Interest in the Libertarian Party at ASU is growing, advocates said, as illustrated by the turnout at the very first West Coast Students For Liberty conference on Saturday.
The conference drew about 80 students to the Memorial Union throughout Saturday, a dramatic change in attendance from the previous year.
Last year, interest in the conference was so low that it was canceled, but the rise of underdog presidential candidate Ron Paul and growing disapproval of the Obama administration have helped spike interest in the Libertarian movement, Students for Liberty at ASU president and finance senior Alex Falkenstein said.
“After the Ron Paul movement and the election results, more and more students have turned to the Libertarian Party,” Falkenstein said.
“They’ve seen Republicans and Democrats do the same things.”
The club advocates Libertarianism, a political philosophy that stresses small government, fiscal restraint and individual liberties.
Libertarians differ from their fellow conservatives in the Republican Party in their socially liberal beliefs — many advocate legalizing drugs and gay marriage.
Falkenstein noted the success of other conservative student groups in recent years, including his own and the Network of Enlightened Women, as a sign that students are looking for alternatives to the current status quo. He attributed much of the new interest to grassroots organizing on the Internet.
“The ideals are being supported now with the rise of the Internet [as a medium],” Falkenstein said. “People are realizing Libertarian ideas are good.”
The event was highlighted by speeches from Patri Friedman, the grandson of influential economist Milton Friedman, and David Nolan, co-founder of the Libertarian Party in 1971. Nolan is also known for inventing the “Nolan Chart,” a political survey used to categorize survey takers’ political leanings.
Friedman presented to the audience his vision of seasteading — creating floating platform communities in international waters governed by Libertarian principles, including an unregulated, free market and a high degree of personal freedom.
“We know that freedom works,” Friedman said. “We just need a place to prove it.”
Friedman calls his new idea “Politics 2.0” — much like Web 2.0, which emphasizes small, innovative startups and allows users a high degree of choice.
Friedman’s vision is a world with many seasteading communities, each with a distinct system of government, that compete for residents. The communities with the systems that work best would flourish, while the worst, most ineffective communities become ghost towns.
“Politics 2.0 [is] where lots of small, start-up governments innovate and compete and learn by experimentation what it is that best makes for a good country,” Friedman said. “These governments that don’t have a good product will get out-competed and die.”
Nolan, who was the keynote speaker at the event, delivered a lecture titled “Five Futures and a Slightly Checkered Past.” In it, Nolan predicted five events likely to happen in the U.S. over the next 50 years, including the U.S. disbanding or experiencing a slow economic decline similar to Japan.
He was also critical of the Obama and Bush administrations for what he called interventionist foreign policy and excessive government spending.
“The Obama administration is doing all the wrong things and there’s no reason to believe they’re going to change,” Nolan said.
Robert Peters, actor and UA alumnus who was president of the libertarian club at UA until he graduated in 2001, also attended the conference.
Peters said he was excited about the amount of interest, particularly among young people, in the ideals of the Libertarian Party.
“The state of the movement is phenomenal,” he said. “I never expected this kind of enthusiasm surrounding [Libertarian] ideas in my lifetime.”
Reach the reporter at derek.quizon@asu.edu.
