The LPMC

From "The Post Libertarian Moment Defined"

The next few Monday’s will be reprints of the sections that make up my new essay The Post-Libertarian Moment Defined which you can download in full by visiting postlibertarianmoment.com. I consider this essay of vital importance to anyone who calls (or as the case may be called) themselves “libertarian.”

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The LPMC

You may think it worthwhile to trace the history of the Libertarian Party back fifty years, but the popular/modern libertarian movement was not concerned with the Libertarian Party until The Libertarian Party Mises Caucus (LPMC) began to recruit members into the political party after the failed Johnson/Weld ticket of 2016. In an Episode 1010 of The Tom Woods Show in 2017, LPMC Chairman Michael Heise when asked about the strategy of the LPMC

“Our first call to action that we’re doing to rally people is to vote for new leadership. There are people in leadership who are more of the Bill Weld ilk, or who don’t represent the message in a way variety that we like or we are used to. So we want to make it more Ron Paul and less Bill Weld.”

The LPMC has been highly successful in recruiting libertarians to their cause, including many high-profile figures like Tom Woods, Scott Horton, and Dave Smith. “The Takeover” as it is now being called, is well underway, and the Caucus expects to take control of the LNC at the National Convention in May of 2022.The caucus has succeeded in taking over the leadership of many state affiliates prior to the national convention.

Before 2020, political action was largely an academic question for libertarians. In the shadow cast by lockdowns, political action has far more dramatic consequences. The LPMC gave libertarians looking to “do something” a place to do it, and a community of like-minded individuals to network with. What is often lost in the criticisms of the LPMC is the recognition that they have become an authority on what political action should look like for libertarians. Whether they have the right prescription is a different matter entirely worthy of its own investigation.

The LPMC has been operating for over 4 years in an effort to take over the Libertarian Party. The standing guard within the Libertarian Party has not welcomed the influx of new activists, in fact, various factions within the LP work explicitly against the LPMC creating a culture war within a party that eschews culture wars. Put another way, there are good, hardworking libertarians who are spending hours of their week and hundreds of their dollars joining a political party that is explicitly rejecting them. The explicit plan is to take over the LNC, and the boards for each of the state affiliates. This will ensure a “real” libertarian runs for president in 2024, though everyone understands a libertarian on the LP ticket will not win in the 2024 election. When the LPMC is successful in taking over the Libertarian Party, they will still face the uphill battle that all third-parties do in the USA. This will make it that much harder for good libertarian candidates to be elected to positions they could win either without a political party, or with the GOP. . . .

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