Over the last 50 years, the Libertarian Party has been built up from a small group of organizers in a Colorado home to the largest political party in the United States behind the dominant two-party system, with ballot access in all 50 states and the District of Columbia and hundreds of elected officials in state, county, and municipal governments.
This growth in spite of insurmountable odds is the result of the unique value offered by the Libertarian Party and its philosophy. While the two old parties seek, promote, and impose an ever expanding government with ever expanding influence on our lives, the Libertarian Party has promoted the freedom and responsibility of the individual. While the two old parties hew to no principle but the expansion of their own power and the expansion of government authority, the Libertarian Party has sought to dismantle systems of power and limit government authority.
The most unique offering of the Libertarian Party, in contrast with other alternative parties like the Green Party, Reform Party, and Constitution Party, is that we do not easily fit into the left-right paradigm of mainstream American politics. By promoting civil rights, police accountability, open immigration, freedom of choice, an end to the drug war, and the equal rights of racial, gender, and sexual minorities we can appeal to the traditional left. By promoting lower taxes, reduced government control of the economy, gun rights, and educational freedom we can appeal to the traditional right. By standing against the Military Industrial Complex, the Federal Reserve, mercantilist trade policies, and the corrupt back room dealing of "bipartisan" collaborations against the American people we align ourselves with the voters and everyday Americans in a way the two old parties have failed to do for decades.
But that history and those accomplishments are under assault.
Under the false pretense of bringing the Ron Paul Revolution and the broader "liberty movement" into the Libertarian Party, a small organization of malcontents has formulated a plan to "take over" the Libertarian Party. Despite their claimed pedigree, these are not the activists that made Ron Paul's 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns in the Republican Party the muted success that it was. These are certainly not the activists who were involved in the 1988 Libertarian Party campaign of Dr. Paul. Instead these are charlatans, narcissists, and grifters attaching themselves to the legacy of Ron Paul in an attempt to subvert and usurp the Libertarian Party and its 50 state ballot access, and to support their own lifestyles despite the anti-social behaviors and minimal marketable skills that render them ill suited to honest work.
This organization styles itself the "Libertarian Party Mises Caucus". Inspired and controlled by one man in Pennsylvania, with a network of podcasters and internet trolls to promote its expansion, it has brute forced its way into control of multiple state affiliates of the Libertarian Party. It has done so primarily in pursuit of a vendetta against long serving volunteers of the Party who through years of painstaking, frustrating, and expensive work have built the Libertarian Party into what it is by navigating the legal labyrinth of ballot access, campaign finance, and election laws.
By their conduct and their priorities they have made clear that they do not seek to expand the Libertarian Party consistent with its 50 year legacy. They do not seek to reach out to sympathetic voters all across the political spectrum and show them the philosophy of love, consent, and responsibility that we have developed in order to win elections and shape public policy. They seek control of our messaging platforms to validate their narrowly focused view of freedom only for themselves regardless of the freedom of others or the responsibility to care for themselves and others in their communities. They seek to disrupt our operations and jeopardize our ballot access at a crucial moment in American history when we are in striking distance of disrupting the two-party monopoly on American elections.
They are, however, facing resistance. Many in the Libertarian Party are standing up to this invasive encroachment in defense of what we have built. In June of 2021, the Mises Caucus secured a beachhead in the Libertarian Party of Delaware, taking control of one of its three county affiliates and 40% of its Board seats. After four months of continued infighting, stalemate, stagnation, and bad blood, the remaining members of the State Board of the LPD engineered a plan to push the boundaries of their governing documents to bring Mises Caucus shenanigans to a halt.
Working in concert with members from all three counties, the Mises Caucus center of gravity on the State Board was expelled. Soon after, the Mises Caucus controlled county affiliate was dissolved. Voting membership in the LPD was restricted to prevent current and future efforts to "take over" the party from progressing.
Some Libertarians across the country and certainly Mises Caucus members in Delaware have taken issue with these actions. With some justification they claim that the manner in which these changes were imposed were secretive, unethical, and exclusionary. With less justification, but signifying a greater threat, they claim that these changes were adopted in contravention of the LPD's governing documents and established precedents. While an ideal world would have seen a more forthright battle of ideas and the triumph of established Libertarian principles, the world we actually live in saw these actions taken in compliance with the standard practices and established rules of the LPD, whatever their other shortcomings.
Nevertheless, as is their pattern when they lose, the Mises Caucus is responding with threats, disruptions, and naked attempts to sabotage the Libertarian Party of Delaware. While the established Party under the leadership of its remaining Board members continues to maintain control of the Party's assets, the ousted Mises Caucus members are threatening lawsuits and raising money from their dispersed national network of take over operatives to bog down the LPD, call their legitimacy into question, and disrupt its relationship with the National LP.
They cannot be allowed to buy the LPD with legal distractions. They cannot be allowed to destroy the LPD by subverting its purpose to make it a handmaiden of the Mises Caucus. They cannot be allowed to threaten and bully the LNC into surrendering its 50 state ballot access by shunning its Delaware affiliate. As they raise money to attack the LPD through the courts, WE must raise money to fight back against them.
While many affiliates, notably the LPPA, have managed to hold them off, no other affiliate yet has managed to take power back from the Mises Caucus once it has been lost until now. Help us to continue and win this fight. Please donate to the Libertarian Defense Fund to support our efforts in Delaware and to finish this first blow pushing back against the Mises Caucus takeover. Thank you!
