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Election 2016: Time for Libertarians to Dump Bill Weld

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Libertarian Party Logo
Libertarian Party Logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I didn’t pay much attention in 1972 when vice-presidential candidate Thomas Eagleton was removed from  the Democratic ticket and replaced by Sargent Shriver after it came to light that Eagleton had a record of psychiatric hospitalizations. I have a pretty good excuse  for being distracted — I was five years old — and I’ve never looked into the mechanics of how that happened. But I’d like to see it happen again, this time in my own party.

The bylaws of the Libertarian Party’s national committee require that committee to “provide full support for the Party’s nominee for President and nominee for Vice-President as long as their campaigns are conducted in accordance with the Platform of the Party.” But they allow the LNC, on a 3/4 vote, to suspend either candidate. The suspension becomes permanent removal unless the candidate successfully appeals it to the party’s judicial committee.

Why on earth would Libertarians want to dump vice-presidential nominee William Weld? To let American voters, especially gun owners, know that the Libertarian Party still supports their rights as it always has.

Weld won the party’s nomination by a nose on the second ballot at the party’s national convention, after presidential nominee Gary Johnson pleaded for him to be chosen. One reason he was a hard sell to Libertarians was his anti-gun record as governor of Massachusetts (he supported and signed an “assault weapons” ban).

During the nomination campaign he went back and forth, telling Libertarians he had changed his views on guns one day, telling CNN he hadn’t changed his views on guns the next day.

Since the nomination, Weld has campaigned vigorously against the party’s platform — not just on gun issues but on due process rights — often spouting nonsense that makes him sound as ignorant and as nutty as Donald Trump at his worst.

Here’s Weld talking to REVOLT 2 VOTE correspondent Amrit Singh during the Democratic National Convention:

“You know the five-shot rifle, that’s a standard military rifle. The problem is if you attach a clip to it so it can fire more shells, and if you remove the pin so that it becomes an automatic weapon. And those are independent criminal offenses. That’s when they become essentially a weapon of mass destruction. The problem with handguns is probably even worse than the problem of the AR-15. You shouldn’t have anybody who’s on a terrorist watch list be able to buy any gun at all.”

None of the factual claims he makes there are true, nor is his stated position even remotely libertarian.

Libertarians support gun rights. Libertarians support due process, not presumed forfeiture of rights due to inclusion on secret enemies lists. These items are in our platform, and they’re not negotiable.

Some of my fellow Libertarians believe that removing Weld would damage Gary Johnson’s presidential campaign and possibly even irreparably harm the party itself. I disagree.

In this year of all years, doing the right thing — and being SEEN doing the right thing — is pure political gold. It’s time for Bill Weld to go.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Donald Trump: Unprincipled Populist

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English: 1896 Judge cartoon shows William Jenn...
English: 1896 Judge cartoon shows William Jennings Bryan/Populism as a snake swallowing up the mule representing the Democratic party. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign rhetoric is, by most accounts, “populist, ” but that’s a broad description. Trump takes his “populism” from a particular historical tradition — one with a baleful history in American politics.

What is populism, and what’s the problem with Trump’s version of it?

Simplified, populism is the notion that society consists of two classes — the righteous but oppressed masses, and the greedy and oppressive power elites. That notion is timeless, but in modern political theory we can trace it to two French libertarians, Charles Comte and Charles Dunoyer, who correctly identified the righteous masses as “the productive class” (those who make their living through honest labor and exchange) and the greedy power elites as “the political class” (those who make their living, and accrue their power, by working for or buying the favor of the state).

Karl Marx repurposed Comte’s and Dunoyer’s theory and put it in harness to his nutty economic theories. Marx’s righteous masses were “the workers;” his greedy power elites were “the capitalists.” His proposed solutions militated in a non-libertarian direction, but he was at least clear on the relationship between the power elites and the state.  The state, he said, is “the executive committee of the ruling class.”

The final disposition of the ruling class is the rub with most “populist” agitators: They aim to topple the existing ruling class and replace it with another.  They don’t want to get rid of the power elites; they just want to BECOME the power elites. And they promise that their constituents (the righteous masses) will ascend to power with them.

Principled populism aims to end the existing class division altogether. By either limiting or liquidating government, it proposes to make the formation or existence of a “political class” impossible. In a genuine populist society,  a libertarian society, honest labor and free exchange are the sole sources of wealth and power.

Trump’s populism descends from an odd twist in American populism which treats the most marginalized and oppressed groups as the oppressive power elites, the middle class as the oppressed righteous masses, and a demagogue as the savior of those masses. We saw this kind of populism in the Dixiecrat rebellion of 1948, in George Wallace’s independent presidential campaigns, in Nixon’s “southern strategy” and in Pat Buchanan’s upstart Republican and Reform Party efforts.

Trump tells Pennsylvania steel workers and Louisiana carpenters and Kansas farmers that the oppressive power elites aren’t the political class (American government’s taxers, regulators and subsidy eaters), but rather foreign workers crossing the border and foreign governments American politicians get “a bad deal” from.

He tells the white middle class that the power elites aren’t the political class (government police terrorizing our communities), but their fellow productive class Americans (often  African-Americans) who object to assault and even slaughter by those police.

He tells Americans that putting him in power will put them in power.

Don’t fall for it. It’s a lie. Trump’s a fake populist and a run-of-the-mill (except for the really bad hair) power seeker.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Election 2016: Think Three’s a Crowd? Try 2,000

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Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump says Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson is a “fringe candidate.” I’m not sure what definition of “fringe” Trump is using. Johnson is a former governor, elected twice as a Republican in a Democrat-leaning state. Trump’s main presidential qualification seems to be his legendary skill at trolling his opponents on Twitter.

Democratic presidential  nominee Hillary Clinton hasn’t deigned to notice likely Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Instead she’s dispatched proxies like runner-up Bernie Sanders (“We have got to defeat Donald Trump. And we have got to elect Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine. … this is the real world that we live in”) to heap scorn on the practicality of a post-Philadelphia campaign from Clinton’s left.

OK, I admit it: History and money say the odds are with Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton — that one of them will be the next president of the United States. The last time a third party or independent candidate really threatened to win the White House was 1992, when Ross Perot knocked down nearly 20% of the popular vote, having at one time polled ahead of both Republican incumbent George HW Bush and the eventual winner, Democratic nominee Bill Clinton.

But it’s strange year. It feels like almost anything could happen. And while Clinton and Trump are the frontrunners, the field is, well, YUGE.

As of July 27, the Federal Elections Commission lists 1,814 candidates for president on its web site.

It’s true that some of them have dropped out, or have been eliminated in party nomination processes, or haven’t done anything EXCEPT file an FEC “statement of candidacy.” Most of them won’t appear on any state ballots, or even register themselves with election authorities as write-in options.

On the other hand, some candidates who haven’t submitted FEC statements may show up on your ballot this November. Candidates are only required to file an FEC  Form 2 once they’ve raised or spent $5,000. In some states, ballot access doesn’t cost that much.

If you’re an American voter, you have options. Republicans and Democrats will tell you that you’re “wasting your vote” if you don’t pick one of the two leading brands. I don’t think they’re right — what’s the point of voting if you’re not voting for who or what you actually support? — but even if they’re right, well, it’s your vote to waste, isn’t it?

For once I agree with Ted Cruz: If you vote, vote your conscience.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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