How many true republican libertarians are even in Congress? Ron Paul, after that it becomes a little muddled. Amash and Bobb Barr claim to be, but they vote for things that are clearly not in line with libertarian ideals. I am a libertarian and I have never identified with the Republican party. Any libertarian other than Ron Paul that aligns himself with Republicans I do not support until I know their views, because most of the time they will be money whoring dbags ala Rand Paul and Paul Ryan.

No.

The whole "Abolish IP" thing is pretty much in line with full blown anarchists.

There are some mild changes I'd like to see in regards to IP, mostly reducing protected periods etc, but this is yet another idea where small, manageable and correctable issues emerge and a certain sect of "libertarian" (the one with the capital "A") just go "drone strike, nuke the site from orbit" on the issue.

"Economic freedom promotes human freedom" - Milton Friedman...

Libertarians should abandon states rights nutbags like ron paul as well.

Agree with OP. Here in my congressional district in AZ, we elected an Atheist bisexual woman by a very narrow margin. The libertarian candidate actually got 6% of the vote. i voted for a democrat for the first time in my life on tuesday for the reasons given in OP

yea just not once they have been in office


but yes i have been saying this for years, it's mind boggling the libertarians are pigeonholed with the republicans. I guess that just goes to show how big of an issue " the economy" (whatever that means" is to the average voter

huh, DADT repeal, end to DOMA defense.

On the state level it is even better with gay marriage and legal weed becoming the norm in liberal and Democratic states. that's not happening on the fed level with Boehner and the T-Party controlled House.

yo, yo, FT !!!

i hate tourneys tho. It's past my bedtime.

lol wut

Shipped. 900 and change.

I think this is the first libertarian thread I liked.

Lucky Libertarians.

Makes me want to rub Ron Paul's head for some more luck!!

I guess I don't know the libertarian (as opposed to the ACist) position on immigration. What is it?

I don't think they need to cave entirely on economic issues, but they should definitely be much more moderate. Also, they do need to cave entirely on the environment.

But if the Republican libertarians switched entirely over to Democrat, it would probably result in the collapse of the Republicans, which would be replaced by...

The biggest problem with the two party system is when they've made you feel like you have to vote for them as the lesser evil, they can just ignore you. The Republicans totally take the libertarian vote for granted, so they have zero reason to ever be more libertarian.

I'll give you the repeal of DADT, but I think it's pretty disingenuous to claim that instructing your DOJ no longer to mount a legal defense of the constitutionality of a law that's still in full force and effect amounts to some sort of serious victory for gay rights. "We won't use our legal team's resources to defend it" -- it being the biggest federal impediment to marriage equality -- stops pretty far short of what gay and lesbian people deserve.

These things are all being passed by ballot initiative, i.e. non-partisan popular vote, i.e. direct democracy. These are cases where legislators, who were elected by the people to do the job of making law and representing the interests of their constituencies in the law-making process, are essentially abdicating that responsibility. Whenever there's a tough and controversial issue that's likely to have serious consequences for politicians' reputations, they basically all decide to punt the question back to the people, so they can both avoid being answerable to supporters if it fails or held accountable by opponents if it passes. It's hard to see that Democrats deserve much, if any, credit for these things.

Agree re: the environment.

This is an excellent point. Until libertarians decide to punish the major parties, and until they stop conflating their rhetoric for their policies, the status quo alignments (and cultural associations) will endure.

I'm a Democrat because of my beliefs about the appropriate role of government. (If Obama and Romney swapped positions on abortion and gays, I would still be hugely for Obama.) So, I tend to see libertarians and Republicans as being on the opposite side of me.

It probably has something to do with the size of the libertarian vote.

I would counter the great and venerable Milton Friedman, peaceful blessings unto him, with te idea that economic freedom is personal freedom and vice versa. Legal weed is both an economic and personal freedom, same with gay marriage. Same with legal online poker eventually. So is our ability to go anywhere online (I'm looking at you china) and buy mostly whatever we want.

As for the OP, I've been of that mindset since before I abandoned the Democratic Party and registered libertarian. However, I wonder if now might not be the time to attempt to influence the GOP on these issues, instead of leaving them with absolutely no voices for freedom. If the echo-chamber says they lost cuz Rmoney wasn't socially conservative enough and no one is there to counter that bs, where do they go from there?

I think now is the time to infiltrate the Republican Party and install a seattlelou or jimafternoon to the power positions.

they better change otherwise they are going to end up like the non PRI parties in Mexico for the next 20 years until they wise up. It's not like there aren't examples of countries where one party (or at least one coalition) dominates without using nefarious means for decades


edit- my nefarious means I mean blatant and transparent election rigging. Obviously all parties use questionable means in one form or another

goldwater-type republicans should also abandon the GOP imo. This seems like it's got to happen sooner or later, might as well get it over with and suck up the pain sooner rather than later.

Dude you haven't checked out Rand Paul's voting record in the Senate. It's astounding. He's more libratarian than DeMint.

Rand Paul is amazing.

Swings both ways. Rothbard for example went one way then the other. ACists are actually for no boarders at all but given the status quo I believe most are for more or less open boarders. I.e. open boarders but with health test and criminal background test that crosser pays for plus maybe a sign off on welfare.

edit - sorry, I just woke up. I now see you were asking for some sort of non acist libertarian position.

I hate it when people try to board my ship without permission.

also, surfers. ****ing hippies.

What Milton was talking about when he issued that quote in the Free to Choose series is that places where free markets have come in people have been better off. I can't recall off the top of my head which segment of which episode that came from. But he pointed out that women in Japan were much better off because of free markets than the Imperial system.

I was kind of shocked at just how much I found myself agreeing with Milton watching this series. Something like 80 to 90% of what he said. However, the left over percentage and my Keynesian outlook leaves me enough wriggle room to say I am still not sold on Laissez-Faire systems, and still left-of-center.

DrModern is killing this thread, but there's something more important to think about. As we get told a lot, there's no such thing as a monolithic "libertarians", and in fact it's not entirely clear what the libertarian view is on something like gay marriage.

Some people might say that going 4-0 on popular votes was a big step forward towards equality, but Ron Paul is the public face of libertarianism and he thinks marriage is between a man and a woman.

IOW, because libertarianism isn't properly a party(a lot of people who are not LP members credibly self-identify as libertarian), there's no gatekeeping. So all the nonsensical wingnut economic stuff(e.g. the Ron Paul Revolution) is grouped in with sincere fiscal conservatives and people who don't care about the fiscal stuff but do care about guns or weed. Plus, of course, the mentally ill.

tom, you're absolutely right that at the moment it seems that the left-libertarians are achieving more success at the ballot box on their issues than the RP crowd. But like the Sklansky thing, the RP crowd sincerely does believe that gold standard stuff.

You don't need to convince them that they need to forget about the COMING FINANCIAL APOCALYPSE UN AGENDA 21 and focus on decriminalizing weed in some random blue state. That's impossible. You need to convince them that the coming financial apocalypse isn't coming. That's a fundamental change in beliefs, not just a switch of party allegiance.

I agree, but the biggest problem is that the left has done little to nothing on these issues. There was a fairly substantial libertarian/left alliance in 2008, and that dissolved after obama increased the scope of the government while continuing or even worsening civil rights abuses.

Even recent wins are not really supported by Democrats. Both pot initiatives were not supported by democrats. It's nice to see Democrats finally fighting (a little) for gay marriage.

The best thing for libertarians in the US is to continue to work outside of the two party system and organize on issues they feel strongly about. The parties will come to them if they get enough people on their side.