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The Libertarian Party's biennial national convention in Washington, D.C., last month was a snapshot of a minor political party in the midst of a major identity crisis.

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and independent challenger Robert F. Kennedy Jr. each spoke on stage, the former landing a coveted prime-time keynote slot. Fourth-place GOP presidential finisher Vivek Ramaswamy, who keeps trying to make a "libertarian-nationalist alliance" a thing, also gave a speech.

Michael Rectenwald, the favored presidential candidate of the Mises Caucus faction currently running the party, failed to secure the nomination after making a bumbling, post-Trump speech on stage while stoned, having made a spur-of-the-moment decision beforehand to pop an edible. Longtime party activist Starchild was dragged out by security for heckling the Republican headliner. In short, it was exactly what you might have expected had you been following L.P. drama over the past few years.

The fractured party reelected the Mises Caucus' Angela McArdle as chair but also selected as its presidential standard-bearer Chase Oliver, a gay 38-year-old antiwar activist and former Democrat who had pushed the most recent U.S. Georgia Senate race into a runoff election eventually won by a Democrat.

In the past three presidential elections, the Libertarian candidate appeared on all 50 state ballots plus the District of Columbia, finished in third place, and was backed by every state L.P. affiliate. None of that seems likely to happen this year.

The Montana L.P. after the convention immediately declared that it would not be placing Oliver's name on the ballot. "Similarly situated states should follow our lead," the state party wrote. "We call upon the [Libertarian National Committee] to consider suspending and replacing him." So far, one stateColoradohas followed suit, charging Oliver and running mate Mike ter Maat with being "useful idiots for the regime" who are "unfit to represent our values." Idaho is contemplating whether to do the same and putting pressure on the national party to remove Oliver from the ballot. The Libertarian Party of New Hampshire is predictably vocalizing its distaste and intent to siphon resources away from the candidate, but Oliver is still filing his intent to run with the secretary of state there.

Oliver "doesn't represent me and my camp or the things we stand for," comedian/podcaster Dave Smith, who the Mises Caucus had once pinned its hopes on for the 2024 nomination, wrote after the convention. "Look, if us taking over the whole party, if the outcome wasthis," Smith elaborated on his podcast, "then there's only one word to use to describe that, and that's failure."

Oliver's critics say he's culturally woke and was insufficiently opposed to the COVID regime of lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and masking. "I've been against vaccine or mask mandates from government," he counteredto me and Zach Weissmueller on our show, Just Asking Questions. "If the COVID messaging was so goodthis divisive messaging saying, If you wore a mask, if you ever took a vaccine, you're just an idiot and you're stupid or whateverthat's what [the Mises Caucus is] putting out there. And guess what? We're bleeding members and donors because people want to make decisions for themselves and not be shamed that they made a decision differently than their neighbor."

Meanwhile McArdle, against a pre-convention backdrop of declining party membership, fundraising, and ballot access, has portrayed last month's gathering as a triumph, while positing Oliver as a tool for siphoning away votes from President Joe Biden.

"Donald Trump says he's going to put a Libertarian in a Cabinet position. He came out and spoke to us. He said he's a Libertarian. He has basically endorsed us," McArdle said in a June 3 video address. "And so in return, I endorse Chase Oliver as the best way to beat Joe Biden. Get in loser, we are stopping Biden. That's what I think. That's what I think this campaign is about."

How did the party get here, to a place where its chair is openly cheering on victory for the decidedly nonlibertarian Trump?

The modern-day fracture of the L.P. started in 2017, when a small bloc formed the Mises Caucus, lionizing such figures as Ron Paul and Murray Rothbard. Generally young and extremely online, culturally right of center, attracted to sharp-elbowed podcasters like Smith and Tom Woods, the Mises crew exudes visceral hostility toward the state, the Fed, the war machine, and what they see as the philosophically compromised D.C. libertarian think-tankers (pejoratively termed "Beltwaytarians") who they believe enable rather than meaningfully oppose the "regime."

The Mises Caucus arose in revulsion toward the Gary Johnson/Bill Weld 2016 ticket, which they saw as having watered down the libertarian message to the point of being unrecognizable. They were furtherdisappointed by 2020 nominee Jo Jorgensenand downright repulsed by the L.P.'s messaging on Black Lives Matter and COVID lockdowns.

In 2022, the Mises Caucus succeeded in a self-styled "takeover" of the party at its convention in Reno, after which the victors wasted little time inflaming the sensibilities of what they saw as the losinglibertines. No moreoveremphasizing the importance of sex work, abortion, or free-flowing immigration, positions the new guard either disagreed with or felt needlessly alienated potential allies.

But the Reno Resetters, in their bid to reinvigorate the party, were doing plenty of alienating of their ownof longtime Libertarian Party donors and volunteers who did not share the Mises Caucus' preference for meme clapbacks and helicopter jokes.

I chatted with a few of these disgruntled activists about why they pulled their time and money away from the L.P., whether the mixed results from the latest convention gave them reason to hope, and whether there's any way for the fractured party to mend itself.

"I became a libertarian because the authoritarian conservative politics I grew up in didn't resonate with me," says Christian Bradley, who started voting Libertarian and volunteering for the party in 2008. But the Mises Caucus has injected "authoritarian conservative politics into the party," Bradley says, transforming it into more like a "twisted social club" for "MAGA edgelords" than something that represents his beliefs.

Libertarian Partyaffiliated instances of social media edgelording are almost too numerous to count, whether it's riffing on Adolf Hitler's 14 words, or calling the Uyghur genocide "war propaganda," or telling a black congresswoman to go pick crops, or tweeting out "let Ukraine burn," or calling that country "gay," or telling columnist Max Boot to go kill himself, or advocating prison time for Liz Cheney, or fantasizing about sending ex-presidents to Gitmo.

Other edgelording happened behind closed doors, pushing staffers and volunteers away from the party at a time when the organization needed all the help it could get.

"In April 2022, the last full month before the Mises Caucus takeover, the L.P.'s end-of-month financial report listed revenues of $125,542," reported Reason's Brian Doherty last month. "In April 2024, that figure was $84,710, a drop of nearly one-third. The number of sustaining members (those who have donated at least $25 in the past year) has fallen from around 16,200 in April 2022 to 12,211 in April 2024."

Forty-year-old Ryan Cooper met his now-wife, Casie, while doing outreach for the Jo Jorgensen campaign. "From 2016 to 2021, I gave over $50,000 and countless volunteer hours," Cooper says. But now, the couple no longer wants to be associated with "an organization that supported racists, bigots, white nationalists, and [Vladimir] Putin apologists."

The Washington state Libertarian Party has become hollowed out, Cooper contends, with massive declines in attendance at state conventions. All county chapters shuttered except four, and there were only five nonpresidential Libertarians on the 2024 statewide ballot, compared to over 33 in 2016.* Even gaining ballot access for Chase Oliver is no longer a sure thing in the Evergreen State, he says.

Cooper has donated $1,000 to Oliver and said that thereactions by some Mises Caucus types to the candidatecalling him a "cultural Marxist" and "woke homosexual," for instancehelped convince him to become a volunteer for the campaign. He maintains that he won't donate money to the national party until McArdle is no longer chair.

Mark Tuniewicz, a former finance executive based in South Dakota and member of the L.P. since 1994, tells me he notified the party at the start of this year that he had rescinded his decision to bequeath $650,000 to them in his will; with the takeover, he just doesn't believe the organization is serving his values any longer. Tuniewicz served, up until last month, on the Libertarian National Committee (LNC). "No accountability metrics lead to poor execution and results," he says. There's been "unprecedented organizational dysfunction, resulting in huge turnover on the LNC." And, as he wrote in his letter rescinding his donation, the L.P. has been "corrupted organizationally in a way from which it may never recover."

"I stopped donating after the [Mises Caucus] takeover in Colorado in 2021," says Alan Hayman, who's given $3,000 over the years. The state affiliate "proved to be woefully incompetent, wanting to reinvent the wheel on everything, anddeveloped a habit of gaslighting and mistreating members," Hayman says. "They were rude to party veterans, but also felt entitled to their time and knowledge."

Bureaucratic sloppiness led to the party being fined by the Colorado secretary of state $12,500 for late donation filings, part of a nationwide pattern of increased spending on noncore activities. Over the first four months of 2024, the national party spent $10,350 on the bread-and-butter line item of securing ballot access while shelling out $24,807 in legal expenses.

That lack of emphasis on ballot access is having real effects; on June 13, the New York State Board of Elections declared that the L.P.'s petition for ballot access had insufficient signatures, marking the first time in party history that its presidential candidate has failed to appear on the New York ballot.

Some of those legal expenses are coming from the national party suing a faction of the Michigan L.P. that's not under Mises Caucus leadership, but which insists it is legally the state party affiliate. In Michigan, a Mises-affiliated person, Andrew Chadderdon, in 2022 ascended to state chair, due to resignations on the state board. Despite a critical mass of the state delegation voting to remove Chadderdon, the national party continued to recognize him as chair. The national party filed a lawsuit; the state party has been holding separate conventions ever since.

"I am a strong believer in voting with feet, dollars, attention," former party activist Casey Crowe says. "The last two years have given me no reason to continue my financial investment when it's spent on suing affiliates, instead of functional needs like ballot access."

Many of the disgruntled Libertarians point their ire at McArdle.* Former L.P. employee Michelle MacCutcheon, who had been in charge of onboarding all new volunteers (a "labor of love," as she described it), said the new regime carried out a purge of staffers, with little respect given to coalition building or professionalism. (McArdle, for instance, hired her own romantic partner as a contractor to help with fundraising). "We were on a great trajectory" before, MacCutcheon says. "All of that was just wiped clean."

But, counters Florida L.P. member John Thompson, who is more agnostic on the results of the takeover,"If [McArdle] is as bad as they say, then they should have a solid game plan to defeat her and elect a new chair." Instead, she won on the second ballot during the D.C. convention, with 53.44 percent of the vote.

The fractures within the Libertarian Party are likely to deepen over the final 20 weeks of the presidential campaign. But the overall picture remains mixedfor instance, L.P. Communications Director Brian McWilliams tells Reason that fundraising is up 16 percent post-convention. A little post-convention bump is, of course, to be expected if historical trends are any indicator. "The 2024 convention will likely rival 2022 for the highest-fundraising convention in the history of the party," wrote Todd Hagopian, the LNC's pre-convention treasurer, in internal emails updating other members. But "the 2024 convention will be the most expensive convention in the history of the party," due to its location in D.C., and the party "will probably not net as much net income" this year compared with 2022.

It's unlikely that the millions of Americans who have been voting Libertarian for president the past three cycles are even worried about, let alone paying attention to, the party's internal tensions.

But for some activists, there's no reason to continue fighting for a party that feels so far gone.

"I'm not even comfortable using the word 'libertarian' to describe myself, after all the damage the [Mises Caucus], LP, and MAGA have done to the word and scene," Bradley says. "At best, members of Mises Caucus are willing to tolerate and associate with known white supremacists, antisemites, Holocaust deniers.At worst, they are those people."

*CORRECTION: The original version of this article misquoted MacCutcheon; that quote has been deleted. A member of the Washington Libertarian Party contacted Reason post-publication to clarify details about county chapters and ballot presence.

See the article here:
How the Libertarian Party Lost Its Way - Reason

SUMMIT-TRIBUNE STAFF

The Libertarian Party of Iowa vehemently condemns the Iowa Utilities Board decision, which grants a private company the power to seize land through eminent domain for the construction of a carbon dioxide pipeline.

In a statement, party leaders said this decision not only violates the property rights of Iowans but also represents a fundamental betrayal of the principle that all individuals have the right to be secure in their property.

"Eminent domain, whether invoked by government or facilitated through regulatory bodies like the IUB, is an egregious violation of individual rights," said Libertarian Party of Iowa Chairwoman Jules Cutler. "Forcing property owners to relinquish their land against their will, whether for public or private gain, undermines the very foundation of property rights and personal freedom.

Despite overwhelming public opposition, with 78% of Iowans opposing the use of eminent domain for carbon capture pipelines (Source: Des Moines Register), the IUB has proceeded with this contentious decision, reflecting a blatant disregard for the will of the people and sets a dangerous precedent for property rights in Iowa. Landowners have reported aggressive tactics from the pipeline company, including threats and lawsuits, and some company representatives have even faced charges of trespassing.

The Libertarian Party of Iowa went on to say that the IUB, comprised of appointees from Republican governors, has ignored both public sentiment and the precedent set by the Iowa Supreme Court, which ruled against granting eminent domain to entities that are not common carriers. This decision comes despite significant public and legal challenges and is supported by major political donors and former elected officials, raising serious concerns about conflicts of interest (Source: Iowa Capital Dispatch).

"While other companies with similar projects, like Navigator CO2 Ventures, have halted their plans due to regulatory challenges and public resistance, this company has persisted with the backing of powerful political figures and financial interests," Cutler pointed out. "The decision highlights the significant influence of these entities wield over regulatory bodies and raises further concerns about democratic principles in Iowa."

Moreover, this pipeline project is being funded by substantial "green economy" tax credits from the current Democratic administration in Washington, aimed at further manipulating market economies to promote an agenda. (Source: AP News). This bipartisan assault on property rights underscores the Libertarian Partys stance that both major parties are complicit in eroding the freedoms of Iowans.

The Libertarian Party of Iowa is committed to Americas heritage of freedom: individual liberty and personal responsibility, a free-market economy of abundance and prosperity, a foreign policy of non-intervention, peace, and free trade. Find out more at https://www.lpia.org.

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Iowa Libertarian Party condemns IUB verdict on eminent domain for private pipeline - Globe Gazette

In 2016 the Libertarian Party presidential candidate, Gary Johnson, received more votes than any of the partys other candidates in history and the most of any third-party candidate since Ross Perot and arguably, the Libertarian Party has never recovered.

Much like the conservative movement, the libertarian movement has been divided between more normie libertarians who have embraced criminal justice reform and social freedoms (like immigration and the rights of L.G.B.T.Q. people) and the harder-line libertarians who tend to lean more to the right on cultural issues.

In 2022 the hard-line Mises Caucus took control of the Libertarian Party, promising to gain more votes from disaffected Republicans and conservatives (and annoy a lot of people on the internet, including me). And in 2024 the Libertarian Party Convention featured appearances from people like Donald Trump.

But in a major surprise, the winner of the partys presidential nominating process was not the Mises Caucuss favorite but Chase Oliver, a 38-year-old gay antiwar activist who had left the Democratic Party. I spoke with Mr. Oliver about what libertarianism means to him today, how he plans to fight for independent votes this year and why the Libertarian Party failed 2020s libertarian moment.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity and is part of an Opinion Q. and A. series exploring modern conservatism today, its influence in society and politics and how and why it differs (and doesnt) from the conservative movement that most Americans thought they knew.

Jane Coaston: What does libertarianism mean to you now?

Chase Oliver: Libertarianism to me has always meant the freedom for peaceful people to make their own decisions about their own lives without government interference. Ive always said that if youre living your life and not using force, fraud, coercion, theft or violence, your lifes your life, your bodys your body, your business is your business, and your property is your property; its not mine, and its not the governments.

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Opinion | What Chase Oliver, the 2024 Libertarian Candidate, Believes - The New York Times

In this file photo from 2022, Libertarian Chase Oliver, then a candidate for Georgia's U.S. Senate seat, listens during a debate in Atlanta, Ga. The Libertarian Party nominated party activist Oliver for president as the party's candidate in the 2024 election, rejecting former President Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. after they each spoke at the party's convention. (AP Photo/Ben Gray, File) Ben Gray/AP hide caption

PORTLAND, Maine For voters who aren't excited about a rematch between President Biden and former President Donald Trump, Libertarian presidential nominee Chase Olivers pitch is strikingly simple.

I'm under the age of 80, I speak in complete sentences, I'm not a convicted felon, he says on the campaign trail. It's a very low bar, but I've managed to clear that.

Oliver is 39, an anti-war activist and the new public face of the Libertarian Party, the countrys third largest political party and one that could influence who wins the White House in November.

Hes not going to win the election, but thats not his only measure of success. Getting the party more media attention, better ballot access and more Libertarian candidates into local office is also on the docket.

There are concrete things we can do to build our party foundation up that don't require us to win the White House this November, Oliver said. And I think a lot of those things, if done correctly, will be seen as a victory in my eyes and a victory in the eyes of libertarians across the country.

In the aftermath of the chaotic Libertarian Party national convention where Oliver eventually secured the partys nomination after seven rounds of voting (winning with 60.6% against 36.6% for none of the above), his campaign schedule has seen travel across the country to boost his own name recognition and that of the party.

Libertarian presidential nominee Chase Oliver wants to grow the party's base of support, but is facing backlash from a reactionary wing of the party over differing social and cultural views. Stephen Fowler, NPR. hide caption

At a low-key campaign kickoff at a brewery east of Atlanta, Oliver told friends, family and running mate Mike ter Maat that he believes the Libertarian Party can reach a younger generation disillusioned with the current status of America.

One of the things Ive heard most is, I became a libertarian when I was a young person, he said. Right now, there are 40 million-plus Gen Z voters who are ready to hear a message outside the two-party system.

As a millennial politician, Chase Oliver has a different energy on the campaign trail than the buttoned-up Biden or meandering Trump, and is quite vocal about his ideas of what liberty means in theory and in practice.

Broadly speaking, liberty means the right and the ability to live your own life as you see fit, in peace, he said. If you're not harming someone with force, fraud, coercion, theft or violence, if you're not doing any of those bad things, your life is your life. Your body is your body. Your business is your business, and your property is your property. It's not mine, and it's not the government's.

In this 2022 photo, Libertarian challenger Chase Oliver, left, and Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., participate in a U.S. Senate debate in Atlanta on Sunday, Oct. 16, 2022. Republican challenger Herschel Walker was invited but did not attend. Oliver's candidacy in the race is largely responsible for forcing the two leading candidates, Warnock and Walker, to a runoff. Ben Gray/AP hide caption

Oftentimes, libertarians are seen as spoiler candidates in close races - including Oliver himself, who ran for Georgias U.S. Senate seat in 2022 and helped force incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock into a runoff against Republican Herschel Walker.

Still, Oliver wants the party to grow up, and grow into something thats appealing to a larger swathe of people.

Its a golden opportunity with Donald Trump versus Joe Biden 2.0, voters are looking for something different, and in particular, they're looking for younger voices to rise up and really start speaking up in our political system, he said.

But the Libertarian Party is having an identity crisis, exacerbated by Olivers own identity.

Oliver is gay, and his support for gay rights including issues that affect transgender people has widened an existing rift within the party.

I don't run as just the gay candidate, but it is certainly a part of my identity, he said. It's something I am not ashamed of being. I'm proud of being who I am and living as my authentic self, and so I'm just hoping to inspire other people to live as their authentic selves.

Chase Oliver is gay, and his support for LGBT rights has led several state parties to oppose his selection as the Libertarian presidential nominee. Stephen Fowler, NPR. hide caption

At the Portland, Maine pride festival earlier this month, Oliver took breaks from waving an American flag bedecked in marijuana leaves and rainbow stripes to hand out campaign literature, practice his stump speech and shoot the breeze on ballot access with a canvasser for a rival campaign.

So Maine and Alaska are two states where people dont have to fear the spoiler effect, he said. One of the reasons why I'm here in Maine and one of the reasons why I want to be going up to Alaska is to let voters know, Hey, you can put me first and don't worry about it, you put your lesser of two evils next.'

But some in the party see Oliver's viewpoints and selection as the nominee as the greater evil.

Oliver is a more traditional libertarian aligned with the Classical Liberal caucus, as it's known. Theres a growing wing of the party the Mises Caucus that has decidedly non-Libertarian views on social and cultural issues.

The Mises Caucus is a more hardline, edgy and sometimes inflammatory take on libertarianism that is more compatible with the Republican Party under Trump which is partly why the former president spoke at the partys convention this year.

Trump suggested the Libertarian Party back his campaign, instead.

You know, only [back me] if you want to win, he said to boos and jeers from the audience. If you want to lose, don't do that. Keep getting your 3% every four years.

Former President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump salutes to the audience after addressing the Libertarian Party National Convention on May 25 in Washington, D.C. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images hide caption

Historically, Libertarian candidates have pulled more voters from Republican candidates, though this time some are explicitly seeking the opposite.

That includes Libertarian Party Chair Angela McArdle, who has said explicitly she endorses Chase Oliver as a vehicle for Trumps victory.

Donald Trump said he's going to put a libertarian in a cabinet position, she said in a recent social media livestream. He came out and spoke to us. He said he's a libertarian. He has basically endorsed us. And so in return, I endorse Chase Oliver as the best way to beat Joe Biden."

She quipped: "Get in, loser. We are stopping Biden.

Oliver remains an optimist, and amidst the vitriol is still convinced theres a pathway to reconciliation over a shared view of liberty.

He dismissed some of the homophobia and opposition to his campaign as loud voices in the Libertarian Party who arent representative of the partys voters as a whole.

Oliver also declined to speak ill of the Mises Caucus or their beliefs.

Honestly, I'm hoping to heal the divide in the party so that we can have more of them involved in this process of this campaign, he said contemplatively. I will continue to extend my hand, even if some people might want to smack it away. And I have to continue that work to try to heal the divide within our party.

So far, four state parties have publicly denounced Olivers nomination to differing degrees: Montana, Colorado, New Hampshire and Idaho. In the swing states that will decide the election, though, and where margins really matter, hes their guy.

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Meet Chase Oliver, the presidential nominee you've never heard of - NPR

When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s, by John Ganz, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 432 pages, $30

When the Clock Broke, by the progressive essayist John Ganz, is a solidly educational and entertaining work of political history. While Ganz winningly doesn't bash you over the head page by page with the larger point he's trying to make, the stories he chooses to tell about the early 1990s are meant to hit home how elements of American political, cultural, economic, and ideological life back then laid the groundwork for Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" (MAGA) movement today.

His title derives from an obscure 1992 speech by a figure most progressive readers have likely never heard of: the libertarian-movement founding father and gadfly Murray Rothbard, an economist who also explored political philosophy and history as he built a case for a totally stateless society.

Most libertarians' amour-propre might be wounded seeing their movement fingered as having meaningfully paved the way for Trumpism. But in May, the management of the Libertarian Party, dominated by a caucus that sees itself in the Rothbardian tradition, invited former President Donald Trump to speak at their presidential nominating convention, where he tried to make the case that their votes rightfully belonged to him. Whether or not it makes philosophical sense, there is something to Ganz's attempts to link anarcho-capitalist Rothbard with big-state caudillo Trump.

MAGA does at times seem to wear the mantle of smash-the-state anarchism in its rage against the modern progressive state, though Trump's regime managed a state pretty much as big and intrusive as its predecessors' (except for some tax and regulation reductions that were GOP orthodoxy long before Trump). And the Rothbardians' state-hatred can make any punctiliousness about the institutions of democracy and peaceful change of power that Trump threatened seem besides the point: If the state is pure rapine and murder, who can get too upset about whether or not power is exchanged politely?

Since most of this book about the tumult of the early 1990s has nothing to do with Rothbard or libertarianism, readers may wonder why they are hearing quite so much about things like what that eccentric economist in Las Vegas thought about Woody Allen's love life, or why his statement underlies the book's title. Ganz's choice here seems to imply that the clock-breaking Rothbard advocated actually happened.

What Rothbard called forin a talk to the John Randolph Club, a mixed gathering of libertarians and reactionarieswas to "break the clock" of "social democracyGreat Societywelfare stateand New Deal." That clock-breaking obviously did not happen. The best one can say for such a thesis is that Rothbard in the last few years of his lifeafter his "paleo" turn led him to reject most of the libertarian movement and ally himself instead with Pat Buchananstyle conservativesbegan dreaming of a Trumpian-styled right-populist champion on the horizon, one who would aggressively and with no politesse punch left-liberalism in the metaphorical nose. But When Obscure Agitators Who Wanted To Break the Clock Sounded Political Notes That Trump Later Magnified and Succeeded With isn't as catchy a title.

Rothbard and the paleos did accurately foresee something looming in American political culture that the libertarian comrades he left behind did not: that political success could be had by linking rhetorical anti-statism (about some things at least) with a gleefully rude appeal to white resentment.

More Trumpy than Rothbard were the other major characters in Ganz's narrative. Certainly, Buchanan's 1992 presidential campaign, detailed here at length, was a dry run for Trump, as were Buchanan's later books obsessed with defending the white European character of America by putting the brakes on immigrationthough Buchanan was more conventionally educated in politics and economics than Trump is.

Another obscure writer whose story Ganz tells, Samuel Francis, presaged Trump in an almost eerily on-the-nose manner. Francis' columns in The Washington Times and Chronicles advocated an American right that was more open to bully-boy violence and even terror, more obsessed with closed borders, more furious at cultural elites, and more willing to use the government as a nationalist tool to prop up a white working-class constituency, reverse progressive cultural change, and tame "woke" corporations (long before that term was in use, of course).

Underlying Ganz's story is a narrative also believed by his ideological enemies on the nationalist right: that Reagan-era deregulation, deindustrialization, tax cuts, loosening of trade restrictions, and union-busting annihilated any chance for America's former middle classes to thrive, drove them insane, and led them to Trump.

But most evidence indicates that Trump voters are driven more by cultural insecurities and resentments than by economic ones. Besides, Ganz's story of American economic life in its focus only on decline is misleading and overly pessimistic. His book gives the impression that from the early 1990s to Trump's rise, an unrelenting economic disaster settled over the American working man. In fact, from 1992 to 2016 per capita gross domestic product more than doubled, as did median personal income; the median hourly wage nearly doubled; and while the homeownership rate declined, it did so by less than 1 percent (and was by 2023 nearly 2 percent above the 1992 rate). In that quarter century, more of the middle class disappeared into upper classes than tumbled into eternal penury, with the percentage of Americans in the lower middle class or poor shrinking by around 8 percent and the percentage in the upper middle class or rich going up by around 10 percent.

This is not to deny that there were individual voters who fell on the bad end of economic change or had other reasons to feel aggrieved. But it does blunt the idea that economic devastation explains Trump.

The bulk of Ganz's book tells the early-1990s stories of Jesse Jackson, Rush Limbaugh, Ross Perot, Bill Clinton, Daryl Gates, Randy Weaver, and John Gotti, drawing more or less convincing or interesting parallels between their activities then and Trumpian modernity. The Jackson chapter, with its focus on Bill Clinton's "Sister Souljah" moment, reminds us that in a pre-woke age even a liberal Democrat could sound tough on racial politics in a way that reads as MAGA now. The Limbaugh chapter highlights one clear aspect of Trump's appeal, as the paladin defending middle Americans who feel disrespected and mocked by those who control their culture and government. (Trump, Ganz demonstrates, is a walking embodiment of early-'90s right-wing talk radio.) The Gates chapter reminds us that in an era of far more prevalent crime than the one Trump portrayed as "American carnage," worries about street crime didn't necessarily have a racial valence, as even many black citizens and leaders wanted tougher policing. (Not that this was the point Ganz was trying to make.)

The Perot chapter shows that many Americans (though not nearly an electoral majority) were already in the early 1990s hungry for a non-status-quo strongman and didn't care exactly how that would play out in policy terms. And the Gotti chapter, at the book's end, is intended to make the reader think of Trump as more organized crime figure than politician, wrapping up the narrative with a small frisson of fear about what might await America next year.

The 1990s are a fresh area for Ganz to make his writerly mark. But if you read Rick Perlstein's work on the American right in the 1970s (an obvious influence on Ganz in both style and intent, though Ganz can't quite pull off Perlstein's effortlessly delightful readability), you'll see there was nothing uniquely germinal in the '90s for the Trump movement. It was a longer time coming.

Racial and ethnic resentment, revolutionary activity on the part of a tiny margin (with a larger audience of fascinated admirers), a conservative America that feels mocked and disrespected by an elite class, fear of clandestine government agencies, worries about the working class losing economic ground: They were not new in the Trump era, nor did they begin in the '90s. They are persistent parts of the modern American experience.

While Ganz wants to blame free markets for destroying widespread American prosperity, as always, the path to consistently creating wealth (and eventually spreading it more evenly) lies in halting government practices that have slowed down wage growth and productivity, particularly barriers to practicing professions and creating businesses and building living spaces. As always, the most state-encrusted parts of the economy, such as health care and higher education, are the most sclerotic and expensive.

As Ganz makes clear, the fascist-adjacent philosophers that his villain Francis doted on, the likes of Georges Sorel and Vilfredo Pareto, tended to analyze all social issues and crises in terms of who has power and who they wield it against. This is the mindset that leads tribalists such as Francis to try to make the American right a more explicitly race-based operation, as well as one eager to use state power to crush its cultural enemies. In a multiracial, multiethnic republicsomething that America will continue to be no matter how many immigration restrictions the right tries to imposethat's bad for peace and prosperity.

Ganz launches his book with the political saga of David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader who became a Louisiana state legislator from 1989 to 1992, a story that hits home how much the author centers racial conflict in the modern American story. Trump is certainly more circumspect on race issues than Duke. But to the extent that he and his epigones make politics more race-conscious, the worse things will get for America. The same goes for race-conscious Democrats.

Despite Rothbard's embrace of right-wing populism in his declining years, the libertarian project he did so much to further for most of his careerthe project of limiting and decentralizing power rather than frantically striving to use it against your perceived enemiesis all the more vital for civic peace and prosperity in the Trump and post-Trump eras.

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It Didn't Start With Trump...or Libertarians - Reason