Why was Libertarian presidential candidate Jo Jorgensen’s tweet, “It is not enough to be passively not racist, we must be actively anti-racist” so controversial amongst libertarians?

…as answered on Quora….

I just read a number of libertarian answers, and I saw not one mention of the riots associated with Black Lives Matter.

Liberty is not just an opposition to the State — contra Rothbard, who I think was wrong on this. Very wrong. Liberty is the freedom we all can possess; those who initiate force from government, from criminal gangs, or individually, or from mobs all abridge freedom. And libertarians oppose them all. Including mobs. The riots are mob action of an unconscionable kind, and indeed constitute the insurrection of cowards and fools — and they are intimately associated with Black Lives Matter.

One of my goals as a libertarian writer has been to de-mystify gobbledygook and debunk confidence games. Much of statism along with much of ochlocracy (mobocracy) gains support from unrealistic fantasy, regrettable but repeatable error, strategic evasion, and outright lies. So I have no truck with folks who spread untruth combined with vitriol. Black Lives Matter spews lies/error about police killings of ‘unarmed black men.’ Not that this never happens, but that the numbers are simply not that special. The stats do not support the claim. I have a great many complaints about policing in our state-ridden society, but racism does not seem a warranted fixation, at least as regards shootings by the police.* And not irrelevant to this is the fact that nearly every one of the victims BLM lifts up to honor and defend has been a violent criminal killed in the process of resisting arrest** — from Michael Brown on. So, no thank you.

I believe it is the job of libertarians to offer truth as the avenue to peace and justice, not bigotry and error and paranoid fantasy. BLM is all spin and lies and violence, and libertarians supporting it strike me as gullible at best.

There is another reason I found the Jo Jo tweet eye-roll-worthy: if you define racism in a very specific way — a way that most people do not use the term — then it makes at least a modicum of sense. But otherwise, it is an immoral command.

For the essence of liberty isn’t your feelings about people of this race or that, or any race, for that matter. Nor even about discriminating for or against anyone. (Discrimination is a key concept in most folks’ definitions of racism.) Libertarians support freedom of association, and we are against racist discrimination only as it pertains to abridging freedom of association and perverting the unbiased working of the rule of law. Liberty, you see, is for everybody, racist or not. You may hate anyone you like. You just may not initiate force: rob, murder, defraud, etc.

I go further: Liberty is for the racists of all races. We want black anti-white racists as well as white anti-black racists all to co-exist in their separate or interpenetrating spheres (their choice), unmolested.

And the thing about racism? It is just another vice. Like greed or sloth or envy or intemperance. No decent libertarian as libertarian would spout nonsense like “it is not enough to be passively not greedy; we must be actively anti-greed.” And I say this despite thinking that greed, along with envy and a few other vices, is a major driver of both statism and ochlocracy. I think these vices are bigger problems than racism — which is indeed a problem. But being publicly anti-greed is not going to usher in liberty any more than being publicly anti-racist. Libertarians have an answer to a whole bevy of social problems caused by all the vices. It is the idea of justice as equal freedom — in a word, liberty.

Jo Jo and Spike have both proven themselves witless moralists just like conservatives in the days of my youth or the virtue-signaling lily-white progressives who live all around me.

A major disappointment. I probably will not vote for them. Further, I have adopted my old stance regarding the Libertarian Party: liquidationism. That was Murray Rothbard’s term, from the 1980’s, of the position I pushed later, in the 1990’s. Jo Jo and Spike have convinced me that reviving the liquidationist program could be the very best first step forward for a freer society. The Libertarian Party must be destroyed — liquidated — and replaced with one or more organizations far more effective and far less crazy.

* I actually suspect that systemic racism may be a problem, but because it is an invisible hand (unintended) and institutionally tacit process, the subject has to be dealt with very carefully and without a revolutionary mindset. The hatred and fury the concept elicits in leftists and the well-programed young suggest that they cannot think very carefully.

** A key problem in police-black relations is the ubiquity of the illicit drug trade, broken homes caused by a corrupting welfare state, horrendous public schools and insidious business-employment regulation that most people have no clue how they work or why they are bad. Libertarians have of course called attention and opposed these horrific state programs (the War on Drugs; state aid; government schools; the minimum wage, etc.) that have devastated inner-city African-American communities, and are well under way to destroy “white” communities. Further, libertarians have been consistent in opposing the qualified immunity doctrine that protects bad-apple police and corrupts the whole state apple-cart. But among those preventing reform in these areas are the race hustlers, such as the “Reverend” Al Sharpton, who have a confidence game going that requires that blacks not make progress. They gain at their “community’s” expense.

twv