Libertarian Party Presidential Candidate Bob Barr: Or, an Authoritarian By Any Other Name…
(posted by Mona)
Do not vote for Libertarian Party presidential candidate Bob Barr — if you are a libertarian, you’d have to be schizophrenic to do so. Do not vote for him even if you decide Obama can’t win, or even if for some unfathomable reason are in the tank for McCain and decide he cannot prevail. For if there is one defining attribute of libertarians of any stripe, it is opposition to drug prohibition. Yet, as Radley Balko observed in 2005, Barr has advocated that:
…the federal government use RICO statutes to prosecute advocates of decriminalization. That would include entities such as NORML, the Drug Policy Alliance, and, well, me.
Freedom of political speech, “Libertarian” Bob? Setting aside Barr’s noxious drug warrior position, a “libertarian” who would throw me in a cage for exercising my First Amendment rights is a walking contradiction and wholly fiction.
(When obtaining an interview with Barr in ‘05, as the above link documents Balko was “told by the nice woman who got me the interview that drug war questions would probably be a good way to cut the interview short.”)
While I’m not sure that Barr’s merely giving an interview to a theocratic lunatic like John Lofton — as Freedom Democrats’ ka1igu1a documents here — is necessarily an indictment (and federalism does properly hold implications for the abortion issue), it just is not reassuring in light of the foregoing.
If Barr is the new face of the Libertarian Party, well, wtf?
June 6th, 2008 at 10:56 am
Someone had said that http://www.BarrRoot.com was a smear site. I went there to check it out, and while it might not make Barr look all that great- There is nothing there that is not true. It seems more like a fact site then a hit site. So whoever posted that it was a smear site. Must not be that familuar with Bob Barr or Wayne Root. I will leave the link if you want to figure it out for your self. Its barr root08
http://www.barrroot2008.com
June 6th, 2008 at 11:38 am
Mona:
This is one of the first times I’ve ever really disagreed with you. Yes, Barr advocated all that stuff while he was in Congress, but that was before he started down the path to libertarianism. While I know many doubt his conversion (I am not one of them due to some interactions I had with him when he was starting down that path), the big question should not be what he did in Congress, but rather what he chooses to campaign on now. To be sure, if during the course of this campaign he suddenly becomes an advocate of the drug war, then I think he becomes extremely problematic; but the fact is that he has worked too hard over the last several years to earn the support of the anti-drug war community to suddenly go back to his old ways.
Whatever his faults were as a Congressman, he has done yeoman’s work the last several years fighting to undo a lot of that damage, including becoming a lobbyist for the Marijuana Policy Project over a year ago.
One final point I want to make is that sometimes the most effective advocates of a position are those that spent their entire lives fighting against it.
June 6th, 2008 at 11:58 am
Mark sez:
I heard him on some cable news show only a few weeks ago say he would not vote to legalize drugs at the state level. (Heroin was mentioned specifically, and I believe cocaine was as well.)
If you have links demonstrating that Barr has repudiated his ardent prohibitionism — and taken to airing opinions he thought only a few years ago should subject people to RICO prosecutions — than linkies, please?
June 6th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
This is a moot issue. Barr is not going to be President and a Bob Barrized LP will be just another in a long line of failed “conservative” (right-wing populist) third parties: George Wallace’s American Independent Party, Perot’s Reform Party, America First Party, etc. There’s already another right-wing populist party with roughly the same positions as the Barr/Viguerie crowd: the Constitution Party. They never do any better in elections than the LP.
The LP, CP, Greens, etc. have enough of a constituency that they can have a party, but not enough to break out of their own ideological ghettos. I don’t see that changing.
June 6th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
I think it was Tom Knapp (before the LP nomination) who noted that Viguerie most likely has ulterior motives here. He’s always wanted either a) a republican party dominated by social conservatives, or b) a large splinter party that takes all the social conservatives from the republican party.
Barr’s nomination can be seen as part of the same motivation - one could assume that with McCain as the republican nominee, Barr may be able to cause a large percentage of the “small gov’t” Rs to defect, leaving the social conservatives in the cat-bird’s seat in a defeated republican party (paging mr. Mike Huckabee…)
Keith’s right, tho - even if Barr succeeds wildly in this endeavor, the LP’s only going to come in a distant third in the general election. Perhaps double their best showing ever? Barr may or may not be in on Viguerie’s plan - he may indeed have had some sort of belief system conversion. But it’s utterly irrelevant to the process that is going on.
June 6th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Viguerie tried this once before, with the American Independent Party in 1976.
June 6th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
You are seriously faulting him because, while running for president, he said he would not vote to legalize cocaine and heroin? Get real. Not only would it be politically suicidal to say anything else, it’s bad policy, at least without some serious nuance. Worry about something that really matters. Barr is the best option I’ve ever had in my voting life.
June 6th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Some more on this:
Have any of you ever read Rothbard’s “Left and Right: Prospects for Liberty”?
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard33.html
I think Rothbard really nailed it in this so far as libertarian strategy. Rothbard considered libertarianism to be an ideology of the radical left, to the left of liberalism and socialism. He argued that libertarian/conservative alliances are limited in what they can achieve because of the backward-looking, foot-dragging nature of conservatism. This explains why “fusionism” has degenerated into neoconservatism.
Any kind of libertarianism that presents itself as just another right-wing ideology is not going to go anywhere. “Mainstream” libertarianism tends to market itself as simply a variant of conservatism that is more liberal on abortion, drugs, gay rights,
etc. This has failed over and over again.
I prefer a libertarianism that attacks mainstream liberalism as its primary enemy, but does so from the Left rather than the Right, with a strong class struggle orientation (in the manner that Kevin Carson discusses), anti-imperialist, decentralist and ant-statist across the board, defending right-wing as well as left-wing civil liberties.
Such an approach would allow the libertarian-left the means of distinguishing itself from the “regular” Left, while crossing over to the working class radical middle and populist far-right at the same time.
June 6th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
“You are seriously faulting him because, while running for president, he said he would not vote to legalize cocaine and heroin? Get real. Not only would it be politically suicidal to say anything else, it’s bad policy, at least without some serious nuance.”
Whatever Barr ought to say, cocaine and heroin are no more addictive that nicotine and no more intoxicating than alcohol. Having known plenty of alcoholics, heroin addicts, and cocaine addicts, I can certainly attest to the fact that they are all equally dysfunctional. The only difference is that the problems of cocaine and heroin addicts are compounded by prohibition.
The prohibition of opiate and coca based drugs insures that the “hardest” forms of these drugs will dominate the market. Even so, the more dangerous a drug, the more the reason to legalize it. Better that LSD, heroin, cocaine and meth be made by actually chemists and sold in drug stores for what they’re actually worth rather than by basement chemists mixing up whatever they can find and selling it to addicts at 20-100 times its actual value.
June 6th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
Even being a believer in new beginnings, I’m not so sure about a person who has ostensibly gone from advocating criminal punishment for political advocacy to anything resembling limited government.
That said, if you’re Republican, vote for him in November!
June 6th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
Chuck sez:
Damn straight. As others have noted, Barr (like every LP candidate before him) is not going to win. He can only be a protest vote. For the LIBERTARIAN Party candidate to assent to drug prohibition is as absurd as a Green Party candidate declaring that global warming is a canard requiring no attention, or a Communist Party candidate declaring labor has no legit grievances.
June 6th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
That said, if you’re Republican, vote for him in November!
Well, yes, says the pragmatist in me. But those who do ought not pass themselves off as libertarians, unless Mark comes up with some documentation showing a rather remarkable, Come to Jesus moment on Barr’s part.
June 6th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Sure, I can see how a libertarian would be pissed about that.
I’ve noticed that libertarianism has become somewhat trendy lately (for lack of a better word). Not that self-proclaimed libertarians’ beliefs should be suspect, but just that it does seem to have grown in popularity - at least the label and the general concept. Particularly among the young, a lot of “libertarians” I’ve spoken to seem to have no bloody idea what it actually means, certainly not to the depth of people like the libertarians here, who have clearly given a lot of thought to it.
Is Barr just being a political fashion victim?
(On further reflection, I suppose most younglings profess beliefs that they don’t really understand, not just libertarian younglings.)
June 6th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
Chris sez:
That is my impression as well. But, as one who does not subscribe to all of Kevin Carson’s views, and who does not oppose corporations per se, I nevertheless think that many who claim the libertarian label do not understand that it is not coterminous with “anything-corporations-do-or-desire is super.”
A coherent libertarian philosophy does not begin or end with abjuring the criminalization of adult, consensual behavior that directly (w/ a broad [edited to say I meant NARROW] and good faith definition of “directly”) impacts only the parties involved. (Tho it does include that.) But many seem not to have figured that out.
June 6th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
Ah, but is their idea of Libertarianism coexistent, coeternal or consubstantial with “anything-corporations-do-or-desire is super”, you theologian, you?
June 6th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
P. M. Lawrence: How about their “idea” of libertarianism is confounding, and especially among the young and uninformed, contumacious?
June 6th, 2008 at 10:42 pm
“Theocratic lunatic,” eh? Mere name-calling — a pathetic response to my Barr interview. You refuted nothing I said. Why? Because you can’t.
June 6th, 2008 at 10:59 pm
Yes, well John, most reasonable people will find that when your site posts, oh, this for example :
Most are going to find you quite fringe; whatever one thinks about atheists, claiming Antonin Scalia for their camp is simply insane. A quick perusal of your site reveals many other examples of, shall we say, unusual thinking.
But if you and Bob Barr are simpatico, hey, whatever.
June 6th, 2008 at 11:44 pm
Mona:
As I said, this is really one of the first disagreements I’ve ever had with you, and I can understand where you’re coming from. But I don’t think that supporting Barr makes one a schizophrenic libertarian, as you say.
In any event, try here (sorry that I stink at html):
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/479/bob_barr_joins_mpp
here:
http://www.reason.com/blog/show/117470.html
and as importantly, here:
http://www.mpp.org/states/district-of-columbia/news/marijuana-project-parties-1.html
Finally, if you’ll forgive the argument from authority here and are willing to listen through about 6 minutes of Blogtalk radio, you can hear Steve Kubby’s endorsement and description of Barr’s position on the WO(s)D here:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/stevekubbyshow/2008/05/28/leading-from-the-front
Kubby says that Barr’s position is libertarian because Barr’s argument against the Drug War is that it is unconstitutional on the federal level, which is the level of office for which he is running.
As far as I can tell, what Barr has been doing on marijuana the last year and a half is precisely what he had previously said should be the basis for a RICO case.
In any event, it is probably the case that he opposes legalization on the state level. But at least he is willing to acknowledge the failures of the federal drug war (which is far, far more than either Obama or McCain, and which is arguably the biggest problem with the criminalization of drugs). To be sure, his position is not ideologically pure libertarianism, but it is still far more libertarian than either of the competitors.
As far as I can tell, his current position boils down to an argument that drug laws should be a matter of states’ rights. Although I personally disagree with that position and hate the conflation of states’ rights with libertarianism, I would point out that this was exactly Ron Paul’s position on gay marriage, yet many of the people (not necessarily you, so I apologize if this comes across as a straw man) who found Ron Paul to be the epitome of libertarianism find Barr’s positions insufficiently libertarian.
I understand that there are many who think the LP should only nominate candidates who are “pure” libertarians, but to be honest, I don’t think the LP serves any purpose when it does that - its national candidates simply do not achieve enough support or attention to serve any meaningful role in public education. If you think that the LP does serve a meaningful role no matter how small its candidate’s publicity or vote totals, then it may well be a perfectly rational position to oppose Barr on ideological impurity grounds. I just don’t happen to be one of those people.
I acknowledge that Barr has close to zero chance of ever becoming President, but my hopes for the Barr campaign are either: enough people vote for him to push whichever party loses this November in a more libertarian direction, or that enough people vote for him to finally create a viable third party that the two major parties would then have to destroy by co-opting in some fashion.
One final, somewhat less rational reason to support Barr: if you want McCain to lose, but just….can’t…..quite….pull the lever for Obama (even though you really, really want to), then Barr is your guy.
June 7th, 2008 at 11:44 am
I have some good news. Whether or not you vote for Obama, McCain, or Barr, or stay home, or dance naked outside of the polling station, your vote absolutely, positively will not be worth a damn thing. Hell, vote for the Communists, if you like. It won’t matter.
June 7th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
Joshua -
…your vote absolutely, positively will not be worth a damn thing.”
Because the Bilderburg/Bushite/Nazi/Skull-and-Bones/Diebold mega conspiracy will just determine the outcome anyway?
June 7th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Bob Barr. Oy!
Mona hates it when I quote Mike Huben:
The Libertarian Party
The “Party of Oxymoron”: “Individualists unite!”
Minimal government is whatever we say it is, and we don’t agree.
Government is “moving steadily in a libertarian direction” with every change libertarians approve of; no matter if it takes one step forward and two steps backwards.
Yes, the symbol of the Libertarian Party is a Big Government Statue. It’s not supposed to be funny or ironic!
June 7th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Mone,
For the LIBERTARIAN Party candidate to assent to drug prohibition is as absurd as a Green Party candidate declaring that global warming is a canard requiring no attention, or a Communist Party candidate declaring labor has no legit grievances.
As we’ve discussed often at UT, some drugs are just not suited for self-medication by the layperson. Antibiotics, for instance. Cocaine is probably not one of those that needs to be prohibited, as habituating as it is, if the price were not so high (because it is prohibited).
Bob Barr is a phony libertarian but a good shot at an attempt to find a candidate posessing that elusive quality called “electability” with the aim of acheiving political power for The Party.
He’ll hurt McCain. That’s good.
June 7th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
“Most reasonable people,” eh? Now THERE’S a compelling form of argumentation – “reasonable people” meaning, of course, right?, those who agree with you. And I’m “fringe,” huh? More name-calling signifying NOTHING since one can be “fringe” and be right, right? Or be “fringe” and be wrong. And you say nothing (again) that refutes what I wrote about Scalia. And if you listened to my Barr interview you would realize I’m anything but “simpatico” with Barr. The interview is here:
http://www.theamericanview.com/index.php?id=1096
June 8th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
“Most reasonable people,” eh? Now THERE’S a compelling form of argumentation – “reasonable people” meaning, of course, right?,
Actually, John, “the reasonable man” standard - or “reasonable person” as we now acknowledge that women are as reasonable as men and no longer cut out their uteruses to cure them of the vapors - has been around for quite some time and is a “term that originated in the development of the common law”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_person
The question, John, is who is on the fringe of what? A “reasonable person” is not the same as an “average person”. People on the cutting edge of science and reason (if you want to call that fringe) are often right when the “average man” is not. The Pope hasn’t been right about much since… I’ll let Mona answer that but it should tell you what I think of Scalia and Alito and Rehnquist, too. Fringe and wrong.
History and rationale behind the standard
The rationale for the reasonable person standard is that the law will benefit the general public when it serves its reasonable members, and thus a reasonable application of the law is sought, compatible with planning, working, or getting along with others. The reasonable person is not necessarily the “average person”; it is not a “democratic” measure. To predict the appropriate sense of responsibility and other standards of the reasonable person, “what is reasonable” has to be the primary question. (What the “average person” thinks or might do is irrelevant to a case concerning specialized technical knowledge, such as advanced mathematics.) But the reasonable person is appropriately informed, capable, aware of the law, and fair-minded. Such a person might do something extraordinary in certain circumstances, but whatever that person does or thinks is always “reasonable.”
One of the earliest cases contributing to the development of the modern reasonable person standard was the 1837 English case Vaughan v. Menlove. In that case, the court rejected an argument by the defendant’s lawyers that the defendant should be found negligent only if he failed to act “bona fide to the best of his judgment; if he had, he ought not to be responsible for the misfortune of not possessing the highest order of intelligence.” The court, reasoning that such standard would be too subjective, ruled that the better test was whether the defendant had exhibited “a regard to caution such as a man of ordinary prudence would observe.”
US jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes explained the reasonable person standard as resulting from the fact that for life in organized society, “a certain average of conduct, a sacrifice of individual peculiarities going beyond a certain point, is necessary to the general welfare.” Echoing the court’s reasoning in Vaughn v. Menlove, Holmes declared that the law “does not attempt to see men [sic] as God sees them.”
June 8th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Mona… Most are going to find you quite fringe; whatever one thinks about atheists, claiming Antonin Scalia for their camp is simply insane. A quick perusal of your site reveals many other examples of, shall we say, unusual thinking.
I’m not going to go there. Some times you feel like a nut….
June 8th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
Why am I the first to link to the Lofton-Ginsberg interview?
Oliver Wendell Holmes was an unreasonable man whose opinions I will ignore.
June 8th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
“Why am I the first to link to the Lofton-Ginsberg interview?”
That’s hilarious!
June 8th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
That is definitely hilarious.
June 8th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Speaking of hilarious…
McCain: Deliver bottled hot water to dehydrated babies?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DqR7zis99I
This John Lofton?
Christians Cannot Vote for Non-Christians
So says former Republican National Committee official John Lofton: “This is ridiculous on its face to say that Christians can vote for non-Christians. It’s Christ denial, its something that’s very serious, And in fact, in a way things have gotten even worse by saying that religion doesn’t matter. Well, that’s the same as saying, whether they know it or not, that Christ doesn’t matter. He is the King of kings, he is the Lord of lords — which means Lord over politics, and no Christian can be complicit in having an unbeliever, who God calls wicked, rule over us.”
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/2007/11/christians_cann.html
Even these people should be margnalized. It’s not just the foreign policy screw ups that we shouldn’t let back into polite society. That is the most un-American thing I’ve read in some time.
June 8th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
That is definitely hilarious.
It is gobsmackingly side-splitting. One can only wonder why Ginsberg would remain to participate in such a spectacle.
The “interview” also demonstrates precisely why it would be an utter waste of time to engage Mr. Lofton as if he were a serious person, whose “arguments” are not self-evidently demented to any reasonable person. (Thanks LWM for the explication of the “reasonable person” legal doctrine, which I did, indeed, have on my mind.)
June 8th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Mark: Thank you for the links, and I have somewhat changed my mind as a result of them. Barr’s merely repudiating an interest in imprisoning anti-prohibition activists would not have moved me; but that he is now a lobbyist for the Marijuana Policy Project, does.
And, as I said, Barr’s merely giving a fringe figure like Lofton an interview does not seem to me the indictment of Barr that ka1igu1a feels it to be. Not without more, and you’ve made a good case that Barr has in — word and deed — backed off from the “more” I cited.
June 8th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
LWM sez:As we’ve discussed often at UT, some drugs are just not suited for self-medication by the layperson. Antibiotics, for instance.
Yes, but the reason why I am on public record — as is UT’s Greenwald — for approving of the need to have a prescription for antibiotics is because over-use/unnecessary use can render one a walking contagion to others, and/or cause antibiotics to loose their efficacy. In my view, that constitutes “direct harm,” or a high potential for it, to others.
Otherwise I wouldn’t give a rat’s patooty if Aunt Mary simply did not get that most common colds are viral, and that antibiotics will usually therefore do her no good at all — I’d say she should be allowed to swallow as many varieties of antibiotics as she wished at the first sign of the sniffles. I would say that, if the facts in my first graf were not true.
June 8th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Here’s Lofton with Frank Zappa on “Crossfire” in the 80s:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=B9856_xv8gc&feature=related
June 8th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
“Otherwise I wouldn’t give a rat’s patooty if Aunt Mary simply did not get that most common colds are viral, and that antibiotics will usually therefore do her no good at all — I’d say she should be allowed to swallow as many varieties of antibiotics as she wished at the first sign of the sniffles. I would say that, if the facts in my first graf were not true.”
I would add to this that we don’t have nearly two million arrests annually for possession of antibiotics without a prescription. I wouldn’t care if psychoactive drugs like marijuana, cocaine, heroin, etc. were regulated in a way similar to how alcohol is now. That’s a far cry from complete prohibition and outright criminalization.
June 8th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
Here’s Lofton with Frank Zappa on “Crossfire” in the 80s
Thanks for that, Keith. I saw that episode of Crossfire at the time — I was a regular. Zappa, uh, rocked. Watching it again brings back good times.
June 9th, 2008 at 7:54 am
Mona:
As usual, I appreciate your open-mindedness. I reiterate that I do think there are rational reasons not to support Barr, particularly depending on your view of the LP’s purpose and potential. I also think it’s rational to be suspicious of the authenticity of many of his position changes (especially on DOMA); but at least on the WO(s)D, his actions speak pretty loudly in his favor.
The position that confused me, though, was the position in which Mike Gravel’s conversion to libertarianism (which occured literally in the context of his quixotic attempt at the Dem nomination) was viewed as authentic, while Barr’s (which was made official almost 2 years ago and which he was moving towards for years) was not.
June 9th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Mona:
I believe, at the debate a few weeks ago at the LP Convention, Barr’s response to the question posed about the drug war indicated that he supported remitting the issue back to the states as a first step toward eventually remitting the issue back to the personal decisions of individual Americans.
I believe an unedited clip of that debate is availabel at http://www.cspanjunkie.org.
June 9th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
“Deliver bottled hot water to dehydrated babies?”
Is that anything like that product in the Ren & Stimpy episode: “Instant Young’uns–Just Add Water!”?