperanalytical, consider this: Most people think of Ds as being on the left and Rs as being on the right. Remember: It’s about popular perceptions. And when we think in terms of those perceptions, most people think of Rs as being fiscally and socially conservative and Ds as being fiscally and socially liberal. The old center was once about being either squishy in both departments, or about being fiscally liberal and socially conservative. But a new “center” is emerging. As people become disaffected with all the bad economic policies of the Obama administration and all of the preachy moralisms of the Republican status quo, most are gravitating to a position that looks decidedly more libertarian—that is, fiscally conservative and socially liberal.

*** end quote ***

It’s even more fundamental than that: I don’t want to pay for anything I don’t want. And, I don’t care what you do as long as you don’t hurt anyone else.

Golden Rule: I want you to be as free as I want to be.

Argh!

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LIBERTARIAN: Murder and restitution

Sunday, December 22, 2013

Newark, Irvington Men Accused of Deadly Short Hills Mall Carjacking

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This is a difficult one for me being a little L libertarian.

One presumes that the Zero Aggression Principle is the operative “Golden Rule”.

So hence, I derive the corollary “No victim; no crime”.

And shortly after that: “Justice is restitution”.

If I accidentally injure you, I have to make things right. 

If I intentionally injure you, not only do I have to make it right, but there should be a penalty to ensure I don’t do it again. That’s why I like the concept of “punitive damages”. No better way to get people’s attention than to pile on. (“Now listen McDonalds, juries have been telling you that too many people are being injured by super hot coffee. Will a 16m$ judgment get your attention?” And, it did.)

After a while I came to the realization that the “death penalty” administered by a Gooferment court is too capricious and arbitrary. And, there’s nothing in the Constitution that permits this. So, the Gooferment shouldn’t be killing anyone unless they are preventing force or fraud on a citizen. Beside once they kill you, they can’t fix that mistake.

I can see a possible exception where someone is a convicted felon and they are too dangerous to keep around. Although there’s a lot of land in Alaska for the bad guys to try farming. 

Where my thinking (i.e., memes and paradigms) break down is in cases like this. Intentional, or even unintentionally, killing a fellow human being who has done nothing to you.

How do you make restitution in this case?

And, more importantly, how is the bad guy prevented from doing it again?

“Alaska farming” and if you go outside our “security zone”, then your “restraining collar” blows your head off.

So cases like this really stretch my little L libertarian meme.

Help me?

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LIBERTARIAN: Porcupine

Monday, September 16, 2013

http://porcupine-musings.org/about-me/

Why the porcupine? The porcupine bothers no one and no one bothers it. If attacked it will defend itself. As much as an animal can, it embodies the libertarian ideal of a world of liberty where we are free to lead our lives as we see fit as long as we do not impinge on the rights of others to do the same.

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LIBERTARIANISM: MYOB!

Sunday, July 28, 2013

http://www.libertarianism.org/publications/essays/value-sociological-principle-rule-mind-ones-own-business

On the Value, as a Sociological Principle, of the Rule to Mind One’s Own Business
In this essay, collected in What Social Classes Owe to Each Other (1911), Sumner denounces busybody social reformers who want to run other people’s lives.

WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER
1911

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The danger of minding other people’s business is twofold. First, there is the danger that a man may leave his own business unattended to; and, second, there is the danger of an impertinent interference with another’s affairs. The “friends of humanity” almost always run into both dangers. I am one of humanity, and I do not want any volunteer friends. I regard friendship as mutual, and I want to have my say about it. I suppose that other components of humanity feel in the same way about it. If so, they must regard any one who assumes the rôle of a friend of humanity as impertinent. The reference of the friend of humanity back to his own business is obviously the next step.

*** end quote ***

Seems as true now as it was then.

Think about if we had avoided WW1, 2, Korea, Viet Nam?

The USA should emulate the Swiss.

Imagine the vigor if we focused on our own problems. And, not our neighbors.

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LIBERTARIAN: Libertarian bigotry?

Friday, July 5, 2013

http://www.survivalistboards.com/showthread.php?t=308073&utm_source=Community&2BBulletin&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Survivalist-Boards-Community-Bulletin-2013-07-02

Can a true Libertarian be a bigot?

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How can one reconcile Libertarian philosophy and still support unequal rights? 

Should Libertarians support gay marriage?

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It seems real simple. 

Libertarians should be opposed to the Gooferment “mandating” anything.

Everyone should be free to make whatever agreements they choose. Without interference, from the gang pretending to be in charge.

Argh!

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