I am writing this at Porcfest, an annual libertarian gathering in northern New Hampshire put on by the Free State Project. Lots of very free range kids, some of them selling things, a lot of well behaved dogs, a few people openly carrying firearms, a weird cultural mix of hippy and libertarian gun culture. I may write another post about it; this one is about an issue for libertarians posed for me by a talk I just heard by Angela McArdle, sometime chair of the Libertarian Party and currently of the Mises Caucus.
"If the party is seen as visibly supporting Trump, as it will be by anyone who listened to McArdle’s webbed talk, it will be seen as sharing the responsibility for all of his actions, some of them far from libertarian."
I have no great issue with the rest of your piece, including its core premise. Utterly reasonable.
But the second half of the quote above is just not true. Heck, other Democrat politicians are not always seen as sharing the responsibility for the actions of Democrat presidents!
Those who voted for Trump do not share responsibility for his every action. Politics has never been this way. Whether political campaigners try to spin things this way or not.
This is the rare time that you are suggesting that people are stupid. With your use of the passive ("will be seen as"), you imply that others are without agency or a brain.
You are also violating Bastiat's "the unseen" principle here as well, in a way that most ordinary people even do not. They understood the choice was between Trump and Kamala, not between Trump and a libertarian candidate and not between Trump and a generic non-person as candidate.
I am not so sure as you. I agree that fundamentally voting for someone does not make you complicit in every one of their actions; obviously they don't consult you after the fact of their election. On the other hand, if you vote for someone who says they will do X, and then they do it, well... I wouldn't tell them "This is what you wanted" because obviously what comes out of the process isn't what you expect generally, but then again if someone votes for moonbeams and rainbows blended with snake oil, that's kind of on them to know better. (I am thinking of the PPACA aka Obamacare here, for instance.)
When it comes to what people will see this as, and whether or not they will say "see, libertarianism wants this!", I think that is in fact likely. Mostly I think it is likely because people already do that, on both the left and right. Both parties throw libertarians under the bus, in part because both parties have strong "I want to tell people what to do" wings I suspect. As it stands, whether or not a particular policy even is libertarian in the philosophical sense or just "held by @Rando_Calrissian420, self proclaimed Libertarian on Twitter" doesn't seem to matter. Libertarian is often used as a by word for "those crazy extremists" by both parties.
So I don't think it is too crazy or unreasonable to think that if the LP publicly supports Trump, people are more likely to believe "those things Trump did are what Libertarians want," if only because most people can't be bothered to think through philosophies, including the ones they themselves profess to hold. To be fair, libertarians argue a good bit over what is or isn't proper so it can be hard to know from the outside, but the random crap people claim is libertarian suggests to me that most people have no idea what it means other than "the craziest of the other tribe".
What “people will see” is that you are less opposed to / more in favor NET of the candidate you supported than the other major party candidate.
Most of the time, it is no more, no less than that.
The place that I will meet you halfway is that you are at least signaling that you are not MASSIVELY opposed to any of the winning candidate’s *biggest* issues.
So in the case of Trump, you indicate you are not massively opposed to ending DEI, stopping illegal immigration, deporting illegal immigrant criminals, stopping government spending on leftist priorities, raising tariffs on China.
It STILL doesn’t indicate you are in favor of those things. But I grant you are signaling at least partial acceptance of those things as less worse than what you would have gotten from the other side.
P.S. that a relatively few not-at-all thoughtful people may believe as you and DF suggest is likely true but surely irrelevant. First, because those specific people are unlikely to ever support the LP ever, period. And second, because at least as many, and arguably more, people would see LP non-support of the GOP, at least in swing states, as tacit support for Democrats and *their* agenda.
I.e. you can’t have it only one way, if you insist on going down this simplistic, “checkers” path.
Yes, I don't disagree with you much, just the overly strong point about how people see actions. For instance, I suspect most libertarians are against raising tariffs on China (or anyone else) as that is a rather fundamental requirement of the philosophy, but most people who are only aware that libertarians are "right coded" won't believe that. However, to the extent that the LP is distinct from the Republican party, it seems to me it behooves them to be very clear about what they disagree on, even if they agree on many things.
David, I agree with the thrust of your argument, but you’re about 5 years too late. The LP and, more broadly, the term “Libertarian” no longer represent what they represented to you in the past. Your average “libertarian” looks more like Tulsi in their foreign policy, RFK in their views on science, and Trump regarding his views on immigrants or trade.
Classical liberals, GMU, Reason, CATO, and the rest of those groups lost (or never bothered fighting directly). The soul of the libertarian party and platform is now firmly populist and isolationist. I don’t like it either, but the sooner we acknowledge that the sooner we can get to finding solutions that work to reverse this trend.
My impression from Porcfest is that there are a fair number of people in the movement with nutty views of one sort or another but also quite a lot of reasonable people.
Oh hey, I made roughly that argument to AndyG a moment ago; could have benefitted from reading more of the comments :)
I am a little skeptical that the average "libertarian" actually matches that description, but I agree that they are believed to match that description. The LP has always been a bit of a mess, which is why most libertarians make the distinction between small l and big L libertarian. For at least 20 years the party and the philosophy have been rather different.
However, the way the media and parties talk about libertarians is also pretty well divorced from any reality. I suppose to be fair, most of what they talk about is also far from reality, so they are consistent.
It would probably be easier to form a new party, untainted by the last few years. Something with an unmistakable name which is harder to co-opt. "Individualist" comes to mind, but it's a terrible name. "MYOB" gets the message across. "Tanstaafl" has a nice heritage, but is to easy to twist, like the idiot who wanted trade barriers to protect garlic as a national security threat.
Somebody in one of the comment threads, or possibly a conversation at Porcfest, had a "Capitalist" party, apparently with a large Objectivist element. The problem with that label is that "capitalist" is less a label for an ideology than for a particular role within a capitalist society.
I don't agree that the Socialists were the reason the mainstream parties became more socialist. I believe they did so because politicians, by definition, are authoritarians who like telling everyone else what to do, and governments are the perfect vehicle for doing so. Socialists merely provided new excuses for expanding government.
"True" libertarians will never have that success, because they preach that people can solve problems on their own, and the last thing any bureaucrat or politician wants is to solve the problems that put them in power. Spreading the idea that people don't need government goes against their very way of life.
That is why I do not approve of the Mises takeover. I don't expect the LP to win any nation-wide political contests, or even state-wide. A few county elections, maybe. Inviting Trump to speak didn't bother me; trying to explicitly trade LP support, to tell LP members to vote for Trump, was the end of my support for the LP.
I want a national party that has principles and doesn't care about currying favor with the kleptocrats. If a libertarian is elected to some county board of supervisors or a city council, I don't expect someone who demands his right to come to meetings nude and smoking pot. I expect a push for fiscal responsibility, reining in police abuses, and holding civil servants to account. Rand Paul and Thomas Massie are doing about the best they can, and that is good enough for me. Oliver Chase? Give me a break. Joy whats-her-name? No thanks. Gary Johnson was OK the first time, with hints of Rand Paul and Thomas Massie, but the second time he insisted on Weld, and that was terrible.
I want a part with principles, to shame the other parties, and the current LP is not that.
Inviting Trump to speak was fine, better if they had also gotten someone from the Biden campaign. We want the major parties competing for our votes — but not for LP support.
I think you hit the nail on the head there re: socialism. Socialism/communism/fascism/what have you are all excuses for people to take power over other people, and as such they are relentlessly popular with those who want power over others. Socialism is particularly popular because it sounds nice, so people can control others for "their own good."
About the only way libertarian thought can spread is by pointing out how often the government creates the very problems it tries to later solve, and people getting experience with the short end of the government stick.
David, you present the banal, stereotypical dilemma of the Libertarian Party: Either ideological purity or electoral opportunism.
There is a third way.
That is, the LP should consistently present itself as the "Break Glass in Case of Fire" Party. Everyone knows that the former republic is headed for a firestorm of financial reckoning but, like a small animal frozen before a snake, is paralyzed to save itself. Strategically, the LP should focus on stepping into power when the Uniparty immolates itself. Tactically, this means:
• A relentless, single-minded focus on how the LP can put out the coming fire.
• Recruit the Presidential candidate who can best articulate that impending disaster. Silly-talking candidates like Gary Johnson (2012, 2016) are out; former GOP hacks like Bob Barr are out.
• Create a shadow cabinet of capable officers for every high office, including non-members who have libertarian leanings, with alternates for each post. Governorships should only be suggested for serious LP candidates, without any obsession to offer 50 of them.
• Restrict the enormous ballot access spending to strictly the Presidential level. Yes, national & local access sometimes form a package deal, but currently the LP currently tries to fill the whole ticket, bestinking itself with frankly nonserious State and local candidates that no one would trust with public office.
• Local tactics should be focused solely on sharp questioning of Uniparty politicos at town hall events and social media.
• National and State LP leadership should do thorough vetting of members who will be eligible to stand before a camera with some respectability. Those who refuse to make an acquaintance with a shaving kit and suit and tie can work unseen as functional grunts. Embarrassments like the clown at the 2024 LP convention who strutted around naked but for a scant animal hide should be pitched into the street.
No one's going to look to any outsider like the LP as their savior, and a savior President while Congress is still populated by the old horde is the path to dictatorship.
On the other hand, people might be looking for savior ideas, and libertarians, not necessarily the LP, could be trying to put possible ones out there. Auctioning off federal assets to reduce or eliminate the debt is a possibility discussed in an earlier comment thread. I don't know if the claim that they would more than suffice is true, but it is the sort of policy that is unthinkable — until it suddenly looks like the way out of crisis.
Agree 100%. A Libertarian party has a very different nature from that of a party that is oriented towards yielding power. Some people don't see this, and I suspect some people try to obscure it, because playing the traditional political game yields more concentrated benefits, while merely using the political game as a vehicle for ideas yields dispersed benefits.
Carrying the argument a little farther, if the LP has enough political power to have valuable favors to sell, endorsing a major party candidate or running or not running a candidate who will pull votes from one candidate to the benefit of the other, it will attract people who want to sell them. As a rule, professionals beat amateurs.
At that point the party may shift its priorities towards improving its position as a seller of political favors.
"McArdle announced her intention to resign as LNC Chair, citing new opportunities in the Second Trump Administration, likely under Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the Department of Health and Human Services." (Wiki)
Very thoughtful. I got a new label for myself, too: libertarian Republican! No one knows what "classical liberal" means anymore, anyway.
I've long admired the Socialist Party strategy of pushing ideas into the mainstream. It worked -- for them.
Though I appreciate that the Libertarian Party cannot become a party of big tent principles, and certainly not contradictory principles, I do wonder if the LP requires too much ideological purity. Some years ago I had occasion to meet and talk with a quite prominent libertarian academic. He asked me what my political views were. I answered: Like yours, plus statutory old age, accident, unemployment, and health insurance. He responded scornfully: Oh, a liberaltarian!
Your additions are anathema to everything individualists stand for. All can be provided by the private sector. None need government coercion. Three of them by their very name (insurance) give that away, and the idea that everyone has the same wants for old age is the opposite of individualism.
McArdle successfully supported a left of center LP candidate for the presidential nomination on the theory that he would pull votes from Biden2 and, in a webbed talk delivered after the LP convention, advised libertarians to push his campaign in blue states, said that her objective was to defeat Joe Biden.
Meanwhile, we have a President who has ramped up law enforcement abuse and bombed Iran.
I am an ex-libertarian, having dropped my support of these principles long before we met.
There were two reasons. One was that I became convinced that libertarianism, like other isms, was only workable if human nature changed significantly and implausibly. That's the one I usually mention - it's polite and not especially insulting.
The other reason, however, is, to quote the Christian Bible, "by their fruits shall ye know them". I strongly disliked the results of choices made by vocal libertarians. And this is long before Libertarians (capital L in this case) supported Trump. What I saw was that while libertarians explicitly eschew being the one who starts violence, somehow their choices had a significant tendency to result in other people being hurt, and they didn't appear to care. The philosophy is explicitly anti-altruism, so this is somewhat consistent. But I'm not signing up for a philosophy that either attracts primarily less caring people, or reduces the level of caring about others in those who join it.
Signing up to support Trump is just more of the same - more power for us, and never mind the side effects. I'll use it in anti-libertarian arguments, as it's a beaut of a soundbite. But I'm not even sure it's an escalation of a pattern I'd already noted.
p.s. You do not personally appear to be a classic, non-generous libertarian. This is absolutely not a comment about you.
My meaning was indeed to focus on "savior ideas" as you say instead of savior leaders, whom Chartertopia rightly fears.
As for one aspect of the coming conflagration – the national debt – I don't see how it can be managed, let alone repaid. It will have to be repudiated, as detailed here:
"If the party is seen as visibly supporting Trump, as it will be by anyone who listened to McArdle’s webbed talk, it will be seen as sharing the responsibility for all of his actions, some of them far from libertarian."
I have no great issue with the rest of your piece, including its core premise. Utterly reasonable.
But the second half of the quote above is just not true. Heck, other Democrat politicians are not always seen as sharing the responsibility for the actions of Democrat presidents!
Those who voted for Trump do not share responsibility for his every action. Politics has never been this way. Whether political campaigners try to spin things this way or not.
This is the rare time that you are suggesting that people are stupid. With your use of the passive ("will be seen as"), you imply that others are without agency or a brain.
You are also violating Bastiat's "the unseen" principle here as well, in a way that most ordinary people even do not. They understood the choice was between Trump and Kamala, not between Trump and a libertarian candidate and not between Trump and a generic non-person as candidate.
I am not so sure as you. I agree that fundamentally voting for someone does not make you complicit in every one of their actions; obviously they don't consult you after the fact of their election. On the other hand, if you vote for someone who says they will do X, and then they do it, well... I wouldn't tell them "This is what you wanted" because obviously what comes out of the process isn't what you expect generally, but then again if someone votes for moonbeams and rainbows blended with snake oil, that's kind of on them to know better. (I am thinking of the PPACA aka Obamacare here, for instance.)
When it comes to what people will see this as, and whether or not they will say "see, libertarianism wants this!", I think that is in fact likely. Mostly I think it is likely because people already do that, on both the left and right. Both parties throw libertarians under the bus, in part because both parties have strong "I want to tell people what to do" wings I suspect. As it stands, whether or not a particular policy even is libertarian in the philosophical sense or just "held by @Rando_Calrissian420, self proclaimed Libertarian on Twitter" doesn't seem to matter. Libertarian is often used as a by word for "those crazy extremists" by both parties.
So I don't think it is too crazy or unreasonable to think that if the LP publicly supports Trump, people are more likely to believe "those things Trump did are what Libertarians want," if only because most people can't be bothered to think through philosophies, including the ones they themselves profess to hold. To be fair, libertarians argue a good bit over what is or isn't proper so it can be hard to know from the outside, but the random crap people claim is libertarian suggests to me that most people have no idea what it means other than "the craziest of the other tribe".
You don’t seem to be disagreeing with me much.
What “people will see” is that you are less opposed to / more in favor NET of the candidate you supported than the other major party candidate.
Most of the time, it is no more, no less than that.
The place that I will meet you halfway is that you are at least signaling that you are not MASSIVELY opposed to any of the winning candidate’s *biggest* issues.
So in the case of Trump, you indicate you are not massively opposed to ending DEI, stopping illegal immigration, deporting illegal immigrant criminals, stopping government spending on leftist priorities, raising tariffs on China.
It STILL doesn’t indicate you are in favor of those things. But I grant you are signaling at least partial acceptance of those things as less worse than what you would have gotten from the other side.
P.S. that a relatively few not-at-all thoughtful people may believe as you and DF suggest is likely true but surely irrelevant. First, because those specific people are unlikely to ever support the LP ever, period. And second, because at least as many, and arguably more, people would see LP non-support of the GOP, at least in swing states, as tacit support for Democrats and *their* agenda.
I.e. you can’t have it only one way, if you insist on going down this simplistic, “checkers” path.
Yes, I don't disagree with you much, just the overly strong point about how people see actions. For instance, I suspect most libertarians are against raising tariffs on China (or anyone else) as that is a rather fundamental requirement of the philosophy, but most people who are only aware that libertarians are "right coded" won't believe that. However, to the extent that the LP is distinct from the Republican party, it seems to me it behooves them to be very clear about what they disagree on, even if they agree on many things.
Would that all libertarians were indeed “right-coded” with their votes in swing states… 😏
But I have no issue with your argument.
As I have no issue with DF’s suggested LP MO.
I consider DF the most pragmatic/reasonable “hard-core” libertarian I’m familiar with (and to leave no doubt, to me that is a high compliment).
I also consider almost all of his arguments fair and reasonable, even when I disagree with him.
But this “will be seen as…” portion was IMO the rare weak argument - the kind he usually correctly and insightfully differs with - that he made.
David, I agree with the thrust of your argument, but you’re about 5 years too late. The LP and, more broadly, the term “Libertarian” no longer represent what they represented to you in the past. Your average “libertarian” looks more like Tulsi in their foreign policy, RFK in their views on science, and Trump regarding his views on immigrants or trade.
Classical liberals, GMU, Reason, CATO, and the rest of those groups lost (or never bothered fighting directly). The soul of the libertarian party and platform is now firmly populist and isolationist. I don’t like it either, but the sooner we acknowledge that the sooner we can get to finding solutions that work to reverse this trend.
My impression from Porcfest is that there are a fair number of people in the movement with nutty views of one sort or another but also quite a lot of reasonable people.
Oh hey, I made roughly that argument to AndyG a moment ago; could have benefitted from reading more of the comments :)
I am a little skeptical that the average "libertarian" actually matches that description, but I agree that they are believed to match that description. The LP has always been a bit of a mess, which is why most libertarians make the distinction between small l and big L libertarian. For at least 20 years the party and the philosophy have been rather different.
However, the way the media and parties talk about libertarians is also pretty well divorced from any reality. I suppose to be fair, most of what they talk about is also far from reality, so they are consistent.
It would probably be easier to form a new party, untainted by the last few years. Something with an unmistakable name which is harder to co-opt. "Individualist" comes to mind, but it's a terrible name. "MYOB" gets the message across. "Tanstaafl" has a nice heritage, but is to easy to twist, like the idiot who wanted trade barriers to protect garlic as a national security threat.
Somebody in one of the comment threads, or possibly a conversation at Porcfest, had a "Capitalist" party, apparently with a large Objectivist element. The problem with that label is that "capitalist" is less a label for an ideology than for a particular role within a capitalist society.
I don't agree that the Socialists were the reason the mainstream parties became more socialist. I believe they did so because politicians, by definition, are authoritarians who like telling everyone else what to do, and governments are the perfect vehicle for doing so. Socialists merely provided new excuses for expanding government.
"True" libertarians will never have that success, because they preach that people can solve problems on their own, and the last thing any bureaucrat or politician wants is to solve the problems that put them in power. Spreading the idea that people don't need government goes against their very way of life.
That is why I do not approve of the Mises takeover. I don't expect the LP to win any nation-wide political contests, or even state-wide. A few county elections, maybe. Inviting Trump to speak didn't bother me; trying to explicitly trade LP support, to tell LP members to vote for Trump, was the end of my support for the LP.
I want a national party that has principles and doesn't care about currying favor with the kleptocrats. If a libertarian is elected to some county board of supervisors or a city council, I don't expect someone who demands his right to come to meetings nude and smoking pot. I expect a push for fiscal responsibility, reining in police abuses, and holding civil servants to account. Rand Paul and Thomas Massie are doing about the best they can, and that is good enough for me. Oliver Chase? Give me a break. Joy whats-her-name? No thanks. Gary Johnson was OK the first time, with hints of Rand Paul and Thomas Massie, but the second time he insisted on Weld, and that was terrible.
I want a part with principles, to shame the other parties, and the current LP is not that.
Inviting Trump to speak was fine, better if they had also gotten someone from the Biden campaign. We want the major parties competing for our votes — but not for LP support.
I think you hit the nail on the head there re: socialism. Socialism/communism/fascism/what have you are all excuses for people to take power over other people, and as such they are relentlessly popular with those who want power over others. Socialism is particularly popular because it sounds nice, so people can control others for "their own good."
About the only way libertarian thought can spread is by pointing out how often the government creates the very problems it tries to later solve, and people getting experience with the short end of the government stick.
David, you present the banal, stereotypical dilemma of the Libertarian Party: Either ideological purity or electoral opportunism.
There is a third way.
That is, the LP should consistently present itself as the "Break Glass in Case of Fire" Party. Everyone knows that the former republic is headed for a firestorm of financial reckoning but, like a small animal frozen before a snake, is paralyzed to save itself. Strategically, the LP should focus on stepping into power when the Uniparty immolates itself. Tactically, this means:
• A relentless, single-minded focus on how the LP can put out the coming fire.
• Recruit the Presidential candidate who can best articulate that impending disaster. Silly-talking candidates like Gary Johnson (2012, 2016) are out; former GOP hacks like Bob Barr are out.
• Create a shadow cabinet of capable officers for every high office, including non-members who have libertarian leanings, with alternates for each post. Governorships should only be suggested for serious LP candidates, without any obsession to offer 50 of them.
• Restrict the enormous ballot access spending to strictly the Presidential level. Yes, national & local access sometimes form a package deal, but currently the LP currently tries to fill the whole ticket, bestinking itself with frankly nonserious State and local candidates that no one would trust with public office.
• Local tactics should be focused solely on sharp questioning of Uniparty politicos at town hall events and social media.
• National and State LP leadership should do thorough vetting of members who will be eligible to stand before a camera with some respectability. Those who refuse to make an acquaintance with a shaving kit and suit and tie can work unseen as functional grunts. Embarrassments like the clown at the 2024 LP convention who strutted around naked but for a scant animal hide should be pitched into the street.
No one's going to look to any outsider like the LP as their savior, and a savior President while Congress is still populated by the old horde is the path to dictatorship.
On the other hand, people might be looking for savior ideas, and libertarians, not necessarily the LP, could be trying to put possible ones out there. Auctioning off federal assets to reduce or eliminate the debt is a possibility discussed in an earlier comment thread. I don't know if the claim that they would more than suffice is true, but it is the sort of policy that is unthinkable — until it suddenly looks like the way out of crisis.
I'm all in favor of that. But I was responding to two particular lines:
"Strategically, the LP should focus on stepping into power when the Uniparty immolates itself."
" Recruit the Presidential candidate who can best articulate that impending disaster."
Admittedly, I may be reading too much into that last line. But coupled with the first, it gives me the creeps.
ETA: THulsey says I did read too much into that last quoted line.
Agree 100%. A Libertarian party has a very different nature from that of a party that is oriented towards yielding power. Some people don't see this, and I suspect some people try to obscure it, because playing the traditional political game yields more concentrated benefits, while merely using the political game as a vehicle for ideas yields dispersed benefits.
Carrying the argument a little farther, if the LP has enough political power to have valuable favors to sell, endorsing a major party candidate or running or not running a candidate who will pull votes from one candidate to the benefit of the other, it will attract people who want to sell them. As a rule, professionals beat amateurs.
At that point the party may shift its priorities towards improving its position as a seller of political favors.
"McArdle announced her intention to resign as LNC Chair, citing new opportunities in the Second Trump Administration, likely under Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the Department of Health and Human Services." (Wiki)
Very thoughtful. I got a new label for myself, too: libertarian Republican! No one knows what "classical liberal" means anymore, anyway.
I've long admired the Socialist Party strategy of pushing ideas into the mainstream. It worked -- for them.
Though I appreciate that the Libertarian Party cannot become a party of big tent principles, and certainly not contradictory principles, I do wonder if the LP requires too much ideological purity. Some years ago I had occasion to meet and talk with a quite prominent libertarian academic. He asked me what my political views were. I answered: Like yours, plus statutory old age, accident, unemployment, and health insurance. He responded scornfully: Oh, a liberaltarian!
Your additions are anathema to everything individualists stand for. All can be provided by the private sector. None need government coercion. Three of them by their very name (insurance) give that away, and the idea that everyone has the same wants for old age is the opposite of individualism.
Four of them.
A club that would take me, I wouldn't join.
They call it old age insurance, but it's not even close, as the others still can claim.
McArdle successfully supported a left of center LP candidate for the presidential nomination on the theory that he would pull votes from Biden2 and, in a webbed talk delivered after the LP convention, advised libertarians to push his campaign in blue states, said that her objective was to defeat Joe Biden.
Meanwhile, we have a President who has ramped up law enforcement abuse and bombed Iran.
I am an ex-libertarian, having dropped my support of these principles long before we met.
There were two reasons. One was that I became convinced that libertarianism, like other isms, was only workable if human nature changed significantly and implausibly. That's the one I usually mention - it's polite and not especially insulting.
The other reason, however, is, to quote the Christian Bible, "by their fruits shall ye know them". I strongly disliked the results of choices made by vocal libertarians. And this is long before Libertarians (capital L in this case) supported Trump. What I saw was that while libertarians explicitly eschew being the one who starts violence, somehow their choices had a significant tendency to result in other people being hurt, and they didn't appear to care. The philosophy is explicitly anti-altruism, so this is somewhat consistent. But I'm not signing up for a philosophy that either attracts primarily less caring people, or reduces the level of caring about others in those who join it.
Signing up to support Trump is just more of the same - more power for us, and never mind the side effects. I'll use it in anti-libertarian arguments, as it's a beaut of a soundbite. But I'm not even sure it's an escalation of a pattern I'd already noted.
p.s. You do not personally appear to be a classic, non-generous libertarian. This is absolutely not a comment about you.
My meaning was indeed to focus on "savior ideas" as you say instead of savior leaders, whom Chartertopia rightly fears.
As for one aspect of the coming conflagration – the national debt – I don't see how it can be managed, let alone repaid. It will have to be repudiated, as detailed here:
https://mises.org/mises-daily/repudiating-national-debt
Someone in an earlier thread cited an old estimate that the assets were more than the debt. Do you disagree? I don't have any estimate of my own.
I'd say no one can know that until the auction takes place. So, I can't disagree since I can't offer an alternate estimate.
Glad to know I got your meaning wrong.