So recently I checked out the local chapter of the libertarian party hoping to meet up with some fellow libertarian. I'm in line with Walter Block's idea that the political process can be used to further educate the public about ideas of freedom during election time at least when they are some what paying attention.
Unfortunatly most of the people weren't what I would consider true libertarians (I suppose I shouldn't have been suprised considering their candidate Gary Johnson is a far cry as well). A lot of them considered themselves to be "pragmatic" libertarians. The chapter chair considered anarcho-capitalists giving libertarianism a bad name because of "radical" ideas like privatizing roads, law enforcement etc.
So I guess my question is if anyone else had a similar experience interacting with the libertarian party. Not sure if I should both hanging around but I wanted to at least let them know resources like Mises.org exist. Most of them never heard of austrian school economics either :/
The LP is generally Classically Liberal. You're going to meet many different types in the LP as Libertarianism is a wide umbrella (from the classicals to the An-Caps to the Mutualists). I've found the older folks are more Liberal and the younger ones more Anarchistic. My beef with the LP when I was a member was that we got no support from the national party and our local chapter was disorganized. We spent about $14,000 to secure 4% of the local vote. IMO that's a waste of money and was better served setting up things for education/community outreach. I think a better organization is StudentForLiberty. They run annual regional and international conferences that are great for networking. On a side note I'll be at the Lansing and Chicago conferences this year.
They arent austrians
“Since people are concerned that ‘X’ will not be provided, ‘X’ will naturally be provided by those who are concerned by its absence.""The sweetest of minds can harbor the harshest of men.”
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