Mediaboss Marketing

Roughly 100 anti-Trump protesters demonstrate peacefully in Market Square on February 19, 2017, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Jeff Swensen / Getty Images)

The Democratic Socialists of America, a traditionally progressive socialist organization founded in 1982, has seen it's membership increase multiply from roughly 5,000 to 25,000 members in the past year following the Bernie Sanders campaign and the subsequent election of Trump. Now, many on the left are looking at the organization as a barometer of sorts for the fate of the larger left. In addition, many are viewing the DSA convention this week in Chicago as a key turning point within the organization. Coming out of the DSA is a new caucus called the Libertarian Socialist Caucus. The LSC promotes a vision of "libertarian socialism" -- a traditional name for anarchism -- that goes beyond the confines of traditional social democratic politics. I asked John Michael Coln, a member of the group's provisional organizing committee, to talk about its vision and goals.

Adam Weaver: The DSA has a range of tendencies and is sort of a "big tent" of socialist politics. What made you want to form a Libertarian Socialist Caucus (DSA-LSC)? Tell us about yourself and what you see as the political influences of the group.

John Michael Coln: I've been a member of DSA for over a year; some of us involved have been members before the "Bernie and Trump bump." So it's not a matter of anarchists infiltrating and joining DSA ... but anarchists who have been members of DSA all along. We want to organize them as we believe that libertarian socialism is democratic socialism.

Once upon a time, before Trump and Bernie Sanders, there had been a thing called the Left Caucus which aimed to organize all the DSA members who wanted to push the organization to the left. It was good, I was part of it, but it's now basically defunct because with so many new members joining DSA, many are already to the left of the DSA. But what the existence of the Left Caucus proved was that caucuses based on ideological interests had a place in DSA. We want to be the first caucus within the DSA that had a more specific vision, that openly talks about a specific political direction that they would move towards. Rather than say we want to move the DSA to the left, we [are saying we] want to move to the left with specific positions and a specific manner. And not everyone who identifies with the left is going to agree.

Speaking for myself here, I believe that the LSC has an especially important role not just in promoting its own ideas, but also in setting an example for others for how to do caucuses right in being internally democratic, in co-existing, cooperating with and having cross-membership with other caucuses. Caucuses can be hubs of organizing activity, hubs of political education, hosting reading groups, etc. There's a dimension of caucuses that are akin to being political parties within the larger DSA.

It's important to note that you can't be in the LSC unless you are a dues-paying member of DSA. Most of our members were people who were already members of the DSA. There are some people who, because we announced our existence, joined DSA, and that's a consequence of the libertarian socialists already in DSA who were getting organized.

At the end of the day, the Libertarian Socialist Caucus, or any other caucus for that matter, is not an alien entity within DSA; rather it's a caucus of DSA members united around a shared interest.

What do you see as the commonalities and differences between the politics that you are looking to put forward and DSA's current politics and organizing? What are you looking to change?

I would contest the framing of the question a little bit. It's important to note that beyond the idea of big-tent socialism, the DSA doesn't actually have a party line. Outside observers, though, act as if DSA does, but the reality is it doesn't have a set of positions that you have to accept. Rather, the DSA is an internally democratic organization of socialists that adjudicate their disputes through liberal parliamentary norms of conflict resolution. In other words, if we disagree, like on the convention floor, it will be argued out on the floor between delegates. It's not a centralist organization where there's a party line and if you disagree you have to leave.

The problem is that, at this point, it's difficult to say exactly what LSC stands for because we don't have official positions. We just finalized our membership, and because we are democratic we haven't reached positions yet. There are probably shared values that we have that people in DSA don't have, and we want to promote those values and make them more popular.

These [values include] skepticism of the state, a critique of the state and seeing the state as going hand-in-hand with capitalism. A second component is a belief in radical democracy with a higher standard of democracy, one which is more rigorous. A lot of people believe that democracy is just elections. But we believe democracy means more than electionsthat it is participatory.

We want to advocate and convince people by the strength of our ideas that there are things DSA should be doing and should be promoting. We want to see more things like directly democratic neighborhood assemblies, worker cooperatives, participatory budgeting, radical syndicalism and municipalism that DSA is currently not promoting, as well as the things DSA is already doing, like organizing workplaces and fighting bosses and landlords. We see these as the fullest embodiment of the values that unite the different kinds of socialism within the DSA under its banner.

The DSA's convention is happening in Chicago this weekend. With over 40 proposals and with the huge influx of new members who have entered the organization, many observers see this convention as a turning point. Can you tell us what you see as the key issues at stake that will be debated at the coming convention? How is DSA-LSC leaning on these issues?

I do want to answer this one by saying, like I said before, LSC doesn't have an official position yet. The very first event that we are organizing [Friday] morning is our first general assembly where members of LSC will follow a procedure presented to our membership to make decisions about convention debates. We are going to go one-by-one through all of the floor debate questions that will happen at the convention. If our assembly can arrive at a consensus, we are going to ask the delegates present to vote in accordance with that.

We don't know how many will show up exactly, but we are expecting, based on our listserve, something like 20 confirmed delegates, and we are allowing any DSA member to attend.

A major decision at the convention will be elections for the 16-member National Political Committee of DSA, which acts as a sort of national level policy and steering committee for the organization. Right now there's the competing Momentum/Spring Platform and Praxis slates, individuals drafted and signed onto a "Unity Platform" document, and now members of DSA-LSC are putting forward their candidates as well, called DSA Friends and Comrades. What do you see as the competing visions represented?

I can't say anything on our official position on them. Speaking only for myself, I think that Momentum and Praxis both have some pros and they both have some cons. They are all good organizers and comrades that have done good work. But I personally disagree very strongly with what I would see as the centralizing tendencies in Momentum's positions. But I'm only speaking for myself, and I know for a fact that other LSC members have different opinions.

What I would say about both Momentum and Praxis is that the way they came about is that [their candidates] only represent themselves. My hope is that in the future LSC sets an example where candidates are selected by caucuses and are accountable to them rather than self-selecting. And I think that's important because the platforms of the slates have shaped the convention as a whole, and it's more democratic if those conversations arise from larger groups of members within the DSA.

The DSA Friends and Comrades coalition is something that came out of LSC members and was organized by LSC members informally and hasn't been approved by the group. We wish them well, and some of us will vote for them and promote them on our social media, but they don't represent the LSC. Next convention we aim to organize a primary and democratic process to put forward a slate.

Go here to read the rest:
A Turning Point on the Left? Libertarian Caucus Debuts at Democratic Socialist Conference - Truth-Out

Washington Times

Inside the Beltway: Libertarian health care: Repeal and deregulate ... Washington Times Libertarians have entered the health care fray, vowing to repeal and deregulate to create a system better than Trumpcare or Obamacare. (Libertarian Party) ... For first time, Libertarians to run for countywide offices | Region ...Delco News Network all 2 news articles »

Read the rest here:
Inside the Beltway: Libertarian health care: Repeal and deregulate ... - Washington Times

Public DomainWhen President Ronald Reagan nominated Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1987, he praised his nominee for being "widely regarded as the most prominent and intellectually powerful advocate of judicial restraint."

It was no exaggeration. During his decades-long career as a law professor, federal judge, and legal commentator, Bork routinely preached the virtues of a deferential judiciary, arguing that in the vast majority of cases "the only course for a principled Court is to let the majority have its way."

Where Bork led, most legal conservatives were ready to follow. Judicial deference, or restraint, became a rallying cry on the legal right.

Borkean deference still holds sway today in many quarters. But it is also increasingly under fire from libertarian-minded legal thinkers who want the courts to play a more aggressive role in defense of individual liberty and against overreaching majorities.

Case in point: The new issue of Governing magazine profiles Don Willett, the Texas Supreme Court justice who recently appeared on Donald Trump's shortlist of potential U.S. Supreme Court candidates. Willett "is witty and approachable, and he's huge on Twitter," writes journalist Alan Greenblatt. "He's also one of the most influential jurists in the country right now."

Willett's rising influence signals Bork's declining favor. It shows that libertarian legal ideas are gaining ground.

To be sure, Bork and Willett are both "conservative" and both have ties to the Republican Party. But they differ in important ways. Bork wanted judicial minimalism; Willett wants judicial engagement. "The State would have us wield a rubber stamp rather than a gavel," Willett complained in the 2015 case of Patel v. Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, "but a written constitution is mere meringue if courts rotely exalt majoritarianism over constitutionalism."

Texas Supreme CourtAs Greenblatt notes in his profile, "Willett is pretty blunt about his overall intent. He's a champion of individual rights, claiming a central role for the judiciary in protecting those rights against state encroachment." Bork, by contrast, was obsessed with limiting the judiciary's role. If Bork's great enemy was judicial activism, Willett's great enemy is judicial pacifism.

The differences don't stop there. According to Bork's interpretation, the 14th Amendment offers zero constitutional protection for economic liberty, which means that the courts have no business striking down government regulations on 14th Amendment grounds. Since the amendment does not explicitly refer to economic liberty, Bork reasoned, it does not protect it. When "the Constitution does not speak," he insisted, we are "all at the mercy of legislative majorities."

Willett takes a different view. "The Fourteenth Amendment's legislative record," he has pointed out, "is replete with indications that 'privileges or immunities' encompassed the right to earn a living free from unreasonable government intrusion."

Willett has even thrown shade in Bork's direction: "A conservative luminary, Bork is heir to a Progressive luminary, Justice Holmes, who also espoused judicial minimalism. Both men believed the foremost principle of American government was not individual liberty but majoritarianism." Willett clearly ranks individual liberty first.

Thirty years ago, when Borkian judicial deference was in its heyday, the conservative legal mainstream was largely hostile to libertarian legal ideas. That Don Willett is now championing those same ideas and is at the same time under possible consideration for a Supreme Court seat demonstrates just how far the dial has moved in a libertarian direction.

Read more here:
From Bork to Willett: Is the Conservative Legal Movement Going Libertarian? - Reason (blog)

Getting into writing can be quite daunting for people, but it is easier than ever before to be a writer. The internet has placed virtually all the information of consequence known to anyone at our fingertips. So it is vitally important for all those libertarian writers who feel so inclined, to be active.

With this article I hope to get some hesitant aspiring libertarian writers, or writers who have already started but are still unsure about some things, to put pen to paper.

This is simply a collection of those things which have helped me throughout my writing career and which I have told people when they asked me for advice. I am not a journalist or a literary scholar, so everything you will read here comes from my personal experience in writing. I have also had the privilege of being the editor in chief of two publications: The Rational Standard, South Africas only libertarian publication, and, of course, Being Libertarian. But dont see these tips as the only set of valid tips, as many different things work for many different people.

This list is also not comprehensive. These tips are merely some of my thoughts, and if pressed, I might be able to share many others.

This is the most important tip I hope aspiring libertarian writers take to heart.

While research and fact-checking are by default important for any type of writer, overthinking your endeavor can at best lead to significant delay, and at worst to abandonment. If you are unable to verify something dont worry, writing op-eds is not academic writing. Tell your readers that you were unable to verify it, but explain why you believe it to be true regardless. Make an argument; dont get hung up on the numbers, especially if you are writing from the perspective of Austrian economics. Dont, however, be dishonest or try to hide the fact that you couldnt find empirical evidence from your readers.

Also try to set limits on the scope of your article. I will address brevity below, but here it is important that you not consider your article to be the final word on a given topic. You do not need to explain everything you say at length. Assume your readers have a hunger to do some reading on the topic elsewhere!

The most important thing you should do, however, is to just start writing. Put your ideas on paper, and see what happens.

Remember, you are not writing an academic paper where you are investigating something. You already have a message you want to get across.

Start your article by writing down your core thought usually your conclusion and build it around that. For example, if you think minimum wage laws would hurt unskilled workers, start your article by writing exactly that. Your lead-up and introduction will come later, but you need to ensure the core message you want to convey appears in the text of the article in a similar way it came to your mind; usually brief and in understandable language.

We are ordinarily taught that conclusions need to be at the end of the text, but when writing articles, its important to get your message across in the very first paragraph, to ensure even those people who dont read the entire text have at least seen the most important information. This is known as the lede or lead of the article, and is essentially like a preface in a book.

The next paragraph, whether it has a heading or not, will usually be your introduction.

Many other editors will disagree with me on this point, but I must re-emphasise, again, that you are not writing an academic paper which requires extensive justification for your assertions. In ordinary articles, this is not necessary, depending on your audience. If you are writing to a libertarian audience, you usually do not need to explain at length why the State is a violent institution, for example.

The best length of an article has been said to be 500 to 800 words. Any longer than this might cause ordinary readers to bookmark your article to read later something which doesnt always happen. Longer articles, however, certainly have their place, and this will usually depend on what you intend your article to be a summary, a comprehensive analysis, a manifesto and whether or not you are commenting on something timely or timeless.

Many writers are very concerned about the responses they get to their articles. This is good, as this is how a market ordinarily functions. However, just like a company should be free to determine for itself how to do things, should a writer not submit himself entirely to the whims of his readers.

Be conscious of what your readers think about your work, but dont let that get in the way of continuing to do what youre doing. After all, you have an idea youre trying to sell, and just because others are not willing to buy it doesnt mean you have to stop. Otherwise, libertarians would be in big trouble!

Dont be afraid of preaching your message to the converted.

Libertarians often need to have our core principles put to us in different ways, or simply reminded of our core principles in the first place, which sometimes get lost in the academization of libertarianism. By reading others interpretations or conveyances of our principles, we can also learn how to more effective market our ideas.

Another common concern libertarian writers often have is that they have already written an article on a given topic, or that one of their colleagues wrote one, and thus they feel they shouldnt do so again or as well.

Repackage your previous article. Write it in a different way. Look at the topic from another angle. Or dont; write it from the same angle, but in response to a different event. But never think that it is not necessary to write something just because it has already been written about, by you or someone else. Libertarian ideas are not winning or widely known, so it is fair to say that most people probably have not read about that topic you think has been exhausted.

I left this one for last, as it tends to upset quite a number of new and even experienced writers.

It takes years for columnists to get paid a significant amount or any amount of money for writing. You should not set out to write because you want to get paid there is an oversupply of people who want to give their opinions for money. As an up and coming libertarian writer, you should always humble yourself, as you are part of an era where sharing your ideas with virtually everyone else in the world is easier than it has ever been. Imagine: Your ideas can reach further than the dictates of kings and dictators just a few hundred years ago.

We are all capitalists, and that means we believe that one shouldnt expect time and effort from someone else with some kind of reciprocity. However, being capitalists, we also accept the principle of value subjectivity and reject the labor theory of value. This means, principally, that other people must value being able to see your opinion more than they value the amount the paywall charges. But it also means that you have to value your time and effort more than you value writing for the libertarian cause and spreading our ideas. And this, for an up and coming writer, is not recommended. You should want to write because you have something meaningful to say and you want to share it with others.

Too many writers have argued that non-monetary payment does not qualify as payment. To up and coming libertarian writers, the payment offered by a platform is often the platform itself, with a potentially massive audience just waiting to be exposed to your brand and ideas. It is, unfortunately, quite one-dimensional to perceive payment in currency as the only valid type of payment. If your problem is putting food on the table, writing opinion articles might not be the best way to ensure that happens.

Keep at it consistently and develop yourself, and the money will come eventually.

* Disclosure: At the time of writing I was ill with a cold and sinusitis. Please excuse me if some of my writing here seems more abrupt than usual.

This post was written by Martin van Staden.

The views expressed here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect our views and opinions.

Martin van Staden is the Editor in Chief of Being Libertarian, the Legal Researcher at the Free Market Foundation, a co-founder of the RationalStandard.com, and the Southern African Academic Programs Director at Students For Liberty. The views expressed in his articles are his own and do not represent any of the aforementioned organizations.

Like Loading...

Link:
8 Tips for New and Aspiring Libertarian Writers The Chief's Thoughts - Being Libertarian

Young Americans are usually thought of as decidedly liberal. This is an oversimplified picture. A sizeable minority of Millennials identify as conservative. Despite some evidence that Millennial conservatives lean left on social issues, it would be wrong to write all of them off as libertarians. Some young conservatives, in fact, hold anti-libertarian attitudes, and their numbers may be increasing.

Plainly speaking, these young conservatives hold socially and culturally conservative views. On the other hand, they are wary of individualism and free markets. They are not necessarily anti-capitalist, but fear that laissez-faire economic systems can be excessively cutthroat, prizing individual material gain above the wellbeing of the community.

This strain of conservative thought is closely related to the traditionalism of Russell Kirk, the 20th-century conservative political theorist who authored The Conservative Mind. Kirk identified ten foundational conservative principles. The first principle states that conservatives believe in an enduring moral order. Moral truths do not change with the times, and neither does human nature. Conservatives are champions, he continues, of custom, convention, and continuity because they prefer the devil they know to the devil they dont know.

Conservatives value private property because it is closely linked to freedom, but argue that getting and spending are not the chief aims of human existence. Decisions directly affecting members of a community should be made locally and voluntarily. Regarding governance, conservatives recognize that human passions must be restrained: Order and liberty must be balanced. Moreover, a conservative favors reasoned and temperate progress, but does not worship Progress as some type of magical force.

Young, anti-libertarian conservatives represent a new generation of traditionalists. And they are increasingly prominent on some college campuses.

Christian McGuire, a student at Virginias Patrick Henry College and editor-in-chief of the George Wythe Review, spoke to National Review about the schools conservative climate, saying the whole campus is fairly conservative. Patrick Henry College is a Christian school, so faith strongly influences students political views. McGuire says most students come from a background of religious conservatism, and feel as ifthey have been left out of the national discussion. More bluntly, he claims most of Patrick Henry College realizes we lost the culture war.

In response, McGuire and his fellow conservative classmates have started to turn to traditionalist thinkers such as Kirk. McGuire mentioned other increasingly popular thinkers among campus conservatives: Edmund Burke and G. K. Chesterton. Even Catholic social teaching is influencing some students. They are finding that these are rich sources of conservative thought.

When asked whether monarchist sentiments could be found on campus, McGuire responded firmly: Yes, absolutely. Though still very much a minority view at Patrick Henry College, some traditionalist-minded students are open to the idea of a king.

Traditionalist sentiments can also be found almost 600 miles northwest of Patrick Henry College, at the University of Notre Dame. Mimi Teixeira, a student at Notre Dame and vice president of the schools Young Americans for Freedom chapter, told National Review there is a sizeable group of students inclined to traditionalism. They are more interested in, and connected to, the Catholic faith and Catholic social teaching, she says. Besides Burke and Kirk, Pope Saint John Paul II is a powerful influence on this group.

The Notre Dame traditionalists are skeptical of classical liberalism. We do have a group of conservatives, she says, who dont agree with the Enlightenment. They contend classical liberalism is missing a piece.

Notre Dame isnt the only Catholic university with a sizeable number of young traditionalists. The Catholic University of America, in Washington, D.C., is home to many students who could be understood as profoundly traditional, according to Friar Israel-Sebastian N. Arauz-Rosiles,O.F.M. Conv., a seminarian at the university. The schools Catholic identity deeply influences how students think. He describes Saint Thomas Aquinas as probably the single most influential thinker on the university campus, in terms of his impact onstudents theological and political outlook.

Friar Israel has noticed that some students attend a yearly Mass in honor of Blessed Karl of Austria celebrated at Saint Mary Mother of God Church in Washington, D.C. A member of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, Blessed Karl of Austria was the last emperor of Austria and king of Hungary. Friar Israel acknowledges this mightmerely represent a superficial interest in Catholic monarchy. Nevertheless, he has encountered a number of students who reject classical liberalism and such political theorists asThomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

At Hillsdale College in Michigan, traditionalist conservatism has many adherents. Michael Lucchese, a senior at Hillsdale, says lots of people come in libertarian, and come out hardcore traditionalist. They reject, he continues, the sort of free-markets-will-solve-everything mentality of libertarianism in favor of a more traditional conservatism. Hillsdale students are exposed to the Great Books of the Western canon, including texts by Plato and Aristotle. Russell Kirk, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Leo Strauss also influence Hillsdale students. Lucchese added that C. S. Lewis is the most uncontroversial figureon campus, beloved by everybody.

Like McGuire, Lucchese reports that some students are sympathetic to monarchism, especially in the history department. Pointedly, he says many students are dissatisfied with the modern world. They recoil at the prevalence of sexual immorality and the atomism at the heart of liberal capitalism. Traditionalism looks to higher, permanent things such astruth, goodness, and beauty. Students see that as more fulfilling than what the modern world has to offer.

Traditionalist conservatism is not establishing deep roots on all campuses. Marlo Safi, a student at the University of Pittsburgh and editor-in-chief of The Pitt Maverick, told National Review that most conservatives there are of a libertarian bent. I have only met maybe five people, she says, whom I would call traditionalists in the vein of Russell Kirk. Most conservative students prefer to talk about Milo Yiannopoulos and people who are currently on the scene, says Safi.

Similarly, Anthony Palumbo, editor-in-chief of the Wake Forest Review, told National Review theres not much traditionalist conservatism at Wake Forest. Most conservatives at Wake Forest care little about social and cultural issues, preferring to promote free-market economics.

Among students, traditionalist conservatism seems to be especially common at Catholic universities and smaller Christian colleges. These young traditionalists question the idea of Progress, and express discontent with the modern world. They find value in community, and their views are usually rooted in faith. The Left may be winning the culture wars, but these students keep the flame of traditional morality ablaze. They reject libertarianism, especially what they see as its excessive faith in free markets and individual material gain. They often look to similar thinkers for inspiration: political theorists such as Russell Kirk, statesmen such as Edmund Burke, philosophers such as Plato, numerous Catholic intellectuals, and others.

They are not quite a monolithic group. Not all of them are monarchists, for example. The degree to which they are skeptical of classical liberalism also differs. Some are very much opposed to Locke and Rousseau; others are more cautious in their criticism.

The presence of traditionalist conservatism among college students reveals that some young Americans reject the vocal liberalism and libertarianism of their peers. More than that, however, these young traditionalists fear that the modern world has gone astray. They are the vanguard of a new generation standing athwart history, trying to reorient Americans toward ideas and ideals thatnourish the whole person: community, truth, goodness, and beauty.

READ MORE: The Strange Traditionalism of the LiberalElite Did William F. Buckleys Conservative Project End in Failure? The End of Reaganism

Jeff Cimmino is a student of history at Georgetown University and an editorial intern at National Review.

View post:
Traditionally conservative college students reject the vocal liberalism and libertarianism of their peers. - National Review