In 2016, the Libertarian Party presidential candidate, Gary Johnson, received more votes than any of the party’s other candidates in history and the most of any third-party candidate since Ross Perot — and arguably, the Libertarian Party has never recovered.
Much like the conservative movement, the libertarian movement has been divided between more “normie” libertarians who have embraced criminal justice reform and social freedoms (like immigration and the rights of L.G.B.T.Q. people), and the harder-line libertarians who tend to lean more to the right on cultural issues.
In 2022, the hard-line Mises Caucus took control of the Libertarian Party, promising to gain more votes from disaffected Republicans and conservatives (and annoy a lot of people on the internet, including myself). And in 2024, the Libertarian Party Convention featured appearances from people like former President Donald Trump.
But in a major surprise, the winner of the party’s presidential nominating process was not the Mises Caucus’s favorite but Chase Oliver, a 38-year-old, gay antiwar activist who had left the Democratic Party. I spoke with Mr. Oliver about what libertarianism means to him today, how he plans to fight for independent votes this year and why the Libertarian Party failed 2020’s “libertarian moment.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity and is part of an Opinion Q. and A. series exploring modern conservatism today, its influence in society and politics, and how and why it differs (and doesn’t) from the conservative movement that most Americans thought they knew.
Jane Coaston: What does libertarianism mean to you now?
Chase Oliver: Libertarianism to me has always meant the freedom for peaceful people to make their own decisions about their own lives without government interference. I’ve always said that, “If you’re living your life and not using force, fraud, coercion, theft or violence, your life’s your life, your body’s your body, your business is your business and your property is your property. It’s not mine, and it’s not the government’s.”
Coaston: Conservatism and libertarianism are often paired together, more than libertarianism is with liberalism. Your political origins were as an antiwar activist disillusioned with Barack Obama. As you came up as a libertarian, do you think you became more conservative? Why or why not?
Oliver: I don’t think personally I’ve become more conservative. But as somebody who has actually embraced truly classical liberal values, I’ve understood that there will be people who live more conservatively than I do. That’s fine, so long as they don’t seek to use the force of government upon me. Just as I’m happy to let anybody live their life as outside of the norm and outside of the box as they want to, so long as they don’t seek to use the force of government on me.
Coaston: How do you think about the effect your candidacy has on Joe Biden and Donald Trump, or do you think about the effect?
Oliver: Well, I’m hoping both political parties start shifting the Overton window toward more libertarian policies and ideas. As we gain more votes, as we force more runoffs as I did in 2022 and really become a thumb in the eye to the two-party system, they have two options. They can adapt or they can start to fade away.
Personally, I think the fade away option would be great because I would like to see three or four or five parties in this country really representing the broad spectrum of political opinion, not just this broken, old two-party system represented by broken, old candidates.
But if they could end up adapting and taking our ideas and utilizing those ideas, as we saw with cannabis — it took them 40 or 50 years to catch on. Maybe, they need to catch on a little quicker to the other ideas of freedom.
Coaston: Libertarian Party chair Angela McArdle said recently that you’re “going to pull two-to-one from Biden as opposed to Trump. It’s going to be challenging. It’s going to be challenging to get libertarians to vote for him. It’s going to be challenging to get independents who are right of center to vote for him. Kennedy’s in the race. What makes the most sense is to lean into the spoiler effect for Joe Biden and the Democrats.” Is that how you’re thinking about this?
Oliver: No. I’m going to be running in every state across the country, earning votes across the spectrum. A poll in my home state of Georgia just came out showing me polling around 3 percent. I’m pulling equally from those who are self-identified Republicans, Democrats and independents. I think the chair needs to look at the polling data. There are people dissatisfied with Donald Trump, Joe Biden and, frankly, the entire political system altogether.
This is why independents are the largest growing group, and it’s why the Democrat and Republican bases continue to shrink. And, I’m looking to garner votes from across the spectrum because I think there are certainly people who might be more personally conservative and who live more conservatively than me, but recognize that I’m the only person that’s defending their true constitutional right to live as they wish in peace without any government force invading upon them.
Coaston: In 2016, Gary Johnson received more votes than any L.P. presidential candidate in history — nearly 4.5 million and the highest for a third-party candidate in 20 years. But, some Libertarians viewed his candidacy as a failure. There is always a fight between purity and success for any political movement, and the L.P. has been no exception. Where do you think that fight is right now?
Oliver: I was happy to see Gary Johnson get as many votes as he did. I think no campaign is perfect, and there’s always room to have constructive criticism. But the idea that his campaign was somehow seen as a failure compared to past L.P. campaigns, I don’t think the metrics bear that out. I’m no fan of Bill Weld, obviously, based on the vouching for Hillary thing. I wouldn’t have vouched for Hillary.
With regards to purity versus pragmatism, I’m someone who understands that we have North Stars that we have to go toward. But if we’re not working toward those goals one step at a time, they become more and more unachievable over time.
Coaston: How do you think Donald Trump changed libertarian thinking?
Oliver: I don’t, honestly. I think Donald Trump is no libertarian, and I don’t believe that his policies are libertarian. Now, I do believe he’s had an effect on our politics, which has created more hyperpartisanship and hyperpolarization and more animosity.
He’s a very caustic person. And so in his politics, he’s exported those values, frankly, not just to the Democrats and Republicans, but to libertarians and really everyone along the political spectrum. I think there’s more and more animosity and more and more division, and that’s just sad because we need more and more unity against the abuses of the state across left and right.
Coaston: How do you think the pandemic changed libertarian thinking?
Oliver: Well, I think the pandemic certainly solidified many of the libertarians’ view that there isn’t a crisis that government won’t take advantage of to rob us of our liberty. This was certainly proven out during the Covid years. Whenever we see a crisis happening, the first thing we need to look to is, “How is the state going to exploit this for their benefit, their power and their gain?” — many times at the expense of the average working person.
We saw this with millions of small businesses disappearing. We saw this with the callous lockdowns that prevented people from even saying goodbye to their loved ones as they were passing away. It just shows that government cares more about their power than that of the average citizen.
[In 2021, a study from the Federal Reserve estimated that approximately 200,000 additional business establishments closed permanently during the first year of the pandemic compared with historical averages; since then, many small businesses have struggled with rising costs and interest rates, including repayment of loans. Obviously, in the first months of the pandemic, many, many more small businesses than that closed temporarily or faced difficulties.]
Coaston: Every few years it seems we hit a “libertarian moment,” and I’d argue 2020 was one, with more people talking about state power and criminal justice reform. Some people, I think, would argue that the energy for criminal justice reform has faded for some voters and that moment didn’t last. Do you agree or disagree?
Oliver: Well, I’m from Atlanta, where we have the Stop Cop City movement. So, I believe the criminal justice and police accountability movement is still very much alive and well where I’m at. And, I still see many people wanting to have a level playing field for individual citizens against government when it comes to all areas of criminal justice.
We still see the injustice is happening everywhere. It’s just that, maybe, even though the summer of 2020 was huge for criminal justice, I think the pandemic outlasted that as something in the American consciousness. But as we’re now moving into the post-pandemic world, you’re going to see more and more Americans turning their attention back to criminal justice reform as a major concern because over-policing hasn’t ended. The abuses that we see from law enforcement that need to be held accountable have not stopped.
I’m a police accountability activist with a former law enforcement officer as a running mate. We both very much agree on things like ending qualified immunity, mandatory body cams, liability insurance for officers. These are across the political spectrum from even an activist to someone who actually used to be a police officer.
Coaston: Is there anything you think libertarians should have done differently in response to 2020 and the call for criminal justice reform?
Oliver: Absolutely. I think we spent too much time with internal bickering. We should have been in the streets arguing for police accountability. We should have been forming single-issue coalitions that could have allowed us to have more action. And it also would’ve allowed the Fox Newses of the world not to just say, “Oh, that’s just leftists out there.” No. That’s leftists and libertarians who really agree that the police and the state need to be held accountable when the boot of the state comes down on our neck.
I think it was a missed opportunity, and certainly if I had been the nominee in 2020, I would’ve been doing what I was already doing in 2020, which is marching peacefully across party lines in a single-issue coalition for justice.
Coaston: The American public, certainly on marijuana, definitely is now more in line with the longstanding libertarian viewpoint. What’s the next big issue libertarians are right about?
Oliver: Let’s expand past cannabis to the total end of the war on drugs, which creates much of the violence we see in our neighborhoods. But really, the next hill to climb is going to be therapies like psilocybin therapy, MDMA therapy, ketamine. These are therapies that have been shown in a medical setting to absolutely help people suffering from mental health issues, including PTSD for our veterans.
Coaston: I’m interested to hear about your thoughts on how the Republican Party has shifted around Ukraine. I know you’ve been very frustrated with U.S. policy in both Ukraine and Israel. It seems more Republicans, including Trump, sometimes, want less American involvement.
Oliver: Much of it is the G.O.P. following Donald Trump’s lead, and he is a very erratic person. One day he says something like, “Well, I didn’t start new wars.” The next day he’s bragging about selling weapons to the Saudis that ended up killing a lot of the Yemeni people. And so with that kind of erratic foreign policy, which is what Donald Trump offers, what you’re seeing is just this erratic response to the G.O.P., just trying to follow suit like the ducklings they are.
Frankly, I’m one for a less interventionist foreign policy, one that exports our values with free markets and free trade as opposed to bombs and bullets. But Donald Trump isn’t for that, either, because he’s a hard-core economic protectionist who doesn’t know what free trade is or how it’s beneficial to the marketplace.
It’s just not a great combination when you’re exporting our weapons to autocrats around the world, you’re not being consistent with your foreign policy messaging and you’re also not even engaging other nations because you’re engaging in protectionism with things like tariffs and other trade barriers. Biden’s even doubling and tripling down on those trade barriers.
The only true free-market and peace candidate is the Libertarian Party candidate. That’s me in this race, and I look forward to earning the votes of the antiwar movement.
Coaston: I’m not sure if you know this, but I was a registered member of the Libertarian Party. I left in 2022, and I think that there’s been a decrease in the number of people who are registered Libertarians. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on why that is and what you want to do to reverse that trend.
Oliver: Yeah. The two things that I see most from that is edgy, combative messaging that has come out of many libertarian channels that just hasn’t been effective for growth. It’s created siloed, echo-chamber thinking. And when you’re thinking within an echo chamber, it’s hard to see the greater picture.
I think we need to understand that there’s a broad swath of the electorate that is, broadly speaking, quite libertarian. We just have to be able to communicate our values in a way that they can resonate with, that understands them. Something I’ve always tried to do as a libertarian is explain to people, “I know you may not agree with every single thing about being a libertarian today, but give us a chance and open your mind to alternative options other than using the state to achieve your goals, recognizing that the state is inefficient and that there are more efficient ways to do things.”
We want to help the poor. We just don’t think the state’s the best to do that. We want to see more alternatives in the marketplace and more choice of innovation in the marketplace. And, we certainly know the state’s not going to achieve that. We have to be willing to speak to a lot more than just the people who follow us on Twitter.
Coaston: I think my last question, it’s a little broader. Something I’ve noticed and I’ve written about is that many people embrace what I would call personal libertarianism, but they don’t expand that outward. I think we see that when we have conversations about criminal justice reform in which someone firmly believes that they should be permitted to have their grass grow longer or do things that for other people lead to the intervention of the state, but they are happy to call the police on someone else. How do you, as someone who is attempting to not just get people into the Libertarian Party, but to get people into libertarianism for everyone, how do you combat that?
Oliver: Well, it’s about making sure that we understand that libertarian values are not selfish. I think that’s the biggest misnomer about libertarians — that somehow we are selfish or that because we care about our individual liberty, we don’t care about the liberty of others.
What I’m stressing in my campaign and I think we need to stress more as a party, is that we actually value the liberty of other people because that is what gives us our individual liberty. If we’re not fighting for the liberty of people who look differently or who live differently or who worship differently or who love differently, then we are not fighting for our liberty, because when one person is not free, we are not free.
So I’m hoping that people can see the empathy, and, frankly, the love that comes out of the message of liberty from my campaign. Because if we’re not fighting for other people, we’re not fighting for ourselves.