Understanding the Trump landslide

Trump in Arizona, June 2024. Photo by 

Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

As with many Canadians (and Americans) these days, my starting point for reading the daily news day is social media site, X. The site owner, Elon Musk, maintains a free speech policy one cannot find anywhere else. The advantage of that to me is that, after an hour or so, I can get both an overview of the news and a short list of stories to follow up for possible mention on my blog. 

Yesterday, though, all I could find was one story that everyone wanted to post about, the 2024 American election result. It was not just that the Republicans won, but the size of their win. Not only did Donald Trump take the presidency; his party also took control of both houses of Congress. That is hyuge (as the new president would say) in the American system, where the Presidency and Congress (the executive and legislative branches) are formally independent. Let me emphasize its hyugeness by repeating it in its own paragraph. 

( A ) In 2024, the Republicans won the Presidency, the Senate, and the House. 

It seems that everyone on earth, or at least everyone on X, wants to talk about nothing else; and everyone has their own theory of why (A) occurred. One theory that I could not find anywhere on X was my own. I would like more people to know of my theory – not just because it was mine, but because it allowed me to predict (A) four years ago. Indeed, I offered my prediction at the time as a test of my theory: (A) happening would not prove my theory correct, but the failure of (A) to happen would have falsified this version of it. 

I wrote up my theory, and made my prediction, back in November 2020, in an article called " US election results are more of the same ." I was commenting on the fact that: 

( B ) in 2020, the Democrats won the Presidency, the Senate, and the House.

Checking back, I also discovered that: 

( C ) In 2016, the Republicans won the Presidency, the Senate, and the House;

( D ) In ​​2008, the Democrats won the Presidency, the Senate, and the House;  

( E ) In 2000, the Republicans won the Presidency, the Senate, and the House; and 

( F ) In 1992, the Democrats won the Presidency, the Senate and the House. 

To sum up: For the entire millennium so far, every incumbent president has been replaced by a challenger from the other party, in a repudiation of the incumbent's party. This repudiation has been total, with the challenger's party taking control of Congress as well as the White House. 

Those are facts. Are they just a coincidence or is there a theory that explains them? The theory that I have come up with goes like this: 

The first part follows from Ludwig von Mises' theory of interventionism. Mises taught that, while intervention was meant to be a compromise between minimal and total government, it would always tend toward the total. Each government intervention would have new, unintended consequences, new problems which had to be solved by yet more intervention. In that way, government would grow. But (and this is my own idea at this point), as government increased, so would the problems it created. It would tend to become a bigger, more commanding government trying to perform ever more functions; but it would also increasingly tend to fail at performing any of those functions well. It would increasingly tend to fail at even its core functions of courts, police, and national defense. Given enough time, it would become both a totalitarian state and a failed state. 

Long before that point is reached, the government would be failing to satisfy the needs of an increasing number of voters. Ironically, the more it tried to do, the more people it would fail to satisfy: as a government grows through interventionism, so does the number of dissatisfied voters. Those voters would give up on the party system to some degree. Some reject the system only slightly, becoming nominally independent but still retaining some loyalty to their old party. Others reject it completely and become non-voters. In between are the true independents, dissatisfied voters who reject and will vote to throw out either party. As their numbers grow, true independents increasingly determine the outcome of elections; and as they tend to vote against incumbent government, those incumbents will be totally repudiated at regular intervals. 

While the interval is regular, it is not independent of human agency. It can and has changed.  Currently it is four years (A-C), but before that it was eight (C-F). Since that change coincided with the first election of Donald Trump, it is fair to speculate that his first election is the main reason for the speed-up. Since his election, both parties have become increasingly negative. Negative campaigning has existed since the beginning of American democracy, but since Trump's election both parties have taken negativity to a whole new level. 

In the past the negativity of political campaigns began and ended with political campaigns. members of both parties were able to coexist socially outside political life. Today, though, politics and its negativity, never ends. Partisans of both parties have come to see the other party as intrinsically evil, good only to be destroyed. The challenger party does little more than point to the failures of the incumbent regime. The incumbent party increasingly dismisses the challengers' criticisms as "playing politics" and does nothing to correct them. As a result, the all-important true independents – who can confirm the flaws for themselves, as well as their failure to be corrected – are increasingly unsatisfied, increasingly likely to defect to the challengers at the earliest opportunity. They have become motivated by anti-incumbency. 

This election has confirmed that four-year interval. However, since Trump remains a player it does not tell us whether the interval stays at four years or reverts to eight following his retirement. Based on the data, there is no way to predict that, for now. All that can be predicted is that in four years' time both parties will once again march into battle as if marching to Armageddon; and in that election the Democrats will win. However, how long that Democratic president will stay in office cannot be answered at this time. 

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Disinformation pushed world into lockdowns (3)

China’s Global Lockdown Propaganda Campaign | The Tablet - Michael P. Senger: 

September 15, 2020 - "Xi Jinping has frequently stressed global cooperation to fight COVID-19. In turn, the world has started to look more like China. Localities introduced tip lines to report lockdown violations and countries unveiled new fleets of surveillance drones; Chinese company DJI donated drones to 22 U.S. states to help enforce social distancing rules. 

"Speaking through official channels, the CCP has avoided literally telling other governments to 'lock down.' Rather, the CCP has shamed governments for not locking down and relentlessly advertised its 'pandemic response' (which, of course, means lockdowns). In March, Chinese state media bought numerous Facebook ads extolling China’s pandemic response; all of them ran without Facebook’s required political disclaimer. On July 7, FBI Director Christopher Wray disclosed that the CCP specifically approached local politicians to endorse its pandemic response....

"For decades, the CCP has co-opted scientists through its unparalleled overseas influence network, the United Front Work Department, which expanded dramatically under Xi. In June, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that 189 of its grantees had received undisclosed funding from foreign governments. In 93% of cases, including that of Charles Lieber, chair of Harvard’s chemistry department, the undisclosed funding came from China. Likewise, the National Science Foundation, a smaller organization, reported 16–20 cases of undisclosed foreign financial ties; all but two were with China....

"In a May interview for China Central Television, Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of the esteemed medical journal The Lancet, emphatically praised China’s lockdowns, saying: 'It was not only the right thing to do, but it also showed other countries how they should respond in the face of such an acute threat. So, I think we have a great deal to thank China for …' The fact that Chinese state media so widely shared a particularly credulous New Yorker article by Peter Hessler about China’s coronavirus response did not escape China expert Geremie Barmé, who cautioned its author that it reminded him of 'another American journalist, a man who reported from another authoritarian country nearly a century ago … Walter Duranty'....

"The CCP has shaped scientific narratives by consistently promoting the falsehood that 'China controlled the virus'.... Of course ... China expelled journalists in March and its infection data is manifestly forged; U.S. intelligence has confirmed China’s data is intentionally misrepresented. Nonetheless, China’s fake numbers have been paramount in scientific discourse. By demanding elite publications repeat the Orwellian lie that 'China controlled the virus,' the CCP has normalized that lie for Western elites to repeat themselves, exploiting China’s fastidiously managed reputation and the fact that most Westerners do not yet know it as an untrustworthy, totalitarian state....

"Within China, the CCP has pretended to believe its own lies only at its own convenience, reserving the right to use COVID-19 as a pretext for unrelated authoritarian whims — demolishing retirement homes, detaining dissidents and reporters, expanding mass surveillance, canceling Hong Kong’s Tiananmen Square vigil and postponing its elections for one year. In Xinjiang, where over 1 million Uighurs are imprisoned, lockdowns have gone on since January and have involved widespread hunger, forced medication, acidic disinfectant sprays, shackled residents, screams of protest from balconies, crowded 'quarantine' cells, and outright disappearances.

"The most benign possible explanation for the CCP’s campaign for global lockdowns is that the party aggressively promoted the same lie internationally as domestically — that lockdowns worked. For party members, when Wuhan locked down it likely went without saying that the lockdown would 'eliminate' coronavirus; if Xi willed it to be true, then it must be so. This is the totalitarian pathology that George Orwell called 'double-think.' But the fact that authoritarian regimes always lie does not give them a right to spread deadly lies to the rest of the world, especially by clandestine means.

"And then there’s the possibility that by shutting down the world, Xi Jinping, who vaulted through the ranks of the party, quotes ancient Chinese scholars, has mastered debts and derivatives, studies complexity science, and envisions a socialist future with China at its center, knew exactly what he was doing."

Read more: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/china-covid-lockdown-propaganda

Also read:

Disinformation pushed world into lockdowns (1)

Disinformation pushed world into lockdowns (2)

There was good news in 2020

2020 Did Bring Some Good News | Reason - John Stossel:

December 30, 2020 - "Was 2020 the worst year ever? The media keep saying that. We did have the pandemic, a bitter election, unemployment, riots, and a soaring national debt. But wait, look at the good news, says historian Johan Norberg. His new book, Open: The Story of Human Progress, points out how life keeps getting better, even if people just don't realize it.

"2020 was 'the best year in human history to face a pandemic,' he says. Had the pandemic happened in 2005, 'You wouldn't have the technology to create mRNA vaccines.... In 1990,' he continues, "we wouldn't have a worldwide web. If we had had this pandemic in 1976, we wouldn't have been able to read the genome of the virus. And…in 1950, we wouldn't have had a single ventilator.'

"These last 20 years, adds Norberg, have been especially good. 'Mankind has attained more wealth than ever.' I push back: 'There's more to life than wealth! And lot of this money went to the top 1 percent. Ordinary people think they're doing worse.'

'If you look at specifics like global poverty, child mortality, chronic undernourishment, and illiteracy,' Norberg replies, 'they all declined faster than ever.' Those things are pretty good measures of quality of life....

Of course, there were bad trends in 2020. Murder rose in the United States. Social media algorithms divided us further. 'Suicide is up,' I tell Norberg. 'I can definitely see the problems,' he replies, 'but once upon a time, if you ended up in the wrong school or neighborhood, you had nowhere to go—no other community available to you. Now there is, and that opens up a world of opportunity. Some awful things as well, but some beautiful things.'

"That meant that even during this pandemic, people found new ways to help others. Volunteers used the internet to find better ways to donate their time. Young people brought food to the elderly. Zoom and Slack taught us that not being in the office sometimes works as well, or better. Businesses had new tools with which to adapt. Restaurants moved to takeout and delivery, aided by apps like UberEats and Grubhub. Such healthy adaptation rarely makes news, because reporters seek out problems."

Read more: https://reason.com/2020/12/30/2020-did-bring-some-good-news/

U.S. election results are more of the same

by George J. Dance

NBC News has declared Democratic candidate Joe Biden the President-elect of the United States. Democrats also retained control of the House of Representatives (although they lost seats). They have not as yet taken the Senate; right now they are projected to win 48 seats in the 100-seat upper chamber. However, two seats will be decided in a January run-off election in Georgia, a state Biden won; winning those would give the Democrats control of the Senate (thanks to the tie-breaking vote of the vice-president). That will hand the Democrats a 'hat trick' – control of the presidency and both houses of Congress – a hyuge change from just three years ago, when the Republicans controlled all three.

I am reminded of a French saying – <plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose> – the more things change, the more they stay the same. This hat trick phenomenon is not novel, but has characterized U.S. politics throughout the new century:

• With Bill Clinton's election in 1992, the Democrats controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress. The Republicans won both houses in 1994, and retained control for the rest of his presidency. So that....
• With George W. Bush's election in 2000, the Republicans controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress. They briefly lost their Senate majority, after a GOP Senator switched to the Democrats, but won it back in 2002. They retained control of both houses until 2006, when the Democrats retook both. So that....
• With Barack Obama's election in 2008, the Democrats controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress. They lost the House in 2010, and the Senate in 2014. So that....
• With Donald Trump's election in 2016, the Republicans controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress.

The players and winners may change, but the pattern stays the same. American voters give one duopoly party complete control of the federal government. They are invariably disappointed by the outcome. They then react to this disappointment by giving the other party the same complete control. They are following a strategy best expressed in this cartoon:

I believe that human ideas are the chief determinants of  human behavior. So what idea(s) can be driving this recurring behavior?

When I was a lad, big "liberal" democratic government was widely seen as the vehicle that would lead us to utopia. That view had begun to fray by 1970, and by the end of the century was nowhere to be found. What happened? Why did utopia never arrive?

There are two different views. The minority, or libertarian, view is that big governments necessarily have structural flaws that prevent them from functioning as promised. The majority or populist view is that big governments work just fine; however, they keep getting captured by bad people who keep perverting them. This populist belief – a faith in governments, combined with a mistrust of the people running them – dominates in U.S. federal politics, and its dominance looks like the best explanation for the cyclical pattern noted above. 

The big difference this time is that the cycle completed in just four years rather than eight. It remains unknown whether that shorter cycle was a mere blip caused by the incumbent president, or whether the cycle has in fact speeded up. My prediction is that the cycle has permanently speeded up, and we will see yet another Republican hat trick in 2024.

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How Britain stumbled into lockdown

These people have no idea what they're doing: Ex-Supreme Court judge LORD JONATHAN SUMPTION gives a devastating verdict on our political leaders' handling of the crisis | The Mail on Sunday - Jonathan Sumption

June 21, 2020 - "Does the Government have a policy for coronavirus? Indeed it does. In fact, it has several ... all mutually inconsistent and none of them properly thought through.... [T]his crisis has exposed .. a dysfunctional Government with a deep-seated incoherence at the heart of its decision-making processes.

"The Government has repeatedly claimed to be ‘guided by the science’. This has in practice been a shameless attempt to evade responsibility by passing the buck to scientists for what are ultimately political, and not scientific, decisions. Scientists can advise what measures are likely to reduce infections and deaths. Only politicians can decide whether those measures make sense in economic and social terms too.

"Sage {Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies], the committee of scientists advising the Government, has been very clear about this, as the minutes of its meetings show.... Ministers press them for the kind of unequivocal answers that will protect them from criticism. Scientists cover themselves by giving equivocal answers, which reflect the uncertainty of the science. The Government responds by avoiding any decision for which it would have to take political responsibility, until the pressure of events becomes irresistible, when it lurches off in a new direction.

"Plan A was published on March 3. It concentrated on ensuring the provision of medical and other essential services. It relied on advice and guidance to the public, not coercion. The Government stood out against the authoritarian and indiscriminate measures which were being applied in Italy, and later in other European countries.

"Plan B was an abrupt U-turn. On March 18, the Government announced the closure of schools. On March 20, pubs, cafes and restaurants were added. Finally, it announced the full lockdown on the evening of March 23. That was a last-minute decision made that afternoon, for which the Government had made no preparations at all. It had not included a lockdown power in the Coronavirus Bill which was then going through Parliament. Instead, it was forced to make legally questionable use of public health legislation designed to control the movements of infected people, not healthy ones. Even then, it took another three days to prepare the regulations, and meanwhile pretended that they were in force when they were not.

"Judging by its minutes, Sage was unenthusiastic about closing down the hospitality industry, forbidding large gatherings or closing schools. From an early stage, it had pointed out that the real threat was to people over 70 and those with serious underlying medical conditions. Since March 5 they had been advising the Government to ‘cocoon’ those people, and others who either had the disease or lived in the same household.... ‘Citizens’, the behavioural scientists advised, ‘should be treated as rational actors, capable of taking decisions for themselves and managing personal risk.’ If this advice had been followed, it would have left almost all the economically active members of the population free to earn their livings and sustain the economy.

"Indiscriminate lockdown was a panic response to the now-notorious statistical model produced on March 16 by Professor Neil Ferguson’s team at Imperial College. Panic responses leave little room for reflection. No serious consideration appears to have been given to the potentially catastrophic side effects. In fact, the Imperial team did identify the main problem about a lockdown. In an earlier report to Sage, they had pointed out that once a disease had taken hold in a population, ‘measures which are too effective merely push all transmission to the period after they are lifted, giving a delay but no substantial reduction in either peak incidence or overall attack rate’. They repeated this view when they recommended a lockdown on March 16 and said that to be effective, it would need to be maintained until a vaccine was available, ‘potentially 18 months or more’....

"The Government justified its Plan B as a temporary measure designed only to delay the peak until the NHS’s intensive care capacity had caught up. But when it came to Plan C, which was unveiled on May 10, they forgot all about that. By then the NHS had caught up, mainly as a result of the Government’s one undoubted achievement, namely the rapid increase in the country’s critical care capacity.... But instead of lifting the lockdown, it merely nibbled at its edges, announcing that its essential features would remain in place for weeks or months....

"[T]hree weeks later on June 2 ...[w]e were heading for an economic catastrophe: gross domestic product down by more than a fifth and falling; 3.5 million jobs set to be lost in the hospitality industry alone; unemployment already up to two million; several million businesses snuffed out; job openings for a generation of young people extinguished. Why was the PM ... surprised? What did he expect to happen if he closed down the economy for several months and conducted a scorched-earth campaign against the rest of our national life? The only plausible explanation was that he had never properly thought about it...

"So we moved to Plan D, announced on June 10, which involved a general return to work. But in many areas the return was stymied by the Government’s two-metre physical distancing rule. The rule never had any rational basis.... Experiments by the Department of Health (reviewed by Sage) indicate that the risk of airborne transmission is low outside a healthcare setting. It is being maintained because the Government wants scientific cover and Sage cannot rule out some risk that prolonged face-to-face contact at less than two metres might cause some infection. No one in government was grown-up enough to confront the real issue: does a low risk justify a huge economic cost?...

"Finally, there is the ultimate absurdity of the quarantine recently imposed on incoming travellers, which the Government has admitted was not based on any scientific advice, but simply (it seems) on the mistaken belief that the public would applaud it. The Government is now trying to backtrack by negotiating ‘air bridges’ with other countries. But it does not need to negotiate anything. This is a problem of our creation. We can simply lift the restriction at our end. Like so many of the Government’s measures, it is being maintained simply in order to avoid admitting that it was a mistake....

"You have to go back to the early 1930s to find a British Cabinet as devoid of talent as this one. The Prime Minister, who in practice makes most of the decisions, ... is incapable of studying a complex problem in depth. He thinks as he speaks – in slogans. These people have no idea what they are doing, because they are unable to think about more than one thing at a time or to look further ahead than the end of their noses. Yet they wield awesome power. They are destroying our economy, our cultural life and our children’s education in a fit of absent-mindedness."

Read more: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8443747/LORD-JONATHAN-SUMPTION-people-no-idea-theyre-doing.html

Bleeding Heart Libertarians exsanguinated

The End | Bleeding Heart Libertarians - Matt Zwolinski:

June 1, 2020 - "Back in 2011, a group of academic philosophers started a blog called 'Bleeding Heart Libertarians.' The idea behind that blog was ... that you could be a libertarian who favored free markets and limited governments, and still care about the kind of things people on the left refer to as 'social justice' – relieving poverty, racial and sexual equality, immigrant rights, LBGTQ rights, and so on. Hence, the slogan of the blog, 'free markets and social justice'....

"Reconciling free markets and social justice seemed like an especially worthwhile project to undertake in 2011. Academic political philosophy was largely dominated by followers of John Rawls, for whom a commitment to social justice (of a particular sort) was paramount. And libertarianism remained a fringe and unfamiliar view within the academy – for most academic philosophers, it was a view that was born and died in 1974 with the publication of Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia. But a critical mass of scholars were working out new ways of thinking about libertarian ideas; and many of us who were excited by the work of scholars like David Schmidtz, Gerald Gaus, and John Tomasi thought that there was a different style of libertarian thought beginning to crystallize. And we didn’t only want to publicize that; we wanted to encourage it, to help build and develop the research program associated with it.

"Moreover, if we sought to open mainstream Rawlsian political philosophy and theory to the influence of market-friendly classical liberalism, we also wanted to wanted to steer classical liberal scholarship toward taking egalitarian liberal ideas much more seriously than it often had.

"In a more minor way, there was a political background, too. The Cold War 'fusionism' of conservative and libertarian politics was put under considerable strain during the George W. Bush administration; the 2008 presidential candidacy of Ron Paul had reenergized a strain of libertarian politics that rejected neoconservatism but embraced a kind of nationalist, anti-immigrant paleoconservatism instead. Libertarians who didn’t feel comfortable entangled with either neoconservatives or paleoconservatives, those who took the 'liberalism' in 'classical liberalism' seriously, hadn’t quite found a public voice....

"Things have changed quite a bit in the last nine years, both in the realm of academic philosophy and that of real-world politics. Rawlsianism and its particular interpretation of social justice have receded in prominence. The variety of libertarian and classical liberal views within the academy has become better known, even by those who reject those views. And that variety is now a more firmly established fact among libertarian scholars and students themselves

"I like to think that this blog, or at least the people who write for it, have played some role in at least the second of those two developments. We set out with the aim of articulating a new and distinct vision of libertarianism. And – while there are certainly a great number of important details of that vision that have yet to be worked out – I think we have succeeded.  The project of establishing the intellectual space for bleeding-heart libertarian ideas has also more or less succeeded, giving way to the various different intellectual projects people are going to pursue in that space. In other words, we’ve said what we needed to say.

"For that reason, it’s time to bring Bleeding Heart Libertarians to a close. We’ll be keeping the archives open. But we won’t be posting anything new. At least not here. All of us are still actively writing, and many of us are writing on themes that are very much relevant to the Bleeding Heart Libertarian project. But we’ve said what we wanted to say here, and we think it’s best to put a period at the end of that sentence rather than an ellipsis."

Read more: https://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2020/06/the-end/

Iraq was the Democrats' war, too

When Iraq Was Clinton’s War - Chip Gibbons, The Jacobin:

May 6, 2016 - "When [George W.] Bush entered the White House, the US (with help from the UK) was bombing Iraq an average of three times a week. In 1999, the US spent  $1 billion dropping bombs in Iraq; in 2000, that number was up to $1.4 billion....

"Omitting the decade leading up to the 2003 invasion distorts the roots of the war, which wasn’t just a product of post–9/11 hysteria or the creation of various Bush administration personalities. The February 2001 assault was part of a bipartisan policy that put continuous war with Iraq at the center of strategies to maintain US hegemony in the Middle East....

"[A]t a February 1998 town hall... Secretary of State Madeleine Albright tried to sell the public on bombing Iraq. Albright was repeatedly interrupted by antiwar activists, and ... replied, 'No one has done what Saddam Hussein has done, or is thinking of doing. He is producing weapons of mass destruction'.... Just a few years later, similar scenes, with different players, would be reprised in the buildup to the Bush administration’s invasion.

"Much as George W. Bush inherited his initial Iraq policy from Bill Clinton, Clinton inherited his from Bush’s father. Following Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the UN Security Council imposed sanctions on Iraq.... Even after Hussein pulled out, however, the US ... refused to allow the sanctions to be lifted. Their new rationale was that the restrictions were needed to  disarm Iraq. Yet as early as 1992 the US knew Iraq had given up its weapons of mass destruction, and the sanctions remained....

"Iraq experienced shortages of food, medicine, and clean drinking water. And a 1995 Lancet study sponsored by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization concluded that 576,000 children under the age of five perished because of the policy, while a “conservative” estimate put the death toll for the same age group at 350,000. Dennis Halliday, a thirty-four-year UN veteran, resigned ... after spending a little over a year as the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq. He said the sanctions constituted genocide.... Clinton simply denied the facts in question....

"Like his successor, one of Clinton’s early acts in office was to bomb Baghdad. In 1993, he sent twenty-three cruise missiles to hit the city.... Five years later, Clinton signed the 'Iraq Liberation Act' into law, formalizing the US’s demand for regime change. The legislation, which also appropriated $97 million to fund Iraqi opposition groups, was followed up with ... Operation Desert Fox ... sold to the public as retribution for Hussein’s decision to kick UN weapons inspectors out of the country. Yet ... Clinton ordered the inspectors out. Saddam didn’t kick them out....

"From the end of Operation Desert Fox [in December 1998] until the 2003 invasion, the US and UK bombed Iraq at least once a week."

Read more: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/05/war-iraq-bill-clinton-sanctions-desert-fox/
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Oklahoma LP transgender exec makes history

Oklahoma Transgender Student Elected in Libertarian Party | Oklahoma News | US News - Joy Hampton, Norman Transcript, Associated Press:

April 23, 2018 - "University of Oklahoma student Traci Baker is only 20 years old, but she was recently elected as state secretary of the Libertarian Party ... the first transgender official of any party in state history, as well as the first transgender executive of a state party in the U.S.

 "Baker grew up in Edmond [Oklahoma] and was interested in politics early on. 'I was inspired by the Ron Paul campaign in 2012, and that's what got me into Libertarianism,' she said. 'I was in high school when I did debate, and then I was in Youth in Government in the YMCA program. That's also when I started doing my first campaign.'

"Baker graduated from Edmond Memorial High School in 2016 and moved to Norman to attend OU. 'I came out as transgender pretty much immediately upon moving to Norman," Baker said.... I'm on campus a lot, and campus is pretty supportive'....

 "With federal, state and county filings coming up, Baker has been busy with party responsibilities.

 "'We've got three great candidates for governor and a candidate for state auditor, which Democrats don't have. So, that's pretty cool,' she said. 'We have some candidates for House and Senate seats, as well as a few running for Congress'....

"'I will continue to be the candidate liaison for the party,' Baker said. 'I equip them with the resources that they need to run and interact with them to make sure they know how to file for office.'

"She also works with candidates on campaign finance ethics and filing regulations and other knowledge they need to know while running for office." "

Read more: https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/oklahoma/articles/2018-04-23/oklahoma-transgender-student-elected-in-libertarian-party
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New Ron Paul book: The Revolution at Ten Years

The Revolution at Ten - Campaign for Liberty - Norm Singleton, National Blog:

October 20, 2017 - "Campaign for Liberty Chairman Ron Paul's new book, The Revolution at Ten, is a great read.  One can learn more about economics, politics, history, and the philosophy of liberty from this 130-page book than from most lengthy academic works.

"Starting with the early legal codes protecting individual rights to the Magna Carta, the American Revolution, and the movement toward liberty in the 19th century,  Dr. Paul discusses how America abandoned the philosophy of limited government, free markets, and non-interventionist foreign policy in the 20th century.  Dr. Paul explains  how liberty was lost as progressives gained control over the government, began constructing a welfare state at home and a warfare state abroad. The progressive's crusade to use state power to "perfect" America and the world was facilitated by the twin mistakes of 1913 – the creation of the income tax and the Federal Reserve.

"Dr. Paul then recounts the rise of the rEVOLution in 2008 and 2012. While the media proclaims it is dead, Dr. Paul sees it as still growing as support for the ideas of Liberty continue to grow and the failures of progressivism become more obvious.

"The unifying theme of the book is that we are in the last stages of the progressive era and what replaces it depends in large part on how successful we are in getting a critical mass of people to embrace liberty and join our movement.

"Dr. Paul covers the major challenges facing us, including foreign policy, civil liberties, the 'deep state,' climate change hysteria, and, of course, monetary policy and the Federal Reserve. My favorite chapter is on cultural marxism. Dr. Paul ties the 'social justice warrior' crusade to censor all speech they deem offensive to the progressive goal of destroying civil society in order to use government power to exercise total control over individuals.

"The last two chapters of the book compare the libertarian society with one governed  by 'progressive' values and looks at the chaos that could come from the collapse of the Keynesian welfare-warfare state. Dr. Paul is optimistic that a free society can emerge after the next crisis.... Dr. Paul’s predictions should inspire us to redouble our efforts to work to grow the liberty movement and force the [pilot] to change course before an economic crisis leaves us no other choice."

Read more: http://www.campaignforliberty.org/revolution-ten
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Order from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Revolution-at-Ten-Years/dp/0996426558

R. Lee Wrights (1958-2017)

R. Lee Wrights | Libertarianism Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia:

May 5, 2017 - "Roger Lee Wrights (June 8, 1958 - May 4, 2017) was an American politician, activist and political consultant. He was the founder, editor, and publisher of the online libertarian newsletter Liberty For All. He was the National Vice Chair of the Libertarian National Committee, serving several different times in that role. Wrights was an unsuccessful contender for the 2012 presidential nomination of the Libertarian Party, finishing as first runner-up to the eventual nominee Gary Johnson....

"Wrights was born on June 8, 1958 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He graduated from West Forsyth High School in Clemmons, North Carolina in 1976. Afterwards he enlisted in the United States Air Force.... Wrights earned a degree from Willmar College in Willmar, Minnesota where he majored in history and journalism. After college, he was a contributing editor for the Eagle News, a monthly political news and commentary newspaper in Forsyth County....

"Wrights founded Liberty For All with J. Michael Bragg in 2000, a free speech publication with the motto "Let Your Voice Be Heard" which claims "no one is turned away and no one is censored". In 2001 Wrights began work as an editor of the Free Market Daily, an e-mail newsletter distributed by FreeMarket.net. After FreeMarket.net shut down in 2002, Wrights joined a group that began the Rational Review News Digest, a daily web and email-based news and commentary roundup....From 2005 to 2008, Wrights worked as editor of the Choice Channel for the International Society for Individual Liberty....

"Wrights was active in local, state and national Libertarian Party organizations since 2000 and was a lifetime member of the Libertarian Party. He served as secretary and chair of the Libertarian Party of Forsyth County, N.C. and was vice chair of the Libertarian Party of North Carolina (LPNC) for seven years.... In 2008, Wrights was campaign manager for the Mary Ruwart for President Committee....

"On April 16, 2011, Wrights officially announced his candidacy for the Libertarian presidential nomination in the election of 2012. The stated focus of his campaign was to 'stop all war', referring not only to war with foreign nations, but also to war on the American people and their civil liberties waged by the U.S. government.... Wrights also advocated abolition of the national income tax and added that he would 'replace it with...nothing.'

"At the 2012 Libertarian National Convention, Wrights was defeated for the LP presidential nomination by former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, finishing second in the balloting with 25% of the delegate votes. Following the defeat, Wrights expressed support for Johnson in his general election campaign. He was then nominated as a candidate for the LP vice-presidential slot. Wrights was defeated for that nomination by retired California Superior Court Judge Jim Gray, finishing second in the balloting with 38% of the delegate votes.

Wrights died on May 4, 2017, after a lengthy illness, at the age of 58.

Read more: http://libertarianism.wikia.com/wiki/R._Lee_Wrights