Fake libertarians propose alliance with conservatives.

The con man from Vegas is still lurking around the shell of the Libertarian Party trying to promote a conservative agenda for the LP. Wayne Allen Root, a conservative, keeps promoting himself as the leading LP contender in the next election. The only evidence for that, to date, is his own fertile imagination where he constantly imagines himself as being what he is not.

Root wants the (formerly) Libertarian Party to officially become part of a conservative coalition “to take back America from Obama and his socialist agenda.” Really, only a moron thinks the problem is a socialist agenda. It isn’t. Sure Obama wants socialism. But the problem is a statist agenda, a desire to have Big Government. And the conservatives, who had power for much of the last 30 years, have NEVER pushed through smaller government.

Root wants a coalition of conservatives, who by definition are statists, to join the LP. How will the LP manage this? Clearly the only way to appeal to conservatives is to strip the last vestiges of libertarianism from the party. The LP, to a large extent, has become nothing more than a home for failed conservatives who haven’t a clue.

Root defines “moderate Republicans” as part of the problem. So apparently those Republicans who are not “moderate” are to be our coalition partners. Who exactly would that be, Mr. Root? Root promises that his right-wing book, the misnamed Conscience of a Libertarian, explains what issues the coalition will run on. Remember that book—the one that avoids the war on drugs but worries about gambling (because Root made his living conning gamblers into buying his “advice” on how to lose money more efficiently). His was the book that didn’t mention foreign policy at all.

Libertarianism, under the make-over from Root and the traitors who run the Party, is libertarianism stripped of its non-interventionist foreign policy and with civil liberties underplayed to such a large degree that it is a joke to pretend they are even there. Root wants a libertarianism that is just another version of the failed conservative policies that destroyed the Republican Party.

Roots new policy on immigration is one, which he says, will allow only “skilled upper middle class immigrants [well you can't come out and say "whites only" anymore] with assets of $250,000 or more, to move to America—thereby ending our foreclosure crisis, housing crisis, and national debt crisis, all at one….” Let’s explore this piece of bullshit for a minute.

First, why exactly should only “upper middle class” people be allowed to immigrate to America? That policy, I note would have kept out Root’s own ancestors from America—okay, so that’s a point in its favor. But the same policy would have meant that Milton Friedman would have been born under Soviet control and Ayn Rand would have died in World War II. Interestingly the jobs that go unfilled in America are not the high-paying jobs for the upper middle-class but the more menial work that many immigrants yearn to do. But Root's racism, which is never far below the surface, won't let them in—after all, they're, you know, brown people.

What is Root’s solution? He wants to start pumping up the housing bubble again by forcing immigrants to spend at least $250,000 on a home in order to be allowed into the United States. The whole purpose of this is to use state coercion to force people to purchase houses and to try to push the values back up. State intervention created the housing bubble and Root, in the name of libertarianism, wants to use more state intervention to re-inflate the bubble. The housing crisis he refers to is the bubble created by political hacks pandering to popular wants—which is what Root is doing. The foreclosure crisis hits those people who were pushed into buying property which they weren’t ready to purchase, by the easy terms of government. That problem, sadly for the people involved, has been solved.

How will forcing another group of people to buy houses, that they apparently don’t want, do anything to help the people who lost homes? And how does this end the debt problem? I also have to ask how Root thinks this ends a “Social Security crisis”? The way to end a social security crisis is to end social security. What is Root’s view? Save it with reforms.

In fact Root says he doesn’t want to end several major failed government programs at all. That’s the old libertarian view, not the new Root view. He says he wants to “reform Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid…” Like the conservatives who sold out America, Root wants to reform Big Government, not end it. George Bush told conservatives that big government was their friend. Root is doing a watered down version of the same thing with libertarians.

In one of his supposedly glib moments Root did touch upon “sin,” by which it appears he means social freedom. He described the Nevada “approach” as “legalize it, regulate it, and tax it.” So Root apparently thinks regulation and new taxes are the way to promote social freedom.

Root has also been publicizing an “endorsement of his book” by John Hospers, who was the LP presidential candidate in 1972. That campaign didn’t mean much at the time. Hospers was on only two ballots. Dogcatchers got more votes than Hospers. And Hospers was inactive in the LP from that point onward. Hospers constantly drifted to the Right and fought libertarian impulses. Today, I fear he has few such impulses.

He has always been a weak libertarian, even at his best. His natural inclination is toward conservatism and in his senectude he has literally gone off the deep end. What value Hospers once had, has been more than undone by his war-mongering attitudes, views that have only beome worse as Hospers ages. Now in his 90s, he has basically repudiated libertarianism in practice.

Consider Hospers’ previous endorsement. Before Hospers was praising Root, he was sending out praise for another one of his heroes: George W. Bush. Hospers, who has joined the anti-immigration racists, did criticize Bush for “failing to protect our borders.” Consider, however, that so-called border protection has made it harder for Americans to travel freely. Not a single terrorist crossed our border illegally. but by “securing our borders.” Hospers and other conservatives have stripped Americans of their freedoms. Thank's John, we appreciate it. Now go away.

Hospers praised Bush for taking steps to “protect us” from “weapons of mass destruction, including ‘suitcase’ nuclear devices.” In other words, Hospers repeated the lies told by the Bush administration to justify an attack on a nation that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. Hospers went so far as to basically exonerate the odious Patriot Act, saying that opposition to it was “based more on hysteria and political opportunism than on reality.” This is not libertarianism. John Hospers may have written a book on the topic when he was much younger, but the John Hospers of today is NO libertarian, but a hawkish conservative. His endorsement of Root ought to be an indication of just how bad Root is. As I see it Hospers endorsed Bush, the Patriot Act and Wayne Root. Three destructive forces to liberty, what a record John!

That Root is proud of the support he is getting from Hospers is an indication of how clueless Root is about the history of libertarianism. Otherwise he would know that the last endorsement from Hospers was for the disastrous, destructive George W. Bush. But, no surprises there, Root had endorsed Bush as well. This is how far the libertarian movement has sunk.

Hospers, closer to 100 than to 80, was never that good. So, at least his advanced age gives him an excuse for making stupid decisions. He can call it a "senior moment." Unfortunately, his "senior moment" has lasted decades. Root, was never a libertarian, so that he gets libertarianism wrong is no surprise either. But what excuse do the party hacks at the national level have for betraying libertarianism and trying to turn the LP into a haven for has-been Republicans, who want the “libertarian” label but not libertarian policies?

Under the current national chairman and some of the officers who run the party, the Libertarian Party has ceased being libertarian. It is unlikely it will ever become libertarian again. My guess is that is headed for a long, steady decline (though that has been obvious for some time). The type of candidates that the LP runs will become more statist with each passing election. Some will be outright bigots, but that has already happened. The LP will adopt the hateful message of social conservatives and try to win the Religious Right over to their side by abandoning all support for civil liberties and social freedom. It will eventually become the last haven for the dying remnants of the Moral Majority, a retirement home for has-been theocrats, social conservatives, klanners and sundry bigots and hate-mongers. These are the disgusting types that Root is already getting cozy with. For another example of Root's barely concealed racism go here.

Oddly, in that sense, the LP may save the Republican Party. As the LP moves further away from libertarianism, into the intolerant, Right-wing camp, it will start to attract the dwindling numbers of fundamentalists that are in the Republican Party. The LP will basically draw out the infection that ruined the GOP. Unfortunately the LP will continue to destroy the “libertarian” brand in the process. But with the poisonous bigots and religious morons in the LP maybe the Republicans will discover small government. I wouldn’t count on it, but it might happen. Either way the LP is irrelevant, and the fastest way for the party to prove that it is a destructive force for liberty, is to endorse a conservative like Root.

Photo: Wayne Root along with some of the national officers of the Libertarian Party, discussing how to make the LP more fragrant to the public.