by See here.This political collapse of libertarianism, quasi-libertarian and traditional consensus neoliberal economics in the GOP is the unnoticed story of the last year.Now it may well be that Gary Johnson’s third party Libertarian run for president might attract more voters than usual (maybe all those Bernie Bros who are stoners?), but the pathetic Libertarian party has no chance of ever winning the presidency, and not just because one of the highlights of their Party National Convention was one fat dude called James Weeks (a Libertarian Party Chair Candidate) stripping nude on C-SPAN to the horror of millions nation wide:[embedded content]The only serious party for a libertarian or quasi-libertarian President of the United States is the GOP. And Trump’s victory has killed this, given Trump’s hatred of free trade, his love of protectionism, and his abandonment of the standard quasi-libertarian GOP issues like privatisation of Social Security. Even the libertarianism of the Tea Party movement seems to be collapsing as the Tea Party people come to support Trump. Go figure.It looks like the – umm, how shall I put it? – full-retard economics of libertarianism was never that popular with the Republican base. They just needed the right person to make them discover their love of Big Government and conservative socialism. That person was Trump.
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Lord Keynes considers the following as important: Strange Death of American Libertarianism in the GOP
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This political collapse of libertarianism, quasi-libertarian and traditional consensus neoliberal economics in the GOP is the unnoticed story of the last year.
Now it may well be that Gary Johnson’s third party Libertarian run for president might attract more voters than usual (maybe all those Bernie Bros who are stoners?), but the pathetic Libertarian party has no chance of ever winning the presidency, and not just because one of the highlights of their Party National Convention was one fat dude called James Weeks (a Libertarian Party Chair Candidate) stripping nude on C-SPAN to the horror of millions nation wide:
The only serious party for a libertarian or quasi-libertarian President of the United States is the GOP. And Trump’s victory has killed this, given Trump’s hatred of free trade, his love of protectionism, and his abandonment of the standard quasi-libertarian GOP issues like privatisation of Social Security. Even the libertarianism of the Tea Party movement seems to be collapsing as the Tea Party people come to support Trump. Go figure.
It looks like the – umm, how shall I put it? – full-retard economics of libertarianism was never that popular with the Republican base. They just needed the right person to make them discover their love of Big Government and conservative socialism. That person was Trump.
It turns out too that the Republican base seems to be sick and tired of the endless Neoconservative warmongering that has been going on since 2000. See the excellent analysis of these issues by Michael Lind here with these criticisms here.
More astonishing still is that there seems to be some evidence that many former Ron Paul-style libertarians have morphed into Alt Right neo-fascists.
Greg Johnson, one of these Alt Righters, describes this process of political transformation of Ron Paul supporters in the following video (not for the faint-hearted):
But, as we see, the Alt Right “refutation” of libertarianism seems to have little to do with the economic flaws in libertarian theory. Rather, it seems to be more in line with Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s critique of standard libertarian theory along with intense white nationalism and identitarianism, anti-Semitism and racial issues peculiar to the United States.
So this is yet another story people have missed: the emergence of neo-fascism in America, even if it is just a fringe movement, seems to have come via libertarianism. Creepy.