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I nearly fell out of my chair this morning when I learned that Libertarian presidential hopeful Gary Johnson had picked former Massachusetts Governor William Weld to be his Vice President. Weld is a big time gun control proponent. As the nytimes.com reported back in the day (October 1, 1993) . . .

With voters growing increasingly fearful of gunfire on the streets, Gov. William F. Weld of Massachusetts reversed course this week and proposed some of the most stringent gun control laws in the country.

Mr. Weld, a Republican who will run for re-election next year, called for a statewide ban on assault weapons — a proposal he opposed during his 1990 campaign — as well as a waiting period for buying handguns and a prohibition on handgun ownership by anyone under 21. His proposed legislation would also limit the number of handguns an individual could buy and would impose tough penalties for illegal gun sales and gun-related crimes.

“The purpose of this common sense legislation is to remove deadly guns from our streets and to take weapons out of the hands of many teens who themselves are becoming deadly killers,” the Governor said.

This morning, CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Weld how he squared his pro-gun control stance with libertarianism. Weld revealed himself as a dyed-in-the-wool pro-hunting-and-that’s-it Fudd.

Sorry, guys. Another one bites the dust.

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155 COMMENTS

    • Is the libertarian option really an option at all? That is a party that should be focused on gaining voter registrations so they can get on the primary ballot in many states and run candidates for smaller offices. My state requires a 5% threshold to get on the primary ballot. I’ve seen the voter registration rolls where I live. You can count the registered libertarians on one hand, out of 3800 registered voters.

        • This is why people should stop wasting their votes on Third Party Candidates and write-ins who have no chance whatsoever of winning. All that does is ensure that the Democrats will win. Is that what we all want . . . Clinton or Sanders in the White House? I know I sure don’t.

          Trump is going to be the Republican candidate, so everyone who doesn’t like him for one reason or another needs to stop venting and pull together so we don’t have to fight for our rights for another 4 or 8 years.

      • No they really aren’t and they know it. Listen to Johnson and Petersen, their main goal is to raise awareness, get into the debates, and on the ballots. They already know they can’t win an election, but their goal is the long game as far as I have seen. Petersen’s live streams cover this pretty well, and Johnson was on Joe Rogan’s show explaining it.

        • “The US government will fine Bill Gates 1 million dollars a day until Microsoft complies with antitrust investigations. At this rate, Gates will become bankrupt just 10 years after the earth crashes into the Sun.”

          There’s such a thing as too long a game.

        • But having somebody like Bill Weld be a spokesman for libertarianism in any debate is like selecting Hugo Chavez to defend the free market. Why should any libertarian assist an effort to “get the message out there” when it’s the wrong message to begin with?

        • Because Johnson had previously shown that he does not understand the concept of free markets or of capitalism. Apparently, free weed is enough for him to call himself a Libertarian. Weld is just a further step back into Statism.

  1. I guess I’m not Libertarian for the upcoming election. Blasphemy. He is NOT a libertarian. Johnson should be ashamed for such an idiotic choice as a running mate.

    • I think he should be commended. He knows whats at stake here. He just single handedly threw sand into the eyes of all the conscientious objector never Trump voters. The chances of him Ross Perot’ing this election have plummeted. Seriously, how the heck could you square wasting your vote now?

      • Well, I guess as a Never Trump fellow, I’ll just have to vote the down ticket and write in “none of the above” for the presidential race.
        I won’t vote for Mrs Clinton, or Mr Sanders, as I feel they’re both terrible choices for the country, on a number of issues, not just firearms.
        But I also won’t vote for Mr Trump. I don’t trust him.
        I guess this kinda goes to show what happens when you republicans select a progressive statist for your canidate, many of us undeclared or independent voters who are barred from voting in the primary won’t vote.

        • So basically what you’re saying is you want to see our next president be the lying sack of shit Clinton?? People with this attitude shouldn’t be allowed to vote.

        • “People with this attitude shouldn’t be allowed to vote.”

          Sounds like a Trump supporter to me…..

      • His chances of Ross Perot-ing the election plummeted? I’m not sure that an imperceptible nudge from “never gonna happen” to “never ever gonna happen” constitutes a plummet.

        Thr Libertarian Party has never had a better chance to blossom than the Obama administration. Unfortunately, the LP never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. It’s a party of kooks, misfits and malcontents at the grassroots level, and has beens, never weres and vanity candidacies at the candidate level.

        They need to focus on local elections only and just build up from there. These quixotic presidential runs by Republican party rejects are just embarrassing and counterproductive.

        • ” Unfortunately, the LP never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. “

          Literally laughed out loud…and not the kind of literally the braindead say when they mean figuratively.

          That statement is gold on a lot of planes.

    • Weld is also the nativephobic open-borders moron who equated enforcing immigration laws with Nazi Germany. The libertarians’ love of open borders, based on their naive obsession with anarchy (and probably much needed cash infusions from anonymous neolib donors), renders them completely unfit for office. The whole open borders thing is just a trojan horse for cheap labor, global serfdom, and demographic warfare by richers who build walls to protect themselves.

      • Libertarians are strongly divided on Open-borders, which, along with abortion, is one of the two major dividing issues in the party.

        • If you eliminated state sponsored welfare open borders wouldn’t be a problem at all. In the 19th century the Irish and Chinese had to work their asses off or starve. This is good for the natives. Combining public welfare with open borders is national suicide.

          For libertarians abortion comes down to whether or not you accept prenatal science. If you truly believe a living human being is actually no different than a cancerous tumor than why would any legitimate government have the right to dictate what you do with your own body. But for the non science deniers, if the government isn’t there to protect the weakest of the society, what point is there in having a government at all?

        • >> For libertarians abortion comes down to whether or not you accept prenatal science.

          No, it depends on what exactly you believe to be the criteria for natural rights. If you believe that any human being is entitled to them, then you would generally be anti-abortion. If, instead, you believe that it is personhood that entitles one to natural rights, then you would not have any problem with abortion at least until the last trimester, and quite possibly all the way to birth (since, quite obviously, a clump of cells with no brain cannot possibly be a person).

          Having said that, there are other considerations, especially when you get into the more extreme/nutty forms of libertarianism. For example, Rothbard believed that abortion is always justified on the grounds that an unwanted fetus is effectively committing trespassing, and thus if it does not vacate itself on demand (which it obviously cannot), then any means of removing it are acceptable – just as use of force would be acceptable against someone committing trespassing in your house. There’s also a more moderate position along the same lines, which basically says that a fetus has a right to life, but no right to sustenance – and so while it would be illegal to kill it outright, it would not be illegal to remove it and let it die on its own.

        • ‘…then you would not have any problem with abortion at least until the last trimester, and quite possibly all the way to birth (since, quite obviously, a clump of cells with no brain cannot possibly be a person).’

          Anti-science or willful ignorance of science, really doesn’t make any difference.

          As far as the ‘trespassing’ argument, it’s beyond absurd. Unless a woman is raped, she has invited that child into her womb with the understanding that she would offer the child sustenance and nurturing until the child is an adult. You cannot invite someone into your home and then shoot them dead as a trespasser. For that matter you can’t legally (in pretty much any society on earth) execute a legitimate trespasser unless he/she poses a lethal threat or grave bodily harm. These arguments are not intended to be serious philosophical ideas, but rather just a rationalization for irresponsible behavior.

        • Science is largely irrelevant here. Science can objectively determine if someone or something is human – but if you don’t believe that every cell with human DNA has natural rights, then it has exactly zero relevance.

          And, of course, the notion of rights themselves, much less natural rights, is firmly outside of the domain of science.

          The question of personhood (and its related questions of self-awareness, intelligence etc) is much more complicated, and it is currently not in the realm of scientific definitions or testability, although we’re slowly getting there.

        • >> Unless a woman is raped, she has invited that child into her womb with the understanding that she would offer the child sustenance and nurturing until the child is an adult. You cannot invite someone into your home and then shoot them dead as a trespasser.

          You can, however, demand that they leave at any point – e.g. if they do something that you don’t like – and (depending on the jurisdiction) use force to evict them if they do not comply. And as far as libertarians are concerned, it would be moral to use even lethal force at some point if they resist.

          >> Unless a woman is raped, she has invited that child into her womb with the understanding that she would offer the child sustenance and nurturing until the child is an adult.

          Rothbard examines this hypothesis, but finds it lacking. It basically implies that there’s some sort of implicit contract in child-bearing – but it falls apart almost immediately, since a contract between two parties requires both to be of a sound mind, and a fertilized egg clearly isn’t.

          You could claim that such a contract is an implicit societal norm, but then that norm can change over time or geographically – there’s certainly nothing “natural” about it.

          BTW, I’m not a libertarian, and I do not necessarily agree with Rothbard here (or on most everything else) – I’m just relaying his opinions. However, his construction has one thing going for it – it is internally self-consistent, and based on a very few fundamental axioms, from which everything else follows logically. I disagree because I do not share some of those axioms, but even so, his approach is infinitely saner than what passes for political debate on abortion on any given date.

        • First, we’re not talking about ‘any cell with human DNA’, we are talking about a group of cells (numbering in the billions by the time a woman realizes she is pregnant) with UNIQUE, INDIVIDUAL human DNA. There is a huge (scientific) difference between a random cell within your body and a human fetus.

          Second, since when is ‘self-awareness, intelligence etc’ a requirement for ‘personhood’? Do you have a ‘right’ to murder someone just because they are sleeping and therefore not ‘self aware’ or ‘intelligent’? If someone was permanently in a vegetative state you MIGHT have an argument, but a fetus is clearly not permanently ‘un-self-aware or unintelligent’.

          Third, if you rented a property and later decided in the middle of the lease term that you wanted the tenant out, would it be appropriate in any circumstance to murder the tenant if they refused to leave? How is it appropriate to kill another human being for ‘refusing’ to leave a property that they are physically incapable of leaving? Especially if they’ve honored every last detail in the agreement to be there in the first place?

          Fourth, how is there not an ‘implicit contract’ between a woman and her offspring? For thousands of years the consequences of sexual intercourse have been known by every single human being that has ever lived, save the non-functional retarded. This isn’t exactly a new concept. Under colonial (English) common law, abortion was forbidden after the ‘quickening’ because at that point they knew that there was another living human inside the womb. Today we have the scientific knowledge to recognize the fetus to be human long before the baby kicks. If thousands of years of tradition and hundreds of years of common law do not constitute an ‘implicit contract’ then there are no societal bounds and no point in government at all. You are not then a libertarian at all but if you truly believe this philosophy you are an anarchist.

          Like I said, these arguments are nothing short of a rationalization for irresponsible behavior. It’s nothing short of holocaust denial.

        • >> Second, since when is ‘self-awareness, intelligence etc’ a requirement for ‘personhood’? Do you have a ‘right’ to murder someone just because they are sleeping and therefore not ‘self aware’ or ‘intelligent’? If someone was permanently in a vegetative state you MIGHT have an argument, but a fetus is clearly not permanently ‘un-self-aware or unintelligent’.

          A fetus is actually permanently un-self-aware. To become self-aware, it needs to grow into something else. So yes, a fetus is exactly like a person in a permanent vegetative state (indeed, that is the comparison I was going to offer myself). A fetus is not like a person that is sleeping, because sleep is merely a state, to and from which the same human transitions.

          Basically, a fetus is something that can eventually become a person. It has never been a person before, so that eventual future state of affairs does not confer any special traits to fetus here and now. Not anymore so than an unfertilized egg is a person, even though some eggs grow into persons.

          And no, there’s no distinction between fertilized egg and unfertilized egg on account that one grows “naturally” into a person “if you leave it alone”, while the other one does not. The simple reason is that an egg – or a fetus – don’t grow “naturally” into a person in a clean experiment (i.e. outside of uterus). They require a very specific environment which has to be maintained, certain nutrients that have to be supplied etc. That is very much not “leaving it alone”, since the mother is at all times actively sustaining the egg/fetus. Effectively, to be pro-life means accepting a positive right to life, at least in some circumstances. Libertarians usually treat positive rights as anathema.

          In any case, we’re veering further and further away from science and into philosophy here. There’s no scientific definition of “personhood” that I’m aware of, and so my definition is not really any better or worse than yours.

          >> Third, if you rented a property and later decided in the middle of the lease term that you wanted the tenant out, would it be appropriate in any circumstance to murder the tenant if they refused to leave?

          If you ask an ancap, it would depend on how they got there and what the terms of the contract are. Absent any other terms, occupation of your property that you did not consent to amounts to aggressive use of force, and can be countered with force, to whatever degree necessary to make it stop.

          >> Fourth, how is there not an ‘implicit contract’ between a woman and her offspring?

          You can’t have a meaningful contract with something that cannot enter into contracts, by virtue of not being able to consent, or indeed reason at all.

          At best you could claim that the contract is between a woman and the society. And then we move on to…

          >> If thousands of years of tradition and hundreds of years of common law do not constitute an ‘implicit contract’

          “Thousands years of tradition and hundreds of years of common law” also say that wife is the property of her husband in most respect (e.g. she can’t own any property in her own name), and so are their children. Not only that, but it was the law here in US until the second half of the last century in most places.

          Humans are very good at making others like themselves miserable, and a lot of that has been codified in tradition and custom. So I say FOAD to any tradition and any custom that does not have an objective rational explanation; and appeal to tradition in and of itself does not hold any sway for me.

          >> It’s nothing short of holocaust denial.

          Sure, and Obama is therefore literally Hitler. ~

        • Intellectually dishonest rubbish. You have a fixed position and will contort your logic as much as necessary to rationalize your irresponsible behavior.

          And O’Bama isn’t Hitler. He’s more like Goebbels.

    • The Libertarian primary hasn’t been held, and Austin Petersen’s got my vote either way. You can’t get more pro gun than that guy.

      • So what you’re saying is, you’re not voting in this election at all and don’t care what happens. Thats what a vote for some nobody is.

        • Absolutely spot on!

          If you vote for this guy who has absolutely no chance to win, you might as well go down to the polls and vote for Clinton because you are voting against Trump.

          Please people, grow up and start thinking strategically! We have to win back the White House and voting for this guy is not going to do it.

        • Whenever anyone starts telling you that “we should …”, the very first question you should ask yourself (and them) is: who is “we”?

    • SOMETIMES Libetarians are great (especially minus their foreign policies)
      ALWAYS the Libertarian party sucks.
      Nothing but a vanity project for people to run in the Libertaran party.

      Rand Paul and other L’s have shown that Libertarians can operate within the Repub party.

      • Psst….Rand Paul was not, is not and will not be a ‘libertarian’…in either party (all parties suck ass) and/or in philosophy.

        Lil’ Rand has disavowed being libertarian and repeatedly self-identified as a ‘Reagan Republican’…you know…a big talker populust sounding monger of rhetoric but still a statist, albeit a smaller statist when compared to most of the vermin.

        His hero and role model, Ronnie Reagan supported gun control, signed gun control and advocated for gun control, in addition to a plethora of other state/federal-supremisist policies.

        Funny how stuff like this is nearly always conveniently ignored or glossed over.

        Regardless, have a good day.

      • >> Rand Paul and other L’s have shown that Libertarians can operate within the Repub party.

        Oh, did they? So what were their successes?

        • Actually getting elected to the US senate blows away everything the libertarian party has accomplished. Combined.

          Of course, as was pointed out above Rand Paul has insisted he’s not libertarian.

    • Every Libertarian I know (myself included) is still trying to figure out why the hell Johnson picked this completely un-Libertarian asshat.

    • Trump will be controlled somewhat by a GOP Congress. There is actually very little the president can do without agreement from Congress. This is the last chance to keep a pro-gun Supreme Court.

      Hillary, on the other hand, will likely have a democrat Congress on her coattails and together, they will shred American’s gun rights. They will also turn the Supreme Court anti-gun leftist, probably permanently. Our new anti-gun laws will make Australia’s look wimpy.

      I’m not voting for Trump, I’m voting AGAINST Hillary.

        • No, when Hillary gets elected with a democrat Congress, she will get her “Australian-Style Gun Control.
          You need to pay more attention.

        • “No, when Hillary gets elected with a democrat Congress, …”

          WRONG, Bob.

          Let me explain something to you.

          Americans as a whole hate Congress. But individually, they think *their* Congress-Critter is OK.

          The House will *not* flip Democrat this term. The Senate, on the other hand, *might* turn Left, but not enough to be filibuster-proof…

        • Honestly, with how hard it is to challenge an incumbent, the best we’ve been able to do is focus on just a few and reaaaaaally push. The one I’m watching is Wisconsin. I want “Ryan’ed” to be a verb like “Cantor’ed.”

      • It has been evident for decades to any thinking man that the Republic and the Constitution are being systematically and deliberately destroyed as part of a globalist-collectivist plan, in part via the Republican-Democrat paradigm.

        It has also been patently obvious that it will inevitably result in a literal choice of willing subjugation or revolt via force of arms.

        If one has not discerned this fundamental truth yet, then that one is defacto of a serf-mentality and is one of the hundreds of millions of obedient ‘lawful’ citizens who will ‘follow the law’, even if it means giving up Liberty’s Teeth and even up to the point of obediently walking up to the waiting slit-trench or to the gates of a fed-govt detention camp.

        Pardon me whilst I go puke after reading your comment and contextualizing it.

    • Naw, in private Hillary is the wicked witch of the West hissing at the 2nd amendment. There’s no way for a pro choice, pro gun person to vote.

      • Pro-choice and pro-gun? Careful, son – admitting to not making all of your decisions based on a two thousand year old book of fairy tales is cause for lynching around here.

        • Should be pointed out that there are some people who use logic and reason to determine that people should be allowed to have the tools to defend themselves, AND that children who are developed enough to survive outside of a womb, or have a heart beat/brain wave, should not be killed.

        • It’s also possible to use logic to determine that people should have guns for self defense and that legally forcing a person to donate their organs for the benefit of another person is a violation of human rights. If someone dies on the waiting list for a kidney transplant, we don’t call those who chose not to donate murderers. If it’s wrong to force someone to undergo major surgery and give up a kidney to save someone else (and I think it is), then it’s wrong to force someone to stay pregnant against their will to save a fetus.

          Pro gun and pro choice, it’s all just pro self defense.

          Wish I had a candidate to vote for who hadn’t promised to violate the fundamental rights of American citizens…

        • I hadn’t heard the argument comparing kidneys to the rest of the human (or fetus’s) body. I’ll hafta ponder that one.

        • Oh I figued it out! When you can remove an unwanted but innocent human from your body without killing them, then we can come to a compromise!

        • What?! No, that’s not a compromise. They’re pretty firm on the baby killing part. How else are they gonna feed the souls of the innocent to Sho’goth Roddom Clinton?

    • Wasn’t Obama supposed to be the last president? You know, because he’d never vacate the white house in 2012 2016, FEMA concentration camps have already been prepared for the patriots, and black helicopters are about to descend any time now?

      And (to address the other poster waiting for a civil war), I believe it was imminent – as in “next year at most” – pretty much since Obama got elected.

      • Do you really think that Ferguson and Baltimore were grass-roots driven and happened spontaneously? Hint – busloads of agitators were shipped from other areas under White Castle supervision – you follow the news, you know this. Do you not see these as very possible rehearsals for mass protests and insurrections requiring the government stepping in and getting emergency powers? We may not know the truth and all the details for a long time, but, seriously, you (and I) haven’t been born yesterday not to see a possible rehearsal. Maybe the One decided that its too risky, maybe He’ll try it again closer to November. But I certainly do not believe that He actually “cared” about any lives there – black, rainbow or whichever.

  2. Look, I hate to piss upon the Libertarian parade, but in my youth, I was actually active in the Libertarian Party in California.

    Here’s what I learned the hard way (through a misallocation of my time and political efforts) about Libertarians: A large number of them are nothing but a bunch of dope-obessed tax cheats, who are interested in flying their freak flag as often as possible.

    That’s it. At least half of the “libertarians” I met in the LP meetings in both southern and Bay Area California couldn’t give a rat’s rear end about guns, much less gun rights. They were all about dope, not paying taxes, and sexual gratification. They weren’t libertarians, they were libertines. This isn’t merely a semantic difference.

      • I call them “liberaltarians” because they are basically for legal pot…and that’s about it. They sure aren’t federalists.

    • That also sounds like an aspect of California. What would be your voting advice in the upcoming election?

      • As I get older, I’m less inclined to give extensive advice on the important things in life: voting (I suppose we must, but it is as distasteful as getting a dose of the clap), drinking (drink good stuff, in moderation, or not at all), cars (get one you can work on) or dogs (if you want one, get a useful one).

        Guns are a topic on which I’ll still opine. Buy nice guns, take care of them.

        The worst part about giving advice is that some people actually might follow it.

    • I had a different experience in MN. I met a lot of tinfoil hat wearers and petty dictators though. I have also participated quite heavily in the Republican party here. The members I ran into there were often different from but on the whole no better than the Libertarians. Going to the state convention as a delegate was the last thing I ever had to do with them. It was a disgusting show.

    • Libertarians tend to pick their issues to stand on. Some just want their drugs. Some just want no state involvement in marriage. A few just want their guns.

      Me? I just want the government to mind it’s own business. If I want to guard my marijuana crop with a full-auto M4, I should be able to, and not have to ask anyone’s permission to do so. And have my wife backing me up with another M4. We’d be married because we said so, not because the government “granted” us the right.

      • That is my perspective as well. I would like the government to cease trying to “help” me (or anyone else) and just do what is their responsibility per the Constitution.

      • I like the way you think and your analogy is exactly as it should be in a free nation of free men where creation and enforcement of ‘law’ is only legitimatefor circumstances where someone caused actual harm to the Life, Liberty or Property of another.

        Sadly, such beliefs are near as scarce as hen’s teeth.

    • The pot head libertarians I saw on TV while growing up in Sacramento in the 1970s never supported the second amendment. They said people getting high didn’t need guns.
      The only thing libertarians support is getting intoxicated and “putting things into there bodies.”
      At one time I thought libertarians wanted to end the welfare slavery sysyem. But that’s not true.
      They just want to keep black people distracted with different types of drug intoxication.

    • Why would every libertarian care about guns specifically? It is a highly individualist ideology that boils down to “live and let live”. This implies that every person’s interests are their own, and they should concern themselves with those, and let others take care of theirs.

      Also, WTF is a “freak flag”?

      • A true Libertarian will be concerned about the freedom of having a gun (or guns) because, to quote Jefferson, “it gives boldness, enterprize, and independance to the mind.”

        • That’s Jefferson’s opinion, and it doesn’t seem to be substantiated by evidence. These days especially, I know of many crazy people with guns.

        • Just because there are (and have always been) crazy people with guns, that does not devalue the benefits of the gun. There are also crazy people with books…

        • Of course it doesn’t devalue guns themselves. But it does provide evidence against the notion that guns “give boldness, enterprize, and independance to the mind”.

          Guns are tools, nothing more, nothing less. As with any tool, its utility varies depending on the person and the circumstances. Some simply don’t find much utility in them, and that’s fine. So long as they hold to the notion that other people may find them useful, and those people shouldn’t be prevented from using them, it’s all consistent with libertarian values.

        • @int19h As long as those people don’t break the law or undermine another individuals desire for “Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness” than I could really care less they have a gun.

    • To things: 1) How long ago was this? Have you checked in to LP discussion in the last 10 years? 2) California, you say? Are you sure you were dabbling in Libertarian politics at all?

  3. Bill Weld was a left-leaning New Yorker (is there any other kind?) before he became a left-leaning Republican from Massachusetts, which was before he became a left-leaning Republican from New York for the second time. He’s about as Libertarian as Ben Bradlee of the Washington Post (aka Pravda on the Potomac), who not coincidentally was Weld’s father in law.

    Got that?

    • The choices are so bad this election, I guess I’ll lower my expectations: sex, drugs, and no taxes are sounding good!

    • Good thing that there are no other ‘left-leaning’ Statist Federal-Supremist New Yorkers trying to get elected to office.

      Oh…wait….

  4. I’d never vote for a pro-abortionist anyway, but now I’ve got that and the fact that he’s soft on the Second Amendment.

  5. Hillary will give us a Supreme Court with 4 to 6 Kagans and Sotomayors on it.
    Won’t that be WONDERFUL !!!!!!!

    • Four to six Kagans and Sotomayors on the same court would have some wild orgies and miss most of the arguments.

  6. This is why I despise the Libertarian party, if they didn’t have double standard, they’d have no standards.

    I guess you’re all anti-government until it’s convenient for you.

  7. Just proves what I’ve been saying for awhile. Libertarians are essentially liberals. I used to be libertarian in my youth. But after really getting to know them and what they stand for I turned away. Many of them are ignorant on many issues and have only read a few sentences out of the constitution. It could’ve been a great party but it suffered an influx of too many disenchanted liberals.

  8. Gary Johnson is not that great of a Libertarian candidate. He likes the idea of the State forcing people to participate in religious rituals they disagree with. He is just another lesser evil candidate to vote for.

  9. I used to vote Libertarian in the Presidential elections, because here in Washington, the state always goes Democrat and my vote doesn’t mean much anyway.

    I reasoned that I could at least make a statement by voting Libertarian. Now I have no excuse to vote for someone other than Trump.

  10. So, screwed screwed as a Democrat, screwed possibly as a Republican, screwed definitely as a Libertarian, what is the next political hoop to jump through until we find a representative who gives enough of a shyt about the Constitution and the rights of the American people?

    Trump has been endorsed by the NRA but am I the only one who wonders if he will actually advance 2A rights or hinder them for politics?

    • You are not the only one, my head hurts thinking of what I’ll do in November at the ballot box. Hooking the Donald up to a lie detector is the only way I might trust whatever comes out of his mouth.

      • You’re assuming he’s not the sort who can sincerely believe A on the day of the lie detector test (and thereby pass it) then change his mind and sincerely believe not-A the next day. Then go back to believing A a week or two later.

  11. I happen to be a Libertarian. Yeah, I tend to believe that if a person can buy alcohol, they ought to be able to buy pot; pot smokers/edibles eaters tend to be a tad less violent than people drinking alcohol. I also believe that a person should be able to do whatever they wish unless it harms another person; the caveat is that “harm” needs to be delineated at a high level, and “harm” cannot be “offended”. Once another person is harmed, the person doing the harm should be hammered to the fullest extent of the law…

  12. I identified as Libertarian in college, and because of the demographics and location of my alma mater, many I talked to were from Texas or California. I became a bit disillusioned as conversations grew. It was all weed, sex, guns, and freedom for them. Then I began harping on dismantling the welfare state, privatizing a whole bunch of current government services, and I got deer in the headlights looks. It was at that moment that the mask had been taken off. Fiscal and social libertarians are rare. Social libertarians are a dime a dozen. Regardless, I still love Rand Paul

    • A lot of us would Stand With Rand, but he opted to take a seat.*

      *The author is noting that Rand dropped out of the Presidential race to campaign for re-election to his seat in the Senate.

      • I don’t blame him, he saw the writing on the wall. If I remember correctly he had, what, less than 2% of the vote while he was still in it for Prez? Ya gotta hedge your bets.

    • Social libertarians at least have a start. I call them Canadian Libertarians though, because they tend to forget the whole fiscal thing.

      • We don’t forget about it. We just don’t necessarily agree with it. It’s amazing, isn’t it, that people opinions can take varying positions on more than one axis. Just because some combinations are more common than others, doesn’t mean that the remaining ones aren’t valid.

  13. I had considered the possibility of Johnson as a protest vote until I watched the Libertarian Party debates. Standing next to Johnson, the anti-virus doper McAfee sounded more presidential.

    • You gotta love John McAffee, mostly for his position on guns, but especially his advice on backing up:

      “Back it up… Baaaaaaack it up…”

  14. The libertarian party is irrelevant. They have only received ONE electoral vote ever.

    Most people in the LP are leftists.

    People like Jeff Cucker (Jeff Tucker) and Adam Kokesh contribute to the downfall of the movement.

    It’s a joke and not a viable alternative.

    • >> The libertarian party is irrelevant. They have only received ONE electoral vote ever.

      This is inherent in the two-party system with per-state first-past-the-post, which basically requires a party to win a majority in an entire state to get even one electoral vote. If you can pull that off in one state, you can usually do so in more than one – so you get zero votes until such time as you’re big enough, and then you suddenly receive a lot.

      (Which, by the way, is part of the reason why the political system is so badly broken. It simply wasn’t designed with parties in mind, by people who were smart but didn’t have much experience with parliamentary democracy, and didn’t realize that parties are inevitable in it, just as cartels are inevitable in a free market.)

      >> Most people in the LP are leftists.

      … you have a really strange definition of “leftist” if this statement is true for you. Care to elaborate what it is?

      (I kinda suspect this is about abortion and weed, but let’s check.)

      • I don’t blame the two party system. I blame a hyper-inclusive democracy where “one person one vote” prevails when many leftist would simply be left to starve to death if it wasn’t for the state.

        My issue with libertarians is that it’s been hijacked by the left. And it has nothing to do with abortion and weed. In fact, thank god for abortion, imagine the inner city voting block that would exist if all those babies came to term??? The U.S. would have been Venezuela 20 years ago.

  15. Sounds like Mr Weld has been bought and paid for by one of the many liberal gun-control groups. This is definitely a problem with the GD RINOs, and I’m sorry to see a Libertarian make such a poor choice, all things considered for the party’s views.

  16. I can only chuckle at the spoiler ticket being pro-gun control. Maybe a few disaffected Bernie-bros will hop sides to vote for the limp Johnson.

  17. Simply another clear illustration as to why ‘Party’ (all parties) should be rejected as a measure of voting and, rather, the dirt-simple practice of using the Founding Principles, the textual and actual Constitution and the fundamental and essential principles of Individual Liberty should be adpted as one’s only yardstick to measure a candidate’s rhetoric and even more importantly, a candidate’s current and past actions and advocacy.

    If a candidate does not measure up, regardless of what letter is behind the name…Rep-Dem-Lbt, etc… that candidate should be summarily rejected.

    Of course, this would mean that men would have to actually have to possess such principles, let alone actually stand unwaveringly on them, and…well, you know…..

    The result of practicing the ‘Paradigm of The Lesser Turd’, aka voting party, or the lesser evil, or voting out of controlled/directed/orchastrated fear of ‘the other turd’, well, it is crystal-clear and the irrefutable evidence of where such actions lead is all around us, right now.

    Look around a bit and objectively assess things and then engage in some intellectual honesty and self-reflection.

    For you lesser-turd practitioners….go ahead and wail, gnash teeth, deride, ridicule, attempt to bully and boringly and predictably attempt to rationalize and justify one’s actions based on fear, conviction-weakness and/or the lack of having fundamental principle…always masked as ‘pragmatism’…..when all is said and done it is as common as shit on the bottom of a bird-cage and just as distasteful and predictable.

    I will simply give a pre-emptive and massive ‘snore’ to any lesser-turder replies.

    Personally, I have zero tolerance nor any respect for any of those who ‘knowingly’ and ‘willingly’ act in such a domestic-enemy supportive manner.

    Most people’s milage vastly varies, of course.

    And so continues the destruction of the Republic, the Constitution and Liberty itself.

      • Umm…I pretty much addressed it as it relates to voting, in my above post.

        Did’ja miss it?

        That ‘course of action’ rejects supporting any domestic enemy of Liberty and of the Constitution with my vote, my money, my word-of-mouth support, my advocacy, etc…

        Pretty tough one to puzzle out, huh?

        Any who knowingly vote for or otherwise support collectivist domestic enemies, well, er…they support them…despite any attempts to rationalize or justify it away.

        It really is that simple.

        When, not if, the day comes where weaseling, rationalizing, justifying, excuse-making and the foolish ‘hopeful’ supporting of the lesser evil no longer is an option… and when the inevitable naked totalitarianism and factual subjugation face people…that will be the time to see who are the men and who are the pussy-boys.

        Fact is, this now inescapable scenario will be directly tied to the ‘pragmatic’, compromising non-principled lesser turd support of tens of millions of herd-beasts.

        As I see it, of course.

    • You can’t avoid parties. In any sort of parliamentary system, where you have decisions made by votes of an assembly of people, any group in that assembly that decides to collude in a quid pro quo manner has an advantage over those that do not – and that is how parties are born.

  18. Well, you can be a man and call yourself a woman but that does not make it so.

    And apparently you can be an anti-liberty zealot yet call yourself a libertarian.

    It works exactly the same way.

  19. This choice should make it more difficult for anti-Trump GOP voters to go Libertarian. Surprising and disappointing choice.

    • Agreed getting the governor of a nanny state to run with you as VP is a bad idea if you’re running on the platform of less government interference with society.

      The plus side is as mentioned it will likely help keep Johnson from Peroting the election.

  20. I live in Massachusetts and just hearing this @$$#%&% name makes me shake with anger! He is one of the main reasons why we have these draconian gun laws in Massachusetts! ?????

    • I didn’t realize that. Blargh.

      Really not sure who to vote for these days. Johnson still seems the least egregious of the candidates. I guess I can just no vote instead of voting for him with his crap stain VP. That seems the most likely option these days.

    • You know things are really bad for the Libertarian Party when a 35-yo internet troll without a job is a favorite of anybody.

      Let’s face it — sadly, the Libertarian Party is a circle jerk.

      • The LP, I learned the hard way, is comprised of people who want to hold debates. They want to show everyone just how high their moral horse is, what with their pledges of no use of prior force, leaving people alone, etc.

        But then I noticed something: They never won elections. And the reason why they never won elections, is because they were too busy getting high – and trying to debate other people who were as high as they were.

        Political power is wielded by those who show up. The LP’ers don’t show up. They don’t show up on doorsteps, they don’t show up at election offices, they don’t show up at fundraising events… and they don’t show up in the election results.

        • People of ‘libertarian philosophy’ showed up by the tens of thousands when Ron Paul ran for office because Ron Paul was viewed as being principled on Liberty issues.

          Your painted-scenario was not and is not the problem. The problem is that far too few actually have, let alone hold to, the Principles of Liberty and to following the textual Constitution.

          As an aside, what one chooses to put into their own body is no business of yours nor of govt at any level. Just so you know.

        • I agree. What people put into their bodies is no business of mine.

          So when I show up as a EMT, and someone is dying due to non-prescription opioid OD, well then, that’s their business…. right?

        • “So when I show up as a EMT, and someone is dying due to non-prescription opioid OD, well then, that’s their business…. right?” — Absolutely! Why should my tax money be used to resuscitate them, pay for their treatment, welfare and repeat of the cycle? And if someone decides to jump off the bridge, it is not the society’s job to place safety nets under every bridge.

        • But the libertarians never want to close the loop. They want to allow people to ingest any drug they want, but the libertarians never talk about the laws enacted that coerce me (the EMT) to treat and transport the doper who OD’ed, they coerce the taxpayer to pay for his dumb ass to be treated in the ER (at great expense, even when they cannot pay), etc.

          The same issue happens with the libertarians and immigration: They want to erase borders and allow unrestricted immigration… but they don’t want to address all the social spending programs available to immigrants who show up without a clue how to become a productive member of US society.

          And that’s the larger reason why I now think that the libertarian movement is foolish: They never close their policy loops, never think their policies all the way through. The drug legalization movement is viable if, and only if, drug users are made to pay (financially) for their own missteps. ie, if they OD, it is necessary for them to pay for their own treatment to continue living. If they can’t pay… oh well. Similarly, I’m in favor of halting all immigration unless and until the social welfare spending is brought under control.

        • >> But the libertarians never want to close the loop. They want to allow people to ingest any drug they want, but the libertarians never talk about the laws enacted that coerce me (the EMT) to treat and transport the doper who OD’ed, they coerce the taxpayer to pay for his dumb ass to be treated in the ER (at great expense, even when they cannot pay), etc.

          I don’t know which libertarians you’ve spoken to, but the ones I’m familiar with definitely believe that people have to deal with the consequences of their choices, and do not approve of the laws that coerce you to treat anyone, or that make the taxpayers fund that all.

          >> The same issue happens with the libertarians and immigration: They want to erase borders and allow unrestricted immigration… but they don’t want to address all the social spending programs available to immigrants who show up without a clue how to become a productive member of US society.

          Again, you seem to have found some mythical strain of libertarians that don’t have an opinion on various welfare programs. The ones that I’m familiar with not just have a strong opinion on it (which can be summed up as “no welfare, period”, usually), but it’s literally what they spend most of the time complaining about.

  21. MEH…I was booed off the stage for suggesting that the libertarian dude Gary didn’t matter(on a large FB gun page). And suggesting that Ted Cruz was the only pro-gun choice(with any chance ). Sooooo… I’m liking the orange billionaire lately. Whatever pizzes off the left scum. CNN featured lots of anti-donnie rhetoric about guns. No I’m not familiar with the VP pick but I will NEVER go libertarian. All in for Trump(arg).

  22. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahhahahahhahahahhaha

    I’m high today

    This is goooooooooood

    Aint got no choice but trump

  23. Mmm, need a source newer then 1993 to say “Johnson’s VP Choice is Pro-Gun Control”. Not saying it isn’t true, I am saying that a 1993 quote doesn’t equate with “is”.

    • The problem with Weld is he was “pro gun” in 1990…. Then he pandered for votes for re-election in 1993 and became anti… Now he’s pro again (at least for Those of us who sent dumb enough to fall for this crap).

  24. The Libertarian Party has been stepping on its own testicles for decades. They have the best message and the worst bumblers imaginable in charge.
    They tried to recruit me one year. But in order to gain admission to their glorious institution, I first had to sign a paper promising that I would never use force against the US government. I’m pretty sure, to this forum, I don’t have to explain why I threw that application, and the Libertarian Party, into the trash.

  25. That was more than 20 years ago. It’s possible he wouldn’t do that today.

    This is not encouraging speech from him, there, though. Very Fudd. I can’t tell if he’d dodging the question, justifying past actions, or something else. Or all the above. I do think he claims to be in line with libertarian party views now, though. Which is something. Not sure what, but something.

    I think I would still vote for Gary Johnson, though. There’s not a better candidate, still, SIGH.

  26. Yay. I hope this is the end of the Libertarian party and the beginning of when actual conservatives take over the Republican party and start leading it instead of leaving it.

  27. For what it’s worth, he claims that his views in 1993 were a mistake (from http://www.independentpoliticalreport.com/2016/05/bill-weld-a-personal-message-for-delegates-to-the-libertarian-national-convention/ ):

    I am a lifelong hunter and gun owner. In 1993, however, as Governor of Massachusetts, I went along with some modest restrictions on certain types of firearms. I was deeply concerned about gun violence, and frankly, the people I represented were demanding action. Sometimes, governing involves tough choices, and I had to make more than a few.

    Today, almost 25 years later, I would make some different choices. Restricting Americans’ gun rights doesn’t make us safer, and threatens our constitutional freedoms. I was pleased by and support the Supreme Court’s decision in the District of Columbia vs. Heller — a decision that embraced the notion that our Second Amendment rights are individual rights, not to be abridged by the government.

    • It’d be nice except that it doesn’t really feel repentant. It just feels politically expeditious. Why else would he keep using the justification double speak.

      “It totally wasn’t that bad and not a big deal, but I’m sorry I did it and wouldn’t do it again.” Right…

  28. Johnson and Weld, Two mainstream Globalist Republicans pretending to be Libertarians. Weld sat on the board of The Council on Foreign Relations along with Heidi Cruz. This news sunk the Cruz campaign and it will sink these guys when it gets around. Americanism NOT Globalism

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