Libertarianism

Gary Johnson Is Campaigning as a Libertarian Centrist

As with so much in 2016 politics, a pattern is beginning to emerge that might have been hard even to imagine a year ago. When libertarian candidates have made inroads in the GOP in the past, it has often been in some of the party’s rightmost precincts. But [Gary] Johnson and [Bill] Weld thus far have enjoyed little success (and, to be fair, shown little interest) at wooing the most conservative elected officials and pundits. While the Libertarian ticket has been drawing an entirely unprecedented…

Gary Johnson on Race and Poverty: ‘My Head’s Been in the Sand’

Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson has been making a heavy play for left-leaning voters in his second run for the White House. On Wednesday, he turned that effort up a notch when asked about racial issues, a subject that has long been a difficult one for libertarians given their tendency to support almost no role for the federal government in ending private racial discrimination. Asked by a questioner during a televised town hall discussion about his thoughts concerning the “Black Lives Matter movement,” the former…

Why Doesn’t Gary Johnson Criticize Hillary Clinton?

Gary Johnson’s fondness for savaging Republicans gives way to a strange delicacy when Democrats are up for discussion. In a word-association exercise at a CNN town hall, Johnson labeled Clinton a “great public servant” and declined to elaborate. Sure, Johnson’s libertarianism puts him at loggerheads with orthodox conservatives on social and foreign policy. But it should also bring biting reproach of liberals and socialists, who reject constraints on government (like the Constitution) when these stand in the way of a desired result. Johnson, to win…

Rand Paul Lost Because He Wouldn’t Appeal to White Identity Politics

Kentucky senator Rand Paul announced today that he is ending his run for the Republican presidential nomination. “It’s been an incredible honor to run a principled campaign for the White House,” he said in a statement released to the media. “Today, I will end where I began, ready and willing to fight for the cause of Liberty.” Paul’s withdrawal came after he finished fifth-place in the Republican presidential caucuses held in Iowa Monday. In 2014 and very early in 2015, Rand Paul was thought by many…

Donald Trump and the Anti-Libertarian Moment

It hasn’t even been a year and a half since journalist Robert Draper wondered at length in the New York Times Magazine whether America was about to begin a “libertarian moment.” The question seems downright quaint just days before the first actual votes are cast in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. Rand Paul, the man whom Draper and many others anointed as the leader of the revolution, has been languishing in also-ran territory for a solid year in local and national surveys….

Understanding the present is the key to the future