The Cult of Losing: Why the Libertarian Party Fails—and Deserves To
AustinLiberator
There’s a certain tragic beauty in libertarianism. Its philosophy is clean. Its logic, compelling. Its moral clarity, undeniable. And yet, every election cycle, the Libertarian Party stumbles onto the national stage like an overconfident philosophy student at a knife fight—armed with abstract truth, but completely unprepared for the street brawl of real politics. The result is as predictable as it is pathetic: irrelevance, ridicule, and retreat. The Libertarian Party doesn’t just lose. It practices losing. It idolizes losing. And worst of all, it confuses losing with virtue.
The Smartest Ideas. The Dumbest Strategy.
No one disputes the intellectual depth of the libertarian worldview. Its champions—Bastiat, Hayek, Mises, Rand, Rothbard—articulated a vision of society based on consent, responsibility, and individual liberty that remains one of the most coherent responses to authoritarianism ever crafted.
But somewhere along the way, the Libertarian Party forgot that ideas don’t govern—people do. And people are messy, tribal, afraid, and often irrational. Convincing them takes more than a good argument. It takes discipline. It takes organization. It takes grit. Instead, the LP spends its time arguing over platform minutiae, splitting hairs over whether roads are tyranny, and nominating presidential candidates based on who can yell “taxation is theft” the loudest.
Failure Isn’t an Accident—It’s a Choice
Let’s not pretend this is just a problem of bad luck or an unfair two-party system. No, the Libertarian Party fails because it chooses to fail. Because it refuses to grow up.
Take 2016:
- America was disillusioned with both major parties.
- Trump was erratic. Hillary was toxic.
- Millions were desperate for an alternative.
And what did the LP do?
It handed the nomination to Gary Johnson, a two-term Republican governor with a libertarian streak and then strapped a verbal anvil around his neck in the form of Bill Weld—a man who endorsed Hillary Clinton before the campaign was even over. Johnson himself couldn’t name a single foreign policy hot spot (“What is Aleppo?”) and often sounded more like a stoner life coach than a commander-in-chief. Yet this was the LP’s high-water mark—3.3%.
Or take 2020:
Jo Jorgensen, a well-meaning academic, ran the most forgettable campaign in modern third-party history—wooden, vague, and ideologically compromised. At a moment when Americans were being suffocated by COVID mandates and lockdowns, the Libertarian Party’s standard-bearer was tweeting about the need for “anti-racism” and “social justice.” Libertarians didn’t just miss the moment. They buried it.
A Party of Clowns or Cultists?
In recent years, the LP has descended even further into farce. The Mises Caucus seized control in 2022, promising to rid the party of woke messaging and bring it back to Rothbardian fundamentals. But instead of launching serious campaigns or building state infrastructure, they turned the party into a libertarian LARP session—full of edgy Twitter memes, juvenile infighting, and failed purity tests.
Meanwhile, actual liberty champions from the Republican Liberty Caucus - like Thomas Massie, Rand Paul, or Mike Lee - continue to fight battles inside the GOP, where real policy gets written. They work. They legislate. They win votes.
The LP? It holds conventions. It tweets. It complains about ballot access.
The Hard Truth
The truth is this: The Libertarian Party is not a political party. It is a philosophy club with a fetish for martyrdom.
- It does not govern.
- It does not win.
- It does not grow.
And worst of all, it scares away the very people who could change that - young idealists, former Republicans, disaffected independents, and this author - who get one look at the circus and walk away. It’s not the message that’s broken. It’s the medium. And the messengers.
There Is Another Way
Liberty-minded Americans are not extinct. They are awakening. But they are not looking for a party that wants to “educate the public.” They are looking for a movement that wants to fight, win, and govern.
They want a caucus that knows how to whip votes, write legislation, and train activists. They want strategy. Discipline. Focus. They want to take the hill—not just lecture about it.
And that’s where the Republican Liberty Caucus, and liberty-minded leaders inside the GOP, offer hope.
The RLC doesn’t waste time with costume politics. It doesn’t chase internet clout. It works within the system to change the system—supporting candidates, influencing platforms, and pushing policy in real time. It’s not always flashy. But it’s real.
Liberty Deserves Better
Liberty is not a joke. It is not a meme. It is not an aesthetic. It is the most noble, hard-won, fragile principle in the history of politics—and it deserves fighters who understand the battlefield. Not just armchair philosophers shouting from the edge of the arena.
The Libertarian Party appears unwilling to grow up, get serious, and get in the fight, and thus, it will remain what it is today: A ghost. A distraction. A monument to what could have been.