Inde—wait for it!—pendents

From the election results I'm seeing so far, only unaffiliated independents with "brand recognition" are getting elected. Libertarian candidates did well (read: getting double-digit percentages of the vote) in a number of House races; Green didn't have as many candidates by a long shot.

Is it fair at this point to say neither of them will either be a viable third party?

I am thankful for the contributions by non-establishment candidates to the printing and media industries I cherish. Although I won't miss hearing that dude going on about "In socialist kontry, if you have good idea, someone punch you in the dink. No one is sharing ideas; everyone is protecting their dink," delaying my critical sloth-video watching on a regular basis.

H.P. Lovesauce wrote:

Is it fair at this point to say neither of them will either be a viable third party?

I'd say that's fair to say as long as the Democrats and Republicans remain in power and people continue to feel pressured to vote for one of them or else risk "throwing away" their vote.

Farscry wrote:
H.P. Lovesauce wrote:

Is it fair at this point to say neither of them will either be a viable third party?

I'd say that's fair to say as long as the Democrats and Republicans remain in power and people continue to feel pressured to vote for one of them or else risk "throwing away" their vote.

For sure, the power structure is so deeply entrenched it's tough to imagine any third party gaining traction. It seems like some sort of liber-tea sort of movement is best positioned, but it may be impossible to make a run onto the national stage without strong backing inside a number of states first.

Perhaps the key for government-lite movements is to destroy a few municipal and county governments first, and ride the wave of the inevitable gratitude of the people all the way to Washington.

H.P. Lovesauce wrote:

For sure, the power structure is so deeply entrenched it's tough to imagine any third party gaining traction. It seems like some sort of liber-tea sort of movement is best positioned, but it may be impossible to make a run onto the national stage without strong backing inside a number of states first.

Barring a catastrophic event like an economic collapse, yes - and such events end badly much more often than they end well. In my party, I think we've finally purged or converted the people who think that if we can just get our message out to people, there will be a sudden wave of votes for us that will catapult the party into Washington. Instead, it's going to be a long cold slog of chipping away at the incumbent parties as they move closer together and more authoritarian. We've got some great wedge issues like opposing the War on Drugs and a non-imperial foreign policy, but it takes time and effort drive those home.

Perhaps the key for government-lite movements is to destroy a few municipal and county governments first, and ride the wave of the inevitable gratitude of the people all the way to Washington.

It's not the key, per se, but it's definitely one of the stepping stones. One of Gary Johnson's biggest appeals was that he was a well-liked two-term governor who nonetheless had a very liberty-friendly, fiscally sensible record. For example, he vetoed over 750 bills while in office - more than all of the other governors combined. It's not an accident that he garnered the most Libertarian votes ever in a Presidential election and was just shy of percentage-wise record that Ed Crane set in 1980.

Of course, it's also a pipe dream that local elections are somehow easier to win. Local elections are harder, because individual localities have established power structures that tend to lean heavily one way or the other and rarely change. It is very hard to break into these structures, which is why things like the Free State Project exist to concentrate lower level efforts.

Is it fair at this point to say neither of them will either be a viable third party?

Have they ever? Well, since the mid-19th century or whatever.

Why the assumption that both parties will always move towards more authoritarian stances? That's not been true in my lifetime; it seems to ebb and flow.

Ross Perot got 19% of the popular vote in 1992. He didn't do anything useful with that, unfortunately, but there's obviously room for alternatives.

I think the best chance at a viable third party would probably be a schism in one of the two major parties. The GOP has some seriously conflicting viewpoints, with the religious right and social authoritarians hanging out with the small government / low taxation folks.

Robear wrote:

Why the assumption that both parties will always move towards more authoritarian stances? That's not been true in my lifetime; it seems to ebb and flow.

Because neither party acknowledges any restraint to government power or capability. Thus, their default response to any situation or crisis is to expand government authority over the area in question. This is reinforced by public choice mechanics: as soon as the government assumes authority in a given area, special interests have an interest in expanding that authority to benefit themselves. These incentives lead to policies like the War on Drugs, which has been prosecuted for decades in the face of overwhelming evidence that it is entirely ineffective (and indeed, detrimental). These incentives also lead to explosive growth in the size and complexity the law, which results in increasingly arbitrary enforcement depending on the whim of the regulator or the favor of a politician. That will eventually lead to increasing levels of corruption, injustice, and abuse, which leads to public unrest - the beginnings of which we've already seen in the last few years and the advanced stages of which we can observe in the EU.

While it's possible to roll back the assumption of government authority in various areas, the difficulty of doing so means there is inevitable "scope creep" - over time, government authority tends to expand unless somehow constrained. Since the Supreme Court has largely abdicated this role, the only thing left is public resistance, electoral or otherwise. One way this resistance is expressed is through voting for parties other than the two main parties, who are an integral part of the system that is growing increasingly corrupt. We can see this effect in Greece, for example, with the unfortunate expansion in support for the Golden Dawn party. Indeed, one of the most dangerous aspects of this type of situation is the growth of nationalist/protectionist tendencies, which unchecked can lead to war.

Aetius wrote:
Robear wrote:

Why the assumption that both parties will always move towards more authoritarian stances? That's not been true in my lifetime; it seems to ebb and flow.

Because neither party acknowledges any restraint to government power or capability. Thus, their default response to any situation or crisis is to expand government authority over the area in question. This is reinforced by public choice mechanics: as soon as the government assumes authority in a given area, special interests have an interest in expanding that authority to benefit themselves. These incentives lead to policies like the War on Drugs, which has been prosecuted for decades in the face of overwhelming evidence that it is entirely ineffective (and indeed, detrimental). These incentives also lead to explosive growth in the size and complexity the law, which results in increasingly arbitrary enforcement depending on the whim of the regulator or the favor of a politician. That will eventually lead to increasing levels of corruption, injustice, and abuse, which leads to public unrest - the beginnings of which we've already seen in the last few years and the advanced stages of which we can observe in the EU.

While it's possible to roll back the assumption of government authority in various areas, the difficulty of doing so means there is inevitable "scope creep" - over time, government authority tends to expand unless somehow constrained. Since the Supreme Court has largely abdicated this role, the only thing left is public resistance, electoral or otherwise. One way this resistance is expressed is through voting for parties other than the two main parties, who are an integral part of the system that is growing increasingly corrupt. We can see this effect in Greece, for example, with the unfortunate expansion in support for the Golden Dawn party. Indeed, one of the most dangerous aspects of this type of situation is the growth of nationalist/protectionist tendencies, which unchecked can lead to war.

quoted for truth, also I like your sig
to Robear: you have not been paying attention

Because neither party acknowledges any restraint to government power or capability.

The history of the US is one of restraining the abuse of government power overall. It ebbs and flows, but on the whole, it's less authoritarian than it has been at times in the past, and certainly less authoritarian than a monarchy. We are nowhere near where a practicing monarchy or dictatorship would put us. We're not at the British level of authoritarianism, or that which exists in a Socialist state like Sweden, viewed from government's effect on daily life.

You can't have it both ways; you can't argue that Lincoln was terrible for getting rid of habeas corpus and enforcing one interpretation of the Constitution by force, and then argue that since then, we've become even *more* authoritarian rather than less. Clearly, there's a lot more change in the opposite direction than you give credit for. I've run through it in other threads, but look at the Church Commission, the Miranda decision, Prohibition and Blue Laws, and many other changes we've seen just in our lifetimes that have reduced government power. It's not always moving towards authoritarianism; yes, we're currently seeing an upswing in some areas, but if your thesis were true, we'd all be government factory slaves by now. Put another way, with all the freedoms we've got today, the government must be *incredibly* incompetent not to have put us in a dictatorship in the last 240+ years.

The other problem with blaming it on government is that you've got no structural changes to suggest that would fix the problem you cite. There's no evidence that a third party would magically reduce authoritarian tendencies. There's no intent to reduce the very structures you dislike the most, since you've asserted many times that we need to keep the law enforcement functions of government. At root, the problem is either government, and you won't get far espousing anarchism as a way of reducing authoritarianism; or it's policies, which can be changed within the current system. After all, the Drug War does not have to be permanent, and it's not in any way certain that it won't be pulled back or eliminated. The recent trend in legalizing marijuana is a very good example of that (and it's also an example of Libertarian successes without either getting rid of government or going to a third party for saints to help reform everything. Maybe the current system can actually change things when people get involved and active.

Given that, there's got to be at least some attention to the problem that will occur when the pendulum swings back away from a fear-based wartime mentality. At that point, when people are seeing authoritarianism decrease in visible ways - and it will happen - you guys have to have *some* other differentiator. Libertarianism has a lot more to offer than one-note fear-mongering, in my opinion, but the fringe stuff - "government is going to arrest us all eventually!" and "all our money is teh fakezor", it puts off people like me who have voted third party in the past. Isn't there a *moderate* version of all this? Or is it all doom, gloom, and sign up here to pick up the pieces? I'd argue the benefit of libertarianism is in it's effects on the other two parties, and I think the marijuana thing, gay marriage and other social legislation successes in the past bear that out.

Roland, *you're* not paying attention. So there! (Come on, seriously? We disagree so I'm "not paying attention"? Because your interpretation is so obvious, so correct, that everyone would accept it if only they "paid attention"? Double-teamed double-posts aren't going to change anyone's mind here. Jump in yourself, the water is fine.)

Since the Supreme Court has largely abdicated this role

BTW, I have no idea how you can look at the recent history of the Court and say they've abdicated the role of reducing authoritarianism. They've gotten rid of campaign finance laws, they've interpreted the Second Amendment in a way unique in American history and oriented entirely towards the individual, and it's quite possible that given the chance they would revoke abortion rights and civil rights laws. That's all increasing individual freedoms, and the Court as it stands is all for that.

Again, look at it from the other direction. The current Court has ruled on several major cases *against* long-established government powers. How you get from that to a *trend* of increasing authority and an abdication of their role is not clear. Yes, in one area, rulings related to intelligence operations, we've regressed. But in many other areas, they've acted to increase individual freedoms, even in ways that overall hurt the country, and that's a hallmark of this court in the last decade or so.

Like I said, both things are going on, and claiming a solid trend towards one across US history is just not realistic. Better to hash out where we are now in relation to other crisis points in history, to figure out whether we're in trouble, or within normal operating parameters. But that would not give the same dramatic sound bites, I guess.

It would seem a logical next step for a group of libertarians to set up a model community in the most "liberty-friendly" of the states and live according to their principles as an experiment. This is what socialists did in the 19th century and hippie communitarians in the 20th.

Oh, they're trying:

http://freestateproject.org/

Farscry wrote:
H.P. Lovesauce wrote:

Is it fair at this point to say neither of them will either be a viable third party?

I'd say that's fair to say as long as the Democrats and Republicans remain in power and people continue to feel pressured to vote for one of them or else risk "throwing away" their vote.

I agree with this completely. One of the major parties needs to take a major beating at some point to break us out of this two party deadlock.

So, the fact that they self-select for people who are deeply committed to not breaking the rules makes it a good example for all of society? What we need is a libertarian system that works across *all* citizens. It needs to be able to deal with those who abuse the system, not just exclude them at the front gate. Any uniformitarian movement can shut out those who disagree, but a system proposed for the entire country needs to be able to deal with dissenters in a productive way.

It will be interesting to see how this goes. But I don't see it having any more success than the Communist communities, and probably less than some.

So, the fact that they self-select for people who are deeply committed to not breaking the rules makes it a good example for all of society? What we need is a libertarian system that works across *all* citizens. It needs to be able to deal with those who abuse the system, not just exclude them at the front gate. Any uniformitarian movement can shut out those who disagree, but a system proposed for the entire country needs to be able to deal with dissenters in a productive way.

It will be interesting to see how this goes. But I don't see it having any more success than the Communist communities, and probably less than some.

Edit - Ah, I see I misunderstood completely what it is. It's not a communitarian group, it's an attempt to load New Hampshire with libertarians, in order to move the state politically. So my criticisms don't apply. They are trying to make change at the state level via political activism. It's been running since 2001, and has not made it's 20,000 person goal yet, being around 13,000 so far.

It's interesting that the website says that they are not a political movement.