Book Review: Introduction to the Libertarian Party (2013)

Posted on August 28, 2015 by Brian Wright

For Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Independents, and everyone else
by Wes Benedict

Anyone who has been around the Libertarian Party (LP) as long as I have—from its founding and with a long absence 1972-1978 and some shorter occasional absences since—can cite a relative handful of books that were LP ‘culture bearers,’ from first presidential candidate John Hospers’ scholarly Libertarianism, to David Bergland’s Libertarianism in One Lesson (now in its < > printing), to Dr. Mary Ruwart’s Healing Our World (coming up on an acclaimed third edition), and of course to all the polemical masterpieces of Professor Murray Rothbard (perhaps the most LP-centered being For a New Liberty). And a host of others that don’t come to mind at the moment.

Wes Benedict’s Introduction to the Libertarian Party is a worthy candidate for an LP book of the times, meaning these times—let’s say late 1990s to the present. It sports several notable features: Continue reading →

Brian’s Column: Rethinking Libertarian Party Strategy:2

Posted on February 9, 2014 by Brian Wright

From Part 1, I hope that I effectively made several points that warrant an effective grand strategy for Libertarians and libertarians. Before I summarize these points, let me first stipulate the larger community that the strategy is intended to serve:

World Citizenship Alliance

The community of service is composed of you or I or any of a vast number of what I’ll call free men.[1] I mean free in the Jeffersonian or Lockeian sense of persons living—achieving their material, real existence—in a natural condition of purely voluntary relationships with others, free to choose what to do with their lives without the initiation of force (aggression) by any of the others, and asserting this condition as fundamentally right. In other words asserting what historically is called the Rights of Man. Continue reading →

Brian’s Column: Next Step for the LP? (Part 2)

Posted on January 13, 2013 by Brian Wright

Leveraging the LP to create a majority party
by Brian Wright

In Part 1 of this piece suggesting a new direction for Libertarians,
I made my case based on the following chain of observations and premises:

There’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the 2012 Libertarian Party (LP) presidential candidate Gary Johnson and the Green—practically and essentially a ‘peace’ party—presidential candidate Jill Stein… when it comes to peace and civil liberties. Continue reading →

Brian’s Column: Next Step for the Libertarian Party? (Part 1)

Posted on December 30, 2012 by Brian Wright

Part 1 of 2: Time for a ‘paradigm shift’ in grand strategy?
by Brian Wright (Part 2 here)

On the night before the recent election, I’m watching the alternative debates on FreeandEqual.org. The site streams the verbal contest between presidential candidates Gary Johnson and Jill Stein of the Green Party, only it isn’t much of a contest. The topic is foreign policy, focusing primarily on peace and civil liberties, their positions virtually identical: yes and yes. [Dr. Stein, IMHO, has the greater civil libertarian street credit, having been arrested and held for a day by police for taking part in an Occupy Wall Street protest.] Continue reading →