Controversialist Arvin Vohra Announces 2020 Libertarian Presidential Run - Hit & Run : Reason.com - Matt Welch:
July 6, 2018 - "Arvin Vohra, a 39-year-old educational entrepreneur notorious for questioning age-of-consent laws for 14-year-olds, for arguing that joining the military to pay for college is 'morally unacceptable,' and for joking about shooting up school boards, announced at the tail end of the Libertarian Party's biennial national convention that he is running for president. Vohra joins longtime libertarian activist and serial arrestee Adam Kokesh, a 36-year-old Iraq War veteran who is running on a platform to dissolve the federal government, as the two biggest L.P. presidential candidates to officially announce.
"'On the first day of my presidency,' Vohra tweeted Thursday, 'I will pardon those in prison who have neither harmed anyone nor stolen anything. I will start with @Snowden and @RossUlbricht.' Next comes 'all nonviolent drug users, all nonviolent drug traffickers, all nonviolent drug kingpins...anyone that's in jail for crypto-currency crime [and] gun possession where they didn't actually hurt anybody.'
"'My number one goal,' the candidate tells me, 'is to end the welfare state and abolish the income tax. I'm going to be using my campaign to spread that message on the policy level, but also to help people realize there are so many ways to reduce government without changing policy, including opting out of government schools, including using cryptocurrency, including using the power of jury nullification.'
"Vohra, who served two terms as national vice chair, has been the Libertarian Party's single most controversial figure the past year and a half. In February, he survived attempted suspension and censure motions from the Libertarian National Committee (LNC) over his age-of-consent and military remarks; in April, a second effort to suspend after the school-shooting joke came one vote short. Vohra's self-conscious controversialism—what movement graybeards call the 'libertarian macho flash'—was a recurrent, negative theme throughout the three-day national convention....
"[I]n all three rounds of voting ... Vohra's limped along at 9–8–10. Party delegates had ample opportunity to weigh in on the incumbent's provocative rhetorical strategy, and the conclusion was unmistakable: two thumbs way down.
"Vohra sounds cheerful about seeking his party's presidential nomination after such a snub. 'I'm going to be trying to bring a lot of new people into the party,' he explains. Also, 'a presidential campaign to me is just different from being a vice chair. A vice chair is about kind of half externally focused, half internally focused, and realistically most people objected to my internally focused messaging.... A presidential campaign ... is 99 percent externally focused, and so the type of messaging that goes into it is just different.' In other words, he says he'll tone it down at least a little."
Read more: https://reason.com/blog/2018/07/06/controversialist-arvin-vohra-announces-2
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July 6, 2018 - "Arvin Vohra, a 39-year-old educational entrepreneur notorious for questioning age-of-consent laws for 14-year-olds, for arguing that joining the military to pay for college is 'morally unacceptable,' and for joking about shooting up school boards, announced at the tail end of the Libertarian Party's biennial national convention that he is running for president. Vohra joins longtime libertarian activist and serial arrestee Adam Kokesh, a 36-year-old Iraq War veteran who is running on a platform to dissolve the federal government, as the two biggest L.P. presidential candidates to officially announce.
"'On the first day of my presidency,' Vohra tweeted Thursday, 'I will pardon those in prison who have neither harmed anyone nor stolen anything. I will start with @Snowden and @RossUlbricht.' Next comes 'all nonviolent drug users, all nonviolent drug traffickers, all nonviolent drug kingpins...anyone that's in jail for crypto-currency crime [and] gun possession where they didn't actually hurt anybody.'
"'My number one goal,' the candidate tells me, 'is to end the welfare state and abolish the income tax. I'm going to be using my campaign to spread that message on the policy level, but also to help people realize there are so many ways to reduce government without changing policy, including opting out of government schools, including using cryptocurrency, including using the power of jury nullification.'
"Vohra, who served two terms as national vice chair, has been the Libertarian Party's single most controversial figure the past year and a half. In February, he survived attempted suspension and censure motions from the Libertarian National Committee (LNC) over his age-of-consent and military remarks; in April, a second effort to suspend after the school-shooting joke came one vote short. Vohra's self-conscious controversialism—what movement graybeards call the 'libertarian macho flash'—was a recurrent, negative theme throughout the three-day national convention....
"[I]n all three rounds of voting ... Vohra's limped along at 9–8–10. Party delegates had ample opportunity to weigh in on the incumbent's provocative rhetorical strategy, and the conclusion was unmistakable: two thumbs way down.
"Vohra sounds cheerful about seeking his party's presidential nomination after such a snub. 'I'm going to be trying to bring a lot of new people into the party,' he explains. Also, 'a presidential campaign to me is just different from being a vice chair. A vice chair is about kind of half externally focused, half internally focused, and realistically most people objected to my internally focused messaging.... A presidential campaign ... is 99 percent externally focused, and so the type of messaging that goes into it is just different.' In other words, he says he'll tone it down at least a little."
Read more: https://reason.com/blog/2018/07/06/controversialist-arvin-vohra-announces-2
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