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More than 100,000 people rallied across France on Saturday to protest President Emmanuel Macrons plans torequire a Covid-19 health pass to access public places such as cafs and cinemas starting next week. In addition to traditional concerns about curtailed civil liberties, conspiracy theories have fuelled the opposition to making proof of vaccination obligatory.

Starting July 21, a health pass (pass sanitaire) will be needed to access any of Frances leisure and cultural venues serving more than 50 people, including cinemas and museums. From the beginning of August, the pass will be required on any long-distance public transport, in shopping centres or at cafs and restaurants including on Frances famed outdoor terraces.

The pass must either include the QR code that proves someone has been fully vaccinated in France or results from a negative PCR or antigen test taken in the previous 48 hours.

Frances Covid-19 infection rate has reboundedalarmingly as the more contagious Delta variant has spread, with the average number of new cases confirmed per day soaring to nearly 11,000 from fewer than 2,000 in late June. The uptick prompted Macron to announce the health pass restrictions on July 12.

Too far

Butthe movehas provoked furious opposition among manyin France: some137 rallies took place across the country on Saturday, gathering nearly 114,000 demonstrators(including 18,000 in Paris), according to the interior ministry.

Many appeared to have taken to the streets out of alibertarianbelief that obliging people to be vaccinated if they want to accesspublic venues and activitiesis aninfringementon their basic rights.In no way does a president have the right to decide on my individual health, one Paris protester, who gave her name as Chrystelle, told Reuters.

Lucien, a young shop manager demonstrating in Paris, told AP he was by no means ananti-vaxxerbut that the state should not effectively coerce people to getinoculated.The government is going toofar, he said.

Some mainstream politicians have echoedthese arguments. Franois-Xavier Bellamy, a prominent young MEP for the conservativeLes Rpublicainsparty, and Loc Herv, vice-president of the SenatesCentristesbloc, penned a joint opinion piece in Le Figaro this week in which they laid out their reasons for opposing the measure.

Opposing the health pass does not make someone an anti-vaxxer, they wrote. The essential problem with the pass is that, for the first time in our history, people will have to present a document in order to do the most simple, ordinary things.

Extremes on both sides

But most of the political opposition to the health pass has come from extremes on both sides of the political spectrum. Macrons plans mark a backward step for personal freedoms,said leader of the far-rightNational Rally (Rassemblement Nationalor RN) party,Marine Le Pen,earlier this week. The health pass is an abuse of power,thunderedJean-Luc-Mlenchon, leader of the extreme-leftFrance Unbowed (La France Insoumiseor LFI).

LFI firebrand Franois Ruffin went further on Friday as he urged people to rally, characterisingthe health pass as a means of humiliation coming from an absolute monarchy in the form of Macrons government. Florian Philippot, Le Pens former right-hand man and leader of the right-wing populistLes Patriotesparty,declaredahead of Saturdays protests that they woulddemonstrate the power of the people in the face of a disgrace.

Various populistshave argued against the health pass on civil libertarian grounds, avoiding anti-vax statements. But many of Saturdays protesters thought differently.

Tellingly, when Philippot was addressing the Paris rally and introduced a man called Benjamin onto the stage, saying, Hegot vaccinated, but that was hischoice,there was an awkward moment of hesitation in the crowd,Le Figaro reported. It then erupted into cheers when Philippotsaid, But hes against the health pass! asBenjamin ripped up his vaccination certificate.

Embedded in the crowd, LeFigarosreporterrepeatedly overheardconspiracytheories such as that the pandemic wasorchestrated in advance and its all to make money for the laboratories. When Richard Boutry a former France Tlvisionsjournalist who now tours the country propagatingconspiracy and anti-vax ideas arrived on the scene, many demonstratorschantedhis nickname: Ricardo! Ricardo!

Were members of the Resistance; youve only just go to look at what happened under Vichy one minute different people have different rights, the next a demonstrator told Le Figaros reporter one of several comparisons he heard to the Nazi Occupation.

On Friday night, a vaccination centre in rural southeastern France was broken into and vandalised with the Cross of Lorraine (a symbol of the French Resistance) and graffiti saying Vaccination = genocide and 1940,presumably a reference to the year theVichy regime was founded.

I feel there were likely fewer avowed and strident civilian libertarians than there were conspiracists at these demonstrations, said Andrew Smith, a professor of French politics at the University of Chichester.

French anti-vaxxers likening themselves to the Resistanceconstitutes a worrying manipulation of history,he continued.

It also shows something very specifically French about the anti-vax movement in the country.That language aboutdefeat, collaboration and Nazism its a big difference from what you see in Anglo world, where Nazis are, of course, often the bad guys many people evoke but its much more abstract.

Rise of QAnon

Polling data shows thatFrench anti-vax sentimenthaswanedas thevaccinationrollout proceeded in the first half of the year. Nevertheless, anOpinionWaysurvey published in May found that 20 percent of French adults would turn down a jabwhile13 percent are undecided.

The French Academy of Medicine has said the country needs 90 percent of its adult population to be fully vaccinated toreceive herd immunity and defeatCovid-19.

The popularity ofFrenchpseudo-documentaryHold-Upshows that Covid disinformation has a big audience inthis country.Endorsing anarrayof debunked claims, the online film got more than 2.5 million views after its release in November, with several famous faces including iconic actress Sophie Marceau sharing the video.

It is in this context that the QAnon conspiracist phenomenon which weaves falsehoods about the coronavirus into a broader tapestryof fantasy, including warning of a worldwide cannibalistic cabal of paedophiles hasgrownin France over the past year, boosted byFrench-languagemisinformation websites such as DQodeurs and FranceSoir (a renowned broadsheet in the years after theWorld War II,which closed in 2012 before re-emerging two years ago as a conspiracist Internet publication).

READ MORE:'Stakes are high as QAnon conspiracy phenomenon emerges in France

A boon for Macron?

Nevertheless, conspiracy theories remain a marginal force in French society. Most people in France see that hard work and sensible policies are the route out of the pandemic, not conspiracies, Andrew Smith said.

It seems most Frenchcitizenssee Macrons plan as one such sensible policy: An Ipsos-Storia Sterna poll published on Friday showed that 60 percent of French people favour the health pass and the accompanying plan to oblige all health workersto be vaccinated.

And the pass may well prove to have beena politically expedient move for Macron ahead of the presidentialelectionnext April. When Macron made his announcement on Monday, plenty of people saw it as partly a public health measure but also a campaign message for the presidential elections, observed Paul Smith, a professor of French politics at Nottingham University.

Macrons health passcould beespecially effective at winning over moderate voters who see him charting France a path out of the Covid nightmare and see themselvesas part ofa silent majoritystanding against both the far left and the far right, said Andrew Smith:This policy changes the terrain of the battleground. The traditional right- and left-wing partiesLes Rpublicainsand theParti Socialistewill not and cannot challenge Macron on taking a measured, sensible approach to the pandemic.

You dont win the presidency through 117,000 people spread across the streets of France, Andrew Smith observed.You win through sensible, evidence-based policy to end the pandemic and restart the economy.

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Conspiracy theories fuel French opposition to Covid-19 health pass - FRANCE 24 English

The fact is, America is a country fundamentally shaped by libertarian values and attitudes. Our libertarian values helped to create the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and those documents in turn shape our thinking about freedom and the limited powers of government. David Boaz, Who Killed Gun Control?

What is a libertarian? According to Wikipedia, libertarians wish to maximize autonomy and political freedom, emphasizing free association, freedom of choice, individualism and voluntary association. In essence, the libertarian is anyone who upholds liberty as their core guiding principle and wants to preserve their own rights as well as the rights of others.

Libertarians also want to limit state power, albeit to varying degrees. Anarcho-capitalists want only a night-watchman state, the purpose of which is limited to protecting people from aggression, enforcing private property, and a few other aspects of private life which the free market typically doesnt concern itself with. (This is not to be confused with anarchism, an ideology that usually rejects private property.) Consequentialist libertarians who believe free trade must benefit society as a whole may tolerate greater government power if it does genuine good rather than merely hinder individual autonomy.

People hearing about libertarianism for the first time might assume its some fringe ideology. You could argue that it is, but you would have to acknowledge a large reason why: Libertarians seek to take power away from the government and not give it to anyone else. Any powerful person or organization which owes their lofty position to the status quo has every incentive to marginalize libertarianism.

Summarizing a complete political and economic philosophy in a few paragraphs is a hefty task. It took Murray Rothbard (aka Mr. Libertarian) over 300 pages to do about as much when he penned For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto.

But lets set the books aside for a moment and briefly explain what libertarians believe, with the understanding that libertarians disagree on many things as well.

Libertarians believe everyone should enjoy total autonomy. Do as you please with your life. Spend it with whomever, doing whatever, wherever. Just dont forcibly interfere with anyone elses liberty and were all square.

Libertarians believe in entrepreneurialism and the free market. Innovation is wrought from passion and hard work, not duty. A government that taxes the industry is only stealing products to give to those who havent earned it. With less government control comes greater access to the free market, and more opportunity to create wealth for all.

Libertarians do not recognize official authority in most cases. The man in Washington, the man in Moscow, the man in the Vatican none of them can nullify your right to live free and independently. The libertarian rejects authoritys need to violate their rights for the greater good. To the libertarian, there is no greater good beyond the preservation of those very rights.

Why is the Libertarian Partys symbolic animal a porcupine? Because it bothers nobody and expects the same favor in return. But if you do decide to bother it, you may reasonably expect a snoot full of barbs.

No true libertarian country exists. One might argue the political ideology has a built-in kill switch, as the very people who value individualism and economic freedom seldom want to helm an organization which controls people and taxes them.

While conservatism and liberalism are espoused by Americas two dominant political parties, either of which proffers a very noisy presidential candidate every four years, libertarianism remains something of a question mark in most peoples minds.

What are the libertarian positions on the big issues? They are seldom publicly advised or officially implemented, so you have to examine them for yourself if you want greater insight into libertarian beliefs.

Democrats and Republicans both believe that a war is an awful, awful thing whenever the rival party has started one. In contrast, the libertarian is unequivocally opposed to war. At its very core libertarianism is a rejection of militarism, which by definition entails the implementation of violence to force others to do as the state wishes.

War breeds nationalism, an ideology diametrically at odds with individualism. It incentivizes corruption, as Smedley Butler elaborates in War Is a Racket, and ultimately poses a net loss to society as Ludwig von Mises explains in Nation, State, and Economy. The state at war demands its citizens to forfeit their rights and their own lives for the good of the collective. Although war invariably increases state power, its cessation almost never decreases it. And while this may go without saying, the natural rights of individuals do include not getting killed.

Libertarianism condemns war as a facet of foreign policy, yet it does not prescribe absolutist pacifism. You have every right to strike a man who is attacking you. The non-aggression principle forbids the initiation of force, not forceful defense. Likewise, many libertarians accept that war is a necessary evil in some cases. Few libertarians argue that the United States ought to have remained a British colony, and fewer still would prefer to ignore Kim Jong-un if he decided to glass San Francisco. Yet the staunchest libertarians may also advocate unwavering pacifism to the extent where war could never be an option. Whether their ideology is practicable in so hostile a world is a matter of speculation.

Most libertarians advocate for limited government not zero government as they agree some degree of official intervention is required to protect citizens from aggression, theft, and other transgressions against their private property and civil liberties.

Unfortunately, the current state of the American criminal justice system could hardly be described as limited. The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws, as Tacitus wrote, and indeed America currently has so many laws in place that most citizens would become felons if they were only formally arrested and convicted. As Hunter S. Thompson (who is not to be confused with Tacitus) once put it, In a closed society where everybodys guilty, the only crime is getting caught.

Libertarians would advocate several measures to fix the broken criminal justice system. Qualified immunity, which effectively permits government officials to violate individuals liberty, would have to go. (The Cato Institute better explains why.) So too would police unions, which make it nigh impossible to terminate terrible police officers. Libertarians also call for an immediate end to the war on drugs, as conservative libertarian Milton Friedman supported when he endorsed legalizing marijuana. (Hence why the Libertarian Party is occasionally referred to as the Dude Weed Party.)

A libertarian understands that their civil rights are not special permissions granted (or revokable) by their government. Rather, civil rights are intrinsic to humanity itself. To be born is to have the right to free speech, press, religion and so on. Certain civil rights only apply to those in special circumstances, such as the prisoners right to a speedy trial as protected by the Sixth Amendment (which is arguably violated when a criminal trial can last longer than five years).

A libertarian is soundly in favor of preserving existing civil rights as well as creating additional ones. For example, the Libertarian Party views government officials reading your emails as a very bad thing. A libertarian would also support the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, which would guarantee equal legal rights for all Americans regardless of their sex.

Equal rights are not to be mistaken for equal results, however. Friedrich Hayek explains how so in The Constitution of Liberty: From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time. The equality before the law which freedom requires leads to material inequality.

Gun ownership is the civil liberty which modern liberalism likes to conveniently forget. The Republican Party is friendlier to gun rights, but not nearly enough. Many GOP supporters were unhappy when President Trump instructed the ATF to treat bump stocks as machine guns, or when he said he would think about banning suppressors.

Ron Paul summed up the libertarian view on guns like so: Nobody should tell you you cant own a gun because it might be misused. And George Orwell, a socialist of all things, explained why: That rifle on the wall of the labourers cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there.

One of the libertarian ideas people often struggle with is this: Any political party or form of government has the potential to turn tyrannical. More than 250 million people were killed by their governments during the 20th century alone. Guns preserve political freedom by equipping people to fight back against the only organization which is legally allowed to kill them. In a country where gun confiscation has quite literally concluded with democide, it is crucial to remember that guns arent simply fun toys for rednecks.

Just like it places a premium on property rights, libertarianism maintains that you have total autonomy over your own body. You have the right to accept or refuse any medical treatment you wish to, just as you have the right to take any recreational drug that you please. (But if you get drunk and do something foolish, the consequences are all yours to enjoy.)

Libertarianism rejects the welfare state, including the governments nationalization of healthcare. As Walter E. Williams put it, There is no moral argument that justifies using the coercive powers of government to force one person to bear the expense of taking care of another. Thomas Sowell completed the libertarian argument against nationalized healthcare: It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.

Free-market healthcare is subject to competitive forces that continually improve medicine; government-controlled healthcare must only satisfy whichever criteria impassionate bureaucrats create for it. As is always the case, incentivizing innovation is the surest way toward progress not yoking it to government officials who are more concerned with polls than they are public health.

John Locke summed up the duty we have to children in Some Thoughts Concerning Education: Children are strangers to all we are acquainted with; and all the things they meet with, are at first unknown to them, as they once were to us: and happy are they who meet with civil people, that will comply with their ignorance, and help them to get out of it. (Not all of the libertarian movements preeminent thinkers get it quite so right. Murray Rothbards assertion that parents have no legal obligation to feed their kids can be considered frosty at best.)

The experience offered by public education suffers greatly for its dependence on tax revenue. When teachers must place the demands of government officials before the diverse needs of their students, and when the public education system indoctrinates children with whatever ideologies the dominant political party prescribes, we fail our children. Many libertarians wish to shield vulnerable children from politicians and their special interests by divorcing education from the government entirely.

You have likely noticed that we peppered this article with mentions of several people. These are the thinkers whose work you should explore if you want a firmer grasp of libertarianism. (You had better add Ayn Rand to the list while youre at it.) Keep learning, and one day soon you too may be able to bore your friends to tears with long-winded explanations as to why taxation is theft and the government should bugger off.

Follow this link:
What Is a Libertarian? A Brief Summary of Their Beliefs

Leland Jenson recently wrote a letter insulting his political opponents and spewing leftist buzzwords. He jumps all over the place trying to connect unrelated topics from completely different political camps. For example, he said, Our national democratic institutions are being undermined by Tea Party extremists (Vanilla Isis), trying to lump the Tea Party movement in with the January 6th capital riot. To understand how stupid this is, one must first understand what the Tea Party movement was.

Despite what the media would have you believe, Republicans and Libertarians dont actually get along very well. The Tea Party movement was an attempt to form a coalition between Libertarians and Republicans to focus on one single issue: government spending. The movement did manage to get a few hardline fiscal hawks elected to Congress, but it failed to give Ron Paul (now retired) the presidency.

For those who dont know, Ron Paul can be thought of as the libertarian version of Bernie Sanders. His son, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., is one of the last remaining remnants of the Tea Party. The movement that got Trump elected in 2016 was completely different and unrelated. That movement was all about national populism, not government spending.

The Tea Party movement was very short lived and it functionally died after the 2012 election. The modern Republican party today arguably does not care about the national debt and how much of the annual budget goes to simply paying interest.

Secondly, Im at a loss for words at Jenson calling the tea party vanilla isis. ISIS is a theocratic movement whose goal is to create a Sunni Islamic state. The Shia muslims were treated just as badly as non-muslims, sometimes worse; they could either convert or be killed. The Sunni muslims under ISIS control were forced to follow the strictest Islamic protocols (sharia law), such as men not shaving their beards and women being forced to cover themselves; thats putting it lightly. Failure to comply could result in barbaric thousand-year-old styles of executions such as crucifixions and stoning, including women and children.

Jenson is concerned about bigotry, misogyny and equality or whatever. When the Tea Party was active, the gay marriage debate was in full swing; the Supreme Court did not settle that discussion until 2015, long after the Tea Party ended. Libertarians are generally supportive of gay marriage, Republicans were not. The coalition required them to put their differences aside. Similarly, Libertarians are generally far less religious than Republicans; even the ones that are religious arent authoritarian about it. You wouldnt find the Tea Party pushing for prayer in schools or the Ten Commandments in front of courthouses. Comparing the Tea Party to ISIS doesnt even make sense, not even as a vanilla version. The Tea Party was less theocratic than Republicans in general at the time.

In conclusion, Jenson doesnt know what hes talking about. The Tea Party was not conservative republican extremism.

P. S. Trickle-down economics is not a real thing. The only time you hear those words are when Democrats are attacking a strawman. You wont find academic proponents of it.

William Smith lives in Fargo.

This letter does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Forum's editorial board nor Forum ownership.

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Letter: Writer doesn't know what the Tea Party was - INFORUM

Floridas Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis recently signed a bill to protect against indoctrination in the states colleges and universities. The new law, which went into effect on July 1, requires Floridas public colleges and universities to conduct an annual survey measuring intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity on their campuses. The laws goal is to assess the extent to which competing ideas and perspectives are presented and how free students, faculty, and staff feel to express their beliefs and viewpoints.

The Florida law does not specify what will be done with the survey results, but Gov. DeSantis suggested that budget cuts could result if universities and colleges are found to be indoctrinating students. It used to be thought that a university campus was a place where youd be exposed to a lot of different ideas, DeSantis said. Unfortunately, now the norm is really these are more intellectually repressive environments.

DeSantis is currently a frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Indeed, he edged former President Donald Trump in a recent straw poll taken at the Western Conservative Summit. The problem DeSantis has identified is not unique to Florida Indianas Republican governor signed a similar bill last month and it traces directly to the political biases of the processes by which faculty are hired. Many of the same colleges and universities that tout tenure as a way to encourage free thought censor it by not allowing conservative and libertarian faculty candidates who think freely to get in the door.

I once suggested on the ConLawProf group email list that law schools need to hire more conservative and libertarian candidates (with more meaning, at a minimum, at least one). The reaction? One law professor posted that I was nuts to suggest such a thing. Libertarian law professor Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz quipped at a Federalist Society conference on intellectual diversity in the legal academy that his leftist colleagues at Georgetown felt that three conservatives on a law faculty of 120 was plenty and perhaps even one or two too many.

Anecdotes aside, Northwestern University law professor James Lindgren has published detailed statistical surveys that document that Republicans and Christians are the groups most under-represented in the law professoriate. If the small handful of right-leaning and Christian law schools is excluded from the dataset, the problem is actually worse. Additional studies demonstrate that lack of viewpoint diversity among faculty extends campus-wide. For example, according to research conducted last year by the National Association of Scholars, Democratic professors outnumber their Republican colleagues by a ratio of 8.5 to 1 on top college campuses.

Research since World War II has consistently found overwhelmingly left-oriented political attitudes and ideological self-identification among college and university faculty the report notes. The report also found that the most drastic differences in the ratio were among professors of English, at 26.8 to 1, sociology, at 27 to 1, and anthropology, 42.2 to 1. Less subjective majors such as mathematics (5.5 to 1), chemistry (4.6 to 1), and economics (3 to 1) were less politically biased.

Not surprisingly, DeSantis critics are throwing fits. Nikki Fried, the Florida agriculture commissioner who is challenging DeSantis for governor next year, compared the governors actions to what authoritarian regimes do. Charles P. Pierce wrote in Esquire that DeSantis is a wingnut who is as full of crap as the Christmas goose. Steven Benen toned it down a bit for MSNBC by merely opining that the new law is absurd.

What DeSantis critics fail to appreciate is that truth is most likely to emerge from the clash of ideas. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously referred to it as the marketplace of ideas, while John Stuart Mill expressed this same view in his classic book On Liberty. The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race, Mill wrote. Posterity as well as the existing generation those who dissent from the opinion, still more those who hold it.

Gov. DeSantis received his undergraduate degree from Yale and his law degree from Harvard. He should be commended for recognizing that faculty need to start behaving like professors again.

Scott Douglas Gerber is a law professor at Ohio Northern University and an associated scholar at Brown Universitys Political Theory Project.

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Gov. DeSantis and the need for viewpoint diversity in higher education | Column - Tampa Bay Times

SEASIDE, Calif. Mike Gravel, a former U.S. senator from Alaska who read the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record and confronted Barack Obama about nuclear weapons during a later presidential run, has died. He was 91.

Gravel, who represented Alaska as a Democrat in the Senate from 1969 to 1981, died Saturday, according to his daughter, Lynne Mosier. Gravel had been living in Seaside, Calif., and was in failing health, said Theodore W. Johnson, a former aide.

Gravels two terms came during tumultuous years for Alaska when construction of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline was authorized and when Congress was deciding how to settle Alaska Native land claims and whether to classify enormous amounts of federal land as parks, preserves and monuments.

He had the unenviable position of being an Alaska Democrat when some residents were burning President Jimmy Carter in effigy for his measures to place large sections of public lands in the state under protection from development.

Gravel feuded with Alaskas other senator, Republican Ted Stevens, on the land matter, preferring to fight Carters actions and rejecting Stevens advocacy for a compromise.

In the end, Congress passed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, a compromise that set aside millions of acres for national parks, wildlife refuges and other protected areas. It was one of the last bills Carter signed before leaving office.

Gravels Senate tenure also was notable for his anti-war activity. In 1971, he led a one-man filibuster to protest the Vietnam-era draft and he read into the Congressional Record 4,100 pages of the 7,000-page leaked document known as the Pentagon Papers, the Defense Departments history of the countrys early involvement in Vietnam.

Gravel reentered national politics decades after his time in the Senate to twice run for president. Gravel, then 75, and his wife, Whitney, took public transportation in 2006 to announce he was running for president as a Democrat in the 2008 election ultimately won by Obama.

He launched his quest for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination as a critic of the Iraq war.

I believe America is doing harm every day our troops remain in Iraq harm to ourselves and to the prospects for peace in the world, Gravel said in 2006. He hitched his campaign to an effort that would give all policy decisions to the people through a direct vote, including health care reform and declarations of war.

Gravel garnered attention for his fiery comments at Democratic forums.

In one 2007 debate, the issue of the possibility of using nuclear weapons against Iran came up, and Gravel confronted then-Sen. Obama. Tell me, Barack, who do you want to nuke? Gravel said. Obama replied: Im not planning to nuke anybody right now, Mike.

Gravel then ran as a Libertarian candidate after he was excluded from later Democratic debates.

In an email to supporters, he said the Democratic Party no longer represents my vision for our great country. It is a party that continues to sustain war, the military-industrial complex and imperialism all of which I find anathema to my views, he said.

He failed to get the Libertarian nomination.

Gravel briefly ran for the Democratic nomination for president in 2020. He again criticized American wars and vowed to slash military spending. His last campaign was notable in that both his campaign manager and chief of staff were just 18 at the time of his short-lived candidacy.

There was never any ... plan that he would do anything more than participate in the debates. He didnt plan to campaign, but he wanted to get his ideas before a larger audience, Johnson said.

Gravel failed to qualify for the debates. He endorsed Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in the contest eventually won by now-President Joe Biden.

Gravel was born Maurice Robert Gravel in Springfield, Mass., on May 13, 1930.

In Alaska, he served as a state representative, including a stint as House speaker, in the mid-1960s.

He won his first Senate term after defeating incumbent Sen. Ernest Gruening, a former territorial governor, in the 1968 Democratic primary.

Gravel served two terms until he was defeated in the 1980 Democratic primary by Gruenings grandson, Clark Gruening, who lost the election to Republican Frank Murkowski.

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Mike Gravel, former U.S. senator for Alaska who objected to wars, dies at 91 - Tampa Bay Times