Quoting russell@coker.com.au (russell@coker.com.au):
A quick Google of Mary Rewart will do. You know this of course, why do you even ask that?
(Correct spelling is 'Ruwart', apparently.) How about: Because she was never the Libertarian Party nominee? ;-> Any old idiot can join the Libertarian Party, and many do. Doing so, and then running and failing to get nomination, does not mean you speak for the party. I normally do not keep track of Libertarian Party wack jobs. As I mentioned, that and numerous other minor parties have basically zero role in either national politics or in local politics in the USA with extremely few exceptions. Thank you for answering my question: You spoke in error, and now are ignoring on-point correction.
https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/2012/01/even-with-gary-johnson-the-libe...
The above is one of many articles that summarises this.
Yes, I found that in my two minutes of Web-searching _too_. You'll please note that this article Dr. Ruwart was a _contender_ for the Libertarian Party nomination four years before the article. (Bizarrely, the article calls her 'the _leading_ contender', which is very strange when speaking about a nomination race multiple years in the past.) She was -- as I noted upthread -- passed over for that nomination for the Libertarian party presidential candidate. Because the USA Libertarian Party are indeed crazy, but they are not quite _that_ crazy.
Mary has been active in the LP for a long time in senior positions including representing them in a senate race.
And _losing_. ;-> (She got 1.16% of the vote. Not even Texans are quite that crazy. This was a hopeless challenge to one of Texas's two US Senators, Sen. Kay Hutchinson.) She did manage to be one of the keynote speakers at the 2004 Libertarian National Convention. I'll bet they carefully vetted what she said before letting her take the mic, even though basically nobody pays attention to minor parties in the USA. And at some point in the past, she was an 'at-large member of the Libertarian National Committee', which along with US $2.25 will get you a ride on the San Francisco Municpal Railway. And she actually did _once_ make it as far as VP candidate for the Libertarian Party in 1992. I'll bet that was before she started mouthing off about child pornographers.
After a ~10 minute search, I find zero support for the above allegation. I find a claim that in 2008 the USA Libertarian Party considered but passed over for nomination an anarchist candidate named Murray Rothbard who favoured legalising child pornography, but find nothing else suggesting what Russell asserts.
http://anarchism.pageabode.com/anarcho/mutual-aid-parecon-right-stealing-lib...
Which protracted Proudhon-centric blithering _also_ completely fails to support your assertion.
You are being ridiculous here in describing Murray Rothbard as "an anarchist candidate".
Why not? The late Rothbard (who died in 1995) called _himself_ that, after all. He coined the term 'anarcho-capitalist' to describe himself. But, seriously, his label is rather beside the point.
A better (and quite commonly used) description of him is "Mr Libertarian".
In analogy perhaps with the late Robert Taft, dubbed 'Mr. Republican', who notably failed to be elected President. (Eisenhower defeated the Taft faction utterly and permanently in 1952.) But at least Taft managed to be a Senator from Ohio. Rothbard never merely spent 45 years wearing out typewriters as an ideologue academic.
He claims personal responsibility for stealing the word "Libertarian" from the left, see the above article which is one of many about this.
He can claim anything. (Well, actually, no, strictly speaking, he cannot, being deceased for these past 21 years.) However, he could not claim to in any way speak for the USA Libertarian Party. One sign of good character in the late Prof. Rothbard is that he didn't get along with Ayn Rand. On the other hand, he had the poor taste to try to be an Objectivist. ;->
Google indicates that the book "Beyond Tolerance: Child Pornography on the Internet" describes Libertarians as being active on pedophile forums on the net.
No, it doesn't. It merely says on page 97 that the Internet has a 'libertarian ethos', and that unnamed 'other Internet users' imposed a fierce reaction after the manager of a small California ISP discovered in 1998 a child porn Web site, reported that site to legal authorites, and investigated in an attempt to discover more information about the site's operators. This has no discernible connection to the USA Libertarian Party. Here is a more-detailed new story about that incident: http://www.cnet.com/news/isp-attacked-after-finding-child-porn/ Essentially, Marrya VandeVen, general manager of ISP Stockton Community Wide Web in Stockton, CA discovered a child pornography and bootleg proprietary software Web site. She asked the advice of subscribers to an unspecified antispam mailing list about what to do with her discovery, and was advised by some subscribers to 'mind my own business and let it drop', and predicting that her business would face retaliation if she reported the site to the legal authorities. Other subscribers said her query was off-topic for an anti-UCE online forum, and still other subscribers gave her helpful tips. She duly reported the criminal Web site to the US Customs Service and Federal Bureau of Investigation the next day. Three days after that, her ISP main (or possibly only?) Unix server got rooted and all files deleted by unknown parties, and had to rebuilt over the next several days. Upshot: There are scummy people on the Internet. But this has exactly zero to do with the USA Libertarian Party.
Quora is not working now.
Still up for me, FWIW.
Mary Ruwart wrote in her book "Children who willingly participate in sexual acts have the right to make that decision". When a senate candidate from a party makes such a claim in writing (on many occasions) you can't seriously claim that it goes against the party in question.
Yes, and she _still_ doesn't speak for that minor, fringe political party.
It's a fringe nutcase party that has a significant influence on the Republican party.
No, it really doesn't. Russell, you really should not go around making pronouncements about USA politics, because you really have no idea what you're talking about.