From their recent press statement:
The Libertarian Party of Oregon must boycott the 2024 Libertarian National Convention.
For the convention organizers to invite the Presidential candidate of another political party to speak at our nominating convention would be wholly improper at any time. For them to invite former president Trump is shocking and appalling.
Trump is the antithesis of every core principle of Libertarianism. During his term in the presidency, Trump demonstrated his manifest unfitness to address our convention:
- He sharply raised tariffs, which increased the taxation of imports and started a trade war that imposed unnecessary burdens on American consumers..
- He suspended large swathes of what few legal immigration programs existed, and directed the agencies of the Federal government to engage in performative cruelty against immigrants who e entered the country without legal sanction.
- He selected Supreme Court Justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade, enabling state governments to interfere with women making anguished decisions about their healthcare.
- He openly admired and praised such murderous dictators as Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, and Rodrigo Duterte.
- He sent anonymous jackbooted thugs to the streets of Oregon’s largest city to escalate violence, snatch people off the street into unmarked vehicles, and suppress opposition to his policies.
Add to this his desperate attempts to cling to power by summoning his cult of shock troops to Washington to violently overturn our Constitutional Republic, together with his vow to act as a dictator on day one if he is elected to a second term, and it is difficult to imagine a less suitable person to invite to the podium at a Libertarian nominating convention.
The recent history of the Libertarian National Committee evokes the old parable about a Nazi sitting down at a table where eleven other people are sitting… if they don’t send him away when he raises the swastika, what you have is a table with twelve Nazis. There is no Libertarian tent big enough to accommodate determined statists such as the former president.
The Libertarian National Committee may have decided to hand over the national party to the cult of the omnipotent state, but the Libertarian Party of Oregon has the option to refuse to sit down at the table they have prepared. We urge you to exercise that option.
Jeff Weston — Chair, Libertarian Party of Oregon, 2009-2011
Wes Wagner — Chair, Libertarian Party of Oregon, 2011-2015
Lars Hedbor — Chair, Libertarian Party of Oregon, 2015-2017
Kyle Markley — Chair, Libertarian Party of Oregon, 2017-2019
This statement has also been endorsed by another previous chair:
Bruce Alexander Knight — Chair, Libertarian Party of Oregon, 1998-1999
Bruce has always been a genuinely good person.
Former State Vice Chair in Oregon a few hundred decades ago, and I’ll sign on.
PS: Bruce and I started Clackamas County back in the stone age.
L.p. Is officially selling Trump Merch. Just saying.
https://reason.com/2024/05/02/l-a-beats-nyc/
I will be attending the LP 2024 National Convention and will walk out if Trump is allowed a platform.
I will be there to vote those that invited Trump out of office.
We can’t win by running away. We should move to disinvite Trump as a first order of business. Maybe even before we replace the convention chair.
You won’t win those votes because the party failed to purge these people over the course of 2 decades. You have a nazi bar now and there is no fixing it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesFromYourServer/comments/hsiisw/kicking_a_nazi_out_as_soon_as_they_walk_in/
You are better off opening a new bar and knifing the fuckers the first time one shows up. You will never pick up this turd by the clean end again.
True, but a new bar isn’t going to work either . To extend your analogy, imagine a social transformation where people who drink alcohol don’t go out anymore, and people who go out no longer drink alcohol. That’s kind of where we are at with minor political parties, particularly from scratch, for a host of Reasons.
There are many ways to participate politically other than joining or starting a party. There are many ways to change the culture and ideas besides electoral politics. Within electoral politics, you can run as an independent, major party caucus, single issue or multiple issue pressure groups, pac, etc, etc, etc.
The l.p. Can’t be fixed or replaced. It’s time to move on. I’m the worst at sunk costs and doing things due to inertia and familiarity, but that’s where we are, and ultimately it’s for the best as far as libertarian goals. I think the party served a purpose, but now the party is over and it’s time to clear the room. You don’t have to go home, but it’s not worth your time to stay here, and the afterparty is for sure even less worth it.