Free Republic

What do you do when you realize you may be too conservative to be a libertarian? Austin Petersen, best known for running for the Libertarian Party presidential nomination in 2016, is giving the Republican Party a try. Advocating “pro-life and pro-Constitution” values, Petersen is challenging incumbent Sen. Claire McCaskill in Missouri for the 2018 midterm elections. His decision came after thousands of phone calls reaching out directly to his supporters, who overwhelmingly urged him to run as a Republican, Petersen explained on Wednesday’s “Pat & Stu.” “I decided to take their advice because they’re the ones who are putting all...

The insult is that gubernatorial debates in Virginia are little more than smaller versions of the carefully packaged affairs we’ve all witnessed at the national level. What people watch for and what the press and political junkies delight in are those “gotcha” moments that make for great copy and easy attack lines. But let’s indulge Gillespie on his demand for many debates and ignore his own ducking and dodging on the issue in the waning months of the Republican primary. Let’s have 10 debates. Or 19, as the Roanoke Times has suggested. But let’s also insist on a couple of...

Student also had her LinkedIn profile posted, called racist. Jessica Murphy, a 20-year-old student at the University of Wisconsin Green Bay, recently published a column that represented the culmination of months’ worth of work and research, including a dozen public records act requests to the University of Wisconsin system. Her target? Biased classes offered through the public university system that indoctrinate rather than teach, and “degrade capitalism, praise Marxism and encourage a ‘social justice warrior’ ideology,” she wrote in her piece, headlined “Top Five Wasteful Classes in the UW System.” Published Monday by the MacIver Institute, a Wisconsin-based think tank...

Bill would create 500,000 new visas, include path to citizenship, and be open to current aliens A bill introduced this month by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) would increase foreign guest workers by up to 500,000 a year and offer a back-door amnesty for illegal immigrants. The legislation, the State Sponsored Visa Pilot Program Act of 2017, has attracted support from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the libertarian-oriented Cato Institute. “We pretty strongly oppose it. It’s an indefinite renewable visa. In our eyes, that’s a permanent worker.” The bill would represent a massive increase in the number of non-immigrant visas...

It has become very clear in recent weeks that the Libertarian Party Leadership just can’t keep their feet out of their mouths…and like it that way. This should come as no surprise coming from the same party who quotes the Satanic Temple Tenents during A Christian Holy week, sells their principles in a pay to play scheme, or announces that abortion is a non-issue to a party which is clearly divided in the issue. In the latest incident, Libertarian Party Vice Chairman Arvin Vohra had the following to say regarding troops and veterans. "A common excuse to join the military,...

Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, the two-time Libertarian Party presidential candidate, says he’s lost faith in the electoral process and vowed never to run again. He will now focus all his efforts on legalizing marijuana. Govs. Johnson and Weld became the first ticket of any party to feature two governors since the 1948 presidential election and ended up receiving nearly 4.5 million votes nationally, far more than his 2012 popular vote total. While still not a viable electoral force, the 2016 presidential election marked the Libertarian Party’s most successful presidential run to date and the most successful third-party candidacy...

Rock and politics… what hath Charlie Daniels wrought?While the whining lyrics of Elton John, Green Day, Sting and Bruce Springsteen dominate the charts when it comes to political songs making their way to the charts, there have been more than a few that managed to work their way into the hearts of conservitarians everywhere.While most of the tunes on this list are openly and unashamedly jingoistic, a few have managed over time and circumstances to easily fall into the small government and/or flat-out nationalistic leanings of many Rock fans.In no particular order;

Two vastly different pictures of Sweden are being painted by opposing forces in the American media. The leaders of the Sweden Democrats (the Swedish version of France’s National Front) wrote a rather dire op-ed in The Wall Street Journal proclaiming President Donald Trump is absolutely right when it comes to his claims of immigrant chaos in the country.

One of the most basic tenets of libertarianism is the construction of barriers, borders and boundaries. These boundaries are usually invisible, but they could just as easily be manifested into something physical. To protect individual liberty, libertarians believe in placing constitutional limits on the government's power and reach. Figuratively, libertarians believe in building barriers around individuals to protect them from physical coercion, violence and various other external elements. Some libertarians would argue that they're building barriers around the government – but the outcome and intent are still the same: individual freedom. In most cases, to protect one individual from another,...

Tea Party founder and conservative billionaire Charles Koch has attacked Donald Trump's controversial travel ban, branding it as 'authoritarian'. Koch said he will oppose the billionaire president if and when he deviates from a commitment to 'free and open societies'. Commenting on the travel ban controversy, he said: '[The] travel ban is the wrong approach and will likely be counterproductive.'

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) will oppose the Republican budget resolution designed to begin the process of unwinding the Affordable Care Act, making him possibly the only member of the majority to break ranks. In a speech scheduled for later Wednesday, he will criticize the resolution for assuming $9 trillion in additional debt over the next 10 years.

This year saw a major, unexpected political upheaval in both the United States and Europe. ... . . . there are some issues that this year’s events led me to change my mind about. Here are three of the most important. I. The Perils of Polarization. ... II. Should We Bring Back the Smoke-Filled Rooms? ... III. Rethinking the Unitary Executive.

In late October, when it was still conventional wisdom that Hillary was "guaranteed" to win the presidency, the WaPo explained that among the neo-con, foreign policy "elites" of the Pentagon, a feeling of calm content had spread: after all, it was just a matter of time before the "pacifist" Obama was out, replaced by the more hawkish Hillary.   As the WaPo reported, "there is one corner of Washington where Donald Trump’s scorched-earth presidential campaign is treated as a mere distraction and where bipartisanship reigns. In the rarefied world of the Washington foreign policy establishment, President Obama’s departure from...

The mug-shot posters, pasted on walls and lampposts around Paris by an activist group during the United Nations climate talks last year, were hardly flattering. They depicted Myron Ebell, a climate contrarian, as one of seven “climate criminals” wanted for “destroying our future.” But in his customary mild-mannered way, Mr. Ebell, who directs environmental and energy policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian advocacy group in Washington, brushed it off. In looking for someone to follow through on his campaign vow to dismantle one of the Obama administration’s signature climate change policies, President-elect Donald J. Trump probably could not...

Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson and his running mate Bill Weld have a master plan in place “to change history” and win the 2016 election. The pair maintain that quirky political circumstances, voting variables and polling inaccuracies could play in their favor. . . . This situation presents “a clear and realistic strategy” for the third party should the election end up being sent to the House of Representatives, as per established protocols, say the Libertarian gents.

Because they are only 19, Grace Danby and Courtney Trudeau are preparing to vote in their first presidential election. The Ohio state students who play for the women's club hockey team are part of the millennial generation, loosely defined as 18-34-year-olds, that is predicted to be one of the largest voting blocs in the 2016 election. They also share another trait: they identify as libertarians. "Any of the third parties I would consider would take away votes from Donald Trump," Danby said while also expressing dislike for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. "I don't have a lot of time to think...

Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson on Tuesday defended his lack of knowledge of world affairs, suggesting on MSNBC that foreign policy expertise, or even an understanding of where international leaders are from, is what leads to military conflict. “You know what? The fact that somebody can dot the i’s and cross the t’s on a foreign leader’s geographic location then allows them to put our military in harm’s way,” Johnson told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell. The former New Mexico governor has been widely panned for a pair of foreign policy gaffes that have weighed down his long-shot candidacy. First, Johnson responded...

Bumbling Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson wandered onto national television Tuesday to finally admit, with pride, that he does not study trivial things like world leaders and foreign nations. “If that’s a disqualifier, so be it,” Johnson hollered on CNN, echoing a line he coughed up last month after he failed to recognize Syria’s largest city. Johnson — baring bedhead hair and yelling nearly every time he opened his mouth — ostensibly appeared to defend his month of stunning ignorance about world affairs. In recent live TV appearances, Johnson didn’t know what Aleppo is and said “nobody got hurt” in...

Besides Gary Johnson, he means, right? Doesn’t he? Or was Carl Bernstein right that Weld, a Massachusetts centrist, would end up defecting from the ticket and trying to help Clinton down the stretch if he got spooked that a Trump presidency is a real possibility? He’s much more complimentary of Johnson in the clip below than the headline above would suggest, as you’ll see (the key line about Hillary comes near the very end), but it’s odd nonetheless for a candidate in one party to say that no one’s more qualified than a candidate from another. It’s not the only...

In an interview with ABC's "This Week" on Sunday, Johnson told host George Stephanopoulos that "we do have to inhabit other planets. The future of the human race is space exploration," as one possible solution for climate change.