Dave Rubin - political commentator, satirist, and talk show host
What do you think is the reason that the Libertarians haven't done more at the State level? When people talk about the Libertarians, they go 'well Gary Johnson' or whatever it is. And yes there is Rand Paul, but technically he's a Republican. There's Justin Amash. there's a couple people, but why haven't they done more just on the local leve? This seems like a major opening for them.
Dr. Mike Munger - professor of political science & economics at Duke University, writer, and 2008 Libertarian candidate for Governor of North Carolina
Coming over here, I was promising myself I wasn't going to answer this question, but what the heck. I'll say, here's what happens at Libertarian meetings. The first one, twenty or thirty people show up and they're all enthusiastic. and at the second meeting, ten people show up, and the ten say 'I'm really glad those others didn't come back. They weren't real Libertarians,' because what they're mainly concerned about is checking each other's papers. So you can tell if it's a real Libertarian meeting by how long is it before there's an argument about whether individuals should be able to own nuclear weapons.
Nobody cares about that. When I was running for Governor, people would say 'Would you end the Fed?' I'm running for Governor, actually. This is not... 'Yeah, but I wanna know.' So what we really care about is ideological purity, because if you cared about actualy policy or winning, you would suck it up and be a Democrat o Republican.
So the problem that we have as Libertarians is, I don't think people conceive themselves as being part of a political process. They think of themselves as Oh Trey, as being outside and truth tellers -- the keepers of a last flickering remnant of truth. And that's just not a very effective political strategy.
DR
That's interesting because to me -- after doing this show for about two years and having a lot of classical liberals on, a lot of libertarians and I've had progressives and conservatives and everything -- basically, the difference that I see between classical liberals and libertarians is a little more realistic utility for the State. So when someone comes in with that question and says to you, 'Well are you going to get rid of the Fed? You've got money for Governor.' That's a really high-level philosophical thing that, to me, it's just a more realistic approach to how to change things. Do you think that's a fair assessment?
MM
Yes. And I've made a distinction in a couple of things that I've written between Directionalist and Destinationist Libertarians. Destinationist Libertarians have a particular Libertopia in mind, and anything that's not like that is out. Directionalists would want to say, 'are there policies that we could choose that would be cheaper, lower deficits, lower the power of the State and increase personal responsibility and liberty?' So an example would be, when I was running for Governor, my educational platform was vouchers. And a lot of people -- means-tested vouchers -- so the poorest forty percent would get more school choice. Many of the wealthy have it now. Let's have more school choice for the very poor. And a lot of people on the Left were kind of interested in that. There's a lot of African-American citizens that are desperate to get their children into better schools.
Libertarians almost without exception said 'oh no, the State would be involved in that'. The only acceptable Libertarian policy is the immediate elimination of all taxes.
DR
Right. Again, this is the part that is not the realistic part.
MM
Because they're Destinationists. So the Destinationists are always going to be there. Libertarians, if they're going to have any success, are going to have to appeal to the Directionalists in both parties that say 'look, the government has too many powers'. We may disagree about how far back we want to move it, but let's move the train in the other direction. We're going the wrong way. I think there's a consensus. We should move it back. Where we get off the train, that's a different question. But let's change the direction.
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Originally Posted by fishermccann
