Libertarian Party: 2008

Today's Libertarian Party is extremely interesting. For such a small party, the internal divisions rival those of the larger parties, if they don't surpass them. There seem to be two rival factions: the Left-Libertarians and the Right-Libertarians. By Left-Libertarian I don't mean the Noam Chomsky Libertarian Socialists, those guys don't really fit in here.

The Right-Libertarians tend to share the social outlook of the conservatives. They are the type of person who believes that the moral fiber of society is being eroded by government intervention - i.e., social security breaks up multi-generational homes, the government through welfare makes the nuclear family unnecessary, etc. Right-Libertarians are less likely to stand up for gay rights, and are more likely to be pro-life. To their credit, they are unlikely to want to enforce anything via the federal government.

The Left-Libertarians share the same goals as extreme social liberals, but do not believe that they can be accomplished by government intervention. Their primary goals include the abolition of poverty, the empowerment of women, the queer community, and of minorities. They support things like affirmative action in spirit, but not practice, because they realize that the use of government to pursue these goals just gives the establishment more power which hurts any positive social cause in the long run. They believe that the best way to fight poverty is to create wealth - and the best way to do that is through a laissez faire, capitalist system.

This is my perception of the two sides; I don't know how correctly I've characterized them.

For this presidential election, the Libertarian nominees were, on the Right: Bob Barr, Wayne Allyn Root. On the Left: Mary Ruwart, Steve Kubby, George Phillies, and maybe Mike Gravel (though Gravel was less enthusiastic about the free market). These sides are clearly not fixed; Mike Gravel did end up endorsing Root, which surprised me. For the most part, through the six ballots, the votes stayed on the same side. As Kubby, Phillies, and Gravel were eliminated, their support went to the strongest Left-Libertarian candidate, Ruwart. Root and Barr were fairly strong throughout, and once Root was eliminated most of his support went to Barr, which was enough to push him over the edge.

There has been surprisingly little backlash against Barr. The Left-Libertarians realize, that for all their philosophical differences, they agree about what the government should do 95% of the time. Even though the ticket ended up being Barr/Root, the schism between the left and right hasn't hurt the party too much.