Anyone who was hoping that former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld would be gone from the libertarian movement after last year’s dismal performance as Vice Presidential candidate is sorely mistaken. He is still being pushed as a leader of the libertarian movement, with the Koch-backed Students for Liberty hosting him as one of their regional conference headliners.
In an age where rampant extremism and polarization, SFL is ignoring the passions of the people and centering its program around political stability, something that is not exactly in high demand at the present time.
“Political instability, a decline in public trust, increasing debates over senses of and purposes of being, there simultaneously being more and fewer unwritten norms of behavior are dominating our airwaves, news-feeds, and day-to-day conversations. In a time of questions, we want liberty to be the answer,” the event description reads.
The SFL Northeast Regional Conference is taking place in New York City on Nov. 4 beginning at 10am, lasting the entire day and likely into the evening. Tickets are free, and Weld is being touted as a likely keynote speaker. It will be the first time he addresses the liberty movement since his failed Vice Presidential run last year, in which he all but endorsed his long-time friend and Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail.
Weld will be joined at the event by a roster of speakers including feminist Reason contributor Elizabeth Nolan Brown, failed Libertarian Presidential candidate Larry Sharpe, alleged North Korean whistleblower Yeonmi Park, career politician Dick Zimmer, ethnic comedian Lou Perez, vaping enthusiast Gregory Conley, and several others. Weld has taken stances believed to be at odds with libertarianism throughout the years, including support of the Iraq War and the Patriot Act.
This is not Weld’s first foray into the libertarian movement. He has been lingering around for decades, being frequently pushed by entities bankrolled by the Koch bros due to their close friendship with the man. Back in the 1990s, Austrian economist Murray “Mr. Libertarian” Rothbard even commented publicly on the scourge that was (and is) Bill Weld.
“Only his pro-gay agenda accounts for the ardor… toward Massachusetts Governor Weld, whom they embrace as, in the current slogan, ‘fiscally conservative but socially tolerant.’ (The ‘fiscally conservative’ refers to a one-time budget cut followed, the next time around, by a compensatory budget increase.) ’Socially tolerant,’ in the current atmosphere, means a devotion to the entire Left cultural agenda, from gay rights to compulsory multicultural propaganda and condomization in the public schools,” Rothbard said.
The plague known as Bill Weld is not leaving the libertarian movement, as Koch-funded organizations will never stop pushing this milquetoast centrist despite Weld having no national appeal and not being well-received outside of backroom meetings with big money donors.
Bill Weld is not a left libertarian, he’s a moderate republican. No am Chompsky is a left libertarian.
Bills the corporatist, SFL is the lefties
Students for Liberty is a solid organization for the most part. They give relatively equal treatment to all types of libertarians and libertarianish people.
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ……!
Kochs are leftists. LOL
Well they are classic liberals, not Leftist in the 20th Century sense.
they are neo liberals.
The Left hate the Koch Brothers
lol you’re further left than the Kochs
Johnson weld is why no one takes libertarians seriously. Just sayin.
Well… so much for liberty.
“Left libertarians”, yeah okay, that’s like saying I’m a Nazi-Communist. It’s an oxymoron. You can’t be a libertarian when the very premise of being a leftist is to consistently violate the NAP.
Joseph Baratelli
LOL the entire libertarian movement is dead, that is what happens when you grovel to the establishment
So, the RLC has become a commie ‘liberty’ movement against personal rights now? Nice.