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STARCHILD: Don’t Give Up on the Libertarian Party

While I understand the frustration and disappointment at some of the national messaging over the past year, and the changes to the language on abortion and bigotry in the Platform at the 2022 convention, I don’t think giving up on the Libertarian Party is a good idea at this time.

As I see it, the current divisions in the party and libertarian movement are attributable to three main, related factors or circumstances:

1) The increasing polarization of American politics between left and right, Republicans and Democrats. Libertarians, even those who are familiar with the Nolan Chart and understand that the real political struggle is libertarian vs. authoritarian, not left vs. right, are not immune to the cultural zeitgeist. As people who actively pay attention to politics, libertarians are susceptible to being drawn into the left/right, R/D squabbles, and the more heated and polarized those squabbles have become, the more this is true.

2) The often toxic culture of online commenting. The tendency of social media platforms to incentivize comments and posts getting “likes” and so forth by being provocative, combative, and “trolling”, combined with the natural willingness of people to be meaner to each other from behind a screen than they would in person, especially when coupled with anonymity*, has led to increasing acrimony among online communities of all political stripes. Again libertarians are not immune to this.

3) Involvement of high-profile movement figures in these online fights between libertarians more sympathetic to the left and libertarians more sympathetic to the right. As people with significant numbers of followers became more ego-invested in these squabbles, their impact snowballed and spilled over into the offline world, causing factional divisions in the LP to solidify and translate into real-world oppositional efforts on both sides, of which the Mises Caucus organizing had the greatest impact.

*This is not an argument against allowing online anonymity, which is part of a long and vital tradition of anonymous free speech that must be upheld – there are many valid reasons why someone might want to say something anonymously, and the more repressive a regime becomes, the more important this freedom also becomes.

A new libertarian party in the United States, if it were to be as successful as the LP – a big “if” – would not be immune to any of these circumstances. They could just as easily come to plague any new party that had the LP’s advantage of being able to appeal to significant and roughly balanced numbers of people on the left and right. And any libertarian party that did not have such a balance would likely drift away from libertarianism and become pigeon-holed as left wing or right wing, similar to what happened to the Occupy and Tea Party movements respectively, grassroots movements which each had the potential for broad-based appeal to a wide number of people across the political spectrum, but became marginalized as media coverage and their own internal dynamics cemented perceptions of them as on the far left and far right.

So what can be done? We can and should reaffirm our commitment to libertarianism, tone down our attacks on others within the broad scope of the libertarian movement, and focus debates on ideas and strategies, rather than on the people who hold them. Put more energy into outreach and spreading the libertarian message, and less energy into fighting with others who identify as or whose views put them in the category of being broadly libertarian or pro-freedom. Don’t view control of the Libertarian Party as an all-or-nothing affair. Internal divisions will inevitably surface in any faction that gains substantial power in the party. Libertarians tend to be intelligent and free-thinking individuals who are less susceptible than people of other political persuasions to just following marching orders, especially over a period of time.
[Ed.: Slight edits by original author.]

7 Comments

  1. Robert Kraus Robert Kraus June 19, 2023

    WA & other states have shown how to run candidates in top 2. CA does have opportunities. There are many uncontested races not only in CA but other states as well. The strategy Libertarian Booster PAC employed in PA a couple years ago was simple & it work. Focus on uncontested races: https://ballotpedia.org/Election_results,_2022:_Uncontested_races_by_state

    • Richard Winger Richard Winger June 20, 2023

      California does not have many opportunities in partisan elections. The majority of races in which only a single Democrat files in the primary, and no one else does, inevitably result in a Republican filing as a declared write-in. So if a Libertarian also files as a declared write-in, chances are the Republican write-in candidate will get more write-ins than the Libertarian.

  2. Root's Teeth Are Awesome Root's Teeth Are Awesome May 31, 2023

    Starchild, you’re a California LP insider.

    Can you explain why there were almost no statewide or local LP candidates in the 2020 and 2022 primaries?

    I understand that, due to Top Two, LP candidates are not likely to make the November ballot. But I didn’t even see them on my primary ballot in the Los Angeles area.

    • Gail Lightfoot Gail Lightfoot June 3, 2023

      Since the passage of The Voter Nominated Primacy or Top Two, it is 15 times more difficult for Libertarian candidates to place their name on the Primary Ballot AND unless there is only one other candidate in the Primay, their name will not appear on the Nov General Election ballot at all.
      Knowing this the ‘we need to win elections’ members decided to focus on local elections which are [sometimes] winnable.
      Without the support of all LPC {CA LP] members, few, if any members can run for partisan office dispite the fact the political parties are partisan.
      The fact is. local and partisan are totally different animals. In one, you build relationships, to gain votes. In the other you reach out in a very general manner all voters.
      These two differing political postures, as it were, appeal to an work for different individuals.
      One requires intense community involvement and no political party at all.
      The other is the job of political parties.

    • Starchild Starchild July 4, 2023

      I’m not part of the California state executive committee and not super on top of everything, but I can respond generally and say that the Top Two situation is certainly a significant factor. Fewer candidates are interested in running when they know they likely won’t appear on general election ballots.

      Another factor, I think, is that there isn’t enough peer-to-peer communication of people at the grassroots level throughout the state. The state leadership could definitely do more to promote such interaction, such as by advertising the existence of and encouraging people to join an email list or lists for this purpose, for folks to talk about what’s going on, what they could use help with, etc. I think top-down, one-too-many communications put out by central leadership are less effective at generating community, solidarity, and engagement, than activists talking with each other directly.

  3. Michael H Wilson Michael H Wilson May 30, 2023

    “Put more energy into outreach and spreading the libertarian message, and less energy into fighting with others who identify as or whose views put them in the category of being broadly libertarian or pro-freedom.” per Starchild. I strongly agree.

  4. George Whitfield George Whitfield May 29, 2023

    Starchild has written an excellent article analyzing the causes of the Libertarian Party’s current situation and recommending what we should be doing now. I agree with him and will be focusing on positive approaches and activities.

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