Distribute Widely and Attribute to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being for any reason whatever; nor will a libertarian advocate the initiation of force, or delegate it to anyone else.

Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim.
—L. Neil Smith

 

I have, I confess, been out of the Libertarian Party loop for some years, ever since the Party leadership, in its miserable and pathetic lack of wisdom, abandoned the Zero Aggression Principle, wadded up the radically pro-freedom Party platform that I helped to write, and used it for toilet-paper. When they nominated fascist drug-warrior Bob Barr for President, and later on, that pair of uneducated political hacks Gary Johnson and William Weld, I found somebody else to vote for, bringing my 44-year loyalty to the LP to a close.

Those few in the Party that I still have some contact with have made it more than plain that they have no use for my ideas and experience—and especially my principles, which only get in the way of running stumbling morons for office.

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t give a rusty fuck (h/t Rod Steiger) what idiotic thing the Party did next. My political interests now lie elsewhere, where my opinions are respected and welcomed. However (you knew there was going to be one of those, didn’t you?), the Party’s most recent misstep is so stupid, so evil, and so insane, that the LP deserves to be driven out of American politics altogether, thrown on the proverbial garbage heap of history, and burned to a fine, sterile, white ash. As of today, I’m going to do my best to get that process started.

What did the Party do? Very simple. Presented with an opportunity to have former Congressman and twice Presidential candidate (once for the LP and once for the GOP) Dr. Ron Paul speak at its next national convention (for free, because another organization volunteered to pay for it) the bucketheads snottily declined! They also turned down a chance to get distinguished libertarian Judge Andrew Napolitano to speak.

Now just step back and consider for a moment: Ron has been a part of libertarian culture since at least 1977, when I met the brand new shiny Texas Republican Congressman at a breakfast-hour appearance he hosted during an earlier LP convention at the Sheraton Palace Hotel in San Francisco. Hardly anybody else was there, and I got a good chance to evaluate the man. Later, largely due to his position on women’s reproductive rights (yes, abortion), when the Party nominated him and he ran for President, I opposed him. But when he ran again, as a libertarian-leaning Republican, I enthusiastically supported him, and have ever since.

The first article I read (in a movement publication) about the current situation wanted to claim that Ron started the libertarian movement, or at least the party, and maybe set the Moon and stars in the sky, but that’s not true, and I don’t believe that kindly Dr. Paul would ever make a claim like that for himself. It overlooks the lives and lifelong labor, decades earlier, of freedom-fighters like Leonard Reed, Ayn Rand, John Hospers, and Roger Lea MacBride (look them up) not to overlook Dave Nolan. Nevertheless, Ron has been an integral member of the tribe that calls itself “libertarian” for more than forty years, and was such a consistently libertarian member of Congress that his less-principled colleagues (when they weren’t asking him how to vote) called him “Dr. No”.

Thus, to proclaim with grand stupidity, as LP Convention Coordinator Daniel Hayes does (whoever he is), that the former Congressman has no idea what the Party stands for, speaks of abysmal ignorance and profound disrespect. The fact that this ass-clown is also an At Large member of the Libertarian Party National Committee, shows what massive trouble the Party is in. Trouble that it is very likely not to survive.

And now I’ll confess to some ignorance of my own. When I started this article, I thought I knew who Judge Andrew Napolitano is. I have always enjoyed seeing him on FOX, visiting with the ladies. However I followed my own advice and looked him up, in Wikipedia, because that’s easiest. This guy is an unapologetic, uncompromising libertarian on steroids. I urge you to look him up, yuourself, you will be amazed.

Dr. Paul, it appears, is in trouble because he criticized the LP’s laughable 2016 campaign, an effort that only needed another 23 clowns and a tiny car to make the picture complete. Apparently, the Party is now run to cozy up to a vile creature named Mike Shipley, founder of an obscene excrescence called the Socialist Caucus of the Libertarian Party. If I weren’t already out of the Party, that, alone, would cause me to quit. Don’t the teachings of Murray Rothbard and Ludwig von Mises mean anything anymore? Socialism is the “philosophy” that murdered two hundred million people in the 20th century and there is no difference in principle between it and the blackest, most evil communism that ever existed. Besides a profound and willful historical blindness, what mental illness afflicts low, crawling organisms like this Shipley? Or those who tolerate him and welcome him into the ideological home that others (and betters) built?

This is what comes of claiming in the lilting rich and fruity falsetto voice of Political Correctness, that there are “right” libertarians and “left” libertarians, What bloody nonsense. There are, in fact, only libertarians, those governed by the Principle of Non-Aggression (which the LP has tried to toss overboard every minute of the past twenty years), and those non-libertarians who are not. There is also, apparently, a creature called Nicholas Sarwark, the National Chairman who, according to the article I read, thinks Bernie Sanders is a libertarian. I looked him up, too; he’s a typical product of the confused Arizona politics that gave us John McCain, Jeff Flake, and Jan Brewer. He is on record having called the Ludwig von Mises Institute a Nazi organization and wouldn’t know a real libertarian if it walked up to him and pissed in his ear. The fact that he’s been “embedded” in the LP for so long (look him up, too) is a further symptom of its dire distress.

Years ago, when the LP nominated a candidate of dubious integrity who handed out over a million dollars in campaign contributions to his cronies and family as “consultant fees”, I ran against him in one state (Arizona, again) to deprive the LP of 50-state ballot status, something they seemed to think was important. It wasn’t much, and many people still hate me for it, but a statement had to be made against corruption. I made it and I will never regret it.

This current disaster is the direct result of tolerating Political Correctness even a little bit. It is no different, in principle, from inviting Anti-Fa into your living room. The LP needs a purge, and then the system of internal education I proposed almost 40 years ago. Until then, Hayes, Shipley. Sarwark, and others of your collectivist ilk, watch your ballots for something called “The Real Libertarian Party”—and see the LP vote split right down the middle.

“It’s enough that you know that I’ll do what I have to do.”
—Lucky Ned Pepper (look him up, too.)