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Exclusive: Interview With Pinellas County Libertarian Party Chair
With Libertarianism being subject to many misconceptions, I set out to interview the Chair of the Pinellas County Libertarian Party to learn the truth about what they believe.
By Nicholas Just, June 23, 2021
Image Credit: Carol Moore
Brett Bittner, Chairperson of the Pinellas County Libertarian Party was kind enough to allow us to interview him last week, when he gave us insight on issues within the Libertarian Party, libertarian ideology as well as the phenomenon that is conservative Libertarianism.
The Pinellas County Libertarian Party has been, in my experience, what I can only describe as progressive and in recent years this is very contrary to libertarians we tend to see on social media. One group known as the Proud Boys recently gained much popularity for showing up to Black Lives Matter demonstrations last summer.
According to Brett Bittner, those self-proclaimed Libertarians are clearly conservatives and only conservatives, “I would disagree that they are libertarian no matter if they use that label or not'' says Brett. “They are generally utilizing conservative language, conservative talking points and they promote a very conservative message.”
Compared to the proud boys, the Pinellas County Libertarian Party seems very progressive. However Brett Bittner does not believe the party itself is progressive.
“I don't think that it is progressive as much as it is just showing empathy toward groups that have otherwise been ignored or marginalized, that is a part of our principles … The Libertarian Party has been supportive of gender and sexual minorities since our founding 50 years ago. In fact, our first presidential nominee was openly gay.”
Running as the Libertarian Party’s first presidential candidate in 1972, he was also the first openly gay candidate to receive any electoral votes. Libertarian Party
This is the libertarian standard and it has been since the epoch of the Libertarian Party. In fact, legalizing same sex marriage was part of the Libertarian campaign platform since 1972, 40 years before the Democrats adopted it. This raised another point of our conversation, when Brett made the claim that the Libertarian Party is the only party in America with a consistently principled view. “Democrats and Republicans both want big government, it's just a matter of how they want it to serve their interest.”
According to him, ultimately, the goal of the Libertarian Party is to take government out of the lives of the people and leave as many choices up to the individual as possible, within reason of course. “Take a look at the way Libertarians are portrayed in the media, they've done a fantastic job.”
Brett says in response to the perceived irrationality of Libertarians, “they [the media] have always had a disdain for Libertarian ideas because they conflict with the big government left and big government right.” In a sense, right-wing and left-wing mainstream media makes the Libertarian Party seem like a bunch of lunatics.
“They have done a much better job of branding Libertarians than Libertarians ever have.” The two party system has left the American voter with a choice between conservatism or social liberalism, which does not incentivize entertaining Libertarianism as an ideology.
If you would like to take the initiative to learn more about the Libertarian Party and their ideas, you can contact the people at the Pinellas County Libertarian Party with your questions.
Brett Bittner suggested the book Don't Hurt People and Don't Take Their Stuff: A Libertarian Manifesto as a good source for understanding the Libertarian worldview. He also recommended Reason Magazine as a good source for middle ground libertarian ideas.
We would like to thank Brett Bittner and the Libertarian Party for participating in this interview.