Glenn 'Kane' Jacobs elected Knox co. mayor

Glenn Jacobs, Professional Wrestler and Libertarian, Wins His Race for Mayor - Hit & Run : Reason.com - Zuri Davis:

August 3, 2018 - "The next mayor of Knox County, Tennessee, will be a Big Red Monster. Glenn Jacobs, better known to pro wrestling fans as Kane, secured a victory last night against Democratic challenger Linda Haney.

"Prior to announcing his mayoral candidacy in April 2017, Jacobs spent a long and seasoned career as a WWE star. He has also had a long and seasoned career as a libertarian writer and activist. In a 2009 open letter to Chuck Norris, he encouraged [Norris] to back measures to 'End the Fed,' mirroring Ron Paul's denunciations of the Federal Reserve....

"Jacobs' byline has appeared on several libertarian and quasi-libertarian websites, including the Future of Freedom Foundation, LewRockwell.com, and Rare. He spoke at the Young Americans for Liberty's annual conference in both 2016 and 2017, and he has made several television appearances with the likes of Kennedy and Andrew Napolitano. He also co-founded a pro-market organization called the Tennessee Liberty Alliance.

"Though he ran as a Republican, Jacobs' campaign included many libertarian-friendly messages. During a May debate, for example, he argued that the Knox County government could not simply 'incarcerate [its] way out of' the opioid crisis. After he entered the mayoral race last year, he told Rare that running for such offices is important to the liberty movement because change is most effective on the local level:"

Read more: https://reason.com/blog/2018/08/03/glenn-jacobs-is-knox-county-tn-mayor
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Don't blame the alt.right on Ron Paul

Stop trying to blame the alt-right on Ron Paul | Rare - Jack Hunter:

August 25, 2017 - "Did Ron Paul’s popular presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012 kick-start the racist alt-right? No, they didn’t. But some are trying to say they did.

"This conversation began with Matt Lewis’ thought provoking 'The Insidious Libertarian-to-Alt-Right Pipeline' on The Daily Beast Wednesday, in which Lewis ponders if the explosion in popularity of libertarianism over the last decade also served as a breeding ground for today’s new generation of young white nationalists. My answer to Lewis is that ... the overwhelming majority of libertarians did not veer in that direction and explicitly reject white nationalism....

"Then Lewis got around to Ron Paul... '"The paleo-libertarian seed that Ron Paul, Murray Rothbard, and Lew Rockwell planted in the 1990s has come to bear some really ugly fruit in the last couple of years as elements of the alt-right have made appearances in various libertarian organizations and venues,” writes Steve Horwitz, an economist who writes at Bleeding Heart Libertarians.... “In a way, Ron Paul is the guy who lit the fuse,” Nick Gillespie says. “And he embodies some of those contradictions" [between libertarianism and the alt-right]'....

"Horwitz, a left libertarian cited by Lewis, has posted negative things about the Pauls for many years, both Ron and Rand, despite the fact that far less people would even know who Horwitz is and other prominent libertarians if not for the Paul family. That said, Horwitz is not wrong about Rothbard and Rockwell’s dalliances with paleoconservatives in the 1990s, how that racially troubling movement (I identified as paleoconservative back then and know the history well) was a precursor to the alt-right....

"[But] whatever questionable actions Ron Paul’s friends were taking in the 90s, the Ron Paul “rEVOLution” a decade later was the exact opposite regarding the current discussion about the alt-right.... I explained my journey from paleoconservative to libertarian in a lengthy Politico story in 2013. Central to that path was how Paul’s influence pushed me away from the kind of hateful ugliness we see even more extremely with the alt-right today:....

"I cannot count the number of liberty movement members I have met over the course of ten years, traveling across the country during both of Paul’s presidential runs and in the years in between, who had a similar journey: Conservatives who once had little reservation about demonizing immigrants, or blacks or Muslims, who due to Ron Paul’s influence had become libertarians and thus embarrassed by their former views. Not to mention the throngs of people younger than me who came to Ron Paul from not only the right, but left, or even many who had been politically apathetic prior. They weren’t right-wingers looking for redder meat. They were attracted to Paul in part because he was the opposite of that kind of politics, which so many had soured on.....

"I could just as easily make the argument that the Paul’s liberty movement is the exact opposite of the alt-right, something Paul touched on himself commenting on the chaos in Charlottesville."

Read more: http://rare.us/rare-politics/rare-liberty/stop-trying-to-blame-the-alt-right-on-ron-paul/
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Paleolibertarianism's appeal to the alt.right

The Rhetoric of Libertarians and the Unfortunate Appeal to the Alt-Right - Bleeding Heart Libertarians - Steve Horwitz:

August 4, 2017 - "The paleo-libertarian seed that Ron Paul, Murray Rothbard, and Lew Rockwell planted in the 1990s has come to bear some really ugly fruit in the last couple of years as elements of the alt-right have made appearances in various libertarian organizations and venues. Back in February, alt-right hero Richard Spencer stirred up a fuss at the International Students for Liberty Conference in DC after being invited to hang out by a group of students calling themselves the “Hoppe Caucus.” Hans-Hermann Hoppe, long associated with the Ludwig von Mises Institute as well as a panoply of racists and anti-Semites, is perhaps the most popular gateway drug for the alt-right incursion into libertarianism.

"And within the last couple of weeks, Jeff Deist, president of the Mises Institute delivered a talk to students at Mises University entitled “For a New Libertarian.” In that talk, he knocks down an extended strawman of what he thinks constitutes the libertarianism he wants them to reject – what many might call “left-libertarianism'.... Most controversially, Deist, after continuing to argue that family, faith, and the like are the cultural glue that humans need and that libertarians should focus on, decided to end with:

In other words, blood and soil and God and nation still matter to people. Libertarians ignore this at the risk of irrelevance.

"For those who know something about the history of the 20th century, the invocation of 'blood and soil' as something that libertarians should recognize as a valid concern and should appeal to should be chilling. That phrase, which has a history going back at least to the 19th century, was central to the Nazi movement and was at the core of their justification for eliminating those people who did not have connections to the German homeland. It remains a watchword of the nastiest elements on the right, as a quick visit to bloodandsoil.org will demonstrate....

"Perhaps Deist didn’t know all of that. If so, one would expect a decent person to immediately apologize for using that phrase that way in that context. To my knowledge, no such apology has appeared. On the assumption that he is not, in fact, a Nazi, the explanation left standing is that he and his defenders have no problem using rhetoric that will attract those sympathetic to Nazi-like views about nativism and Jews. It’s that lack of concern about engaging in that sort of rhetoric, if not a positive willingness to do so, that is so troubling here, and it is eating away at the liberal roots of libertarianism.....

As I pointed out with the Paul newsletters, all of this appeal to nativism, racism, and anti-Semitism and the like is in deep conflict with libertarianism’s liberalism. It’s particularly in conflict with the liberal cosmopolitanism of someone like Mises. And the use of Nazi language is especially galling as it was the very 'blood and soil' crowd who drove the Jewish Mises out of Vienna....

"Our history is one of liberal tolerance, universalism, and cosmopolitanism, putting the freedom and harmony of all people ahead of the supposed interests of any parochial sub-group, and especially ones defined by the artificial boundaries of nation-states and their subsets. Libertarians ignore this at the risk of irrelevance."

Read more: http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2017/08/rhetoric-libertarians-unfortunate-appeal-alt-right/
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Walter Block endorses Rand Paul for president

Mr. Libertarian Walter Block Endorses Rand Paul - Fergus Hodgson, The Canal, PanAm Post:

April 19, 2015 - "Whether he wanted it or not, US Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) now has the backing of one of libertarianism’s most strident and prominent academics as he campaigns for the presidency.

"Walter Block, the longtime anarcho-libertarian and Austrian-school economist, released a 1,400-word comment via Facebook this Saturday evening, entitled “The Libertarian Case for Rand Paul.”

"'I stand with Rand,' he wrote, 'and I urge my fellow libertarians, particularly those who have been most dismissive of him, to reconsider their position on this man.'

"Block, a tenured professor at Loyola University New Orleans, believes that his own 'libertarian credentials are about as good, among the living, as anyone else’s on the planet.' Lew Rockwell, founder and chairman of the Mises Institute, has dubbed him Mr. Libertarian, and commitment is not a matter of debate for the author of Defending the Undefendable (1976). Block’s uncompromising and combative style has earned him the sarcastic moniker of 'the moderate'.

"A long-time supporter of Rand’s father, Block also wrote Ron Paul for President in 2012, and he laments that 'The acorn has fallen too far from the tree in this case.' However, when it comes to electoral politics, Block is willing to acknowledge that “The perfect is the enemy of the good ...[and] It cannot be denied that Rand is pretty darned good from a libertarian point of view – compared with the realistic alternatives.'

"This announcement comes even after Rand Paul has distanced himself from Block. A 2014 New York Times article sought to sully the younger Paul with comments from Block taken out of context, and Rand countered that Block was just “some guy who I’ve never met."

"A final challenge to Rand among this potential voting block comes from former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, who ran on the Libertarian ticket in 2012.... Block acknowledges that Johnson is slightly more in line with libertarian ideology, but he has little interest in a third-party candidate.

Read more: http://blog.panampost.com/fergus-hodgson/2015/04/19/mr-libertarian-walter-block-endorses-rand-paul-for-president/
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