There is a lot of angst and clamor recently over the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire’s (LPNH) Twitter feed lately.
The libertarian world has basically decided this is their equivalent to Trump’s wife’s undies getting raided by the F.B.I. The Tweet in question was sent on the anniversary of Senator John McCain’s death and shows a fat glossy Meghan McCain crying over her father’s flag-draped casket with the words “Happy Holiday.” The idea is, John McCain is a bad guy and the LPNH was celebrating his death. Many, including Meghan herself, were incensed. A bunch of people in the libertarian movement decided to criticized it. And then, several prominent accounts and those somewhat “okay” with libertarians’ decided to tell the world, “THIS is why I’m not a libertarian.”
It’s been a few weeks since the “Tweet heard round the world” was posted and finally Dave Smith had enough. Besides going on my show, Libertarian Podcast Review, Dave also hangs out on shows like the NoWayJose Podcast. When Jose mentioned the tweet again (look, I had Dave right after the tweet fiasco and he already gave a statement about it, but Jose can’t come up with any original questions so he asked Dave about it again) Dave this time went off and basically said the tweet was in bad taste and stupid. Reed Coverdale, the Bert Reynolds of the LP, was on the show and is part of the LPNH Twitter team and this interaction could have been really awkward. But it wasn’t my show so I enjoyed it.
Dave might have been in the middle of his rant that made Reed literally shit his pants when the LPNH was already tweeting out the Meghan crying pic again. This time mocking Madeline Albright, John McCain and Dan Crenshaw. If you get a trend here, it’s those in power who seem to be fine with creating Gold Star Families.
Once again, people are up in arms about these types of tweets and saying “this is why I’m not a libertarian.” But is it really? Is a tweet, even from an official account, really the thing that will keep you from having a philosophical belief? This is what prompted my tweet of “Is it the mean tweet that keeps you from being libertarian or that you really aren’t that interested in liberty?”
If you hold a strong belief, are you really going to give it up because some people aren’t nice to bad people? I grew up in the church and I’ve had many friends and acquaintances leave because of some grievance or injustice they underwent while being involved with religion. I get that, even then I would say if you have a personal relationship with God, why is a sinner causing it to fail? But that’s a religion. This is a philosophy even more than a party.
The push back on Twitter from my tweet was all over the board. But I found it tough for people to actually argue that they were philosophical libertarians and that this tweet was warranted for them to not be a libertarian.
The GOP and DNC make horrible laws, ruin lives and steal your money while sending your kids to die in a war that only makes money for the powerful and then calls the grieving parent’s “heroes” for sacrificing their kids. But I guess that’s fine as long as they don’t send mean tweets. Of course they do, everyone just seems to normalize their behaviors, laws and actions.
It’s time to stop doing the bidding of the regime and stop acting like a mean tweet is what is restricting freedom. Start to understand the Overton window is so displaced that when you say “stop killing in my name” Dan Crenshaw will shun you and say you are calling military vets “war criminals.” By the way, I’m not saying that. I’m saying John McCain, and his ilk are.
Dave Smith is leading a libertarian wave and taking up the mantle for the cause, so I get why he is upset and pushing back. He’s like a business owner trying to get that one brilliant (male) worker to stop wearing a crop-top and short shorts to the office and just do the job without embarrassing the owner in front of the clients. I get it. But the LP is more like a knock-off Hooters, it’s not WallStreet, and until we start publicly trading on the floor of the exchange, we’re going to be wearing daisy dukes for awhile, posting memes and mocking the evil doers until they cry.
this substack is why im no longer a libertarian