Tag: libertarians
libertarians

We’ve Reached Peak Libertarianism — And It’s Literally Killing Us

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

We have now reached peak Libertarianism, and this bizarre experiment that has been promoted by the billionaire class for over 40 years is literally killing us.

Back in the years before Reagan, a real estate lobbying group called the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) came up with the idea of creating a political party to justify deregulating the real estate and finance industries so they could make more money. The party would give them ideological and political cover, and they developed an elaborate theology around it.

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GOP’s Libertarians Aren’t All That Libertarian

GOP’s Libertarians Aren’t All That Libertarian

In Republican primary politics, the libertarian brand carries cachet, which explains why many of the GOP’s presidential candidates are battling to position themselves as the one true standard-bearer of small government conservatism. But a funny thing is happening on the way to the Republican primaries: The whole notion of small government libertarianism has been hijacked by politicians who often represent the opposite.

Take Lindsey Graham, whose political action committee is staffing up for the South Carolina Republican senator’s possible presidential run. In an interview with an Iowa newspaper earlier this month, Graham said: “Libertarians want smaller government. Count me in. Libertarians want oversight of government programs and making sure that your freedoms are not easily compromised. Count me in.”

Yet, despite that rhetoric, Graham has been one of the most outspoken proponents of mass surveillance. Indeed, in response to news that the National Security Agency has been vacuuming up millions of Americans’ telephone calls, there was no sign of Graham’s purported small government libertarianism. Instead, he said in 2013, “I’m glad that activity is going on” and declared, “I’m sure we should be doing this.”

Similarly, Texas Republican senator Ted Cruz has reportedly raised millions for his presidential bid, after launching his campaign on a promise of smaller government.

What Cruz doesn’t say in his speeches railing on “unelected bureaucrats” is that he has spent much of his professional life as an unelected government employee, first as an appointee in George W. Bush’s administration, then as an appointee in Texas’ state government. Also unmentioned in Cruz’s announcement speech at Liberty University was data showing that the conservative school has received one of the largest amounts of government Pell Grant funding of any nonprofit university in America, according to the Huffington Post. That fact can be described with a lot of words, but “libertarian” probably isn’t one of them.

Then there is Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul, the candidate who most openly embraces the libertarian brand.

As a senator, he more than others has strayed from GOP orthodoxy and taken some genuinely strong libertarian positions — most notably against the ongoing drug war, surveillance, and the militarization of America’s domestic police force. He has also tried to foment a discussion about the taboo topic of government subsidies to corporations. In January, he said that “we will not cut one penny from the safety net until we’ve cut every penny from corporate welfare” and last month he said that if elected president, he’d slash business subsidies “so I don’t have to cut the Social Security of someone who lives on Social Security.”

However, Paul’s pledges about corporate welfare apparently do not extend to the Pentagon, which has often been a big repository of such welfare for defense contractors. As Time reported in March, “Just weeks before announcing his 2016 presidential bid … Paul is completing an about-face on a longstanding pledge to curb the growth in defense spending.” The magazine noted that he introduced legislation “calling for a nearly $190 billion infusion to the defense budget over the next two years — a roughly 16 percent increase.”

Additionally, Paul is anti-choice on the abortion issue. That’s right, for all of his anti-big-government rhetoric, he supports using the power of huge government to ban women from making their own choices about whether or not to terminate pregnancies.

While few believe across-the-board libertarianism is a pragmatic governing strategy, some of that ideology’s core tenets — like respect for privacy and civil liberties — are valuable, constructive ideals. But when the most famous libertarian icons so often contradict themselves, those ideals are undermined. They end up seeming less like the building blocks of a principled belief system and more like talking points propping up a cheap brand — one designed to hide shopworn partisanship.

David Sirota is a senior writer at the International Business Times and the best-selling author of the books Hostile Takeover, The Uprising, and Back to Our Future. Email him at ds@davidsirota.com, follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at www.davidsirota.com. 

Photo: U.S. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky speaking at the 2015 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland. (Gage Skidmore via Flickr)

What Makes Rand Paul Strange

What Makes Rand Paul Strange

Senator Rand Paul believes that vaccinating children should be up to the parents, an increasingly unpopular view after recent outbreaks of measles, mumps and other diseases. And throwing a newt’s eye of quack science into the vat, the Kentucky Republican promotes the myth that these shots put children at risk.

The political results have been toil and trouble.

It’s not easy being a politician and a principled libertarian. One who believes in the primacy of individual freedom often takes stances far from the mainstream. It is the true libertarian’s lot to be unconventional, to bravely accept unwanted consequences in the name of liberty. By not going that extra philosophical mile — and adding junk science to the mix — Paul comes off as merely weird.

He was already fighting blowback when he ventured into an interview with CNBC’s Kelly Evans.

“Well, I guess being for freedom would be really unusual,” he responded to a question about whether vaccinations should be voluntary. “I don’t understand … why that would be controversial.”

Does he not? Then he again gave credence to crazy talk of healthy children ending up with “profound mental disorders” after being vaccinated.

When the chat moved to taxes and Evans challenged some of his statements, he shushed her as though she were a little girl. “Calm down a bit here, Kelly,” he said.

Clearly, it wasn’t Kelly who needed calming.

By the end, Paul had accused Evans of being argumentative and blamed the media for distorting positions he had left purposely vague. Not his finest hour.

A real libertarian wanting his party’s presidential nomination has only two choices:

1) Come clean and acknowledge the cost side of your beliefs. If you think parents have the right not to vaccinate their children, agree that more Americans might come down with preventable diseases as a result. Provocative, perhaps, but honest.

2) If you don’t want that controversy tied around your neck, say that you have changed your mind on vaccinations and now hold that they should be required. Not totally honest but at least coherent.

Put into practice, libertarianism can make a mess. If parents have the right to endanger others by not getting their children immunized, why can’t individuals decide whether they’re too drunk to drive?

Paul does say that it’s a good idea to have one’s children vaccinated. Yes, and it’s a good idea to drive while sober.

Libertarian purity led Paul to question a key provision of the 1964 Civil Rights Act some years ago. He argued that the law interferes with a private business owner’s right to discriminate.

Paul said he abhors racism, and we have no reason to doubt him. But his position, though principled, would have left the disaster of Jim Crow intact.

On MSNBC, Rachel Maddow asked Paul this: “Do you think that a private business has a right to say, ‘We don’t serve black people’?”

His answer meandered along a familiar path. Private individuals have a right to hold hateful views, Paul responded, but he resented the question because it implied that he shares them. Actually, the question could not have been more straightforward.

Paul gets credit for letting the liberal Maddow interview him. And his libertarianism on other issues — for example, his opposition to the war on drugs — serves him well.

But he does himself no good by continually throwing smoke bombs at questioners trying to pin him down — changing the subject and accusing them of mischaracterizing his position. If Paul thinks the price of individual freedom is worth paying, he should concede what that price is.

Otherwise, he ends up where he is, stirring a boiling cauldron of weird politics.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

Peter Thiel Wields Political Influence On GOP

Peter Thiel Wields Political Influence On GOP

By Heather Somerville, San Jose Mercury News

SAN FRANCISCO — Peter Thiel has built and funded some of the most successful Silicon Valley startups, but the influence he wields in politics may be the cornerstone of his next legacy.

Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and billionaire tech investor, has become one of the most highly sought endorsements for conservative politicians looking to capture votes from Democratic-leaning Silicon Valley and the good will of powerful tech tycoons. A longtime political enthusiast — which friends say dates back to his unsuccessful run for class president in high school — Thiel, 46, has given millions of his self-made fortune to Libertarian and Republican candidates and advised them on business and technology matters.

“Peter is on the cutting edge of rapidly changing views inside the Republican Party,” said Matt Mackowiak, a Texas-based Republican consultant who worked on President George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign. “He’s had an increasing influence as a major donor.”

Through these political connections, and along with his tremendous wealth and influence in the tech industry, Thiel aims to revive research and innovation, which he says the government and industry have allowed to stagnate. He hopes to foster a new generation of startups that is more bold and creative, and a new generation of the Republican Party that embraces a platform of technology and innovation. Under Thiel’s agenda, Uber would be able to operate freely, Tesla could sell cars directly to consumers, and biotech startups wouldn’t have to wrangle with the Food and Drug Administration.

“Our political system does not work all that well to support the areas of science and technology,” Thiel said in an hourlong interview with this newspaper. “Theoretically there is a role for the government, but if it’s hard to get the website for the Affordable Care Act to work, how are you going to win the war on cancer?

“Silicon Valley is just one of the few places in the U.S. that is just booming,” he added. “So the question (politicians) have is: ‘What can I learn from it?’ ”

Thiel’s sphere of influence in both politics and tech is likely to grow with last month’s publication of his book Zero to One, a how-to manual on creating and running a startup. The book — which prompted a national media blitz for the usually shy Thiel, who sat down with this newspaper at his San Francisco office last week — is based on a series of class lectures he gave in 2012 at Stanford University. It also explores his own social and economic theories, such as the West’s loss of faith in the future and the challenges posed by European Union-imposed regulations. While Thiel said the book is meant for entrepreneurs, it is also making waves among policymakers.

“Peter has always been one of the most involved entrepreneurs in the political space, and I think that this book is a continued reflection of his interest and involvement,” said Aaron Ginn, co-founder of LincolnLabs, a tech group that advocates for libertarian values.

Strategists say Thiel can use his influence on lawmakers to push for regulation that doesn’t stifle innovation and immigration laws that make it easier for tech companies to hire. Thiel said he plans to “do more to foster more technological and scientific progress in our society,” and points to cancer research, which he says has made few advances in the last four decades, and laments that the government would never be able to lead a research effort as sophisticated as the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bombs used in World War II.

“There’s this sense of stagnation in this country,” he said. “The younger generation is expected to do worse than their parents. People feel that they are not progressing in their careers, their salaries are stuck and there is a sense that the future is going to be worse than the present. So the question is how do we get out of that. And it would be nice if our politicians thought about that more.”

Derek Khanna, a fellow with Yale Law School and author of The Party of Innovation, a tech-focused agenda for the Republican Party published in May, says Thiel has “been a strong benefit to the Republican Party in trying to get them to embrace a more technology-friendly direction. There are starting to be a lot of Republicans who are taking technology innovation seriously, and Peter Thiel has had a lot to do with that.”

Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky has pushed for more tech education, expressed support for Bitcoin and criticized the National Security Agency’s surveillance program. Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has called for tax cuts for tech companies and helped pass a patent reform bill.

Thiel gave $45,800 to McCarthy and his 2012 campaign, according to the website Influence Explorer, and is expected to back Paul, who recently opened an office in the Bay Area in anticipation of a 2016 presidential run. A self-described libertarian, Thiel used his wealth to bankroll the 2012 presidential bid of Ron Paul, Rand Paul’s father, with a $2.6 million contribution.

Although he supports legalization of marijuana and gay marriage — Thiel is openly gay and has a boyfriend — he has backed candidates with more conservative social views, such as Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who has received $7,400 from him.

Thiel’s wealth comes from years of investing following PayPal, which he co-founded in 1998 and sold to eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion, earning about $55 million in the process. Born in Germany and raised in Foster City, Calif., he made an early investment in Facebook, reportedly making more than $1 billion in that company’s IPO, and went on to start big-data firm Palantir Technologies, now worth $9 billion, and invest in and advise dozens of other startups.

Thiel’s office in the Presidio, where his investment firms Thiel Capital and Founders Fund are housed, is a regular stop for candidates from across the conservative spectrum looking for an endorsement check and the chance to hear the ideas of someone they consider “a thought leader, and certainly different than the traditional big donor that normally comes out of business,” Edward Rollins, a Republican strategist and consultant, said in an interview.

Corey Cook, a professor of American politics at the University of San Francisco, said Thiel offers the GOP a doorway to where Democrats have had a stronghold, but where business values more closely align with Republicans.

“This is about the Republicans cultivating a donor base and an industry base,” he said. “They are trying to get a toehold in Silicon Valley.”

Some have speculated that Thiel may run for office, using his limitless bank account and appeal among the wealthy and powerful tech community to vie for state office. But that is a proposition he hotly rejects.

“I would never run for office,” he said. “I think politics is very interesting, I think it’s very important and, generally, it’s endlessly frustrating. I’m much more focused on tech, not politics. I’m in Silicon Valley, not in D.C.”

But with the November election just around the corner, Thiel will hardly be staying on the sidelines.

“You get pulled into it every now and then,” he said. And he offers, laughing, that if he ever gets elected to city council, “You can call me to complain.”

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Peter Thiel’s Political Contributions:

Amount: $2.6 million

Who: Endorse Liberty — the political action committee supporting former Rep. Ron Paul, a 2012 presidential candidate.

Amount: $2 million

Who: The Club Growth for Action — conservative political advocacy group led by Chris Chocola, a businessman and former congressman from Indiana that advocates for limited government, free trade and entitlement reform, and gives money to conservative Republican candidates.

Amount: $135,000

Who: Revolution PAC — the smaller political action committee supporting Rep. Ron Paul’s run for president in 2012.

Amount: $100,000

Who: Freedom to Marry Washington — the campaign for same-sex marriage in Washington, which the state voted to legalize on Nov. 6, 2012.

Amount: $45,800

Who: Rep. Kevin McCarthy — the majority went to the McCarthy Victory Fund, the fundraising committee for the California Republican and House majority leader in Congress, with $5,000 going directly to McCarthy.

Amount: $32,500

Who: Republican Party of California

Amount: $17,000

Who: Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney — $6,000 went to the Republican presidential candidate defeated by President Barack Obama in 2012, and the remainder was donated to his political action committee.

Amount: $7,600

Who: Josh Belinfante — a lawyer and Republican candidate for Georgia state Senate in 2012, although he lost in the primary.

Amount: $7,400

Who: Sen. Ted Cruz — a Republican from Texas, a favorite among social conservatives and champions of religious liberty expected to run in the 2016 presidential race.

Sources: Opensecrets.org, Followthemoney.org, Center for Public Integrity

Photo: Ken Yeung via Flickr