The New York Times of january 28 has a story “Shootings pose conservatism debate”. At the very end of the article, it mentions libertarians and the Libertarian Party, in a most deceiving fashion. First it says that libertarians are critical of how ICE treats protesters in Minneapolis, quoting Walter Olson of CATO. But then it says, “But even among libertarians, there is disagreement. Angela McArdle, a former chair of the Libertarian Party, argued this weekend that the nation was in crisis mode and that now was not a time for libertarians to stick so strictly to their ideology. It quotes her as saying, “The threat of mass migration is civilizational. If we don’t deport illegal aliens and stop Democrat fraud we will be Canada in less than ten years.”
The reporter completely ignored the position of the Libertarian Party, issued by current national chair Stephen Nekhaila on January 24. It says that ICE should be abolished.
It often seems like the major media doesn’t see parties like the Libertarians and Greens as fully fledged parties, but rather as a label for individual Presidential candidates. Hard to tell these days if that is out of malice or sheer ignorance.
Ignorance is often the basis for malice.
THe problem is less with the New York Times that with Angela McArdle, and the anti-libertarian crowd that foisted
her on the Libertarian Party as Chair. It is obvious that the goal of the so-called “Mises” Caucus was to destroy
the Libertarian Party so that it could not oppose Donald Trump in the 2024 election. The so-called “Mises” Caucus
did everything they could to destroy the image of The Libertarian Party as a defender of Freedom and opponent of
totalitarian factions. Angela McArdle even aligned the Libertarian National Committee with little Communist groups
in support of Russian aggression against Ukraine. I hope the current LNC Chair communicates to the New York Times,
but the cause of our problems is the attack on our image by Michael Heise, Trump supporter.
@Gene Berkman, I agree with your analysis.
The Libertarian Party of Minnesota’s position is clear.
https://lpmn.org/january-2026-resolution-condemning-ice-actions-in-mn/
Here come the commies again. Angela is libertarian and is correct.
Gene, Chase Oliver’s pathetic pro mask pro vaccine anti free speech campaign did a good job of destroying the party
LPMN probably loves Somalis ripping off the taxpayers.
I know for sure Berkman is a retarded communist
What does this have to do with ballot access?
I do not think that booting out illegal aliens (ie-trespassers) violates any libertarian princioles. The state (ie-the US federal government) has a monopoly on regulatung borders and immigration. This can’t be done unless there is some mechanism for kicking people out of the country.
The concept would be no different if we lived in a libertarian private property anarcho-capitalist society, as in such a society property owners, acting individually or in voluntary grouos, could set entrance policies, and they could discriminate against whoever they wanted for any reason, and they would be free to erect private walls or fences and to hire private security guards to eject trespassers.
Property rights is an essential element to the libertarian philosophy. A key element to property rights is exclusivity to property. Exclusivity to property means property is for the use of a particupar person or group of people but not for the use of everyone. If property must be open to everyone in the world with no restrictions then there is no exclusivity to property and without exclusivity to property there is no libertarianism.
The US federal government having a monopoly on regulating borders and immigration policy does not change this concept.
The federal government ejecting illegal aliens from the country is fulfilling a constitutional function of the federal government. See the “Define and Punish offenses against the Law of Nations” phrase (The Law of Nations is a book popular in the 1700’s of which the founders of the country were familiar which set forth a basic framework of law for a country, part of which is the national government regulating borders and immigration), the “Defend each State from invasion” phrase and the “repel invasions” phrase (under the Law of Nations unauthorized border crossings and violating entrance policies are an offense, the punishment for which is expulsion) of the US Constitution. The US Congress can pass laws concerning the policies for the entrance of foreign migrants and for policies to naturalize foreign migrants into being American citizens. See the “Naturalization” phrase of the US Constitution. One of the first laws passed after the US Constitution went into effect was the Naturalization Act of 1790 which said that only “free white persons of good character” could be granted American citizenship. This shows that the founders never had any intention of granting American citizenship to everyone in the world who wanted to come here or everyone who showed up. Naturalization laws changed and were generally made more difficult for a long time after this, but this general trend changed after the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965. The Immigration Act of 1965 eliminated the ethnic quota system which had been in favor of European ethnic groups only or mostly, with a heavy bias in favor of immigrants of English, Irish and German heritage (those were the largest ethnic groups so those groups received the largest allotments of immigrants). Also, note that in the US Constitution when the founders wrote “Natural Born” citizen they meant a person born in the country to American citizen parents. 14th amendment citizenship did not change this as it only applied to former black slaves. Native American Indians were not American citizens until a 1924 Act of the US Congress granted them American citizenship.
This country has beeb hit with mass welfare statist immigration, mostly from people from third world alien cultures, for decades, and there are now 10’s of millions of illegal aliens in the country. This is putting a strain on taxpayer funded programs and causing crime rates to go up. It is also contributing to a housing shortage and causing rent be higher than it would be otherwise. Statistics show that a super-majority of modern era immigrant groups vote in favor of more socialism and more gun control laws, so they are swinging election results and government policies to the left, and not in a good way.
I think thst cutting off taxpayer funded programs to foreign migrants and their offspring and making it more difficult to become an American citizen would discourage a lot of foreign migrants from coming here and would encourage some of the ones who are here to leave voluntarily.
Ones who are here illegally who do not leave on their own should be physically removed via force.
DEPORT THEM ALL!
There’s nothing false in the parts of the article quoted or paraphrased here. Libertarians disagree on the issue, and NYT quoted some from both camps. It didn’t quote Nekhalia or LPMN because it already quoted an anti-ICE libertarian. The libertarians weren’t the focus of the article. McArdle by virtue of her former title was the most prominent pro-ICE libertarian from their perspective, or at least one they were able to get a hold of easily and quickly.
Aside from that, her exact quote is exactly correct.
I don’t know if Gene Berkman or Frank Robinson have any evidence for their conspiracy theory about an internal party caucus, but if they did somehow help get Donald Trump elected – I rather doubt it – it’s the best thing they could have done as Libertarians, given the practical alternative was Harris-Walz.
There’s no Russian aggression against Ukraine. Russia’s special operation in Ukraine is both historically justified and timely, given the neonazi NATO puppet government in Kiev and its biochemical weapons labs.
If Gene Berkman has been at antiwar protests or protests on any issues where (some) libertarians agree with leftists, there have been small communist parties there. In this case, it was a protest against US involvement on the Ukrainian side, and featured many supporters of the Russian side.
That’s not unusual for antiwar protests either – Gene Berkman might recall people waving North Vietnamese flags and chanting their support for Ho Chi Minh during anti Vietnam War protests, and that there were small communist parties there.
In both cases, there were leftists (including communists) and libertarians and even some conservatives there, and both those who opposed the wars altogether and those who supported the side the US government opposed. What united them in both cases was opposing the US government taking a particular side – South Vietnamese or Ukrainian.
Confused: it has nothing to do with ballot access. Richard Winger covers minor parties as well here, tangential to ballot access.
Andy is exactly correct. The US founders built in inadequate safeguards to ensure we would remain a country led by White people of good character. We need to learn the lessons from their failure and come up with much smaller nation States with much tighter restrictions on both entry and on changing the laws over time.
I’m not convinced any form of anarchism will ever work, or ever be allowed to be tried, but if it can, we need to first weaken and then dissolve the large nation states and create more local governance, in the process also removing the controlling tentacles of government from multiple aspects of society and limiting it to protection against invasion, violent crime and property crime.
Then, maybe some local experiments in anarchism can take place, and may even prove to be successful.