The Libertarian Party Is Not About 'Education' - And Can Never Be

In January of 2020 I was happy to keep trudging along in my podcasting and theorizing about a fantasyland that will never exist: Ancapistan. A magical place where all property is private and the currency is what you want it to be. Reality finally set in for me. What I didn’t know was what a slur the word “reality” was to so many. Mention its derivative “real,” and add “world” to it, and the wailing and gnashing of teeth can be heard from 1,000 miles away. It appears that when one has created their utopia (heh) and decided that it could one day exist, shooting holes in that belief is the ideological equivalent of drawing pictures of Muhammad. 

On to the clickbaity title of this post… or is it?  

I have come to the conclusion that the Libertarian Party (LP) is good for nothing except providing a platform for a bunch of unremarkable people to attain status within a fringe group. And to be fair I experience this often. If I attend a libertarian event, many people thank me for the show or maybe want to take a picture together. Then I walk across the street to a supermarket and no one knows who I am, thankfully. But I don’t do this for fame and glory. If I wanted to, I could pander to larger groups or maybe even individuals who have incredible wealth like the Wilks or remaining Koch brother. But I do still have an ideological goal. I’m just not as rigid as I used to be about how it is to be attained. 

Yet, when it comes to the LP there is the old argument - as I am about to prove to you - that the party is about educating the masses. The party formed in 1971 and Rothbard destroyed that argument in 1972. To quote Murray from the May 1972 edition of Libertarian Forum in the section titled “The Party Once More”: 

More substantially, Mr. Nolan (founder of the Libertarian Party) writes that the primary purpose of the Libertarian Party is not immediate electoral victory but to educate the public in libertarian ideas. We never thought otherwise. But the problem with this approach - a long-standing objective of minor parties - is that the psychology of the mass of the public being educated is overlooked. Let us take, for example, the poor old Socialist Labor Party, which, doggedly, every four years for nearly a century, has been nominating Presidential candidates and getting them on the ballot. What impact on the electorate has the SLP achieved? The problem is that the party has been so small, so flagrantly unviable, that the educational impact for socialism by the SLP has ranged sternly from zero to negative. For what is the reaction of the public? The reaction of the average citizen is that here is a tiny collection of kooks making a mockery of the electoral process (which the average person unfortunately reveres) in presuming to run someone for the Presidency. In short, the SLP is invariably written off as a bunch of crackpots, and their ideology often goes down the drain with them. 

So much of this seems familiar. 

But I can anticipate an objection from the ideologically possessed: “But socialism has become a viable ideological alternative in the US!” And it has done so in spite of the chicanery of fringe electoral politics. Socialism in the USA has taken hold because those who espouse its “superiority” realized they needed to take control of the reigns of education, THEN they could change the culture enough to make socialism politically viable. While I praise anyone who has embraced homeschooling, the overwhelming majority NEVER will. If you want to change the culture you have to understand where culture is made and it’s not in a fringe, political party. If it is to be made in a party at all! 

Someone else will of course invoke the great Ron Paul. Sure, great, what party did he run for president in that sparked a “revolution”? When he ran for president under the LP banner in 1988, was there an ideological revolution? Reminding the ideologically possessed that Ron Paul accomplished what he did (some argue he only changed people personally and did not change politics at all) as a Republican causes them to descend into hyper-cognitive-dissonance.  

Others will call Trump’s feats a third-party run but again, he was only able to smash the regime GOPers because he shared a stage with them. An LP candidate is not getting anywhere near a debate stage with the regime candidates so please jettison that fantasy.  

Education does not come from third-parties. Third parties are for tree huggers, or guys with “Taxation is Theft” top hats or boots on their head. One does not need a damaging party affiliation (actively anti-racist) to get on “alternative media” programs that have 10X the audience of CNN, or cable news shows for that matter.

Participation in third-parties diverts time, and money, from endeavors that make real change whether that be increasing one’s wealth or working in local politics where real change is felt. This isn’t hard to understand. I broke my programming on the “let’s use the party for education” fallacy. You can as well.