Libertarian Opens Campaign For U. S. Senate
BY BUDDY NEVINS
Veteran political consultant Roger Stone’s Libertarian campaign for U. S. Senate is slowly getting underway.
Roger Stone
Stone opened an exploratory committee (below) in Hallandale Beach earlier this month.
Stone was a well-known Republican operative and political trickster since the Watergate era. He also had a key role in the 2012 campaign of Broward Sheriff Scott Israel.
In recent years, Stone decided the GOP was on the wrong path and became a Libertarian.
Libertarian candidacies are a long-shot — to say the least. Libertarian candidate for governor Adrian Wyllie received 223,386 votes or 3.8 percent last year.
While Stone is campaigning for U. S. Senate, he will also be peddling his latest books. The author of The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ and Nixon’s Secrets: The Rise, Fall and Untold Truth about the President, Watergate, and the Pardon, he has a book about Hillary Clinton out September 1 followed by a book about Jeb Bush.
Stone made the following announcement last month:
“I want to thank the many Libertarians, liberty-minded Republicans and not a few progressives who have urged me to seek the Libertarian nomination for the U. S. Senate in 2016. As many of you know I considered running for Governor and decided that a intra-party contest would drain resources the eventual nominee would need in the general election. I am proud to have endorsed and voted for Adrian Wyllie and celebrate the fact that our nominee while underfunded worked very hard got a quarter of a million votes.
I have a book which will be the definitive expose on the Clintons in book stores Sept 1. I have a contract for a book which exposes the Bushs to publish Jan 2. The Clintons and Bushs and their parties represent the exact same pro-war, pro-debt, pro-spending, pro-spying, big government policies. If the Republican nominee is Ron Desantis and the Democratic nominee is Patrick Murphy, this will also be true of them. I would love to debate them. In truth they are identical.
I believe I could be an effective candidate for the Libertarian Party in 2016. I will adhere to whatever rules and screen process the party sets. I will campaign in every part of the state. I believe I could raise substantial funds. I know how to get press coverage.
I would run on a liberty message. I favor the repeal of the NDAA and the Patriot Act. I would reclassify marijuana and then legalize it. I would end the failed expensive war on drugs. I would oppose sending more troops to the middle east. I am not an isolationist, but I am a non-interventionist.
I will outline my own odyssey from being a Goldwater Republican and former Young Republican National Chairman and aide to two Presidents to being disgruntled Republican to being a proud member of the LP. I also am proud of my role as a Senior Adviser to Gov. Gary Johnson in our effort to get on the ballot in 48 states and our legal efforts to get the LP nominee into the Presidential debates.
Let me make clear my affection for my ex-boss President Nixon is personal and not ideological. My book on Nixon makes this clear .I have written and spoken as a critic of closing the gold window, the war on drugs and the expansion of government.
I am under contract to finish two books and will become a formal candidate later in the process. In the mean time I have asked Jo Ann Vaccarino and Alex Vidal to head an Exploratory Committee to begin planning the campaign. I will authorize this committee with the Federal Election Commission immediately
I look forward to seeing many of you in June. Live Free !”
June 28th, 2015 at 11:56 am
Look for the price of rough, low-quality toilet paper to decline at the end of the year, right after almost every single copy of both of this clown’s books gets “pulped”…
June 28th, 2015 at 3:36 pm
Dear Mr. Stone,
One of the things about libertarianism that troubles me is trying to figure out whether “a purely libertarian society is a means to an end or it is the end”.
Let me explain. Conservatives and liberals (property rights versus human rights) will insist that they and their philosophy will best serve 300 million Americans.
Theoretically, if either totally got its way and society went into the crapper, they would have to admit they and their philosophy were wrong.
My impression of libertarianism is that it not the betterment of society but a social-Darwinist system that rewards the winners without any regard to the impact on the rest of us.
If a libertarian society leaves John Galt and Dagney Taggart (Atlas Shrugged) with all the toys, government should do nothing to alter that.
If an eight year old wishes to work in a coal mine with no safety conditions it is not for government to interfere. It is solely a contractual relationship negotiated between the mine owner and the eight year old.
(If you think this is an absurd example, it was not until Hammer v Dagenhart in 1918 that the United States Supreme Court stopped overturning child labors laws keeping children out of coal mines, etc.)
If you think that libertarianism will leave uplifting the underprivileged to the charity of the rich then you have not read Ayn Rand’s essays or novels. Alice Rosenbaum makes it very clear that charity does nothing but encourage sloth.
If libertarians get their way, tell me how you believe society will look and how libertarians get it that way.
Or, is outcome simply irrelevant in your social-Darwinist world?
June 28th, 2015 at 11:52 pm
Against my better judgement, let us take this news item seriously. “Liberarian” is supposed to be in line with President Thomas Jefferson’s much quoted line, “the least government is the best government”, just as the Tea Party was “supposed” to be about!
But here is the problem. if you are going to be consistent, “less government” means LESS LAWS, LESS RULES, but every time you tell a “right wing” oriented “Libertarian” that means legalized gambling, prostitution, drug use, gay rights including for transgender people they say, NO, NO, NO to the tune of the old Whitehouse song about rehab, and if you say to “left wing” Libertarians LESS LAWS, LESS GOVERNMENT that means no Section 8 Housing, no minority “set asides”, no government funding for poor, handicapped, non White minorities in job training, education, health, they say, NO, NO, NO to the same same, Amy Whitehouse comes alive again!
I would like to be a Libertarian who advocates LESS LAWS, LESS RULES, LESS GOVERNMENT, but I am financially well situated, can live where I want, buy more or less what I want – I am on a six weeks vacation in Europe – a vacation from my retirement! – but what about my neighbors who need help with their childrens’ education or neighbors who need assistance with medical care? What about middle-aged people who need re-training for the job market?
YES, the GESTAPO LIKE “security policies” at Broward County Hall and NOW FORT LAUDERDALDE CITY HALL make a mockery of democracy and open government at a time THE STATE PASSED NEW LEGISLATION TO KEEP COUNTIES AND CITIES FROM DISCOURAGING PEOPLE TO APPEAR AT PUBLIC HEARINGS AND MEETINGS, but even so, we can’t live in a theoretical jungle that no one REALLY WANTS! even if the Fort Lauderdale City and Broward County Halls are run by pompous twits that want to put a garage on every blade of grass and a hotel on every grain of sand.
June 29th, 2015 at 1:06 pm
@ #3
It would be cheaper and easier for Broward County and the City of Fort Lauderdale to keep citizens from appearing at public meetings and hearings by hiring Walter Duke, Dania Beach commissioner, to be the guard dog at the door.
His rants and ridicule of many Dania Beach residents who have spoken at meetings have discouraged most from taking advantage of the “citizen comments” portion of the commission agenda. What is he hiding?
June 29th, 2015 at 1:45 pm
#3 its people like you that think city hall is your second home. Yes, you city beach activist Art Seitz, the homeless man (Mr.Cox). You just can’t go down there and demand to meet w/ city officals etc. A lot of you think you own the place. I don’t blame the management for having to take these measures . I never impose like some of you do. I make an appointment etc. You just don’t go down there and cause caos. Although I’m wisful thinking. The real reason Is because there has been some theft @ city hall an d this is simply a deterent. They won’t implement these policy’s on comm days though. Again, I blame you Count, I blame you Art Seitz and I blame you Mr.Homeless Cox… (PS I was @ th e lottery off, this am and the gal says to me do you have your green card? I mean come on. I said no green card , I got something better a pay check stub and a SS card. Green card.. I know, I know I look like I just came out of some crate at the Port but green card?? Then she handed me my $20G(nice)….
June 29th, 2015 at 2:09 pm
Fields seems to believe that Libertarians all believe the same thing and/or are all follows of Ayn Rand. That is just a valid as believing all Democrats believe in everything Obama espouses or that all Democrats are clones of Al Sharpton or that all Republicans are George W. Bush.
June 29th, 2015 at 5:33 pm
I know I should ignore this, but, for the record, I am in Chemnitz where I serve as Trustee of the Family’s Rosenthal Familie Stiftung and have investments. I am also, on this, one of my two a year multi-month trips to Europe each year, going to my rental places in Rome, Rimini, Poznan but not to Przemysl or Dynow outside of Przemysl, Poland where I have investments thru my paternal grandfather Count Andrzej Jozef Chudzikiewicz herb. Chodkiewicz of Chodorowska, those visits will be later in the year.
In 12 years living in Fort Lauderdale living on Ocean Drive, AlA, and now South Middle River I have attended maybe less than 4 Conference Meetings and possibly 8 City Commission meetings, along I usually spend 90% of the time outside smoking cigars or drinking cappuccino in the “mess”.
Since I am now involved with the historic preservation of the “Maine Silver Trail” I can say I have been in City Hall once to pay a utility bill, two at the most conference meetings – although I was actually in the “mess”, and maybe six Commission meetings or less. Where this “community activist” gets his MISINFORMATION that I am even IN FORT LAUDERDALE let alone “hanging around” City Hall is beyond my imagination. On the Rome to Rimini Express I sat with a distinguished Fort Lauderdale resident who decried the low class of people active in Fort Lauderdale now, I guess she must have met Rob Walsh
June 29th, 2015 at 7:14 pm
Sam Fields, I think you missed Ayn Rand’s point. Go back and read her books and essays.
In a way, you are right about the outcome being irrelevant. In creating a society, you don’t think of what outcome you want and go backwards from there, tweaking laws here and creating subsidies there to get to the desired outcome. You build a society by giving people their freedom to interact with each other in their own best interest. This creates the most freedom, the most benefits, the most wealth to the most people.
Count Chocula, this Republican/Libertarian says YES to legalizing gambling, prostitution and drug use. As far as gay rights are concerned, they can do anybody any way they want as long as they are consenting adults. BUT, I have the right not do business or associate with them if I so choose. I also have the right of free speech if I wanted to express my distaste for their lifestyle. That means I don’t have to hire them (because I own the job, not them). I don’t have to sell them a wedding cake (I am not a slave to be put to labor not of my choosing). I don’t have to rent to them (I own my property and have the right to do with it as I choose). I would choose or not choose to do these things because I thought it would be to my benefit.
June 30th, 2015 at 9:21 am
#7 The Count. Well, well, well, didn’t you tell me off. To my moles well you hear the braggart. This is the same old dumpy lookin old man w/ the cheap pair of shoes w/ the back-pack , right?. This is the same man that stated that LOis Wexler thought she was roayality etc. That the city comm. was cheap. That gay business owners in Wilton Manors(the DRive)run shady business etc. This the same man that sends the comm. post cards from his stated vacation stays. Am I missing something hear. Is the same man that was thrown out of Miami Bch comm? Are you all wrong my moles or is this asshole as I repeated from my beloved “podium” “a mess….”. Member that nite….
June 30th, 2015 at 11:52 am
Dear Sham,
Congrads, you are the millionth libertarian to give the same nonresponsive answer of how a libertarian society would achieve its goals…whatever they are…and what it would look like.
As a liberal I could tell you what I want society to look like and how people and government could and should achieve it. I am sure you would disagree with many of my ideas and goals….but you would know what they are.
When this country was founded it was small farmers and small businesses. Thus small government.
Following the Civil War, the American Industrial Age created big business that was a libertarian wet dream that ran roughshod over the workers. Laws regulating wages, child labor and work conditions were repeatedly found unconstitutional by a reactionary Supreme Court. (See the Lochner Doctrine) In the name of property rights, people worked in American factories not dissimilar to today’s Bangladesh.
It was only with the rise of big government that workers began to share in the prosperity that their broken backs built.
If you think this is a thing of the past because the “market” corrected it, one only has to see the life of American migrant workers who are legally as young as twelve.
Things got better because big government, albeit imperfectly, stood up to big business.
Go to Central America and see what happens when there is no effective governmental counterforce to the wealthy. It inevitably and inexorably ends up in crony capitalism that rewards a few families while visiting misery on the masses. And that almost always ends up in periodic large-scale violence.
Let’s actually look at the platform of the Libertarian Party.
Open borders for cheap labor.
No minimum wages
Get rid of OSHA and laws regulating worker conditions.
End the anti-trust laws.
When they say that it’s a “dog eat dog world”, they are actually talking about dogs! Animals are personal property to with what you wish. This includes Michael Vick and pit bull dog fights. And if he wants to warm them up by ripping apart his cocker spaniel, its Vick’s absolute right.
If there is one thing that most annoys me about libertarians it is their foolish notion that their view is based on “natural law” like physics and math and not just another social construct. To that extent, they sound like Marx and Engels talking about “scientific socialism”.
Finally, let me straighten you out about your notion that: “I own my property and have the right to do with it as I choose.”
You don’t.
All land is the property of the King (Think the state/country) All you have are limited rights to use it.
You can irrevocably and totally give your car to Uganda and make it the property of that nation.
I’m pretty sure you can’t detach your backyard from the USA and make it part of Thailand.
You think you can “do with it as I choose”? See what happens if you decide to turn your house into a McDonalds or use the lawn as a garbage dump.
Then again, some libertarians might back you for a McDonalds on The Hillsboro Mile.
June 30th, 2015 at 12:27 pm
Sam Fields, Since Mr Stone has not replied to you let me attempt a response from a general Libertarian perspective.
First you need to understand that libertarianism is ONLY a political philosophy, not a road map for how any individual should live their life. Thus you will find a range of values within the Libertarian Party on what constitutes the “good life”. It deals only with the rules for how individuals should interact in order to create peaceful society.
What unites us despite or differing values, which on a religious level van range from atheism to Mormonism, is something called the Non-Aggression Principle which dictates that all interactions between both individuals and individuals and government must not involve the use of initiatory forces.
That is why, for instance, Libertarians oppose taxes but support user fees for services that that government supplies if people choose to obtain them from government. We also support the right of people to purchase those same services from others instead.
We all have other values that guide our lives beyond political philosophy, but we do not promote those values in a political context. Libertarians in fact tend to be rather private about there other values and unless you know them in some other context than politics I can see why they appear to support Social Darwinism.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. In fact libertarians see co-operation and community as alternatives to government coercion. I’d be happy to answer any more specific questions you might have.
July 1st, 2015 at 7:10 am
Dear June,
I believe you have confused libertarianism with hippie communes
Please read what I wrote above and comment. Additionally, without mandatory taxes-is there another kind?
July 1st, 2015 at 6:50 pm
As anonymous and June above stated, there are many different views inside the realm of “Libertarianism”.
“It was only with the rise of big government that workers began to share in the prosperity that their broken backs built.” Wrong, Sam. Sorry to burst your bubble. Industry treated labor the same way that Feudal Europe did, the same way that imperial Rome did and pretty much the same way that EVERYONE did since the dawn of history. It was business visionaries such as Henry Ford that determined you could double the daily wages (with bonuses) but still reduced labor costs by reducing training and high employee turnover. There was also better employee morale, and a happy employee is a productive employee. Ford did not increase the wages for the benefit of his employees, but for his own, and in doing so, benefited employees and society as well. The point is that industry created so much wealth that workers would be paid more and treated better and for the first time in history, be lifted out of poverty. Industry did this, not big government.
Open Borders- I am against that. It would be national suicide (which we are sliding into right now).
No minimum wages- I agree. When people are first hired, they actually cost an employer money in training and lack of productivity. People should be paid what they are worth, and believe me, there are plenty of people who are not worth minimum wage. Sam, just look at what you earn here in your labors at Broward Beat. I am sure you are paid just what you are worth.
Osha and regulations- I believe we would be better served if employers signed on to private (and competing) underwriters who certified safe work places.
End Anti Trust Laws- YES!!! There are almost no monopolies that have existed that were not protected by a government. Let companies freely compete and their product prices plummet (just like Standard Oil was able to do). Society wins again.
“All land is the property of the King (Think the state/country) All you have are limited rights to use it.” Wrong again Sam. I know you prefer thinking that way but there are a couple of documents you should familiarize yourself with. The Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution.
FROM BUDDY:
Although I disagree with much of what you wrote here, there is a fascinating piece by Frank Bruni in the New York Times how corporations have been major factors in generating acceptance for same sex marriage and removing the Confederate flag. That’s because both steps were good for their bottom lines. No government action needed. Here is the piece, called The Sunny Side of Greed.
Oh, and I do agree with Sam The Sham about Field’s comment concerning “the property of the King.” I also thought that one was decided in 1776.
July 3rd, 2015 at 1:32 pm
Buddy,
Exactly where did you get the notion that the concept of land changed in 1776? Or for that matter with the adoption of the Constitution. It was part of the Common Law that each and every state, except Louisiana, readopted after the Revolution.
The concept that the land is the king’s (Think the United States of America) and that we only have “limited rights” was and is the way we have dealt with the issue since at least as far back as The Common Law of the 11 century!
You don’t own the dirt. You just have a limited bundle of rights in the dirt.
Certainly someone who owns his property in “fee simple” has more rights than a “life estate”, “tenant”, etc.
Nevertheless, the laptop owner has more ownership rights in the “laptop” then any of them.
I can certainly move my laptop to Palm Beach County, but, without permission of the “king”, aka the state, I can’t make my house part of Palm Beach County.
If the ownership rights in my land was equal to my ownership rights in my laptop I could turn my house in Eagle Trace into a fat rendering plant. All the land use/zoning laws would be null and void.
Your notion of land and land rights would empower every sleaze ball developer in The United States to build, mine, drill any land any way they wanted.
In your will you can devise that laptop anyway you want. Land…not so much. Every heard of The Rule Against Perpetuities or its statutory equivalents?
All this is not subject to some philosophical debate by you and Sham It’s a thousand years of Anglo-American property law.
But to use a phrase that grinds your teeth: “You wouldn’t understand this…you’re not a lawyer”.
FROM BUDDY:
Sam, the problem is that you used language (“The King”) without putting it in context, as you did above.
You also attribute to me a “notion” of land rights that I never held. Read what I wrote. I only questioned your use of the words “the property of the King.” Now that you explained it in more detail, I understand what you were trying to say.
I fully understand land rights, having covered at least a hundred land use hearings and having interviewed at length many of this county’s best land use lawyers. In fact, I support the Harris Act which strengthens land owners rights in Florida. And perhaps most important of all, I was fortunate enough to receive many lessons in land use law from one of my best buds while I was at the Sun-Sentinel — the eminent land use expert Don Hall, esq.
July 3rd, 2015 at 10:06 pm
Is this Sam’s laptop?
http://tanrunomad.com/wp-content/uploads/compaq.JPG