Tin-foil hats and the Fuhrer principle.

Here are a couple of short updates from the asylum that is the (formerly) Libertarian Party.

In Wisconsin the tin-foil hat brigade won a primary to nominate conspiracist Kevin Barret as the LP candidate for Congress. Barrett is one of these obsessive lunatics who is convinced that the US government was behind 9/11. I meet the man and he is obnoxious and agressive about his crazy theories -- but that is often the case with the lunatic fringe.

The LP also attacked Ron Paul’s idea of some sort of unified third party effort around Paul’s agenda. I would have done so as well since Paul’s position ignored many important issues for the sake of unity. And the points just happen to be Paul’s hobby-horse issues which certainly avoid social freedom issues. What was wrong with the LP rejection wasn’t the rejection but some of the reasoning behind it.

The comment that screams of latent authoritarianism is this one: “The liberty movement needs a single leader, not a nebulous consortium of strange bedfellows.” Pardon me, but when did libertarianism become the Third Reich?