Jeremy “Spike” Cohen, the 2020 Libertarian Party vice presidential candidate and founder of the anti-government nonprofit You Are the Power, participated in a Dartmouth Political Alliance debate on gun control last Wednesday. Reported. past reports Written by Dartmouth. Dartmouth College spoke to Cohen about his vision for American liberalism and his opposition to gun control policies that he says make gun violence worse.
The ticket with 2020 presidential candidate Joe Jorgenson received just 1.2% of the national vote, less than half of the votes the Libertarian received in 2016. What do you think this says about the future of the party?
JC: In 2016, there was a little more room to vote third-party in the vain hope that maybe a third-party candidate would do better than Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. Negative partisanship won in 2020. People were voting against Joe Biden. They were voting against Trump.
The second factor was that Jorgenson was a compromise candidate within the Libertarian Party. She kind of flew onto the radar on a perfect trajectory to get a nomination. And she ran for president as well. When you're a third-party candidate, you don't fly under the radar or get ignored. You have to get out of there.
The 2024 presidential election will be difficult due to all external factors. Negative partisanship is on the rise. So all of the deep divisions within the Libertarian Party that arose during the 2020 campaign are back in this campaign.
In your 2020 vice presidential campaign, you raised issues such as “murdering baby Woodrow Wilson” through time travel and mandatory tooth-brushing. Why base your candidacy on a satirical platform?
JC: Using satire is a very effective way to get people's attention. All of this is an allegory for the absurdity of politics and the absurdity of government itself. When I ran as performer and activist Vermin Supreme's proposed vice president during the Libertarian Party's 2020 nomination process, I always had the intention of making a more serious change of direction if I won the nomination. If you are asked a serious question, you will answer seriously. When people asked me questions about badgers and cheap bread, ponies and Woodrow Wilson, I gave them the answers they deserved.
New Hampshire's motto is “Live Free or Die.” Do you think we can function as a nation at the federal, state, and local levels if we govern according to those principles?
JC: What's interesting about the history of American government is that it's full of horrible things like slavery, genocide, and wars of expansion, which are the worst things a nation can do, but every time they do those things, The government was straying from the principles we were told we were built on.
We are best governed when we are least governed, and when we are governed based on a “live free or die” mentality. I absolutely believe that if there is a government, that's how the government should be run.
Why is gun ownership especially important to you?
JC: Libertarians place great value on our own principles. We tend to start with our philosophy and build from there. So I started. Even if shown evidence that guns are clearly linked to higher-level violent crimes, I would still say that I would prefer dangerous freedom to peaceful slavery. Guns themselves are not the problem; they become tools for innocent people to protect themselves.
Why do you think so many Americans support gun control?
JC: You sell people anecdotes, horrible school shootings, horrible mass shootings, horrible loss of life and unspeakable things that are happening to people, but every single one of us sees that. I say this. happened. ”
Instead of imposing a one-size-fits-all plan from the federal government, schools should be allowed to decide their own policies on a school-by-school or district-by-district basis.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
