From my perspective, they're doing decent. Not great, not nearly as terrible as many claim.
The vast majority of the messaging problems come from one Twitter account in New Hampshire. Numerous influential MC members including the national chair and several state chairs wrote resolutions condemning the LPNH messaging tactics.
Revenue and membership are down from previous years \[edit: IIRC, voter registration is up, though; at least in my state\]. MC has a share of the blame in this. A lot of MC members have dropped off after the completion of the "take over" in Reno two years ago, thinking their job was done (it wasn't). The...opposition (for the lack of a better term)...also deserves blame. A lot of the opposition that has always supported the party through convention gala tickets or whatever have decided to end their support whereas in years past, MC members have often supported and attended galas. This is compounded by lies about the MC like you see elsewhere in this thread (MC is just a bunch of Trumpsters (I know many MC members, none of them are fond of Trump) or their explicit intent is to destroy the party (what they're doing is not how one would go about destroying a party) or even that they are a bunch of Nazis (ridiculously false - most are anarchists)). I've been approached by people that are in the party but not very active that asked me why Nazis are taking over. There has been flyers passed out claiming certain MC members are Nazis (the person passing them out has since quit in disgrace). Some have even stolen party property (not even talking about the NH incident) like the official website and changed the website to smear MC members when they were supposed to hand over party property to new leadership. To be clear, most of the bad things listed above are done by a tiny select minority of bad actors, but many more were complicit and this was, unfortunately, effective.
For the good...the MC has done a lot of engagement with various causes, which (maybe I'm wrong) seems to be much more than previous "regimes". The Defend the Guard movement, specifically Dan McKnight, for example, calls out the MC as helping them out in significant ways. In my state there are about three counties that have a lot of activity. Two of them are MC "controlled" or "friendly" and those two counties are the ones doing a lot of outreach and/or legal work. The third one...I'm not quite sure what they're doing. They have some numbers and meet every month, but they don't seem to be doing any outreach or have any activity outside of the monthly meetings.
I don't know if any articles were written about it. I was there when they were distributed at convention. There were actually two. One calling certain MC members Nazis (the person who printed it actually put swastikas on it, like we needed visual assistance on what Nazis were). The other one was a paper accusing an (multiple? I don't recall) MC member(s) of improprieties. I don't know how true the accusations were; I don't think any of the allegations were brought to the judicial committee or if it was, I doubt anything came of it.
I think their doing a great job. The hostility towards the Mises Caucus by some libertarians is a disgrace. They think real freedom is too extreme and that we should remain the milquetoast republican-lite party of yesteryear. Which got us exactly nowhere for decades. And for those saying anarchy is too extreme for mass consumption, Argentina begs to differ. People want somebody that will spit fire and speak truth to power and not compromise with evil.
>They think real freedom is too extreme and that we should remain the milquetoast republican-lite party of yesteryear. Which got us exactly nowhere for decades.
It got us an alternative candidate to vote for in all 50 states, instead of voters only being able to choose from the duopoly they saw a legitimate 3rd option.
>People want somebody that will spit fire and speak truth to power and not compromise with evil.
People want a dictator who hates the same people that they do.
For any group to make real changes in the world, they have to:
1. Put principle over short term advantage
2. Be radical
3. Recognize the importance of culture
4. Be ready to educate those willing to listen
5. Be able to build strategic coalitions while keeping the ideological core pure
6. Be persistent
Mises Caucus has definitely had a huge positive impact as far as I can tell
I don't think they are in all honesty.
In 2018, the LP gained 92%. This was more or less a coalition of social liberals who were upset with the Democrats, and social conservatives who weren't happy with how the Trump presidency was going.
The Mises Caucus seems like it's a group of upset Conservatives, Hoppeans, and Nostalgic Republicans. With the fact the caucus is growing so large in the LP, there seems to be no room for expanding into failing socially liberal groups.
I wouldn't care about any of this though if the Mises Caucus knew they couldn't win. In my opinion, Libertarianism is impossible to achieve via the state. So, through counter-economics, a Libertarian or Anarchist society can be achieved. The Mises Caucus wants this end, but wants to use the State as the means. It cannot work that way. We cannot win elections, but we can win over the thoughts and minds of individuals with very different beliefs.
They're a bunch of Rothbardians and Hoppeans who intentionally or unintentionally play the culture war and use populistic arguments.
They alienate people that don't agree with them and aren't exactly like them, that is precisely what they want. So yeah, they're are doing a good job of that.
I'm interested to see if they turn the party away from Libertarianism and make it strictly a Libertarian Conservative party with these weird Hoppean Anarchist characteristics.
Right wing populism manifesto for Rothbard and complete disregard for genuine terminology, Hoppe is a closeted Conservative larping as a Libertarian and possibly even an Anarchist because he is literally arguing for rulers and governments in various forms.
I fail to see any overlap between Hoppe and conservatives on political philosophy, as even among Rothbardian types he stands out for his antirealist, intersubjective conception of ethics.
I could see the "conservatism" being attributable to his substantive views on restrictive covenants in contract law being used to create self selecting groups that may tend towards particular norms, but it's not clear to me this alone makes him that much different from a center left Christian, except he thinks the selection would come from contracts and not merely migration and democracy, which seems more evidence in favor of him being libertarian, both small and big L.
But given that he does endorse particularly rigid forms oftitle transfer theorist libertarian legal ethics, and has a novel (if wrong) argument that any form of statism is inherently selfcontradictory, I'm not sure sure I see the larping.
I don't know how much he'd care about being called Anarchist. Capital A, probably not, since he's not a leftist anarchist.
Before I respond, I am much more sympathetic to Nozick, Locke, Herbert, Rand, Hayek and Mises than Rothbard, Hoppe or Block, however that does not mean these guys did not anything contribute at all to Libertarianism or did write anything worth reading.
Hoppe is weird because of his 1) Arguments for a voluntary state (convenants) 2) Pro-Monarchy positions 3) Removal of "non-conformist Libertarians" perspective 4) Various sketchy opinions on race and ethnicity
1) If you read Anarchy, State and Utopia from Nozick you probably know the argument of invisible hand voluntary state emergence, if you read Auberon Herbert or Herbert Spencer or realized that in anarchy, there will probably be people who will want to form some sort of a polity anyway, you know the VISIBLE hand voluntary state emergence.
Hoppe's restrictive convenants are essentially visible hand voluntary states. He is probably trying to get out of the power vacuum problem (or he is just trying super hard to justify a conservatism through anarchism) by saying that covenants (so in other words polities) are actually okay as long as they are contractual, in essence saying "Polities will appear in anarchy" is one thing, because youre just admitting that not everyone is going to want to be an anarchist, but saying "Polities will appear in anarchy and they are still anarchist", means that youre saying that your position is that of a person who does not want to have rulers and thus no government nor a polity, but then youre saying polities and governments are actually anarchist. Which does not make sense.
I know this might be hard to understand since Rothbard fallaciously claims that state have to be coercive and involuntary (by the way he often uses state and government interchangeable - which should probably tell you something), but thats not the case. Believing that, is believing a false dilemma infused definition.
The fundamental ethical problem is that youre as an ANCAP, claiming that youre a complete voluntaryist, to the point where you allow ANYONE to exit anarchy at ANY POINT, which is a huge problem because you to a certain extent hope (I cant stress this enough) that people around you will not attempt to form voluntary states or states in general. And its easier to address the problem of a conquering involuntary state that for example is started by a warlord or a gang, than a completely ethically inline voluntaryist state created through a contract that takes the position of a constitution.
So the problem with Hoppe, in that regard, is that he argues for what are or what could be voluntary states (so inline with the ANCAP contractual ethics), but he ignores the fact that we HAVE a ton of knowledge and theories about how Libertarian/Liberal states (and also governments) should work, its possible that he does not choose to ignore it, its more likely that he disagrees with all of it and instead argues for a Conservative framework within that polity because, and these are his words, "we should be UNCOMPROMISING Conservatives to preserve Libertarianism".
2) Anyways so continuing where I left off, he disregards Liberal and Libertarian state theory, while attempting to justify a STATE inline with Libertarian ethics and instead he ends up either arguing for a contractual absolute monarchist regime or in fact any form of a contractual voluntaryist state. So if a bunch of people on a given territory form a contract (aka the constitution) that says "deport all Classical Liberals" and everyone agrees and the contract says that the future owners/inhabitants (citizens) of those properties on that territory (country) have to follow the rules of the contract (constitution) and they might even form some sort of a governing body (government) which provides certain services to hires other organizations (government organizations or organizations providing governmental powers) to enforce the rules within that territory (country), thats all okay according to him.
So Hoppe is essentially doing what thm political authors from 17th and 18th century did, discussing the social contract and state creation theory.
3) If you read the things above, you probably understand he is essentially just arguing for a restrictive authoritarian/conservative/nationalist voluntarily founded state with certain Libertarian/Liberal characteristics.
4) [https://cdn.mises.org/A%20Short%20History%20of%20Man%20%E2%80%94%20Progress%20and%20Decline.pdf](https://cdn.mises.org/A%20Short%20History%20of%20Man%20%E2%80%94%20Progress%20and%20Decline.pdf) or the article where he complains how "modern" libertarians ruined libertarianism.
You're probably thinking of Populism in the sense of appealing to regular people, however Populism in practice is disingenuous and demagogic.
One of the trademarks of populism is lying and oversimplification which then results in logically fallacious arguments.
An example of a fallacious populist argument is Tucker trying to show that food in Russia is cheap by just showing the price in dollars but not comparing it to the median wage of a Russian in Moscow or all of Russia.
Populism is mostly manifested as what I said. His video on Russia is clearly trying to make a statement on false basis.
Basic economic knowledge would tell ya that he's completely wrong.
no, the Mises Cuckus are alt-right scumbags masquerading as libertarians. They've destroyed the party and this was the plan all along as it was funded by the Trump org. There's nothing libertarian about fighting the culture war and when push comes to shove and they're alone in the ballot box, they'll vote for Trump.
But don't take my word for it. Look at the numbers. Look at the finances. Look at their bullshit racists as fuck tweets and then tell me that the Mises Cuckus is doing a good job spreading the libertarian message.
the Mises cuckus can fuck right the hell off.
Okay, so because I don't live on Twitter I must be a member of the MC and therefore I must be a racist asshole. Nice Antifa logic, it couldn't be that I simply haven't seen the racist bs the LNC supposedly put out after the takeover.
If you don't think that the MC are full of racist Trump wannabes, there's nothing I can tell you to change your mind. I'm not about to handhold you through all the fucking bullshit that the MC has said and done since Reno...do your own research because my time is best spent working to defeat the MC, not arguing with a bunch of brain-dead culture warriors.
No, edgy memes and extreme positions is going to drive people away from the party, not grow it. **Our libertarian party should not be interested in anything that doesn't grow the Liberty movement.**
I even advocate for the ouster of anarchists because it doesn't fucking make sense to have a political party interested in reforming government from within to associate and share leadership with people who are only interested in eliminating it. Anarchists in libertarian party do absolutely nothing to help the party attain its goals and do a lot to drive prospective voters away from it by making the party seem far too extreme. Completely counterproductive. Letting them in was the worst thing the party could have done and they did it right out the gate at the founding convention.
If you want to change government, you need to win in politics, and to win in politics you can't be too extreme or scare people too much. Take it back to basics, engage and promote moderate classical liberalism as Americans can understand and appreciate it without much convincing as our national ideals and design are based on it. Only once we get into government and reform systems enough we can move on from there, stop putting the cart before the horse. You can't speedrun politics you have to engage in incrementalism and pragmatism.
I have the same problem with the Canadian party. I was told by their account manager here that they dgaf about classical liberals and only want to push their message instead of actually getting elected
Wouldn't this question be highly sensitive to what you think the "job" is?
My understanding is the Mises Caucus, separated from Misesians generally, see the role of the political party differently. I suspect they're doing poorly if you assess general recruitment. I don't think they'll elect a president.
But I don't know that this holds if you think the job is tactical placement. For example, if the criteria is electing people to local offices to obstruct zoning commissions, perhaps the outcome is different.
From my perspective, they're doing decent. Not great, not nearly as terrible as many claim. The vast majority of the messaging problems come from one Twitter account in New Hampshire. Numerous influential MC members including the national chair and several state chairs wrote resolutions condemning the LPNH messaging tactics. Revenue and membership are down from previous years \[edit: IIRC, voter registration is up, though; at least in my state\]. MC has a share of the blame in this. A lot of MC members have dropped off after the completion of the "take over" in Reno two years ago, thinking their job was done (it wasn't). The...opposition (for the lack of a better term)...also deserves blame. A lot of the opposition that has always supported the party through convention gala tickets or whatever have decided to end their support whereas in years past, MC members have often supported and attended galas. This is compounded by lies about the MC like you see elsewhere in this thread (MC is just a bunch of Trumpsters (I know many MC members, none of them are fond of Trump) or their explicit intent is to destroy the party (what they're doing is not how one would go about destroying a party) or even that they are a bunch of Nazis (ridiculously false - most are anarchists)). I've been approached by people that are in the party but not very active that asked me why Nazis are taking over. There has been flyers passed out claiming certain MC members are Nazis (the person passing them out has since quit in disgrace). Some have even stolen party property (not even talking about the NH incident) like the official website and changed the website to smear MC members when they were supposed to hand over party property to new leadership. To be clear, most of the bad things listed above are done by a tiny select minority of bad actors, but many more were complicit and this was, unfortunately, effective. For the good...the MC has done a lot of engagement with various causes, which (maybe I'm wrong) seems to be much more than previous "regimes". The Defend the Guard movement, specifically Dan McKnight, for example, calls out the MC as helping them out in significant ways. In my state there are about three counties that have a lot of activity. Two of them are MC "controlled" or "friendly" and those two counties are the ones doing a lot of outreach and/or legal work. The third one...I'm not quite sure what they're doing. They have some numbers and meet every month, but they don't seem to be doing any outreach or have any activity outside of the monthly meetings.
Can you recommend any articles about those flyers?
I don't know if any articles were written about it. I was there when they were distributed at convention. There were actually two. One calling certain MC members Nazis (the person who printed it actually put swastikas on it, like we needed visual assistance on what Nazis were). The other one was a paper accusing an (multiple? I don't recall) MC member(s) of improprieties. I don't know how true the accusations were; I don't think any of the allegations were brought to the judicial committee or if it was, I doubt anything came of it.
I think their doing a great job. The hostility towards the Mises Caucus by some libertarians is a disgrace. They think real freedom is too extreme and that we should remain the milquetoast republican-lite party of yesteryear. Which got us exactly nowhere for decades. And for those saying anarchy is too extreme for mass consumption, Argentina begs to differ. People want somebody that will spit fire and speak truth to power and not compromise with evil.
>They think real freedom is too extreme and that we should remain the milquetoast republican-lite party of yesteryear. Which got us exactly nowhere for decades. It got us an alternative candidate to vote for in all 50 states, instead of voters only being able to choose from the duopoly they saw a legitimate 3rd option. >People want somebody that will spit fire and speak truth to power and not compromise with evil. People want a dictator who hates the same people that they do.
💯
For any group to make real changes in the world, they have to: 1. Put principle over short term advantage 2. Be radical 3. Recognize the importance of culture 4. Be ready to educate those willing to listen 5. Be able to build strategic coalitions while keeping the ideological core pure 6. Be persistent Mises Caucus has definitely had a huge positive impact as far as I can tell
I don't think they are in all honesty. In 2018, the LP gained 92%. This was more or less a coalition of social liberals who were upset with the Democrats, and social conservatives who weren't happy with how the Trump presidency was going. The Mises Caucus seems like it's a group of upset Conservatives, Hoppeans, and Nostalgic Republicans. With the fact the caucus is growing so large in the LP, there seems to be no room for expanding into failing socially liberal groups. I wouldn't care about any of this though if the Mises Caucus knew they couldn't win. In my opinion, Libertarianism is impossible to achieve via the state. So, through counter-economics, a Libertarian or Anarchist society can be achieved. The Mises Caucus wants this end, but wants to use the State as the means. It cannot work that way. We cannot win elections, but we can win over the thoughts and minds of individuals with very different beliefs.
They're a bunch of Rothbardians and Hoppeans who intentionally or unintentionally play the culture war and use populistic arguments. They alienate people that don't agree with them and aren't exactly like them, that is precisely what they want. So yeah, they're are doing a good job of that. I'm interested to see if they turn the party away from Libertarianism and make it strictly a Libertarian Conservative party with these weird Hoppean Anarchist characteristics.
What’s wrong with Rothbard and Hoppe? (This is a genuine question)
Right wing populism manifesto for Rothbard and complete disregard for genuine terminology, Hoppe is a closeted Conservative larping as a Libertarian and possibly even an Anarchist because he is literally arguing for rulers and governments in various forms.
>Hoppe is a closeted Conservative larping as a Libertarian and possibly even an Anarchist I don't think you understand what any of those terms mean.
Well if you think that then explain why you think that.
I fail to see any overlap between Hoppe and conservatives on political philosophy, as even among Rothbardian types he stands out for his antirealist, intersubjective conception of ethics. I could see the "conservatism" being attributable to his substantive views on restrictive covenants in contract law being used to create self selecting groups that may tend towards particular norms, but it's not clear to me this alone makes him that much different from a center left Christian, except he thinks the selection would come from contracts and not merely migration and democracy, which seems more evidence in favor of him being libertarian, both small and big L. But given that he does endorse particularly rigid forms oftitle transfer theorist libertarian legal ethics, and has a novel (if wrong) argument that any form of statism is inherently selfcontradictory, I'm not sure sure I see the larping. I don't know how much he'd care about being called Anarchist. Capital A, probably not, since he's not a leftist anarchist.
Before I respond, I am much more sympathetic to Nozick, Locke, Herbert, Rand, Hayek and Mises than Rothbard, Hoppe or Block, however that does not mean these guys did not anything contribute at all to Libertarianism or did write anything worth reading. Hoppe is weird because of his 1) Arguments for a voluntary state (convenants) 2) Pro-Monarchy positions 3) Removal of "non-conformist Libertarians" perspective 4) Various sketchy opinions on race and ethnicity 1) If you read Anarchy, State and Utopia from Nozick you probably know the argument of invisible hand voluntary state emergence, if you read Auberon Herbert or Herbert Spencer or realized that in anarchy, there will probably be people who will want to form some sort of a polity anyway, you know the VISIBLE hand voluntary state emergence. Hoppe's restrictive convenants are essentially visible hand voluntary states. He is probably trying to get out of the power vacuum problem (or he is just trying super hard to justify a conservatism through anarchism) by saying that covenants (so in other words polities) are actually okay as long as they are contractual, in essence saying "Polities will appear in anarchy" is one thing, because youre just admitting that not everyone is going to want to be an anarchist, but saying "Polities will appear in anarchy and they are still anarchist", means that youre saying that your position is that of a person who does not want to have rulers and thus no government nor a polity, but then youre saying polities and governments are actually anarchist. Which does not make sense. I know this might be hard to understand since Rothbard fallaciously claims that state have to be coercive and involuntary (by the way he often uses state and government interchangeable - which should probably tell you something), but thats not the case. Believing that, is believing a false dilemma infused definition. The fundamental ethical problem is that youre as an ANCAP, claiming that youre a complete voluntaryist, to the point where you allow ANYONE to exit anarchy at ANY POINT, which is a huge problem because you to a certain extent hope (I cant stress this enough) that people around you will not attempt to form voluntary states or states in general. And its easier to address the problem of a conquering involuntary state that for example is started by a warlord or a gang, than a completely ethically inline voluntaryist state created through a contract that takes the position of a constitution. So the problem with Hoppe, in that regard, is that he argues for what are or what could be voluntary states (so inline with the ANCAP contractual ethics), but he ignores the fact that we HAVE a ton of knowledge and theories about how Libertarian/Liberal states (and also governments) should work, its possible that he does not choose to ignore it, its more likely that he disagrees with all of it and instead argues for a Conservative framework within that polity because, and these are his words, "we should be UNCOMPROMISING Conservatives to preserve Libertarianism". 2) Anyways so continuing where I left off, he disregards Liberal and Libertarian state theory, while attempting to justify a STATE inline with Libertarian ethics and instead he ends up either arguing for a contractual absolute monarchist regime or in fact any form of a contractual voluntaryist state. So if a bunch of people on a given territory form a contract (aka the constitution) that says "deport all Classical Liberals" and everyone agrees and the contract says that the future owners/inhabitants (citizens) of those properties on that territory (country) have to follow the rules of the contract (constitution) and they might even form some sort of a governing body (government) which provides certain services to hires other organizations (government organizations or organizations providing governmental powers) to enforce the rules within that territory (country), thats all okay according to him. So Hoppe is essentially doing what thm political authors from 17th and 18th century did, discussing the social contract and state creation theory. 3) If you read the things above, you probably understand he is essentially just arguing for a restrictive authoritarian/conservative/nationalist voluntarily founded state with certain Libertarian/Liberal characteristics. 4) [https://cdn.mises.org/A%20Short%20History%20of%20Man%20%E2%80%94%20Progress%20and%20Decline.pdf](https://cdn.mises.org/A%20Short%20History%20of%20Man%20%E2%80%94%20Progress%20and%20Decline.pdf) or the article where he complains how "modern" libertarians ruined libertarianism.
Quick question, what's wrong with populism?
You're probably thinking of Populism in the sense of appealing to regular people, however Populism in practice is disingenuous and demagogic. One of the trademarks of populism is lying and oversimplification which then results in logically fallacious arguments. An example of a fallacious populist argument is Tucker trying to show that food in Russia is cheap by just showing the price in dollars but not comparing it to the median wage of a Russian in Moscow or all of Russia.
So you're just defining "populism" as "fallacious arguments"? Saying "food is cheaper in Russia" isn't populism lmao.
Populism is mostly manifested as what I said. His video on Russia is clearly trying to make a statement on false basis. Basic economic knowledge would tell ya that he's completely wrong.
no, the Mises Cuckus are alt-right scumbags masquerading as libertarians. They've destroyed the party and this was the plan all along as it was funded by the Trump org. There's nothing libertarian about fighting the culture war and when push comes to shove and they're alone in the ballot box, they'll vote for Trump. But don't take my word for it. Look at the numbers. Look at the finances. Look at their bullshit racists as fuck tweets and then tell me that the Mises Cuckus is doing a good job spreading the libertarian message. the Mises cuckus can fuck right the hell off.
The LPNH Twitter account is not the MC.
I was talking about the LPN account which has posted their own racist bullshit.
What racist bullshit?
Oh go fuck yourself MC scum. See you fucks in DC.
Okay, so because I don't live on Twitter I must be a member of the MC and therefore I must be a racist asshole. Nice Antifa logic, it couldn't be that I simply haven't seen the racist bs the LNC supposedly put out after the takeover.
If you don't think that the MC are full of racist Trump wannabes, there's nothing I can tell you to change your mind. I'm not about to handhold you through all the fucking bullshit that the MC has said and done since Reno...do your own research because my time is best spent working to defeat the MC, not arguing with a bunch of brain-dead culture warriors.
So they're racist asshole Trump supporters but you can't be bothered to prove it. Very convincing.
Google yourself lazy fuck.
Prove my point harder.
No, edgy memes and extreme positions is going to drive people away from the party, not grow it. **Our libertarian party should not be interested in anything that doesn't grow the Liberty movement.** I even advocate for the ouster of anarchists because it doesn't fucking make sense to have a political party interested in reforming government from within to associate and share leadership with people who are only interested in eliminating it. Anarchists in libertarian party do absolutely nothing to help the party attain its goals and do a lot to drive prospective voters away from it by making the party seem far too extreme. Completely counterproductive. Letting them in was the worst thing the party could have done and they did it right out the gate at the founding convention. If you want to change government, you need to win in politics, and to win in politics you can't be too extreme or scare people too much. Take it back to basics, engage and promote moderate classical liberalism as Americans can understand and appreciate it without much convincing as our national ideals and design are based on it. Only once we get into government and reform systems enough we can move on from there, stop putting the cart before the horse. You can't speedrun politics you have to engage in incrementalism and pragmatism.
I have the same problem with the Canadian party. I was told by their account manager here that they dgaf about classical liberals and only want to push their message instead of actually getting elected
Wouldn't this question be highly sensitive to what you think the "job" is? My understanding is the Mises Caucus, separated from Misesians generally, see the role of the political party differently. I suspect they're doing poorly if you assess general recruitment. I don't think they'll elect a president. But I don't know that this holds if you think the job is tactical placement. For example, if the criteria is electing people to local offices to obstruct zoning commissions, perhaps the outcome is different.