Libertarian Party: Bigotry is not irrational and repugnant, the Southern Poverty Law Center is

Independent Political Report ^ | June 2, 2022 | WP Premium Support

[Angelino97]

At its recently concluded national convention the Libertarian Party removed a long standing platform plank which condemned bigotry as irrational and repugnant. The national committee, which runs the national Libertarian Party in between conventions, is as its first order of business in the new term about to take up the following resolution:

“Whereas, The Southern Poverty Law Center has strayed from its origins as a defender of civil rights and has defamed the now-current Chair of the Libertarian Party and several other prominent members in an attempt to slow the progress of freedom; now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That Libertarian National Committee condemns the Southern Poverty Law Center as irrational and repugnant.”

[Angelino97]

"Right Libertarians" reclaimed the LP from "Left Libertarians" at last weekend's national convention.

[Reno89519]

I am not so sure that’s the end result of last weeks changes.

[Fido969]

Stupid way of doing it.

[Angelino97]

I wasn’t there. I’m on the outside looking in, so I’m not the expert on what happened.

But it’s always nice to see anyone denounce the SPLC.

[SauronOfMordor]

>>removed a long standing platform plank which condemned bigotry as irrational and repugnant.<<

Recognizing that certain groups have a high percentage of members exhibiting certain behaviors is not bigotry ... it is recognizing reality.

[Boogieman]

I’m glad you put them in quotes because a “left libertarian” is a contradiction in terms. “Left” policies require more government, not less. If I were a Libertarian, I’d just call them “infiltrators”.

[Tell It Right]

Now if only the Libertarian Party can nominate someone who’s against a carbon tax. That’s the #1 reason I voted for Trump in 2016 instead of Gary Johnson. With the Dims saying carbon dioxide is a “pollutant”, a carbon tax would give the Dims the excuse to literally tax breathing.

[Responsibility2nd]

Am I reading this correctly? Did the Libertarian Party previously endorse and support the SPLC?

The way this resolution reads, they are now doing at about face as they denounce the SPLC.

[Responsibility2nd]

Right Libertarians? No such thing; there are only Wrong Libertarians.

[DoodleDawg]

I don’t see where they say bigotry is not repugnant. The SPLC, yes. But not bigotry as a whole.

[Bethaneidh]

It started with reaching out to “soft leftists” who turned out to be not so soft.

[nicollo]

If it’s accurate, it’s not bigoted.

But they will call it that, anyway, so I stand by my bigotry.

[silent majority rising]

Seems like there is a lot more bigotry against white folks and Asian folks these days. Bigotry is bigotry. Just like black racism is just as bad. as white racism.

[Angelino97]

I think, in the 20th century, the LP supported freedom of speech and of association without qualification. This attracted some people who wanted freedom to racially self-segregate or discriminate in their private businesses.

Then in this century, the LP became worried that respecting people's rights to racially discriminate in the private sphere might signal that the LP was pro-discrimination rather than neutral. So the LP specifically condemned bigotry as unlibertarian.

Still later, some people thought the LP should be neutral on how people use their freedom of speech or association. Which is why they now removed the previous condemnation of bigotry.

I'm not familiar with the plank that was removed. But I was active in the LP in the 1990s and 2000s, so, reading between the lines, that's what I think happened.

[who_would_fardels_bear]

Libertarianism originally meant anarcho-syndicalism, i.e. the endpoint of communism. That's why Noam Chomsky considers himself to be a libertarian.

Left libertarians and right libertarians in America are both in favor of small government and free market economics. They only differ on the importance of social issues. Although right libertarians don't want to force people to be moral, they know that only a society composed of mostly moral people will be able to maintain a free market economy.

Left libertarians think that a free market can exist alongside a decadent moral order.

One issue where there might be major disagreement is on abortion. Right libertarians would tend to believe that the fetus is a person and abortion is a violation of the non-aggression principle, whereas left libertarians would consider laws against abortion as an infringement on their right to do with their bodies as they please.

[aquila48]

“Recognizing that certain groups have a high percentage of members exhibiting certain behaviors is not bigotry ... it is recognizing reality.”

WHAT?!

Are you saying that pit bulls and poodles are not the same?

[aquila48]

Link doesn’t work.

[Boogieman]

"Left libertarians and right libertarians in America are both in favor of small government and free market economics. They only differ on the importance of social issues."

I disagree on this. As you say, the "left libertarians" only call themselves that because they profess to desire the entirely theoretical endpoint of communism. To get there, they of course would have to implement the real world communism we all know and love, which means totalitarianism.

You can't call yourself a "libertarian" if you just advocate for totalitarianism with some sugar-coated pipe dream fantasy that someday the tyrants might give up all their power so you can have your fantasy "anarcho-syndicalism" later. That's magical thinking. They can choose to believe that if they want, but I am going to judge them based on the actual real world impact of what they are advocating, not their fantasies.

[aquila48]

There never was nor will there ever be a truly libertarian society with basically unlimited freedoms.

It’s for the same reason that anarchy will never take hold.

For either to happen you need 99.9% of the people to be RESPONSIBLE adults, and we all know that will never be the case.

[who_would_fardels_bear]

Noam Chomsky is not strictly speaking a "left libertarian". He considers himself a libertarian full stop. This is because libertarian in Europe means anarcho-syndicalist.

Libertarian took on a whole new meaning in America. It refers to folks that go from minarchist to various "small government" philosophies such as Constitutional Republics, etc.

This is like the term "neoliberal" in Europe which basically translates to "neoconservative" in the US. We just decide to say "Screw you Europeans, we're gonna use your words to mean different things."

My understanding is that left libertarians tend to be pot-smoking perverts who don't want the government telling them to stop taking drugs and having promiscuous sex, while right libertarians are those who tend to be morally upright and focus on limiting taxes and government regulations.

In either case, libertarians are not conservative (see Russell Kirk) as they overemphasize individualism at the expense of communities.

Also, the libertarian ideal is just as utopian (if not more so) than the communist ideal. At least the communists realize that there needs to be a dictatorship of the proletariat for there to be any hope in training people to fit successfully into a society where the state has withered away. (Of course the dictatorship once started never ends, because it is not natural for so many people to live without some form of hierarchical leadership.)

Meanwhile the libertarians think they can get to their entrepreneurial nirvana by just expecting people to sink or swim in a laissez-faire economy. But people by-and-large don't want to be lectured to by the market. They want to round off its sharp edges with welfare and government waste, fraud, and abuse.