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Former President Donald Trump made thesurpriseannouncement last week that he will be appearing at the Libertarian National Convention later this month.

Libertarians are some of the most independent and thoughtful thinkers in our country, and I am honored to join them in Washington, D.C., later this month, Trump said. We must all work together to help advance freedom and liberty for every American, and a second Trump administration will achieve that goal.

Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will be appearing at the convention as well, and on Tuesday, the eccentric long shot issued achallengeto the 45th president.

Lets meet at the Libertarian convention and show the American public that at least two of the major candidates arent afraid to debate each other, Kennedy said. I asked the convention organizers and they are game for us to use our time there to bring the American people the debate they deserve!

Ideally, the Libertarian Party would include either its nominee, if the nominee is decided in time, or another representative of the party in such a debate. Both former libertarian vice presidential candidateSpike Cohenand comedian and podcasterDave Smithhave offered their formidable debate skills. Whether this hypothetical debate would include a libertarian or be a one-on-one with Kennedy, Trump should accept.

Trump is clear that he wants to debate President Joe Biden. It isunlikelythat the Biden team allows its candidate within a country mile of a debate stage, considering his age andmental decline, even compared to four years ago. But Trump accepting this debate would put the pressure on the Biden camp.

It would, at least, make for a good attack ad. This debate would also offer both Trump and Kennedy the opportunity to sharpen their swords as Election Day approaches. Kennedys strength is his recall, and unlike in a four-hour Joe Rogan podcast, he wont be able to grandstand with numbers and statistics real or imagined. Trumps typical stump-style rhetoric wont work, either.

Even if a Libertarian Party representative isnt included onstage, I assume there would be competent, principled libertarians questioning the candidates Cohen and Smith would be two obvious choices and the audience wont be won over by either candidates go-to tactics.

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Lets be honest: There is no real downside for anyone involved. Kennedy gets another chance in the sun, libertarians get an opportunity to question a former president and a strong third-party challenger on the topics that matter most to liberty-loving Americans, and Trump removes Bidens he wouldnt debate DeSantis and Haley card as the 46th presidents staff attempts to shield their doddering candidate.

Even if Trump takes a beating from a libertarian candidate, the audience, or Kennedy (brain wormand all), it is still six months from Election Day. No undecided voter will go blue instead of red this November because of what happened at the Libertarian Party convention. This debate would be fun, and it would be beneficial for Americans to see the former president and the highest-polling third-party candidate in decades answer intelligent, thoughtful questions in front of a neutral, even hostile, audience.

BradyLeonard(@bradyleonard) is a musician, political strategist, and host ofThe No Gimmicks Podcast.

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Trump should debate RFK Jr at the libertarian convention - Washington Examiner

Libertarian proponents of immigration controls inevitably run into four obstacles in their support of this particular statist program:

1. The non-aggression principle. This is the core principle of the libertarian philosophy. It holds that it is morally wrong to initiate force against another person. Another way of stating the non-aggression principle is this: People have the right to live their lives any way they want, so long as their conduct is peaceful that is, so long as they are not initiating force or fraud against others.

A political border is simply an artificial line that delineates different governmental jurisdictions. Most of the time, one cannot even see a border. For example, when people drive from Virginia to North Carolina and cross the border and enter North Carolina, there is not some great big red line that is the border. The only way that people know that they have crossed the border is that they see a sign that says Welcome to North Carolina.

Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

It is obvious that crossing the border into North Carolina does not involve the initiation of force or fraud against someone else. It is an entirely peaceful act. And notice something important: The border between Virginia and North Carolina does not disappear simply because people are free to cross it (in both directions). The border remains. Once people cross it and enter North Carolina, they are subject to the laws of North Carolina. Thus, North Carolina does not lose its sovereignty simply because people are free to enter North Carolina.

If someone stops a person crossing the border into North Carolina, it is the person who is doing the stopping who is initiating force. That person is the wrongdoer. Thus, if North Carolina were to erect a border station at the Virginia-North Carolina border, where border guards could stop a person traveling from Virginia to North Carolina, it would be the state of North Carolina violating the rights of travelers.

The same principles apply to an international border. A person who crosses from Mexico and enters the United States is engaged in a purely peaceful act. It is the U.S. border guards who are the ones initiating force when they stop, arrest, and incarcerate the traveler.

2. An immigration police state. Border controls come with enforcement. If there is no enforcement, then the controls are worthless, given that people will simply ignore them. The enforcement measures along the U.S.-Mexico border have converted the borderlands into an immigration police state. Warrantless searches of ranches and farms within 100 miles of the border. Highway checkpoints. Boarding of Greyhound buses to check peoples papers. Criminalization of hiring, transporting, harboring, and caring for illegal immigrants. A Berlin Wall. Concertina wire. And much more.

At the risk of belaboring the obvious, a police state and a free society are opposites. Thats another way that we know for certain that border controls cannot possibly be reconciled with libertarianism.

3. Americas system of immigration controls and the immigration police state that enforces it have come with massive death, suffering, rapes, kidnapping, detention centers, separation of children from parents, misery, suffering, humiliation, and abuse.

There is no possibility that libertarianism comes with these types of things. Libertarianism is a glorious political and economic philosophy that comes with life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and harmony among people.

4. Americas immigration-control system is based on the core socialist principle of central planning. Government officials centrally plan the movements of millions of people in what is one of the most complex markets in history. Socialist central planning produces what Ludwig von Mises called planned chaos, which is what we have had on the border for around 100 years. Socialism and libertarianism are opposite philosophies.

These are the four obstacles that libertarian proponents of immigration controls face in seeking to have other libertarians adopt their system. Of course, all four obstacles are insurmountable, unlike their Berlin Wall along the border.

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Four Obstacles Facing Libertarian Proponents of Border Controls The Future of Freedom Foundation - The Future of Freedom Foundation

Weeks before the former President Donald Trump is scheduled to accept the Republican presidential nomination for the third time, he will speak to the Libertarian National Convention, a move that has been described as a bit of a head-scratcher.

Naturally, many Libertarians are not happy about it. Some party members are allergic to anything that might increase their relevance or even the general knowledge that Libertarians exist. But it is also fair to say that Trump has moved his own party in a marginally less small-l libertarian direction, and his election in 2016 elevated conservative thinkers who would like to move it in a radically less libertarian direction.

Libertarians with and without capitalization are correct to question how much their preferred moniker applies to a GOP that mostly continues to lavish funds on the welfare-warfare state despite $1 trillion deficits.

All that throat-clearing out of the way, it is really not much of a head-scratcher as to why Trump would want to address the Libertarians. Third parties and independent candidacies are going to matter more this year than four years ago. Trump would like to ensure that this fact benefits him at least as much as it did in 2016.

Despite their best efforts at self-sabotage, the Libertarian Party is markedly better than other third parties at getting on state ballots. It has also done a better job at getting votes these past few election cycles.The LP presidential ticket received 1,247,923 votes in 2012, 4,489,233 of them in 2016, and 1,865,535 in 2020.

Keep an eye on that last number. Gary Johnson was the presidential nominee in the first two elections. The former Republican governor of New Mexico was the most senior elected official and arguably the biggest name to ever top the Libertarian ticket. While that honor is somewhat like being the tallest building in Topeka (or Santa Fe), it might explain why the party was able to break its raw vote record twice and achieve its highest percentage of the popular vote ever in 2016.

But even with the relatively obscure Jo Jorgensen as the 2020 nominee, Libertarians were once again able easily to exceed the million-vote threshold, get its second-highest number of raw votes ever, and finish third nationally. (My most viral post on X was about Jorgensen getting bitten by a bat, back in its pre-Musk iteration as Twitter.) That suggests the LPs post-Johnson breakthrough might have some staying power.

Johnson didnt get as much blame for Trumps election as the Green Partys Jill Stein, though he did receive some. But not only did he win more votes overall; he probably took more from Republicans, leaving his impact more ambiguous than Steins. (I voted for Johnson that year too, abortion misgivings aside, though I probably wouldnt have if I had known Trump had apologized to Pat Buchanan for things said during their short-lived fight for the 2000 Reform Party nomination.)

Which brings us to another reason Trump is wise to speak to the Libertarians: the rise of the Mises Caucus, which includes the sort of paleolibertarians who supported Buchanans presidential bids, especially in the 1992 and 1996 Republican primaries. Some of their votes are potentially gettable for Trump. And is Trump really less libertarian and more of a statist than Mike Gravel?

If your politics can be advanced through a major party like the GOP, they probably should be. Ron Paul accomplished more through his two Republican presidential campaigns, during which he did not get particularly close to the nomination, than he did winning the Libertarian Party nod in 1988.

Pat Robertsons 1988 GOP campaign, for which some Ron Paul 2008 and 2012 lieutenants worked, similarly boosted the organized Christian Right without the 700 Club host having much of a shot past the Iowa caucuses.

With Robert F. Kennedy Jr. making his own overtures to the Libertarian Party, Trump should want to compete for anti-establishment and right-libertarian votes. This is an election that could be decided by tens of thousands of votes in six or seven states. It was not long ago that the Libertarian Party was blamed for Republicans losing some close Senate races.

The only head-scratcher is why the Libertarian Party would want Trump to dominate the headlines coming out of their convention, during which they will presumably nominate their own presidential candidate. Some past Republican presidential candidates could probably tell the LP aspirants about Trumps ability to suck up all the oxygen in a room.

Continued here:
Trump's Libertarian Convention Speech a 'Head-Scratcher'for the Libertarians - The American Conservative

Ten vexing issues for the party, 10 candidates for you.

DonaldTrump intends to address the Libertarian Partys presidential nominating convention on May 25. Hes not abandoning the Republican Party or pretending to be a libertarian but presumably will try to convince libertarians to vote for him in November anyway. Some may.

No matter how strange Trump may be, he presents libertarian potential voters with the same basic (though complex) dilemma any Republican presidential candidate does: At his best, hes slightly less pro-government than the Democratic candidate, which isnt much of an argument in favor of casting a vote for Trump, but you need to be the candidate with the most votes to win the presidency in the U.S. system, so voting for anyone other than one of the two leading contenders is arguably a waste of time, at best a symbolic gesture.

Trump, though, will tell them hes not just the lesser (maybe) of two evils, hes stupendousthe best president ever. Libertarian Party National Committee chair Angela McArdle, despite praising Trump, claims the Party will not take all this lying down but will press upon Trump ten issues they have with his governing style. McArdles dads a preacher, and this will perhaps be a bit like a rebellious Martin Luther nailing his 95 Theses to a Catholic Church door.

Or perhaps Trump will roll the LP with a bunch of time-wasting, self-aggrandizing bluster, as he somehow manages to do to whole nations. So, I will note here just 10 of many possible issues I think libertarians should have with Trump, in case the convention is full of unphilosophical distractions and doesnt manage to press its own 10 issues upon Trumps mind.

Trumps mania for preventing free individuals (of any nation) traveling to whatever parcels of private property will have them (if the travelers can get to them without damaging the land or property of people who for whatever reason dont want to facilitate the travel), his almost blind faith not only in government border patrols but government police in general, his willingness to (for instance) sell billions in weapons to the Saudis while talking like an anti-interventionist, his manifest hunger to use government to punish his enemies and critics, his penchant for undoing existing arrangements and replacing them with near-identical ones that merely add his thumbprint (see: trade treaties), his brazenly big-government-oriented dreams of decreeing special innovation-incubating cities, his cavalier and record-setting deficit spending, his puerile inability to make rational or civil arguments, his embrace of the war against drugs and other draconian measures, and his general narcissistic faith in himself and craven loyalists rather than predictable and transparent procedures are all ample reasons for libertarians to reject the man and his presidential candidacies.

Thats not to say hes the worst thing that could happen to the U.S. On a list of 10 somewhat-plausible 2024 presidential election winners, Id say hes about the sixth-best option. The Libertarian Party convention attendees may disagree with me. They might even nominate him for president if things get really nutty, who knows. I was present at the New York State Libertarian Party convention in the 1990s that nominated Howard Stern for governor, so anything is possible.

The ideal outcome in this or any election is that no one is elected and government everywhere is simply abolished, enabling people to run their own individual lives. Second-best would be some highly principled and knowledgeable libertarian of my own choosing, Party member or not (maybe Argentinas Milei, if we abolish those cumbersome immigration rules I mentioned earlier?). Third would be thinktank president Jacob Hornberger, who strikes me as the most rational and articulate of the actual current crop of people vying for the Libertarian Party nomination. Fourth would be whoever the LP actually ends up choosing, assuming its at least vaguely some kind of libertarian, all libertarians being preferable to the usual crop of eagerly-governing authoritarians who get elected in this world. Fifth, hypothetically, is some very market-oriented and smart last-minute replacement the Republicans whip up at the convention if it looks like Trump is headed to jail, maybe a Steve Forbes but preferably not just some party-line stiff.

Sixth,I suppose, is Trump himself, who at least sounds ornery enough this time around to shutter some agencies. Seventhand lately competing with Trump for the love of the Libertarians in a tight race where both men know a few votes could be pivotalis Robert F. Kennedy, whos undeniably a leftist and statist but sounds sincerely interested in challenging the establishment, cronyism, and the intelligence sector that he suspects of killing two of his relatives (maybe hed even be better than Trumpand Kennedy lately sounds almost Lewis Lapham-like in his desire to restore a sort of Jeffersonian classical liberal order, or at least classic liberal, as he explicitly labels it in a recent ad, be his notions of such an order laissez-faire or not). Eighth, then, is Biden, who, as you may recall, is currently president. Ninth is whoever the Democrats might be tempted to replace him with at the last minutelikely to be worse, not better, than Joe because the replacement would almost certainly be more alert, and fully-conscious Democrats do far more damage (as Kamala Harris may well prove in mid-2025 if Joe retires a few months into his second term).

Tied for 10th, Id put outsider candidates Cornel West and Jill Stein, both smarter than most politicians and admirably averse to the two-party duopoly but very likely to devote their energies to things I consider counterproductive, like radically quasi-Marxist wealth redistribution or more onerous green programs, respectively.

Well find out in less than three weeks whether something magical, disastrous, or irrelevant comes out of the Libertarian convention. I wont hold my breath waiting for a perfectly rational blending of populist and individualist philosophies to begin then, no matter how many essays I could write about why that might be nice, and no matter how many pipe-smoking paleos with waxed mustaches would swoon at the idea. I must be realistic.

ToddSeavey is the author of Libertarianism for Beginners and is on X at @ToddSeavey

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Trump Talks to Libertarians - Splice Today

FreedomWorks was a central organ in the tea party. The group held rallies that flexed and motivated its grassroots supporters. Upstart conservatives courted the group and relied on its money. The establishment of the GOP feared and resented FreedomWorks.

Now FreedomWorks is no more. FreedomWorks dissolved on May 8.

Politicos story on the late groups tumultuous final years frames it as a clash of ideologies, a dissonance between the libertarian principles of FreedomWorks leadership and the MAGA-style populism of its members.

Former FreedomWorks President Adam Brandon also used this terminology, saying he did my best to balance the two competing ideologies, which Politico describes as libertarianism vs. populism.

This is a standard framing in Washington, where insiders tend to see things in terms of policy preferences, principles, and beliefs. But if were being more precise, the tension here wasnt a clash between ideologies.

Some questions:

While the folks at the head of FreedomWorks tended to be libertarian, was libertarianism really what the group embodied and advanced?

Likewise, does it make sense to characterize, as Politico does, populism as the anti-libertarian force within FreedomWorks and the broader Right?

It doesnt, I believe.

Heres a more telling quote from that same article: A lot of our base aged, and so the new activists that have come in [with] Trump, they tend to be much more populist, Brandon said. So you look at the base and that just kind of shifted.

Again, I think Brandon is mostly but not entirely correct here. The key point is that the new activists came in with Donald Trump. Thats important because of what the former president represents.

And what does Trump represent? Its not exactly populism. It would be more precise to say Trump represents Trump.

Our staff became divided into MAGA and Never Trump factions, Brandon wrote in one internal memo.

Thats more accurate, and its more telling. This isnt really about ideas and policies as much as its about personalities. And this is the key to understanding the transition from the tea party era to the Trump Era.

The tea party era was characterized by candidates who were free market ideologues, but the wave they rode into power was mostly an anti-establishment wave. In the days after the Wall Street bailout, Obamacare, and the porky stimulus, anti-establishment meant anti-big government, and so it played nicely with libertarianism.

In other words, you could call 2010-era FreedomWorks a populist force.

FreedomWorks and the somewhat similar Club for Growth were mostly arrayed against big business and K Street lobbyists back in 2010. In contested primaries, the establishment candidates had lobbyist and big business funding, while the tea party candidates had FreedomWorks and Club for Growth funding.

Mike Lee, one of the marquee tea party insurgents in 2010, defeated Bob Bennett, who was branded Bailout Bob.

Back then, a few of us touted a libertarian populism as the central ideology of the tea party. FreedomWorks was with us in this populist stance.

Well, come 2016, GOP populism looked different, and we gained a more refined understanding of the energy behind the tea party. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) put it best:

All this time, Massie explained, I thought they were voting for libertarian Republicans. But after some soul searching, I realized when they voted for Rand and Ron [Paul] and me in these primaries, they werent voting for libertarian ideas they were voting for the craziest son of a bitch in the race. And Donald Trump won best in class.

Real leaders dont merely ride waves; they direct the forces. Trump rode in a populist wave, and he steered American conservatism and populism toward a very specific cause: himself.

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This left the erstwhile libertarian populists saddled with a base that didnt care about lower taxes or taking on cronyism but instead cared about supporting Trump and punching the media in the face.

There are plenty of organizations that could do that better than FreedomWorks. The groups time had come and gone.

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What was the tea party? What is Trumpism?: On populism and FreedomWorks - Washington Examiner