The tide has turned in the Libertarian Party.
The Mises Caucus swept the Libertarian Party of Nevada convention yesterday. Charles Melchin was elected Chair. Jeffrey Hurley was elected Vice Chair, Bryan Elliott was elected as Treasurer, Katie Banuelos was elected as Secretary, Chris Orton was elected as Northern Rep, Adam Haman was elected as Southern Rep, and Sam Toll was elected At Large. The votes were not close. Our guys won by a large margin. They were gracious winners, though, and invited everyone to the LPMC after-party. None of the haters showed up, but some of the people on the fence about us did.
Going forward, I’ll be working closely with this state party to help them catch up to speed and develop “best practices” to share with other state parties and county affiliates.
The next libertarian conventions I’ll be attending are California’s, May 14th – 16th, and Colorado’s, May 21st – 23rd.
Here is a rough transcript of the talk I gave at the convention. I didn’t pull any punches during this talk, but I had lots of people new to the party tell me they appreciated it and that it resonated .
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Rise above this.
Rise to your potential.
This convention represents a major ideological battle in the fight for the soul of the LP.
Walk into this battle with your sword sheathed. If you show restraint, you will be viewed as the adult in the room.
Those who have swords and know how to use them, but keep them sheathed, will inherit the earth. People who are capable of force but able to show restraint are in the correct moral position.
This is essentially what the non aggression principle is about, acknowledging your strength and restraint.
Human beings are capable of remarkable things but we sometimes get so gripped by fear, that we dont behave in a remarkable way. People shirk back from exercising their strength and moral character because they’re afraid. They’re afraid of judgment, they’re afraid of failure, and most of all – they’re afraid of success. They’re afraid how success might radically change their finite, predictable lives.
If you cultivate the mindset of ignoring your strength and you refuse to exercise it, you become a coward.
No one wants to be outed as a coward, so people like to disguise their cowardice as morality, (or moral superiority).
They’ll claim their harmlessness or their opposition to strength and resolve of character is a sign of moral integrity.
But it’s not.
If you have the heart of an axe murderer, but you dont have an axe, you’re not a moral person, and you’re not harmless. You’re just unarmed. You have no moral superiority.
This sense of moral superiority that people get – its the mask you wear to convince yourself and the world that you’re not a terrible monster, so when you look into the mirror, you shrink back in terror or dont run away screaming.
Cowardice is not a virtue. It’s a crippling vice.
Cowardice holds you back from accomplishing things, from actualizing your true potential, and it makes you resentful of others.
There is no place in the libertarian party for cowardice.
There is no place in the libertarian party for people who are afraid to speak out against the lockdowns, or vaccine passports, or the bombing of hiroshima.
This is not the place for your cowardice.
If you’ve been a coward in the past, but you’re ready to make a change, this is your time. We invite you to actualize your true potential. Rise to the occasion. Help us fight back against the tide of totalitarianism that is sweeping our nation. Fight back like your lives and the lives of your children depend on it.
This is no joke!
Back to the fight. The battle for the soul of the LP. This is a very important, but much smaller battle in the nationwide, meta war for our freedom.
What are we fighting for, really?
Some of us are fighting for freedom. We want to use the party as a vehicle for libertarian messaging and elections. As a guidestar on the journey to a freer place.
Some of you are fighting for acceptance from the status quo.
The libertarian party has such low self esteem. It doesnt believe in itself or its own values.
So we have to change things. We have to believe in our principles and speak the truth. And in order to do that we need to clean things up.
Some of you are pretty new to the LP and you’re wondering what you’ve got yourselves into. Maybe all you have is your little county or state party. You don’t have much political power but you’ve got this party and maybe this community right around you. And your party is kind of a mess but it’s what you’ve got. You’ve got officers but not all of them show up to every meeting . You’ve got a website but it’s not updated regularly. You exist but you’re stagnant, and kind of treading water. Or maybe you’ve got some people who are actively keeping you down.
So how do you clean up your party exactly? What are you even cleaning up? Well the libertarian party is supposed to make the world a freer place, and in order to do that we need to communicate our ideas about freedom and let people know. Ok – so we need to be a vehicle to communicate the concept of liberty.
So maybe the first thing you need to do is figure out what your message is, and how to get it across and who to communicate it to – and that’s more work than you might think..
You want to get people elected, and get ballot access, and grow your membership. Those are all good things, too. But you’ve got to get your house in order before you start making additions to your house.
Then the next thing is you have to make the LP appealing to people. So you have to have some discernment and an understanding of how to attract people, and who to attract.
You have to develop your capacity to be creative so you can compete in the marketplace of ideas. That’s what we’re doing.
You want to be enthusiastic and energetic, and oriented towards liberty in a way that excites other people.
These are the first critical steps in growing a healthy organization.
When you begin to pull these things off, the status quo element of the party may interfere with your work. When you start building up this microcosm of meaningful activism, it will evoke the pathology of every insecure person around you and they’ll wonder what you’re up to and they wont be happy because if they’re in a lowly place and so are you, and you’re trying to move out of that lowly place, the higher you move out of it, the more their place looks bad and they will attempt to pull you back down.
All organizations go through this to some degree. If you’re going to organize your party, you’re going to have to confront the devils in your house and some of them can be very challenging to evict.
I wanna reassure you these problems are not unique to the libertarian party. These are archetypal problems that manifest themselves in every kind of organization, but especially in political organizations and non profits.
What’s the payoff for pulling off something like this? For actualizing potential?
We honestly don’t know. We can’t begin to understand our capacity to affect change in the system until we get on the right track and fully realize our potential.
The last year or so is a better example than anything else in our lifetimes of what kind of horror is unleashed upon the world when society abandons bravery and the sovereignty of the individual for the confines of moral superiority and cowardice.
People lost their jobs, their family businesses, their savings, their children’s college funds… suicide, alcoholism, and domestic violence rates soared. Civil liberties all but disappeared.
People gave into tyranny for sake of the greater good – to save “society”. To save YOU whether you like it or not. Whether it helped or not. Whether it hurt or not.
But the year ahead of us! This is our golden opportunity. And maybe our last hope! Our chance to take a stand against authoritarianism, to be a light in the darkness for all of the people who are lost and crying out for guidance.
We don’t have time for cowardice.
We only have time for boldness.
I’m asking you all now to be brave. To recognize your strengths, and the strength of principled, libertarian messaging and leadership.
Actualize your potential. Rise to the occasion.
Angela McArdle 