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The Libertarian Party of Jasper County recently celebrated its official recognition by the Libertarian Party of Indiana. Though the local party's precise number is small, members are planning events to spread the message of libertarianism, and several initiatives for county politics may be arriving in the near future.

Loren Berenda, a Shelter Insurance Agent and former law enforcement officer, is the local party chairman. He believes that the party first began to find momentum in Jasper County during the 2016 presidential election, if only due to the unpopularity of the major party candidates. Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson collected 620 votes from the county, according to courthouse records.

"I know there's a lot of locals who weren't happy with Gary Johnson," Berenda said. "But it was an alternative to Hillary Clinton. And then, obviously President Trump had a lot of negative publicity that was coming out...A lot of people just pushed Gary Johnson's box as a protest to the other two."

The number of voters doesn't have to reflect the exact number of registered party members, and it did show potential interest in Libertarianism from locals. So, local party members decided to try for official recognition from the state-level party. Read the full story in the print edition or by subscribing to the e-edition.

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Jasper County Libertarian Party gains official recognition - Newsbug.info

Had a typical conversation with a Libertarian about the question of health care as a right. He was a typical Catholic dissenter from the Churchs teaching on this point, offering the typical Libertarian falsehoods like:

The reason this is a lie is that health care is not charity. It is, as the Church teaches, a right.

The Libertarian lie in reply to this is twofold.

The reply to these lies is twofold as well:

The reason health care is a right is that life is a right and health is simply a corollary of that. And because health care is a right, guaranteeing access to it, like guaranteeing the right to be born, is a matter of justice, not charity, too. And since it is precisely the business of the state to secure justice, it is the rightful business of the state to secure access to health care for all.

My Libertarian correspondent would have none of this, of course, and emitted the customary lie of Libertarians that state involvement in health care robbed him of the power to glow with the burning personal charity that would consume his heart for the poor and sick, did not the state remove a buck and half from his paycheck in brutal act of violent theft. The poor and sick would see the dawn of a new Millennium of care for all their needs at the hands of a Marching Army of Living Libertarians Saints more generous than St. Francis of Assisi if the state and its monstrous confiscatory powers were not aided by the liberal cabal Catholic bishops in calling for universal health care (as they have, in fact, done for a century).

But then the mask suddenly slipped and he wrote:

Youre an economic buffoon who also happens to be guilty of the sins of sloth and gluttony. You and your following should be ashamed of yourselves for demanding the robbery of the material wealth of the productive.How much of your health care is a right? Youre obese. Should we be forced to pay extra for your sins of gluttony and sloth?

And there it was. All the burning charity suddenly evaporated and made clear that the use of medicine as a weapon to punish the lebensunwertes leben is one of the many charming features of Libertarianism. You know, like this:

I remember when Catholics were all up in arms about death panels. Turns out the only real problem was that guys like my deeply, truly Catholic Libertarian reader wanted to make sure that *he* got to chair them.

And thats the thing. With very few exceptions, Libertarianism is a philosophy which, in contests between the wealthy and powerful vs. the poor, virtually *always* sides with the powerful and declares any state action on behalf of justice for the defenseless to be violence while all violence against the weak is the invisible hand of the market.

Mixed with a smug real Catholic pride, it assumes all illness is Gods punishment for sin and wants to see the wrath of God run its course on those guilty of (in this case) gluttony and sloth (like he knows one damn thing about me and is competent to render such a verdict on the life of a total stranger). This Libertarian Judge of Souls wants diabetics (or anybody else they deem guilty of health-related sins, whether sinfully pregnant women, sinfully sick smokers, sinfully obese cubicle workers or sinfully sick AIDS patients) to die as punishment rather than he pay one damn penny to help their treatment. And he wants everybody to believe that this is all because he is more personally generous than St. Francis of Assisi, but the state gets in the way of his holy charity. These guys are so full of crap and such massive and vindictive narcissists, it takes your breath away.

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When the Libertarian Mask Slips and the Eugenicist is Revealed - Patheos (blog)

Young Americans for Liberty at Linfield College compared to terrorists, accused of threateningschools safe spaces

All they wanted to do was promote free speech and intellectual diversity. Instead their activities were condemned and shut down by professors and students.

So say members of the Young Americans for Liberty campus club at Linfield College, who tell The College Fix their efforts were stifled and stymied through fear and intimidation, administrative power, and student hysteria at their small school in McMinnville, Ore.

The liberty-loving students say they faced repeated and intense backlash from some professors and students after launching their club this past spring mostly notably their event with controversial Professor Jordan Peterson was canceled by campus leaders. Peterson is the University of Toronto psychologist recently famous for his opposition to the requirement of made-up gender pronouns.

The student group was also investigated for circulating a free speech ball on which someone drew Pepe the Frog, the unofficial alt-right mascot. After an investigation, during which YAL leaders were called in and interrogated, the student who drew the image was forced to write a conciliatory essay.

Another of their events, a screening of The Red Pill,a documentary on mens rights activists and critical of the contemporary feminist movement, drew even more ire from campus leaders, with one even likening the libertarian students events to terrorism recruitment.

The associate dean of faculty wrote in the Linfield Review: Just as becoming a terrorist is a gradual, step by step process, people do not become part of the alt right overnight. These events represent a kind of soft recruitment into more extremist ideas.

Another professor accused YAL of threatening the schools safe spaces.

In response to these controversies, a recent campus survey found that there should be some restrictions of speech, people should watch their language as to not offend anyone, and that offensive speakers should not be restricted, the Linfield Review reports.

Coming out against [campus leftists] is going to subject you to some real trouble, recent graduate Parker Wells, a member of Young Americans for Liberty, told The College Fix. Theres a real climate of fear for people who are outside of the normal liberal campus way of thinking. People are not comfortable saying what they think.

Pervasive left-wing campus culture

In telephone interviews, Wells and rising sophomore Keifer Smith (pictured) said it was their schools pervasive, left-wing campus culture that led them to help launch the Young Americans for Liberty club.

They said they were inspired by the lack of intellectual diversity at the private liberal arts college, which enrolls about 2,800 students and pledges to create global citizens out of its pupils, according to its website.

There was a lot of complaining that the campus was moving too far in one ideological direction, Wells said.

He added he felt there was a strong left-wing culture established by professors that felt nearly impossible to escape. For example, during a wine course he took the professor went on a forty-five minute lecture about the wage gap. You cant really escape a certain set of ideas no matter where you go.

So they launched Young Americans for Liberty. Wells became its events coordinator, Smithits vice president.

Then all hell broke lose.

The saga of the free speech ball and Pepe the Frog

The groups first event of the year was a free speech ball on April 12. To playfully promote free speech and free expression, group members set up a large beach ball on campus upon which students could draw or write anything they wanted.

When students came up to the beach ball, YAL organizers gave out fliers advertising the other events they would be hosting the Peterson lecture and The Red Pill mens rights documentary screening.

On the ball, one student drew Pepe the Frog the notorious image that some deem to be representative of the alt-right. The view that Pepe is a hate symbol is evidenced by the Anti Defamation Leagues inclusion of Pepe in its list of general hate symbols. However, the ADL explicitly notes that the majority of uses of Pepe the Frog have been, and continue to be, non-bigoted.

While Pepes presence on the ball did not immediately spark any censure in fact, many students found it hilarious, Wells said when the image of Pepe on the beach ball wound up on Linfields Instagram, censorship, slander against YAL, and an administrative investigation into the group ensued, according to Smith and Wells.

Linfields President, Thomas Hellie, received a number of emails from people outraged that Pepe an (alleged) symbol of racism and white supremacy was on the ball. Hellie took down the instagram post and told the Linfield Review that As soon as it was pointed out that the photo included the image, the Instagram post was removed.

The Linfield Advisory Committee on Diversity then held a free speech forum for the whole campus the Monday after the free speech ball. The diversity committee told YAL that it would not specifically focus on their group or the free speech ball, but that it would be an opportunity to talk about free speech in general.

However, according to Smith, the forum turned into three and half hours of 90 students and professors interrogating and slandering members of Young Americans for Liberty.

The two men said English Professor Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt alleged that YAL is funded by conservative dark money and funded by alt-right white supremacists. Wells and Smith both reject these claims.

There is absolutely no evidence to support that, Smith said.

But extremely problematic is how Dutt-Ballerstadt described the libertarian clubs invitation to Peterson and its screening of The Red Pill in an interview with the Linfield Review.

Problematic because neither Peterson nor the film will be promoting dialogues about gendered inclusions but rather be promoting a dangerous and offensive logic of gendered exclusions, said the English professor, who is also co-coordinator of the Gender Studies Program. The promotion of such exclusionary practices greatly threatens safe spaces for our students, staff and faculty who belong to marginalized groups and violates our ethos of upholding mutual respect on our campus.

Free speech is penalized

After the free speech forum, Wells said, the administration called in every member of YAL for one on one interviews and asked us who drew the frog? After administrators found out who it was, they made the student write an essay about the Pepe incident. (This student preferred not to be identified so as to avoid outrage from other students.)

During the developing controversy, Professor Peterson, in comedic opposition to the existence of safe spaces on college campuses, tweeted: Im violating some more safe spaces soon: Linfield College, April 24.

After this tweet, the Associated Students of Linfield College, citing Petersons violation of Linfields harassment policy and Petersons lack of punctuality in turning in an application it was a day late canceled the talk.

A spokesperson from Linfield stated in an email to The College Fix: There are always conditions for funding. Dr. Peterson and the student organization failed to meet any of the conditions set forth, and ASLC responded by removing its sponsorship and cancelling its funding.

Wells (pictured with Peterson) said that the college has happily looked over such lateness in the past, and it is by no means a precedent for canceling a talk.

Nonetheless, the show went on. Peterson and YAL rented space at the Evergreen Aviation Center Museum grounds and, according to Smith, about 400 fans showed up, and more than 300 people watched it on livestream. The talk was exceedingly well received: Peterson received a standing ovation and the lecture has since been watched more than 86,000 times on YouTube.

As for Linfield cancelling his speech: You were obviously just looking for any excuse, said Peterson in his YouTube response to Linfield.

MORE:College disinvites professor who wont use gender-neutral pronouns because of safe space joke

More trouble ahead

But even during this success, YAL still faced hostility from students.

After Petersons lecture, people congregated in the theater discussing the talk. Wells says that a student at Linfield who he had never spoken to went directly up to him and said, Hey. I appreciate what youre doing here, but seriously fuck you. Putting his middle finger right in Parkers face he said, I think youre just doing this for yourself and you dont care about how it effects other people. And for that all I can say is fuck you.

They also didnt win over many left-leaning ideologues on campus for their May 2 screening of Cassie Jayes The Red Pill.

Professor Dutt-Ballerstadt, in an op-ed in the Linfield Review, rhetorically suggested the YAL events promote racism, homophobia, transphobia, bigotry, misogyny, rape culture, violence against women and a disregard for disabled individuals on our campus.

She continued: The agenda of groups like Alt-Right and campus clubs that are either supported by the Alt-right or providing a platform for the Alt-Right is clear. They want to challenge college campuses for their numerous diversity and inclusion initiatives that provide a legitimate space for ideas and knowledge base that have been historically marginalized and excluded.

Dutt-Ballerstadt did not respond to a request by The College Fix for comment. Linfields media spokesperson Scott Nelson did not respond to a question aboutDutt-Ballerstadt.

Wells also alleged that students were worried about being publicly associated with YAL not only due to social pressures, but due to possible negative academic consequences.

Ive heard this from multiple students in multiple professors classes. And its really not that surprising when you look at whats been said. If youre a freshman and you read what Professor Dutt-Ballestadt said then you wouldnt dare tell her that you had any part of the YAL, he said.

Meanwhile, in the Linfield Review, professor and Associate Dean of Faculty Dawn Nowacki wrote: Overt white supremacism, misogyny, and hatred of LGBTQTI people have not been strongly expressed in the events organized by the Young Americans for Liberty. In fact, these efforts are a lot more subtle. Just as becoming a terrorist is a gradual, step by step process, people do not become part of the alt right overnight. These events represent a kind of soft recruitment into more extremist ideas.

But a Linfield spokesperson stated in an email to The College Fix that the claims of suppressing intellectual diversity are not true.

I flatly rejected the notion that speakers on campus reflect a political homogeneity. Among conservative and libertarian speakers Linfield has hosted in recent years are Jim Hoffman (twice), Steve Knott, Justin Dryer, Tom Palmer, Mark Blitz, Peter Berkowitz, Mark David Hall, Jason Brennan, Chris Preble, Patrick Allitt and Michael Zuckert. All have strong conservative credentials. Huffman is not only a constitutional scholar, but was also a Republican candidate for attorney general of Oregon. We have hosted these speakers because we believe its important to have a civil debate on our campus. We have also hosted liberal speakers for the same reasons, said Linfields spokesperson Scott Nelson.

Lasting impact?

At the end of the day, efforts by the Young Americans for Liberty at Linfield College have helped pave the way for intellectual diversity and free speech, said its president Lucas Carter in an op-ed in the Linfield Review.

Among other things, a conservative equivalent to Young Americans for Liberty, known as Turning Point USA, has spruced up on campus and there is word that a democratic socialist club is in the works, Carter stated. This is exactly what we wanted and we couldnt be any more proud to have pushed Linfields culture in this direction to be able to discuss such variety of views. That is true diversity. Relating back to the previous paragraph: It mightve been a bumpy road, but our activism ultimately paid off and helped foster a culture of respect for the Linfield community.

MORE:Student government rejects Young Americans for Liberty chapter: Its dangerous

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About the Author

College Fix contributor Max Diamond is a recent graduate of Reed College and a freelance writer and editor in New York City.

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Students launch libertarian club at small Oregon college and get harassed, investigated, condemned - The College Fix

Photo: Sandy Huffaker/AFP/Getty Images

The Democracy Fund Voter Study Group has a new survey of the electorate that explodes many of the myths that we believe about American politics. Lee Drutman has a fascinating report delving into the data. I want to highlight a few of the most interesting conclusions in the survey.

1. The Democratic Party is not really divided on economics. You think the Bernie Sanders movement was about socialism? Not really. Sanders voters have the same beliefs about economic equality and government intervention as Hillary Clinton supporters. On the importance of Social Security and Medicare, Sanders voters actually have more conservative views:

Where they mainly differ is on international trade and the question of whether politics is a rigged game. The ideological content of Sanderss platform is not what drew voters. It was, instead, his counter-positioning to Clinton as a clean, uncorrupted outsider.

2. Fiscal conservativesocial liberals are overrepresented. The study breaks down the beliefs of voters in both parties by income. The parties tend to cohere pretty tightly rich Republicans are much closer to poor Republicans than either is to the Democrats; and rich Democrats and poor Democrats share more in common than either does with Republicans.

Still, there are important differences. The richest members of both parties have more economically conservative and socially liberal views than the poorest members. That gives them disproportionate influence over their agendas and priorities.

3. Libertarians dont exist. Well, obviously, they exist just not in any remotely large enough numbers to form a constituency. Its not just hardcore libertarians who are absent. Even vaguely libertarian-ish voters are functionally nonexistent.

The study breaks down voters into four quadrants, defined by both social and economic liberalism. But virtually everybody falls into three quadrants: socially liberal/economically liberal; socially conservative/economically conservative; and socially conservative/economically liberal. The fourth quadrant, socially liberal/economically conservative, is empty:

The libertarian movement has a lot of money and hardcore activist and intellectual support, which allows it to punch way above its weight. Libertarian organs like Reason regularly churn out polemics and studies designed to show that libertarianism is a huge new trend and the wave of the future. Sometimes, mainstream news organizations buy what theyre selling. But the truth is that the underrepresented cohort in American politics is the opposite of libertarians: people with right-wing social views who support big government on the economy.

4. Trump won by dominating with populists. Republicans always need to do reasonably well with populists, which is why theres always a tension between the pro-government leanings of a large number of their voters and the anti-government tilt of the party agenda. The key to Trumps success was to win more populists than Mitt Romney had managed. The issues where 2012 Obama voters who defected to Trump diverge from the ones who stayed and voted for Clinton are overwhelmingly related to race and identity.

As Drutman notes, Among populists who voted for Obama, Clinton did terribly. She held onto only 6 in 10 of these voters (59 percent). Trump picked up 27 percent of these voters, and the remaining 14 percent didnt vote for either major party candidate. What makes this result fascinating is that, in 2008, Clinton had positioned herself as the candidate of the white working class and she dominated the white socially conservative wing of her party. But she lost that identity so thoroughly that she couldnt even replicate the performance of a president who had become synonymous with elite social liberalism.

Every election is different. But to the extent that 2016 has an ideological lesson for Democrats, it is that the subject the party is currently debating within itself whether or how far left to move on economics is irrelevant to its electoral predicament. The issue space where Clinton lost voters who had supported Obama was in the array of social-identity questions, revolving around patriotism and identity.

They may not need to solve this problem Trumps failures may well solve it for them. And to some extent, moral commitments to social justice may preclude the party from moving to the center on some or all of their social policies. But to the extent Democrats want to optimize their party profile to make Trump a one-term president, the social issues are where they need to focus.

Gone is much of peoples power sue federal officials who engage in egregious violations of constitutional rights.

Why do Democrats keep losing special elections? (The answer is actually much simpler than you think.)

Five major shareholders demanded that he step down following months of bad news for the ride-sharing company.

Republicans will likely be emboldened by the results, though they only held the traditionally red districts by single digits.

By dominating early voting and convincing GOP voters that her opponent was outside the mainstream, Karen Handel posted a comeback victory.

While Trump had an 18-point lead in the district, Republican Ralph Norman won by only a few points.

On the day of Georgias special election, rain is flooding Democratic sections of the district while leaving GOP areas relatively unscathed.

Hell be releasing a new EP every month for the next four years.

He opined that the zealot Pence might be worse on domestic policy than Trump. Its a sign the idea of impeachment is becoming real.

It has been made public after the trial of the officer, who was found not guilty last week.

While I greatly appreciate the efforts of President Xi & China to help with North Korea, it has not worked out. At least I know China tried!

Brusselss Central Station has been evacuated, and police say the situation is under control.

It would be an extremely 2017 miscalculation for liberals to fall in love with sanctions just because Trump opposes them.

Ryan has routinely won landslides in his purple district. Randy Bryces incredible new campaign ad suggests that could change that.

The upper chamber is reportedly eyeing an approach to cutting the program that could be more draconian than what passed the House.

A plurality of Republicans think the special counsels investigation is impartial and 75 percent dont want Trump to fire Robert Mueller.

Conservatives spent years developing a plan for remaking the health-care system. The Republican Party has buried it forever.

The First Daughter will meet with Senators Marco Rubio and Deb Fischer to talk over the plan.

Government technology is bad, and the White House wants you to think they can fix it.

Is government transparency under attack or is Sean Spicer just being body-shamed?

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New Study Shows What Really Happened in the 2016 Election - New York Magazine

The Democrat in the Georgia race, Jon Ossoff, was unsuccessful in flipping a traditionally Republican district in the Atlanta suburbs previously represented by Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price. Had the 30-year-old first-time political candidate pulled off an upset, it would have dealt a major blow to the Republican Party's already complicated efforts to gut Obamacare.

Democrats were prepared to cast the results of the closely watched special election as a referendum on President Donald Trump and the GOP's legislative priorities -- chief among them the quest to repeal former President Barack Obama's landmark health care law.

Former Republican Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty said Handel's win provides the party with "huge relief and somewhat of a political sedative" heading into 2018, when Democrats are eager to try to win back control of the House.

"It kind of calms the waters in terms of people looking for predictors or harbingers and what it means for 2018," Pawlenty told CNN. "It says: Perhaps the approach that's being taken in Congress and by the President are more acceptable to a swing district or swing-voting parts of the country than people are predicting."

The controversial proposal, which Handel said she would have voted for, would "gut the protections for Americans with pre-existing conditions -- hundreds of thousands of them," Ossoff argued at a debate earlier this month.

Handel pushed back forcefully, pointing out that her sister was born without an esophagus -- a pre-existing condition.

"For you to suggest that I would do anything to negatively effect her is absolutely outrageous and unacceptable," Handel said.

With health care so much of the focus in the Georgia special election, Democrats were ready to liken an Ossoff victory to that of former GOP Sen. Scott Brown in the 2010 special election in Massachusetts.

At the time, Brown's unlikely triumph over Democratic Attorney General Martha Coakley was viewed as voters' sharp rejection of Obamacare, which Democratic lawmakers were in the middle of crafting. When Brown decisively won the office long occupied by the late-Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy, Democrats were forced to act quickly to pass Obamacare, despite deep reservations and divisions across the party about the legislation.

Now, with Handel keeping Price's old seat in GOP hands, Democratic strategists insist that health care will still be powerful ammunition against Republicans in next year's congressional elections.

"I don't think that very many Republicans will take much comfort on the health care issue even if Handel does win," said veteran Democratic pollster Geoff Garin in advance of Tuesday's result. "I think Republicans will continue to recognize that taking away coverage from millions of Americans and raising costs for millions more is a politically unpopular and dangerous enterprise."

A draft of Republicans' plans in the Senate is expected to be released this Thursday, according to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who wants to put health care in the rear-view mirror before lawmakers leave Washington ahead of the July 4 recess.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer reiterated that sentiment in the briefing room Tuesday.

"The President clearly wants a bill that has heart in it," Spicer said. "He believes that health care is something that is near and dear to so many families and individuals."

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Georgia race: Republicans jittery about health care breathe sigh of relief - CNN