Some Libertarians have turned into race-baiting leftists

[jmdrake]

Yeah, that article kind of wanders. It seems that the main point is stated in this paragraph:



Once one becomes a social justice warrior, it is no longer about logic or reality. Some facts must be denied. Some falsehoods must be believed with a religious fervor.

There are some libertarians who have either become SJWs, or pander to them.

The obvious reality that the crime rate is higher among black people is rejected by some libertarian criminal-justice activists, who claim that the only reason blacks are arrested at a higher rate is due to racism. This claim is at odds with a 1996 Supreme Court ruling that recognized that crime rates vary by race.

I find the latest MSM outrage of hate crimes against Asians being a prime example of SJW insanity. The media never identifies the perpetrators of these crimes, although they sometimes play video which reveals that the attackers are always black. They have the gall to include in stories on the subject that it’s Trump’s fault because he said COVID came from China. They may also mention white nationalism in the story. It’s complete denial of reality by the SJW propagandists and activists.

How do you square the circle that Ron Paul himself cited studies showing that blacks and whites use drugs at the same rate, but blacks are more likely to be arrested, when arrested more likely to be prosecuted, when prosecuted more likely to be convicted, and when convicted serve more time in prison? Are we now going to to dismiss Ron Paul as a "leftitarian SJW?" And yes I know that drug crimes are not the only kind of crime. But I doubt that racial injustice in the the criminal justice system is limited to only one type of crime. There are also a lot of Supreme Court rulings that are at odds with reality.

Also as [MENTION=3169]Anti Federalist[/MENTION] and I have discussed numerous times, not only are there cases of police brutality against whites that go under-reported but there are also cases of police brutality against obviously innocent blacks that go under-reported. There is no explanation why Michael Brown is a household name but Aiyana Jones (shamefully I always have to look her name up) is not. Both were black. Both were killed by police. Aiyana was only 7 and sleeping in her bed. It's unfortunate that some libertarians with large platforms jumped on the "police victim of the month" bandwagon without looking into the cases that get little attention. And yes, cases like Kelly Thomas (white) deserve MUCH more attention as well.

As for Michael Brown, yes there were black witnesses who said his hands were down. There were also white witnesses, construction workers as I recall, who said his hands were up. Both could have been true. He could have had his hands up and then dropped them either before or after the first shot was fired. Eric Garner, the original "I can't breath" victim, was choked to death. His autopsy showed throat trauma. The Obama administration, the same one that cleared the shooter of Mike Brown, slow walked the investigation so that it continued 3 years later and spilled into the Trump administration. It shouldn't have been that hard. The killing happened on camera. While the initial hold was a legal "seatbelt" hold, it was a rear naked choke hold before Garner hit the ground. The fact that Eric Holder couldn't properly do that investigation calls into question his departments handling of the Michael Brown investigation. President George W. Bush, Rand Paul, and Mike Huckabee all expressed concern about the Garner killing. But whenever people on the right want to talk about the police killings of 2014, curiously they always talk about Michael Brown and never Eric Garner or Tamir Rice (kid with a toy gun who was gunned down by police within seconds of their police cruiser pulling up on him after a 911 operator who was also black mis-reported the call which said it might be a toy and called it an "active shooter") or John Crawford III (black man killed in Walmart when white customer lied and said he was an active shooter). Police brutality could be the issue that brings blacks and whites together. But that requires acknowledging that, despite SOME questionable reports, it's a very real issue.

 

[jmdrake]

This belongs here.

 

[Occam's Banana]

There is no explanation why Michael Brown is a household name but Aiyana Jones [...] is not.

Actually, there is. This is from a 2014 post at Slate Star Codex titled "The Toxoplasma of Rage" (the whole thing is well worth reading, but I will only reproduce the relevant third section here):

III.

Slate recently published an article about white people’s contrasting reactions to the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson versus the Eric Garner choking in NYC. And man, it is some contrast.

A Pew poll found that of white people who expressed an opinion about the Ferguson case, 73% sided with the officer. Of white people who expressed an opinion about the Eric Garner case, 63% sided with the black victim.

Media opinion follows much the same pattern. Arch-conservative Bill O’Reilly said he was “absolutely furious” about the way “the liberal media” and “race hustlers” had “twisted the story” about Ferguson in the service of “lynch mob justice” and “insulting the American police community, men and women risking their lives to protect us”. But when it came to Garner, O’Reilly said he was “extremely troubled” and that “there was a police overreaction that should have been adjudicated in a court of law.” His guest on FOX News, conservative commentator and fellow Ferguson-detractor Charles Krauthammer added that “From looking at the video, the grand jury’s decision [not to indict] is totally incomprehensible.” Saturday Night Live did a skit about Al Sharpton talking about the Garner case and getting increasingly upset because “For the first time in my life, everyone agrees with me.”

This follows about three months of most of America being at one another’s throats pretty much full-time about Ferguson. We got treated to a daily diet of articles like Ferguson Protester On White People: “Y’all The Devil” or Black People Had The Power To Fix The Problems In Ferguson Before The Brown Shooting – They Failed or Most White People In America Are Completely Oblivious and a whole bunch of people sending angry racist editorials and counter-editorials to each other for months. The damage done to race relations is difficult to overestimate – CBS reports that they dropped ten percentage points to the lowest point in twenty years, with over half of blacks now describing race relations as “bad”.

And people say it was all worth it, because it raised awareness of police brutality against black people, and if that rustles some people’s jimmies, well, all the worse for them.

But the Eric Garner case also would have raised awareness of police brutality against black people, and everybody would have agreed about it. It has become increasingly clear that, given sufficiently indisputable evidence of police being brutal to a black person, pretty much everyone in the world condemns it equally strongly.

And it’s not just that the Eric Garner case came around too late so we had to make do with the Mike Brown case. Garner was choked a month before Brown was shot, but the story was ignored, then dug back up later as a tie-in to the ballooning Ferguson narrative.

More important, unarmed black people are killed by police or other security officers about twice a week according to official statistics, and probably much more often than that. You’re saying none of these shootings, hundreds each year, made as good a flagship case as Michael Brown? In all this gigantic pile of bodies, you couldn’t find one of them who hadn’t just robbed a convenience store? Not a single one who didn’t have ten eyewitnesses and the forensic evidence all saying he started it?

I propose that the Michael Brown case went viral – rather than the Eric Garner case or any of the hundreds of others – because of the PETA Principle. It was controversial. A bunch of people said it was an outrage. A bunch of other people said Brown totally started it, and the officer involved was a victim of a liberal media that was hungry to paint his desperate self-defense as racist, and so the people calling it an outrage were themselves an outrage. Everyone got a great opportunity to signal allegiance to their own political tribe and discuss how the opposing political tribe were vile racists / evil race-hustlers. There was a steady stream of potentially triggering articles to share on Facebook to provoke your friends and enemies to counter-share articles that would trigger you.

The Ferguson protesters say they have a concrete policy proposal – they want cameras on police officers. There’s only spotty polling on public views of police body cameras before the Ferguson story took off, but what there is seems pretty unanimous. A UK poll showed that 90% of the population of that country wanted police to have body cameras in February. US polls are more of the form “crappy poll widget on a news site” (1, 2, 3) but they all hovered around 80% approval for the past few years. I also found a poll by Police Magazine in which a plurality of the police officers they surveyed wanted to wear body cameras, probably because of evidence that they cut down on false accusations. Even before Ferguson happened, you would have a really hard time finding anybody in or out of uniform who thought police cameras were a bad idea.

And now, after all is said and done, ninety percent of people are still in favor – given methodology issues, the extra ten percent may or may not represent a real increase. The difference between whites and blacks is a rounding error. The difference between Democrats and Republicans is barely worth talking about- 79% of Republicans are still in support. The people who think Officer Darren Wilson is completely innocent and the grand jury was right to release him, the people muttering under their breath about race hustlers and looters – eighty percent of those people still want cameras on their cops.

If the Ferguson protests didn’t do much to the public’s views on police body cameras, they sure changed its views on some other things. I wrote before about how preliminary polls say that hearing about Ferguson increased white people’s confidence in the way the police treat race. Now the less preliminary polls are out, and they show the effect was larger than even I expected.

[source]​

White people’s confidence in the police being racially unbiased increased from 35% before the story took off to 52% today. Could even a deliberate PR campaign by the nation’s police forces have done better? I doubt it.

It’s possible that this is an artifact of the question’s wording – after all, it asks people about their local department, and maybe after seeing what happened in Ferguson, people’s local police forces look pretty good by comparison. But then why do black people show the opposite trend?

I think this is exactly what it looks like. Just as PETA’s outrageous controversial campaign to spread veganism make people want to eat more animals in order to spite them, so the controversial nature of this particular campaign against police brutality and racism made white people like their local police department even more to spite the people talking about how all whites were racist.

Once again, the tradeoff.

If campaigners against police brutality and racism were extremely responsible, and stuck to perfectly settled cases like Eric Garner, everybody would agree with them but nobody would talk about it.

If instead they bring up a very controversial case like Michael Brown, everybody will talk about it, but they will catalyze their own opposition and make people start supporting the police more just to spite them. More foot-shooting.

 

[jmdrake]

Thank you for posting this! So I'm not the only one who sees this trend. It's Rosa Parks in reverse. She wasn't the first black woman in Montgomery to refuse to give up her seat on the bus. But she was chosen to do it again because she had and unassailable character. These days the opposite is happening. Those with the most dubious backgrounds and circumstances are highlighted. That way we can get into our camps and duke it out. So that begs the question. How do we buck this trend?

Actually, there is. This is from a 2014 post at Slate Star Codex titled "The Toxoplasma of Rage" (the whole thing is well worth reading, but I will only reproduce the relevant third section here):

III.

Slate recently published an article about white people’s contrasting reactions to the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson versus the Eric Garner choking in NYC. And man, it is some contrast.

A Pew poll found that of white people who expressed an opinion about the Ferguson case, 73% sided with the officer. Of white people who expressed an opinion about the Eric Garner case, 63% sided with the black victim.

Media opinion follows much the same pattern. Arch-conservative Bill O’Reilly said he was “absolutely furious” about the way “the liberal media” and “race hustlers” had “twisted the story” about Ferguson in the service of “lynch mob justice” and “insulting the American police community, men and women risking their lives to protect us”. But when it came to Garner, O’Reilly said he was “extremely troubled” and that “there was a police overreaction that should have been adjudicated in a court of law.” His guest on FOX News, conservative commentator and fellow Ferguson-detractor Charles Krauthammer added that “From looking at the video, the grand jury’s decision [not to indict] is totally incomprehensible.” Saturday Night Live did a skit about Al Sharpton talking about the Garner case and getting increasingly upset because “For the first time in my life, everyone agrees with me.”

This follows about three months of most of America being at one another’s throats pretty much full-time about Ferguson. We got treated to a daily diet of articles like Ferguson Protester On White People: “Y’all The Devil” or Black People Had The Power To Fix The Problems In Ferguson Before The Brown Shooting – They Failed or Most White People In America Are Completely Oblivious and a whole bunch of people sending angry racist editorials and counter-editorials to each other for months. The damage done to race relations is difficult to overestimate – CBS reports that they dropped ten percentage points to the lowest point in twenty years, with over half of blacks now describing race relations as “bad”.

And people say it was all worth it, because it raised awareness of police brutality against black people, and if that rustles some people’s jimmies, well, all the worse for them.

But the Eric Garner case also would have raised awareness of police brutality against black people, and everybody would have agreed about it. It has become increasingly clear that, given sufficiently indisputable evidence of police being brutal to a black person, pretty much everyone in the world condemns it equally strongly.

And it’s not just that the Eric Garner case came around too late so we had to make do with the Mike Brown case. Garner was choked a month before Brown was shot, but the story was ignored, then dug back up later as a tie-in to the ballooning Ferguson narrative.

More important, unarmed black people are killed by police or other security officers about twice a week according to official statistics, and probably much more often than that. You’re saying none of these shootings, hundreds each year, made as good a flagship case as Michael Brown? In all this gigantic pile of bodies, you couldn’t find one of them who hadn’t just robbed a convenience store? Not a single one who didn’t have ten eyewitnesses and the forensic evidence all saying he started it?

I propose that the Michael Brown case went viral – rather than the Eric Garner case or any of the hundreds of others – because of the PETA Principle. It was controversial. A bunch of people said it was an outrage. A bunch of other people said Brown totally started it, and the officer involved was a victim of a liberal media that was hungry to paint his desperate self-defense as racist, and so the people calling it an outrage were themselves an outrage. Everyone got a great opportunity to signal allegiance to their own political tribe and discuss how the opposing political tribe were vile racists / evil race-hustlers. There was a steady stream of potentially triggering articles to share on Facebook to provoke your friends and enemies to counter-share articles that would trigger you.

The Ferguson protesters say they have a concrete policy proposal – they want cameras on police officers. There’s only spotty polling on public views of police body cameras before the Ferguson story took off, but what there is seems pretty unanimous. A UK poll showed that 90% of the population of that country wanted police to have body cameras in February. US polls are more of the form “crappy poll widget on a news site” (1, 2, 3) but they all hovered around 80% approval for the past few years. I also found a poll by Police Magazine in which a plurality of the police officers they surveyed wanted to wear body cameras, probably because of evidence that they cut down on false accusations. Even before Ferguson happened, you would have a really hard time finding anybody in or out of uniform who thought police cameras were a bad idea.

And now, after all is said and done, ninety percent of people are still in favor – given methodology issues, the extra ten percent may or may not represent a real increase. The difference between whites and blacks is a rounding error. The difference between Democrats and Republicans is barely worth talking about- 79% of Republicans are still in support. The people who think Officer Darren Wilson is completely innocent and the grand jury was right to release him, the people muttering under their breath about race hustlers and looters – eighty percent of those people still want cameras on their cops.

If the Ferguson protests didn’t do much to the public’s views on police body cameras, they sure changed its views on some other things. I wrote before about how preliminary polls say that hearing about Ferguson increased white people’s confidence in the way the police treat race. Now the less preliminary polls are out, and they show the effect was larger than even I expected.

[source]​

White people’s confidence in the police being racially unbiased increased from 35% before the story took off to 52% today. Could even a deliberate PR campaign by the nation’s police forces have done better? I doubt it.

It’s possible that this is an artifact of the question’s wording – after all, it asks people about their local department, and maybe after seeing what happened in Ferguson, people’s local police forces look pretty good by comparison. But then why do black people show the opposite trend?

I think this is exactly what it looks like. Just as PETA’s outrageous controversial campaign to spread veganism make people want to eat more animals in order to spite them, so the controversial nature of this particular campaign against police brutality and racism made white people like their local police department even more to spite the people talking about how all whites were racist.

Once again, the tradeoff.

If campaigners against police brutality and racism were extremely responsible, and stuck to perfectly settled cases like Eric Garner, everybody would agree with them but nobody would talk about it.

If instead they bring up a very controversial case like Michael Brown, everybody will talk about it, but they will catalyze their own opposition and make people start supporting the police more just to spite them. More foot-shooting.

 

[Ender]

How do you square the circle that Ron Paul himself cited studies showing that blacks and whites use drugs at the same rate, but blacks are more likely to be arrested, when arrested more likely to be prosecuted, when prosecuted more likely to be convicted, and when convicted serve more time in prison? Are we now going to to dismiss Ron Paul as a "leftitarian SJW?" And yes I know that drug crimes are not the only kind of crime. But I doubt that racial injustice in the the criminal justice system is limited to only one type of crime. There are also a lot of Supreme Court rulings that are at odds with reality.

Also as [MENTION=3169]Anti Federalist[/MENTION] and I have discussed numerous times, not only are there cases of police brutality against whites that go under-reported but there are also cases of police brutality against obviously innocent blacks that go under-reported. There is no explanation why Michael Brown is a household name but Aiyana Jones (shamefully I always have to look her name up) is not. Both were black. Both were killed by police. Aiyana was only 7 and sleeping in her bed. It's unfortunate that some libertarians with large platforms jumped on the "police victim of the month" bandwagon without looking into the cases that get little attention. And yes, cases like Kelly Thomas (white) deserve MUCH more attention as well.

As for Michael Brown, yes there were black witnesses who said his hands were down. There were also white witnesses, construction workers as I recall, who said his hands were up. Both could have been true. He could have had his hands up and then dropped them either before or after the first shot was fired. Eric Garner, the original "I can't breath" victim, was choked to death. His autopsy showed throat trauma. The Obama administration, the same one that cleared the shooter of Mike Brown, slow walked the investigation so that it continued 3 years later and spilled into the Trump administration. It shouldn't have been that hard. The killing happened on camera. While the initial hold was a legal "seatbelt" hold, it was a rear naked choke hold before Garner hit the ground. The fact that Eric Holder couldn't properly do that investigation calls into question his departments handling of the Michael Brown investigation. President George W. Bush, Rand Paul, and Mike Huckabee all expressed concern about the Garner killing. But whenever people on the right want to talk about the police killings of 2014, curiously they always talk about Michael Brown and never Eric Garner or Tamir Rice (kid with a toy gun who was gunned down by police within seconds of their police cruiser pulling up on him after a 911 operator who was also black mis-reported the call which said it might be a toy and called it an "active shooter") or John Crawford III (black man killed in Walmart when white customer lied and said he was an active shooter). Police brutality could be the issue that brings blacks and whites together. But that requires acknowledging that, despite SOME questionable reports, it's a very real issue.

Pretty much my POV.

And, as far as the OP- Both Right & Left have turned into hate-baiting whatevers- doesn't matter what side they say their on.

 

[Occam's Banana]

Thank you for posting this! So I'm not the only one who sees this trend. It's Rosa Parks in reverse. She wasn't the first black woman in Montgomery to refuse to give up her seat on the bus. But she was chosen to do it again because she had and unassailable character. These days the opposite is happening. Those with the most dubious backgrounds and circumstances are highlighted. That way we can get into our camps and duke it out. So that begs the question. How do we buck this trend?

Unfortunately, I doubt that there is any definitive way to put a stop to it.

Human nature is just too susceptible to inflammatory "click bait" - a fact that politicians and the media exploit to the fullest.

One can only do what one can do - such as spread the word about the Aiyana Joneses of the world and hope that enough people - not necessarily most, but enough - will eventually end up putting two and two together and will be in a position to do something about it.

 

[acptulsa]

Thank you for posting this! So I'm not the only one who sees this trend. It's Rosa Parks in reverse. She wasn't the first black woman in Montgomery to refuse to give up her seat on the bus. But she was chosen to do it again because she had and unassailable character. These days the opposite is happening. Those with the most dubious backgrounds and circumstances are highlighted. That way we can get into our camps and duke it out. So that begs the question. How do we buck this trend?

Unfortunately, I doubt that there is any definitive way to put a stop to it.

Human nature is just too susceptible to inflammatory "click bait" - a fact that politicians and the media exploit to the fullest.

One can only do what one can do - such as spread the word about the Aiyana Joneses of the world and hope that enough people - not necessarily most, but enough - will eventually end up putting two and two together and will be in a position to do something about it.

I believe the high point of relations between blacks and whites in the U.S. was the months after 9/11/01. Americans had a common enemy, which wasn't necessarily positive from a race standpoint overall, but it did unite non-arabic factions.

The powers that be decided that just wouldn't do, and set out to fix it. Which, to an intelligent and rational person, means screw it up.



Is there something to be done about it? Discredit the MSM and Dept. of Ed. Wish us luck.

The good news they're insulting everyone's intelligence in a major way. The bad news is a great many people really, really want to think of the ability to regurgitate propaganda as intelligence.

 

[TheTexan]

How do you square the circle that Ron Paul himself cited studies showing that blacks and whites use drugs at the same rate, but blacks are more likely to be arrested, when arrested more likely to be prosecuted, when prosecuted more likely to be convicted, and when convicted serve more time in prison? Are we now going to to dismiss Ron Paul as a "leftitarian SJW?" And yes I know that drug crimes are not the only kind of crime. But I doubt that racial injustice in the the criminal justice system is limited to only one type of crime. There are also a lot of Supreme Court rulings that are at odds with reality.

Also as [MENTION=3169]Anti Federalist[/MENTION] and I have discussed numerous times, not only are there cases of police brutality against whites that go under-reported but there are also cases of police brutality against obviously innocent blacks that go under-reported. There is no explanation why Michael Brown is a household name but Aiyana Jones (shamefully I always have to look her name up) is not. Both were black. Both were killed by police. Aiyana was only 7 and sleeping in her bed. It's unfortunate that some libertarians with large platforms jumped on the "police victim of the month" bandwagon without looking into the cases that get little attention. And yes, cases like Kelly Thomas (white) deserve MUCH more attention as well.

As for Michael Brown, yes there were black witnesses who said his hands were down. There were also white witnesses, construction workers as I recall, who said his hands were up. Both could have been true. He could have had his hands up and then dropped them either before or after the first shot was fired. Eric Garner, the original "I can't breath" victim, was choked to death. His autopsy showed throat trauma. The Obama administration, the same one that cleared the shooter of Mike Brown, slow walked the investigation so that it continued 3 years later and spilled into the Trump administration. It shouldn't have been that hard. The killing happened on camera. While the initial hold was a legal "seatbelt" hold, it was a rear naked choke hold before Garner hit the ground. The fact that Eric Holder couldn't properly do that investigation calls into question his departments handling of the Michael Brown investigation. President George W. Bush, Rand Paul, and Mike Huckabee all expressed concern about the Garner killing. But whenever people on the right want to talk about the police killings of 2014, curiously they always talk about Michael Brown and never Eric Garner or Tamir Rice (kid with a toy gun who was gunned down by police within seconds of their police cruiser pulling up on him after a 911 operator who was also black mis-reported the call which said it might be a toy and called it an "active shooter") or John Crawford III (black man killed in Walmart when white customer lied and said he was an active shooter). Police brutality could be the issue that brings blacks and whites together. But that requires acknowledging that, despite SOME questionable reports, it's a very real issue.

I would posit that the vast majority of "racial injustice" is the result of income inequality, rather than racism.

Its not a secret that poor people get treated like shit. And poor people are disproportionately black.

In other words, if black lives matter so much, maybe they should do something with their lives. Or turn drug dealing into a respectable profession.

 

[acptulsa]

Or turn drug dealing into a respectable profession.

Drug dealing was a somewhat respectable profession until they started peddling a dangerous "vaccine" that doesn't prevent the disease.

 

[Brian4Liberty]

How do you square the circle that Ron Paul himself cited studies showing that blacks and whites use drugs at the same rate, but blacks are more likely to be arrested, when arrested more likely to be prosecuted, when prosecuted more likely to be convicted, and when convicted serve more time in prison? Are we now going to to dismiss Ron Paul as a "leftitarian SJW?" And yes I know that drug crimes are not the only kind of crime. But I doubt that racial injustice in the the criminal justice system is limited to only one type of crime. There are also a lot of Supreme Court rulings that are at odds with reality.
...

I don't disagree with anything you wrote. I was specifically more interested in crimes other than drugs.

Unfortunately, there is a discrepancy in how and which people are harassed by Police for or arrested for drugs. IMHO, it’s ease of prosecution and arrest that causes this. Why try to investigate and prove a real crime when the suspect has some drugs on them? I fear that is the reason. Systemic laziness and path of least resistance. Al Capone was charged with tax evasion. Nothing new.

Thank you for posting this! So I'm not the only one who sees this trend. It's Rosa Parks in reverse. She wasn't the first black woman in Montgomery to refuse to give up her seat on the bus. But she was chosen to do it again because she had and unassailable character. These days the opposite is happening. Those with the most dubious backgrounds and circumstances are highlighted. That way we can get into our camps and duke it out. So that begs the question. How do we buck this trend?

I’ve been posting about this trend for a long time. AF can attest...

At 22:30, there is a good discussion about BLM and the left's tactics in which cases they promote and propagandize. It has been obvious for a long time that they like cases that are very murky and ambiguous, or are outright lies. They want division. A clear cut case of police killing an innocent person is not the kind of story they like.

 

[Occam's Banana]

The frustrating part is it feels like left-lib is the dominant "wing" right now. Big L sucks bad. The NJ Libertarian Party is the worst. left lib leaning organization that tries to meme on FB and sucks badly at it.

Dave Smith and Tom Woods are trying to change that, via the Mises Caucus.

Recent video (two days ago) from the LP Mises Caucus:
- Michael Heise is a co-founder of the Mises Caucus
- Caryn Ann Harlos is secretary of the LP national committee
- Dave Smith is part of the problem

Video proper starts @ 3:15

On "The Takeover"
"Oh No! The Mises Caucus is taking over! They must be stopped!". The topic of the takeover has become a hot button issue both in an out of the Mises Caucus. Whats it all about? Why are so many people entering the party off of that message? Is it the best idea to message this way? Talk about it with us with Michael Heise, Dave Smith and Caryn Ann Harlos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjUZ5aOwJZw

THREAD: Dave Smith considers seeking the 2024 LP POTUS nomination

 

[devil21]

^^^^Someone's got a serious crush on Smith....

If he's any real threat to the establishment he won't be allowed the nomination. The national LP will give it to whoever is lukewarm, ineffectual and unlikely to gain traction. They proved it last election (as one example) by stealing the nomination from Hornberger and handing it to Jorgenson. Hornberger kicked her ass in practically every nominating contest held across the country but since Hornberger openly talks about topics like the CFR (Deep State, collectively), he wasn't allowed the nomination. She was handed it and did exactly what she was supposed to. Not much of anything.

 

[Occam's Banana]

^^^^Someone's got a serious crush on Smith....

Damn right, I do! :hearteyes::hearteyes::hearteyes:

If he's any real threat to the establishment he won't be allowed the nomination. The national LP will give it to whoever is lukewarm, ineffectual and unlikely to gain traction. They proved it last election (as one example) by stealing the nomination from Hornberger and handing it to Jorgenson. Hornberger kicked her ass in practically every nominating contest held across the country but since Hornberger openly talks about topics like the CFR (Deep State, collectively), he wasn't allowed the nomination. She was handed it and did exactly what she was supposed to. Not much of anything.

Putting an end to the milquetoastery of the LP "establishment" is one of the main reasons the LP Mises Caucus was formed in the first place.

Another reason is to put emphasis on state and local races and give greater support to the candidates in those races - all while using the (otherwise irrelevant, IMO) POTUS race as a platform from which to marshal greater support for the ideas of liberty by breathing fire on relevant topical issues (lockdowns, wars, police abuses, gun rights, etc.), instead of indulging in the lukewarm rhetoric, Woke-pandering and "respectability"-seeking exhibited by Johnson, Sarwark, et al.

I quit the LP back in the '90s (and the Perry Willis scandal that ensued thereafter only served to confirm to me that I had made the right decision) - but now I'm joining again as part of the Mises Caucus.

And it's all because of Dave Smith hearteyes, Tom Woods, et al. ... (YMMV, and that's okay, too ...)

ETA 1: Also, the executive committee of the Mises Caucus unanimously endorsed Jacob Hornberger.

ETA 2: Hornberger is also on the advisory board of the Mises Caucus.

 

[Pauls' Revere]

LOL , What if I told you most of them were always leftarians ? I have libertarian fatigue .Bring on the anarchists see if there is an improvement , LOL

Thanks for adding reputation to this user. May you be lucky enough to receive the same Reputation back in turn.

 

[Occam's Banana]

THREAD: Support the Mises Caucus

 

[Brian4Liberty]

...
ETA 1: Also, the executive committee of the Mises Caucus unanimously endorsed Jacob Hornberger.

ETA 2: Hornberger is also on the advisory board of the Mises Caucus.

Hornberger might have been the purest libertarian in the race. But if IIRC, during the LP debate, Hornberger opened up with the full uncontrolled, mass immigration position. IMHO, all of the candidates jumped on the open borders train, apparently in an attempt to outdo each other in catering to the woke “no borders, no wall” leftist crowd.

I don't know where Smith stands on that issue.

 

[Occam's Banana]

Hornberger might have been the purest libertarian in the race. But if IIRC, during the LP debate, Hornberger opened up with the full uncontrolled, mass immigration position. IMHO, all of the candidates jumped on the open borders train, apparently in an attempt to outdo each other in catering to the woke “no borders, no wall” leftist crowd.

I don't know where Smith stands on that issue.

Dave Smith’s Part of the Problem – Ep. 578 – Immigration With Jen Monroe
webpage: https://namelyliberty.com/dave-smiths-part-of-the-problem-ep-578-immigration-with-jen-monroe/
mp3 file: https://rss.art19.com/episodes/caa56f9e-d3d1-4bf1-9eed-c405e36ea004.mp3

Smith @ 13:50: "... I think that as long as government is controlling the borders, immigration is more or less a government program, whether it's open borders or closed borders, or what we have now, which is a disastrous combination of the two. [...] To me, I think it is no more libertarian or less libertarian to want open borders or closed borders. [...] That doesn't mean I support either. I hate government programs in general. I'd rather see them abolished ..."

Also @ 36:40: " ... This is probably, of all the issues, the one I get the most heat from, from libertarians and from my own audience, which is very divided on this issue. And I manage to piss both [...] sides of them off whenever I talk about immigration ..."

Based on this, I suspect that Smith might at least broadly agree with my own position on the immigration issue, which is as follows:

I refuse to support any "public" immigration policy (whether "open" or "closed"). There is nothing in libertarian theory that supports any such policy. Ideally, all property would be private, and such matters would be settled by (1) property owners deciding for themselves how "open" or "closed" they want their property to be, and (2) whatever system of easements, rights-of-way, etc. organically evolves out of those decisions. Sadly, though, we don't live in an ideal world. As is so often demonstrated, the state only truly excels at preventing optimal solutions from being implemented, leaving everyone to squabble hatefully with each other over whatever suboptimal pick-your-poison "solutions" the state is willing to entertain. So if the state is going to interfere in such matters, it should at least be confined to doing so only on the most local and decentralized scale possible. Regardless of what government-enforced policy one might prefer - "open", "closed", or "mixed" - it is just insanely absurd for places as different (demographically, economically, environmentally, etc.) as Montana and Florida to be subjected to "One Immigration Policy to Rule Them All."

https://twitter.com/ComicDaveSmith/status/1146076282947551233

https://twitter.com/ComicDaveSmith/status/1146195149501939712

 

[Brian4Liberty]

Dave Smith’s Part of the Problem – Ep. 578 – Immigration With Jen Monroe
webpage: https://namelyliberty.com/dave-smiths-part-of-the-problem-ep-578-immigration-with-jen-monroe/
mp3 file: https://rss.art19.com/episodes/caa56f9e-d3d1-4bf1-9eed-c405e36ea004.mp3

Smith @ 13:50: "... I think that as long as government is controlling the borders, immigration is more or less a government program, whether it's open borders or closed borders, or what we have now, which is a disastrous combination of the two. [...] To me, I think it is no more libertarian or less libertarian to want open borders or closed borders. [...] That doesn't mean I support either. I hate government programs in general. I'd rather see them abolished ..."

Also @ 36:40: " ... This is probably, of all the issues, the one I get the most heat from, from libertarians and from my own audience, which is very divided on this issue. And I manage to piss both [...] sides of them off whenever I talk about immigration ..."

Based on this, I suspect that Smith might at least broadly agree with my own position on the immigration issue, which is as follows:

I refuse to support any "public" immigration policy (whether "open" or "closed"). There is nothing in libertarian theory that supports any such policy. Ideally, all property would be private, and such matters would be settled by (1) property owners deciding for themselves how "open" or "closed" they want their property to be, and (2) whatever system of easements, rights-of-way, etc. organically evolves out of those decisions. Sadly, though, we don't live in an ideal world. As is so often demonstrated, the state only truly excels at preventing optimal solutions from being implemented, leaving everyone to squabble hatefully with each other over whatever suboptimal pick-your-poison "solutions" the state is willing to entertain. So if the state is going to interfere in such matters, it should at least be confined to doing so only on the most local and decentralized scale possible. Regardless of what government-enforced policy one might prefer - "open", "closed", or "mixed" - it is just insanely absurd for places as different (demographically, economically, environmentally, etc.) as Montana and Florida to be subjected to "One Immigration Policy to Rule Them All."

https://twitter.com/ComicDaveSmith/status/1146076282947551233

https://twitter.com/ComicDaveSmith/status/1146195149501939712

Based on this, I suspect that Smith might at least broadly agree with my own position on the immigration issue

Based on the Tweets, I suspect he agrees with my more traditional libertarian take on immigration, which is that the welfare state and open immigration are incompatible. Immigration can not be looked at in isolation. It is part of a complex system. There are times when it is appropriate, there are times when it is inappropriate. As long as we have a welfare state, we can not have unlimited immigration. And that is not the only concern. Capacity is also an issue. Politics and culture is another separate concern.

 

[Occam's Banana]

Based on the Tweets, I suspect he agrees with my more traditional libertarian take on immigration, which is that the welfare state and open immigration are incompatible. Immigration can not be looked at in isolation. It is part of a complex system. There are times when it is appropriate, there are times when it is inappropriate. As long as we have a welfare state, we can not have unlimited immigration. And that is not the only concern. Capacity is also an issue. Politics and culture is another separate concern.

I agree with all of that. The sentiments Dave expressed in his tweets are entirely compatible with everything he said during his discussion with Monroe (including the statements I quoted), as well as with everything I said in my own comments on the issue. And something else Dave said during the interview with Monroe - something with which I also agree completely - was that whichever policy one might prefer on this issue, the one thing you can be certain of is that the (federal) government will fuck it up badly.

Deciding upon which variety of "public" immigration policy ("open", "closed", or "mixed") is to be artificially imposed upon everyone is a "pick your poison" scenario. It comes down to a matter of which poison one regards as being least deadly. This is ultimately a subjective evaluation of the respective pros and cons of each variety - but this fact is only problematic because of the public nature of the issue. So long as the issue remains one of public (rather than private) immigration, the problem will persist, regardless of which variety happens to be in effect at any given moment. (In previous discussions on this topic at RPFs, I have pointed out that exactly the same dynamic manifested in the controversies over teaching creationism vs. evolution in public schools. It is instructive to note that, in relative comparison, private schools were blessedly undisturbed by such disputes.)

"Public" immigration policy is an issue over which libertarians can reasonably disagree while still remaining libertarians. This is why the Mises Caucus platform does not take any position on the issue - and why Smith, despite his own reservations, could endorse Hornberger for LP POTUS nominee in 2020 even though Hornberger is solidly in the "open borders" camp.

 

[Occam's Banana]

Hornberger might have been the purest libertarian in the race. But if IIRC, during the LP debate, Hornberger opened up with the full uncontrolled, mass immigration position. IMHO, all of the candidates jumped on the open borders train, apparently in an attempt to outdo each other in catering to the woke “no borders, no wall” leftist crowd.

I don't know where Smith stands on that issue.

In addition to previously posted material, Dave is going to debate Spike Cohen on the issue in a few days.

I'll try to remember to update this thread (and the Dave Smith / PotP thread) when links become available (early next year, if not sooner).

https://twitter.com/Reed_Coverdale/status/1473061310371807235