The Libertarian Party has essentially become the Detroit of politics.
By Leland Freeman
A once gleaming point of optimism that was suppose to be everything right about moving towards a more limited government has degenerated into a self-serving ghetto that now bans it’s biggest champions, like Congressman Ron Paul and Judge Andrew Napolitano.
What happened? How did a movement fall on it’s sword quicker than the collapse of Bitcoin? We have to look back at the Ron Paul movement in 2007-8.
Eight years of Bush and Establishment Republican rule took their toll on the country. Along with the 2008 financial crisis, the country was looking for a change.
Unfortunately, the Establishment Republicans made sure Ron Paul would not get the GOP nomination, pretty much opening the floodgates for whoever the Democrats nominated, which happened to be Barack Obama, who won bigly.
The Libertarians should have seen this as an opening of disenfranchised Republicans, but instead the Libertarian Party nominated Bob Barr, the father of the Patriot act, a very un-small “L” Libertarian thing to do.
Many of those disenfranchised Republicans ended up forming the Tea Party, but were smart enough to remain under the GOP umbrella to win elections in 2010 to present.
Other disenfranchised Republicans made alliances with the Libertarian Party. Thinking they would have something in common with them, those Republicans helped elect officials that would reduce the size of government, increase individual liberty, and get back to a sound monetary system. They were willing to put up with the weird personalities and traits of the libertarians, including their propensity towards anarchy, if it meant there would be a freer society.
After 2012 and the shellacking of establishment candidate Mitt Romney, the general thought was Tea Party and the Libertarians would unite around Ron Paul’s son, Senator Rand Paul for the 2016 presidential election, however as early 2013, that vision started to get clouded.
The Libertarians felt that Rand Paul was too much of a “statist” for promoting the idea of constitutional run government, since the Libertarian Party feels that the constitution requires too much government to exist.
Those that were in the Tea Party felt Rand was not ready, and was not a strong enough personality to be president, enter Donald Trump. Tea Party patriots felt he exuded 80-90% of the good parts of Rand Paul, with a strong enough personality to not only win the nomination, but go toe to toe with Hillary Clinton.
Libertarians could not stand Donald Trump, mainly because of his Reagan’esqu stance of building up the national defense, as well as actually policing the boarders of the country
As we would unfortunately learn, the post-Paul Libertarian Party does not support laws, not because they feel they can self-regulate, but rather because they want to have an environment of anarchy where they could get away with as much wrong doing as possible.
Other elements also contributed to the breaking point of the LP during the 2016 presidential election. The outright embracement of anarchism and their obnoxious cult-like worship of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin are just a few examples.
Originally touted as “digital gold” due to the initial claim of limited supply, crypto currencies have since become the ultimate ponzi scheme, where valuation is literally being pulled out of thin air and new alternative crypto currencies called “Altcoins” were created on a daily basis to inflate the valuation of concurrency market as a whole. Only now do we realize how much damage this caused with the cryptocurrency collapse of 2018 which has a lot in common with the 2008 financial crisis.
This stems from the larger problem of the anarchist influence in the Libertarian movement. Those that supported Ron Paul want limited government, but they are also patriotic Americans. On the other hand, the anarchists that have infiltrated the liberty movement not only hate America, but also what it stands for.
Moreover, the LP leadership seemed to consist of Republican Rejects that anointed the Gary Johnson/William Weld ticket. The Rand Paul supporters felt that they had no place in the LP, because the LP was attacking them more that any Democrat and got behind Donald Trump.
Austin Peterson has since left the LP, and is running for Senate as a Republican after the way he was treated by the party and by Gary Johnson, who tossed Peterson’s flintlock in the trash after he gave it to Johnson after the former Governor won the nomination.
Those that tried to stick it out, and felt they could right the LP’s ship from within, were used and abused by the anarchists. They were demonized, called intolerant and even racist Nazis. The anarchists seem to have more in common with socialist cults than self-reliance.
These “freedom cell” and mutual aid societies often paralleled the structure of Jonestown, where the leaders reap all the benefits, and their followers ended up as slaves. Often times these victims were subjected to a type of physiological torture called gaslighting, where the victims are made to believe that they were at fault, and that they were insane to think otherwise. This is how the Anarchists get away with literal stealing of property, resources and money.
It seems to be straight out of the George Soros playbook, to first destroy LP from within… first by giving a platform for SJW anarchists and totalitarian candidates that are anti-Second Amendment, (Bob Barr and William Weld.)
Next on deck was to use the LP as a Trojan horse to take out the Paul/Trump supporters from within, in order to allow the globalists to retake control of the government by taking enough votes away from Donald J Trump to allow Hillary to win.
Unfortunately for them and fortunately for America, their plan failed.
Now that Trump has been elected however, the LP has hit the afterburners with the attacks on his presidency, just like the overt Soros SJWs.
This is the literal definition of crazy, doing the same thing but expecting a different result. They nominated Nicholas Sarwark as their Chairman, who employs a lot of the same virtue signaling and tactics as the Soros Anti Trump SJWs, and quite honestly the domestic terrorist organization ANTIFA. Sarwark went out of his way to align with leftists and bury Murry Rothbard. He labeled Tom Woods as a Nazi. Stefan Molynuex, who no longer identifies as Libertarian, openly stated… “The LP Wonders why they are irrelevant” in response.
If that was not enough, the LP seems to have fully embraced ANTIFA, with the reality that the apparent front-runner for their party’s nomination for president is Adam Kokesh, a self professed anarchist who has been labeled the “Tide Pod of the Liberty Movement.” Kokesh has also been outed as a total fraud.
Despite this, Mr. Kokesh still has his cult-like followers that listen to his preaching of civil obedience and anarchism, which sound straight out of a blackbloc ANTIFA rally. Other points pushed by the Libertarian Party that demonstrate a total degredation of actual party philosophy? The push for completely open boarders, which has more in common with left-wing DACA supporters, than those of President Trump.
Even the push for Bitcoin has more in common with a One-World digital currency that the UN would want to get behind, rather than getting back to the gold-standard.
The Libertarian Party has done so much damage to the word “Libertarian,” that the classical definition does not even fit the word anymore. Those that once identified as Libertarians, like Ronald Reagan, no longer do.
What’s next? Are Libertarian Party meetings going to take place in safespaces? They are already using most of the tactics of the anarchist left, embracing lawlessness and letting ANTIFA bury the fathers of the Libertarian movement. It would not surprise me one bit if Americans end up finding out that they are receiving funding from George Soros, one way or another.
In closing, it should be Ron Paul and Andrew Napolitano that reject the Libertarian Party, and not the other way around. The Libertarian Party is too far gone to fix, and should be given the Old-Yeller treatment and be put of its misery.
Anarchism is like an un-treatable virus; once it infects the host… it dies a slow, painful, dirty death. It is too late for the Libertarian Party, too late for the movement that identifies itself as Libertarian, but not too late for Americans to be patriotic supporters of limited government.
The sooner people realize that the Libertarian Party is an extension of ANTIFA, the sooner they can separate themselves from it and support President Donald Trump’s mission; Make America Great Again.
Leland Freeman is a conservative filmmaker and radio host based in Austin, Texas.