Current Events > Libertarians lose official party status in Maine due to low vote count

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.pressherald.com/2018/12/17/libertarians-lose-party-status-in-maine/

Only 6,168 registered Libertarians in Maine voted last month, well below the 10,000 needed to maintain official party status.
---

libertarians are just edgy kids who want to break the law and smoke weed
---

God bless
---

Heil two party!
---

Philoktetes posted...

libertarians are just edgy kids who want to break the law and smoke weed

they're actual conservatives, unlike the GOP who love big government when it suits their needs.
---

Giant_Aspirin posted...

Philoktetes posted...

libertarians are just edgy kids who want to break the law and smoke weed

they're actual conservatives, unlike the GOP who love big government when it suits their needs.

No, they're libertarians. "Small government" is not the animating force of conservatism, nor has it ever been.
---

Real talk nobody lives in Maine.
---

Antifar posted...

Giant_Aspirin posted...

Philoktetes posted...

libertarians are just edgy kids who want to break the law and smoke weed

they're actual conservatives, unlike the GOP who love big government when it suits their needs.

No, they're libertarians. "Small government" is not the animating force of conservatism, nor has it ever been.

Libertarians are mostly just people who read way too much Orwell and Rand in highschool.
https://www.zompist.com/libertos.html

Were_Wyrm posted...

Heil two party!

You know that Maine uses ranked choice voting and independents do fairly well there right (Senator Angus King is an independent)?

This is probably the one state where that comment is even more wrong than it usually is.
---

Questionmarktarius posted...

Antifar posted...

Giant_Aspirin posted...

Philoktetes posted...

libertarians are just edgy kids who want to break the law and smoke weed

they're actual conservatives, unlike the GOP who love big government when it suits their needs.

No, they're libertarians. "Small government" is not the animating force of conservatism, nor has it ever been.

Libertarians are mostly just people who read way too much Orwell and Rand in highschool.
https://www.zompist.com/libertos.html

Orwell was a socialist.
---

DarkRoast posted...

Orwell was a socialist.

...who spawned several generations of paranoid libertarians anyway.

Questionmarktarius posted...

DarkRoast posted...

Orwell was a socialist.

...who spawned several generations of paranoid libertarians anyway.

Who ironically probably liked Brave New World as well
---

Questionmarktarius posted...

DarkRoast posted...

Orwell was a socialist.

...who spawned several generations of paranoid libertarians anyway.

I always get a kick out of Mal_Fet having Orwell in his sig

Especially if it's in a topic where he calls the Nazis socialists
---

Doom_Art posted...

Questionmarktarius posted...

DarkRoast posted...

Orwell was a socialist.

...who spawned several generations of paranoid libertarians anyway.

I always get a kick out of Mal_Fet having Orwell in his sig

Especially if it's in a topic where he calls the Nazis socialists

dude they literally have "Socialist" in their name how can you argue with that

/s in case it wasn't obvious <_<
---

DarkRoast posted...

Questionmarktarius posted...

DarkRoast posted...

Orwell was a socialist.

...who spawned several generations of paranoid libertarians anyway.

Who ironically probably liked Brave New World as well

That's an interesting case.
There's definitely someone (or several) someones who read the book and thought "this seems pretty awesome!", but missed the deep tyranny of an explicitly engineered society.

You guys should all read Edmund Burke if you want to know the philosophical underpinnings or conservatism

But you wont

that's a very interested metric imo

it seems like you could vote for the D or R but if you register L then you count towards the L total

my understanding in most states is that you need your top of the ticket to get a certain share of the vote, which makes a lot more sense than the way Maine does it if I'm interpreting that right
---

Romes187 posted...

You guys should all read Edmund Burke if you want to know the philosophical underpinnings or conservatism

But you wont

Anything specific?

orwell was anti socialist

havent you read animal farm
---

Romes187 posted...

You guys should all read Edmund Burke if you want to know the philosophical underpinnings or conservatism

But you wont

Conservatives don't even know the philosophical underpinnings of conservatism.
---

Questionmarktarius posted...

Romes187 posted...

You guys should all read Edmund Burke if you want to know the philosophical underpinnings or conservatism

But you wont

Anything specific?

Reflections on the revolution in France

Philoktetes posted...

orwell was anti socialist

havent you read animal farm

Orwell was an admitted socialist

Animal Farm was about the Soviet Union and Stalinism
---

DarkRoast posted...

Romes187 posted...

You guys should all read Edmund Burke if you want to know the philosophical underpinnings or conservatism

But you wont

Conservatives don't even know the philosophical underpinnings of conservatism.

Most do not, and youre likely thinking of American conservatism which is a slightly different beast.

But conservatives certainly act out the philosophy in some ways, whether they know or understand it.

george orwell was a pseudonym

no one knows who he really was or his true beliefs outside the novelbooks
---

Make the Libertarian Party libertarian again. Although I'm not sure if that would help in Maine anyway.
---

Romes187 posted...

Questionmarktarius posted...

Romes187 posted...

You guys should all read Edmund Burke if you want to know the philosophical underpinnings or conservatism

But you wont

Anything specific?

Reflections on the revolution in France

Just amazon'd

Liberals used to like Libertarians. Now they hate them.
---

HenryAllbright posted...

Liberals used to like Libertarians. Now they hate them.

says who?
---

HenryAllbright posted...

Liberals used to like Libertarians. Now they hate them.

I mean it became abundantly clear in the runup to 2016 and after that most libertarians were just standard conservatives

or the ones that weren't are basically the right wing version of internet communists
---

Libertarians just being embarrassed Republicans has been a thing for as long as I can remember. I've never liked them, their trash has always been transparent.
---

A_Good_Boy posted...

Libertarians just being embarrassed Republicans has been a thing for as long as I can remember. I've never liked them, their trash has always been transparent.

Just swap out "Jesus!" with the religion of "praise be to the marketplace", and you're getting pretty close.

I really wish more than two parties would take off in this country...
---

Philoktetes posted...

george orwell was a pseudonym

no one knows who he really was or his true beliefs outside the novelbooks

Eric Blair. Come on, this is all well-known. He was anarchist by leaning and acquired an enduring hatred for Soviets, Stalinists, and Stalin. He fought with POUM(Worker's Party for Marxist Unification) in the Spanish Civil War, which was purged by Soviet-backed elements in the Republican government, so he had personal experience with them. He hated them with the fury only a leftist could muster for another "left" ideology.

Yeah I've never been a fan of Libertarians. Their whole philosophy of a "total free market" and pushing the whole Ayn Rand bullshit was enough to push me forever away from them. They suck.
---

Doom_Art posted...

HenryAllbright posted...

Liberals used to like Libertarians. Now they hate them.

I mean it became abundantly clear in the runup to 2016 and after that most libertarians were just standard conservatives

or the ones that weren't are basically the right wing version of internet communists

Nobody would call me a conservative and I identify as libertarian.
I think the GOP can go suck eggs.
---

I didn't know there was even 10k people in Maine.
---

HenryAllbright posted...

Liberals used to like Libertarians. Now they hate them.

Its because they remind liberals that they have no moral high ground. For example, excluding honest liberals like Glenn Greenwald, the anti war movement during Iraq has been exposed and nothing more than an anti Bush movement.
---

DarkRoast posted...

Doom_Art posted...

HenryAllbright posted...

Liberals used to like Libertarians. Now they hate them.

I mean it became abundantly clear in the runup to 2016 and after that most libertarians were just standard conservatives

or the ones that weren't are basically the right wing version of internet communists

Nobody would call me a conservative and I identify as libertarian.
I think the GOP can go suck eggs.

there's a big schism between the right fusionists that I guess are now calling themselves the Mises Caucus and other libertarians

you can see this primarily in immigration debates (e.g., Cato vs the Mises Institute)
---

tennisdude818 posted...

HenryAllbright posted...

Liberals used to like Libertarians. Now they hate them.

Its because they remind liberals that they have no moral high ground. For example, excluding honest liberals like Glenn Greenwald, the anti war movement during Iraq has been exposed and nothing more than an anti Bush movement.

Its more that Libertarian ideas tend to be mind numbingly stupid and that plenty who call themselves ones simply are Conservatives who like to smoke pot and have no problem with gay people.
---

The Great Muta 22 posted...

tennisdude818 posted...

HenryAllbright posted...

Liberals used to like Libertarians. Now they hate them.

Its because they remind liberals that they have no moral high ground. For example, excluding honest liberals like Glenn Greenwald, the anti war movement during Iraq has been exposed and nothing more than an anti Bush movement.

Its more that Libertarian ideas tend to be mind numbingly stupid and that plenty who call themselves ones simply are Conservatives who like to smoke pot and have no problem with gay people.

Now you sound like Ann Coulter.
---

Antifar posted...

Giant_Aspirin posted...

Philoktetes posted...

libertarians are just edgy kids who want to break the law and smoke weed

they're actual conservatives, unlike the GOP who love big government when it suits their needs.

No, they're libertarians. "Small government" is not the animating force of conservatism, nor has it ever been.

What is Ronald Reagan
---

Ronald Reagan liked the earned income tax credit
---

Doe posted...

What is Ronald Reagan

A President who expanded the government?

aren't most self-proclaimed libertarians closer to classical liberal than true libertarian? i see a lot of parallels
---

Broseph_Stalin posted...

Doe posted...

What is Ronald Reagan

A President who expanded the government?

He ran on the issues of government taxes and spending and argued that the private sector could handle relief issues better than the government. Conservatives still hold up that platform he had. To say that contracting those government programs was not a primary aim of the conservative revolution is just wrong. Say what you will about the specifics of his presidency, I'm not a Reaganist or anything like that or even much of a conservative, but I do care about historical facts.
---

The main thing I remember about Libertarians is that one guy doing a striptease at their national convention back in like 2016.

That said

LethalAffinity posted...

I really wish more than two parties would take off in this country...

Agreed.
---

Questionmarktarius posted...

Romes187 posted...

Questionmarktarius posted...

Romes187 posted...

You guys should all read Edmund Burke if you want to know the philosophical underpinnings or conservatism

But you wont

Anything specific?

Reflections on the revolution in France

Just amazon'd

Nice!

He also does a work on aesthetics called A Philosophical Enquiry Into the Origin of our Ideas Of the Sublime and the Beautiful that is interesting if youre into that kinda stuff. Im getting through it right now.

You should be able to find both texts free online, though it isnt as fun as holding a book and reading imo

Space_Man posted...

aren't most self-proclaimed libertarians closer to classical liberal than true libertarian? i see a lot of parallels

As far as I know, libertarianism and classical liberalism are pretty much the same thing. It's just that the left started calling themselves liberals at some point so they needed a different name.

Being a Libertarian should really be all about liberty, aka freedom. The thing is, freedom is a complicated concept. I am very anti-authority, which is why I lean libertarian....but at the same time I recognize that the government itself can be more effective at limiting certain kinds of authority, including limiting itself.

Obviously in it's current state the government is very authoritative with all the rules and taxes and regulations, etc....
---

Balrog0 posted...

Ronald Reagan liked the earned income tax credit

and escalating Nixon's already-failed war on drugs.

Isn't the ranked choice voting in Maine supposed to encourage third parties?
---