Libertarian Party (United States)
The Libertarian Party is a United States political party created in December 11, 1971 in the home of David Nolan. The first electoral college vote it won was for presidential candidate John Hospers and vice-presidential candidate Theodora B. Nathan in the 1972 presidential election; this was also the first electoral vote won by a woman.
Key tenets of the Libertarian Party platform include the following:
- a mostly unregulated free-market economy,
- strong civil liberties (see American Civil Liberties Union),
- a foreign policy of non-intervention, peace, and free trade, and
- opposition to the "war on drugs".
Libertarians claim that their platform follows from the ultimate value of individual liberty: the right of individuals to exercise sole dominion over their own lives and property, and to live in whatever manner they choose, so long as they do not forcibly interfere with the right of others to do the same. To this end, Libertarians want to reduce the size and intrusiveness of government and to cut taxes.
Libertarians reject the commonly held "right vs. left" description of political positions. Instead, Libertarians refer people to the Nolan chart to communicate their perception of political orientation (however, see "Libertarians: left or right?" below). Within the larger framework of libertarian politics, the Libertarian Party's platform falls roughly in the realm of capitalist minarchism, although there is some internal disagreement about this categorization. Some Libertarians are actually anarcho-capitalists who view minarchy as a first step towards the abolition of government.
Political power of the Libertarian Party
The Libertarian Party portrays itself as the third largest party in the United States, although its candidate came in fifth in the 2000 Presidential election. It justifies its claim with several facts, including the following:
- The 2000 Libertarian presidential ticket (Harry Browne for president and Art Olivier for vice president) got 382,892 votes, or about 0.36 percent of the national popular vote.
- In the 2000 elections the party ran about 1,430 candidates at the local, state, and federal level. More than 1,600 Libertarians will run for office in the 2002 mid-term election. Both numbers are more candidates than any other third party will run in these elections.
- In 2002, 34 Libertarians hold elected state and local offices.
- In 2000, 256 candidates ran for seats in the House of Representatives. In 2002, 230 candidates are running for House seats. This is only the second time in over 80 years that any third party has contested a majority of House seats.
- In 2000, Libertarian candidates for U.S. House won 1.6 million votes. This count is more than any other third party in U.S. history by raw vote totals, although not by proportion of the electorate. (Some observers point out that, in 2002, the U.S. had a larger population than at any time in its history, so it is perhaps unremarkable that some third party would obtain more raw votes than any past third party.)
- In 2000, Massachusetts U.S. Senate candidate Carla Howell won a record 11.9% of the vote.
- Texas (183), Indiana (158), Missouri (52), Idaho (49), and Wisconsin (25) are all running record numbers of candidates in their state or local elections in 2002. This is more in each of these states than any other third party.
- The Libertarian Party has been a national party since 1972, and became the first third party to run in all 50 states for three elections in a row. It has run in all 50 states in four elections: 1980, 1992, 1996, and 2000. No other third party in U.S. history has managed to run a presidential candidate in all 50 states more than once.
Libertarians: left or right?
Libertarians will often deny vehemently that their political positions can be characterized as either left or right. In fact, the stated platform of the Libertarian Party does differ from positions held by both traditional "left" and "right" movements in the United States and elsewhere. Unlike traditional "left" parties, Libertarians favor unregulated, laissez-faire markets; unlike traditional "right" parties, Libertarians favor legalization of drugs and strong civil liberties. Furthermore, Libertarians disagree substantially with both the Democratic and Republican parties, which purport to represent the center-left and center-right in U.S. politics.
However, the "left" vs. "right" characterization of Libertarians is a matter of some debate. Outside of their claimed political beliefs, the United States Libertarian political movement shares many social ties to the American right-wing movement. For example, the influential libertarian Cato Institute is funded by many of the same interests that fund the Republican Party. Also, the briefly prominent Republican Congressman Newt Gingrich claimed to be influenced by Libertarian principles, and was praised by many Libertarians for attempting to shrink government; Gingrich's influence soon waned, but many of his Republican peers also claimed to espouse some quasi-Libertarian positions, and still do.
Furthermore, Libertarians often prioritize market deregulation over other parts of their political platform, which leads to natural ideological and political alignment between Libertarians and the American right. The American right frequently co-opts the language and social critiques of Libertarians (for example, right-wing publications often cite studies by the Cato Institute). In practice, Libertarians and Republicans enter into alliances of convenience far more often than Libertarians and Democrats. For example, in 2002, the Libertarian Party sent out a direct mail fundraising letter [1], signed by Ron Crickenberger (the party's National Political Director), which is excerpted below:
- Dear Friend:
- 60's radical-turned-conservative activist David Horowitz once said, "Politics is war conducted by other means," but in America one side is doing all the shooting -- liberals.
- The liberals tried to steal the 2000 presidential election with their "Sore Loserman" campaign in Florida. They stole control of the U.S. Senate when GOP turncoat Sen. Jeffords jumped ship, leaving Tom Daschle in charge. Now they're fighting to keep that control... and they're doing it "by any means necessary." . . .
- . . . I'm raising money from libertarians and conservatives across America, in order to pull off a political ploy that could help boot out a vulnerable liberal Democrat Senator, and take control away from the liberals that are now in charge. . . .
- . . . In Georgia, the Libertarians are the "wild card." In fact, 10 years ago, the LP candidate threw the Senate race into an unprecedented runoff... which led to the defeat of the Democrat incumbent and the election of Republican Senator Paul Coverdell. Coverdell won by less than 1% in the runoff, after the Libertarian endorsed him.
- Look at those poll numbers again. The LP "wildcard" can help defeat another incumbent Democrat... with YOUR help.
This letter reveals a strongly partisan point of view, one that is couched directly in the language of left-right political orientation. It places Libertarian Party in alliance, at least temporarily, with the right ("conservatives"), and against the left ("liberals"). The stated goal of the fundraising campaign is not to elect a Libertarian, but to remove a Democrat from office.
From evidence such as the above, some observers conclude that Libertarians are effectively a right-wing political force, even though they do not identify themselves as such. Others conclude that, although the Libertarian platform may be strictly neither left nor right, it is not neutral with respect to left and right either---it favors the right, and hence is "more right than left".
Moreover, critics (both libertarian and not) of the Libertarian Party leadership point out that Republicans do the Libertarian platform few favors in return for this partisan assistance. For example, the Republicans installed John Ashcroft as Attorney General in 2001; Ashcroft was widely held to advocate massive curtailments of civil liberties, a view that only gained currency with his actions following the USA PATRIOT Act's passage. The Libertarian Party's continued support for the Republicans in the face of Ashcroft's acts led some observers to accuse the Party of insincerity in its opposition to the right's anti-libertarian positions (as opposed to the left's).
Some Libertarians, for their part, rebut that they protested Ashcroft's actions as loudly as they have ever protested similar actions by liberals---and, more generally, that Libertarians consistently number among the loudest voices protesting violations of civil liberties. Furthermore, Libertarians claim their platform's divergences from conservative views carry more weight than the party's social, financial, political, and ideological ties to the conservative movement. Finally, Libertarians point out that even if the party's views are "more right than left", that does not contradict their claim to espouse a vastly different form of political and economic organization than nearly all parties on either the right or the left---a claim that even the Party's critics seldom deny.