The year was 2022. I was approached by Dan O'Neill. “How would you like to join the Mises Caucus?” After reading an intro, how could I say “no”?! After all, it was the energy and the excitement of how people felt about Ron Paul – my antiwar hero, that was promised to be a part of those young rebels leading the Libertarian Party. It was promised that there would be no “culture war” that the Libertarian Party would be engaged in – something that was already dividing the Party. After seeing the National Chair, Nicholas Sarwark trying to go after people like Tom Woods for not signing a pledge against bigotry - which seemed “too woke” to digest for many Libertarians, and after seeing the national Libertarian Party drop the ball during 2020 – a year from hell, a time seemed ripe for a change.
At the National Libertarian Convention in Reno, Nevada in 2022, the Mises Caucus was swept into power, through the cheering and the excitement of the delegates. Earlier, the same occurred in the state of New Jersey. Rather than clinging onto power, what the Mises Causes supporters called “the prags” just walked away, which allowed the Mises Caucus members to get elected, only facing token opposition. After all, appearances do matter, and a unanimous vote had to be reserved for George Washington, not the “young bloods” of the incoming sweep. The Mises Caucus of New Jersey promised to work with Libertarians outside of it.
The Mises Caucus on the national level saw the “Rage Against the Machine” rally. The national Libertarian Party Chair Angela McArdle even stated that she saw the federal government using money saved from warfare to pump into social programs as a better choice than the status quo – echoing statements made years earlier by Ron Paul. While the latter is a “god” to plenty of libertarians, I never saw him as “perfect”, as he did support a number of pro-Iraq War members of Congress, while in office, simply because they had joined the Republican Liberty Caucus. Others perhaps only would have reserved the word “perfect” for Jesus, but I digress.
Pumped up by my excitement about Angela McArdle, as a Mises Caucus supporter, I voted for her at the 2024 National Convention in Washington, DC. Voting for delegates in the Mises Caucus, just because they were in the Mises Caucus, admittedly made me no different than Ron Paul. Nevertheless, I came to regret my decision, echoing the later words of the podcaster and a comedian Dave Smith, “I would certainly say there were people the Mises Caucus supported who we should not have.” Even for a Mises Caucus supporter like me, the post-Convention moves by Hannah Goodman regarding her support for RFK, Jr., contra the duly chosen nominee, were just too much to accept. With an independent streak in me, I did support 3 different presidential candidates for President, but when it came to the last vote, I voted along with most of the Mises Caucus supporters in that room – NOTA. What was my objection to Chase Oliver? His lack of condemnation of puberty blockers and hormone injections for children was unacceptable to me. Adults? I could care less, but to have irreversible procedures for children, who might decide later to change their minds? How can children give fully informed consent? Do they even understand the consequences of these procedures? Was I being too loyal to the Mises Caucus in that room? Was I willing not to have a nominee, just so that I could stick a middle finger at Chase Oliver and please the Mises Caucus?
At the end of the day, Chase Oliver did not see a federal government role in the matter. I certainly could not find it in the US Constitution. Nevertheless, I went with the crowd. My concern was that Chase Oliver's position would be an albatross around the Party's neck in the mind of the public at large, a concern that I later would see as overblown. What would harm his campaign, would be the boycott by the Mises Caucus.
Prior to the vote, I spoke to Joe Hauptmann from Indiana, a Chase Oliver supporter. I knew him to be the top Libertarian vote-getter in US history in congressional races, featuring two major party candidates. I did not tell him that I was from the Mises Caucus. I struck a conversation, where I focused on that one stance of Chase Oliver. I sensed that Joe Hauptmann was a good and decent man, and I left the conversation, questioning if the party infighting was necessary. “How different are we, after all?”, I asked myself. I felt terrible. Here was a man that I was supposed to hate, yet I felt no hate towards him and found him to be both intelligent and likable. He implied that others did not accept Chase Oliver because he was gay. I really had no idea what he was talking about. My questions continued, as I found one Mises Caucus member highly objectionable, due to this person's support for denying voting rights to one half of the population.
At the time, I thought that while the behavior of a number of Mises Caucus members in New Hampshire and other states was unacceptable and giving the Party a bad image nationwide via the national media, I viewed this behavior as an exception to the rule. On that note, I agreed with Dave Smith. Nevertheless, I was already finding Facebook posts objectionable in New Jersey, and the earlier promise not to engage in a culture war (via social media), turned to be a promise, that was not kept. Never did I think, that within a few months, in our own state, that comments about Chase Oliver's sexual orientation would be permeated with homophobic slurs like “faggot” to describe him. It was at that point that I realized that Joe Hauptmann might have been right. “This is not what I signed up for!”, I thought. To add insult to injury, “communist” was added to describe Chase Oliver. On a national level, lies were being spread by Angela McArdle and those below her, about how Chase Oliver was supposedly visiting nothing but pride parades. I knew that to be a lie, because Chase Oliver visited all 50 states before he was nominated. I attended one event with Chase Oliver, and it was most certainly not a pride parade. As a Mises Caucus supporter, I felt betrayed. Why were these Mises Caucus leaders lying to their supporters and lying to the public?! When the Libertarian presidential nominee Michael Badnarik visited pride parades in 2004, no one cared. “What happened to this Party?”, I thought.
After Michael Rectenwald (a man I voted for) made a post in support of removing people who practice Judaism from their homes, a number of people in the Mises Caucus in New Jersey came to defend his support for removal. I could not believe what I was hearing. I suggested that perhaps Michael Rectenwald was drunk. Instead, I heard an affirmation of his comments. I swiftly came to the defense of people to practice any religion of their choice and be safe and secure in their homes and left it at that. A light bulb went up in my head. These are the same people who were praising Jeremy Kauffman from New Hampshire – a man who supports making life for neighbors so uncomfortable (simply for sharing a different political opinion), that they would leave on their own.
On a state level, I saw opposition of supporting candidates for office, in direct contrast to something that has been a practice for decades. I could not understand why at the State Board level, there was not only opposition to donating any funds to candidates (which has been a practice for decades), but to even having a PAC, where supporters could offer their funds voluntarily. After the PAC was created, of course, there was a change of heart, but the behavior of the State Board members left me bewildered. “Isn't one of the purposes of a political party is to run candidates? What kind of a political party does not run candidates?”, I thought. “The things have surely changed”. After scoring one victory in November, rather than expressing any satisfaction in that victory, there was an expressed sentiment of discomfort, because the winner happened to be trans.
After promising to work with people who were not members of the Mises Caucus, I saw attacks against members outside of the caucus, with the names being used like “social democrat” and “woke”. One member was attacked for getting a Covid vaccine. Well, Mises Caucus readers, I have been vaccinated, too. In retrospect, I would not have done it, again, if I had all of the information. After seeing cultural war posts on Facebook (contrary to the promise made in 2022), a false quote by Dostoyevsky, and a membership that is in an overall decline, my early sense of excitement has been replaced by disappointment. You can't make Libertarians the enemy and then hope to use the Joint Fundraising Committee with RFK, Jr. as an excuse to make up for the lost funds. Stop treating Libertarians as the enemy, and they will contribute. After burning those bridges, there is now a desire to find scapegoats and delete social networks posts that turn those “woke” Libertarians that you hate so much, off. My question is, “Why did you have to wage war against them, in the first place?” Worse, there is an effort to turn to Republican supporters to raise money, making it more likely that voters won't be able to tell the two parties apart - a sure death of the Libertarian Party. Sure, the freeing of Ross Ulbricht was a victory, and credit should be given, where it is due. But the “greatest victory” of the Libertarian Party? What about people who are alive today, because of the end of the war on medicinal marijuana? Don't those lives matter, too? Is getting one man out of prison more important than those saved lives?!
In the end, it is not about trying to finally please the disappointed members of the Party. The requests of change have been rebuffed in the past. Concerns were ignored. Members have left in disgust. Given past behavior, the late effort to pretend to finally care about what the members think, can only be seen as damage control. I was a true believer. This is why it pains me so much, to acknowledge that I was deceived. What I discovered didn't make me feel any better. The Mises Caucus originally began in the Republican Party, not the Libertarian Party. Hence, the proposed plan appeals to GOP donors to donate to the Libertarian Party. I have connected the dots. The endorsements of Donald Trump, a man who shares responsibility for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children in Yemen... It all made sense... I ask you, “If you care about the Libertarian Party, please do not let it die!”