My credentials - I was once actually paid to be libertarian

From 1978 to 1980, I was employed by the Libertarian Party (LP) at their former office at 1516 P Street in Washington, D.C., and later at their office, combined with the Clark for President Campaign headquarters, on Massachusetts Ave. in D.C. from 1980-81.  I was one of three full-time paid staff at LP Headquarters.  My many jobs at the LP included writing position papers, speaking to local college classes on the LP platform, working with campus libertarian groups,  and In 1978 & ‘79,  coordinating ballot drive campaigns in five states to enable LP candidates to be on the ballot for the 1980 elections.  In 1980 I was a researcher for the Libertarian Party’s Ed Clark for President ticket, bankrolled in large part by David Koch, the LP’s candidate for Vice President. Yes that David Koch, brother of billionaire Charles Koch, who together are currently trying to buy Congress and the Presidency.  They were much lower below the radar back then.

I continued to read about and discuss libertarian ideas for many years afterwards, long after I had left employment with the Libertarian Party.  To my current embarrassment, the last time I voted for a Libertarian Party candidate was as recently as 2000, in Palm Beach County, Florida, no less -- I wasted my vote in what became the epicenter of the Supreme Court coup pushing George W. Bush into the Presidency.    The Bush disaster - launching a multi-trillion dollar war-of-choice against Iraq while cutting taxes and appointing anti-regulation ideologues to NOT watch the banks,  set us up for the largest economic crash since the Great Depression.  Then there was Guantanamo, the institutionalization of torture, the post-Katrina debacle, etc. etc. - it was a huge waterfall of cold water REALITY on this admittedly not-too-bright former libertarian advocate.  The choice is not, as I had often put it, between the “demublican” and “republicrats,” between tweedledum and tweedledee.   Al Gore as President would have profoundly altered, for the better, the outcome of this first decade of the twenty-first century.   Yes there probably would’ve been a 9/11 and a 2008 Great Recession under his watch (It was, after all, the Clinton administration that abolished Glass-Steagall allowing the banks to plunge into an orgy of risky investments).  But for all of his faults, Gore would not have surrounded himself with neoconservatives insisting on attacking Iraq, nor would he have  cut taxes exploding the deficit.

How to bring about a free and prosperous society is still one of my passions.  I had already become disillusioned with radical capitalism, so it was easy to completely jettison that part of my libertarian beliefs.  I realized, finally, that the actual choice before me was supporting democracy and freedom on one hand vs. libertarianism and plutocracy on the other.  I chose democracy, the only real system of government which has actually demonstrated historically that it is capable of preserving freedom and opportunity over many decades.   I held on to my strong support of civil liberties, environmentalist ethics, and a noninterventionist foreign policy.  In other words, I became a liberal progressive.