Support for socialist policies seems to be rising in both the Democratic and Republican Parties, especially the former. The Democrats have nominated Zohran Mamdani, a self-described “Democratic Socialist” who has called for the government to “seize the means of production” from the private sector, as their candidate for mayor of New York City. Mamdani leads in public opinion polls in that staunchly Democratic city. Nationally, “74 percent of likely Democratic voters said democratic socialism comes closest to their viewpoint, while 16 percent said the same of capitalism,” reports Politico. By a 20 percent margin, “likely Democratic voters prefer socialist-aligned figures like Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Zohran Mamdani to establishment politicians like Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries and Nancy Pelosi.”
Socialist Democratic nominee “Mamdani has called for having the government run grocery stores, even though such stores lose money, cost taxpayers, and result in increased food waste and reduced choices of food. Mamdani also proposed arbitrary, extreme restrictions on rent that would leave landlords with too little money to maintain housing units, which could turn much of New York into a slum.”
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has taken public ownership stakes in five public companies, such as Intel. Trump is intervening in the economy more and more, such as setting tariff rates based more on political reasons than sound economic policy. For example, Trump imposed high tariffs on Brazil, even though Brazil buys more of our products than we buy of theirs, because Brazil is prosecuting its former right-wing president for his apparent complicity in an attempted coup.
With both main political parties turning against economic freedom at the national level (at the state level, Republicans are still more pro-market than the Democrats, but at the national level, both parties are dreadful), it would be nice if there were a pro-free-market third party.
But the only pro-free-market third party was the Libertarian Party, and it is basically defunct, garnering less than 1% of the vote in the last presidential election. Many of the Libertarian Party’s leadership cadre have become woke leftists who have largely lost interest in free markets. A classic example is Nicholas Sarwark, the head of the Libertarian Party from 2014 to 2020. Sarwark can be found on social media attacking Republicans for trying to cut Obamacare subsidies and wasteful healthcare spending that has fueled America’s $2 trillion budget deficit. Sarwark boasts that “Libertarianism came from the left and belongs on the left.” Sarwark has reposted Democratic attacks on Republicans like New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu for seeking to reduce welfare spending.
On Bluesky, he reposted an attack on the pro-free-market Cato Institute, which said that “No real libertarians would work at Cato or Scalia Law [School] or AfP. Those are at the top institutions of authoritarianism and control — the opposite of libertarianism.” AfP is Americans for Prosperity, a pro-free-market group that lobbies in favor of economic deregulation and civil liberties. For example, AFP seeks to get rid of unnecessary occupational licensing restrictions that make it harder for people to get a job and earn a living. AFP also won a landmark First Amendment case in the Supreme Court.
Sarwark has peddled the idea that “what the Democratic Party is doing” is “generally good.” Sarwark defended Joe Biden’s student loan bailout, which would cost taxpayers at least $427 billion, and perhaps well over $1 trillion. It was blocked by the Supreme Court as illegal. All libertarian and conservative economists think the bailout is a bad idea. So do even many Democratic economists, such as Jason Furman, chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, who called Biden’s plan “reckless.” Furman said “Pouring roughly half trillion dollars of gasoline on the inflationary fire that is already burning is reckless.” Even the liberal Washington Post called Biden’s student-loan bailout “a regressive, expensive mistake.”
“Under Sarwark’s tutelage, the national Libertarian Party [falsely] depicted police Officer [Darren] Wilson as a murderer. In 2020, it listed ‘Michael Brown’ and his death as an example of ‘systemic’ racism and ‘extrajudicial killings, and blatant violence toward black communities’ by police. Many libertarian criminal justice ‘reformers’ falsely peddled the claim that Michael Brown was shot as he surrendered with his hands up. This ‘hands up, don’t shoot’ claim was later debunked by the Obama Justice Department, but only after it was widely peddled on CNN and other liberal media.”
Self-described libertarians cling to the libertarian label while disparaging capitalism on social media platforms such as Bluesky and X. Cory Massimino is a self-described libertarian who wrote that “libertarians ought to…oppose…capitalism.” His social media post attacking capitalism was liked or reposted by a number of trendy self-described “libertarians” who are now found on the progressive website Bluesky. Massimino wrote, “I elaborate on all this in my Routledge chapter ‘Two Cheers for Rothbardianism,’ where I argue libertarians ought to care deeply about relational egalitarianism and oppose cisheteropatriarchy, white supremacy, ageism, and capitalism.”
When Massimino came to Bluesky, he was effusively welcomed by some self-described “libertarians” and by a woke self-described ethicist who used to work at the nation’s biggest libertarian think tank. That “ethicist” pals around with self-described socialists and anti-capitalist leftists like Karen Attiah, an extremist who condoned the massacre committed by Hamas on October 7, 2023. He now calls himself a “radical liberal” rather than a libertarian, says Cory Massimino is huge influence on his own thinking, and has done multiple podcasts with Massimino. He says the Democrats should be “twice as woke” as they are now, and suggested that it is racist to focus on cutting welfare programs or ending affirmative action.
Bluesky is home to many left-wing extremists. When a leftist killed a corporate CEO, many Bluesky users rejoiced over the murder. “The deluge of support I am seeing over there for murdering health insurance executives is depraved and disgusting. Taylor Lorenz is already targeting other CEOs. Lunatics,” noted a prominent economist, Brian Riedl. The New York Post reported that journalist “Taylor Lorenz defends United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s murder in sickening post” on Bluesky.
Bluesky is intolerant. “Bluesky is so left-wing that even liberal minority group members are sometimes treated like right-wing hatemongers if they don’t parrot the left-wing party line. A gay free-speech advocate at the liberal Brookings Institution, who claims Joe Biden did lots of ‘good things’ and supports paying reparations to some gay people, was branded as a right-wing hate-monger by Bluesky users. They did this solely because he followed the posts of the centrist Democrat Jesse Singal on Bluesky. Bluesky users hate Singal and view him as a right winger, because Singal points out the shaky science behind child sex-changes, which can have negative health impacts. So they blocked the gay free-speech advocate who followed Singal’s posts, Jon Rauch of the Brookings Institution. Rauch explains that ‘For the crime of following@jessesingal.com, this morning, I am now on 40+ blocklists…including…Jesse Singal and followers; Anti-LGBT; Right wing turd; Misinformation; Pedos 2 block; dog brains and piss drinkers. Fun!'” Singal isn’t right-wing: he voted for Joe Biden.
“Bluesky progressives claim they need to be on Bluesky rather than Twitter to block ‘Nazis, trolls, and fascists,’ but the people they block on Bluesky are often normal, civil, centrist people with viewpoints shared by most Americans. A respected law professor was blocked by many Bluesky users for gently criticizing Joe Biden’s pardon of Hunter Biden. That professor has also often criticized Trump — he co-founded the group Checks and Balances, which often criticized Trump — but the moment he criticized Biden, he got blocked by many Bluesky users. They would not tolerate any deviation from the Democratic party line.”
