Politics

The Good & the Bad: Darryl Perry’s Campaign In Review

June 17, 2016

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With the Libertarian Party presidential primary history, Gary Johnson and Bill Weld are out kicking ass, dancing thong dude was removed from the LP of Michigan and I’m back in Manhattan working on inventions. I’ve decided to begin a quick article series reviewing the campaigns of every Libertarian Party candidate who ran in 2016 which was worth mentioning (Shawna Sterling will not get an article). It’s a bit of fun to review what was probably the most viral Libertarian primary season ever and get a greater sense of the future of our movement. So let’s begin with one of the most interesting candidates, Darryl W. Perry; or as I like to call him, the World’s Friendliest Anarchist.

Let me explain the model of how I’ll write these. I will list the things I liked about the campaign in the “Good” portion and as your evolved minds can probably assume, I’ll put the “Bad” version for what I didn’t like (seriously, anyone who couldn’t figure that out, leave the liberty movement and vote for Donald Trump). This is designed to be a fun series and I hope that everyone involved can learn a bit for future primaries. Or well, my opinions could be totally worthless and you should just instead Google me and comment on my hair being nice. Either one… Also, for Darryl, I have three positives and two negatives in this article on him.

So with that, let’s begin talking about the guy who I felt was the most interesting candidate in the Libertarian Party primary.

The Good Things

He was a voluntaryist and proud of it.

Most people who know me politically know I don’t identify as an anarcho-capitalist or voluntaryist. I normally come out as a bit more pragmatic of a libertarian. I’m normally the guy saying we can keep Medicare, not legalize heroin and do other things which some people in the liberty movement would call me evil for saying.

However, I actually do like the idea of an anarchist candidate. Reason being that in my ideal world, I always want to push government to a point it’s smaller and smaller which does create an actual case that my goal might be anarchy. Also, with Darryl presenting a case for anarcho-capitalism, Gary Johnson being more of this pragmatic thinker and Austin Petersen trying to capture a more socially conservative libertarian, it creates a diversity of ideas. Movements that lack that are just called Democrats. Plus, in this diversity it could expose the casual libertarian who came to the movement for a Bill Weld effort and make them into advocating views such as privatization of the roads or elimination of the Fed.

I can’t say I’m fully on the anarchist train, but the voluntaryist aspect made Darryl Perry unique and made many libertarians realize they’d rather take no government over one run by Trump or Clinton.

Darryl is an extremely nice dude.

With anarchists, I’ll just say one thing. They aren’t the friendliest people to encounter on the Internet. You can very often find some guy in a fedora with a neckbeard spreading memes for 18 hours a day and the other hours are spent giving his mother a sponge bath. I’ve often times said the biggest reason I don’t want to say I’m an anarchist is just due to the anarchists themselves.

With Darryl, he earns the Medal of Honor for world’s friendliest ancap. The guy comes off as extremely polite, willing to listen to other ideas, can compliment other people and can talk about things such as him going out running and being physically active. He is a fun person. He is someone I’d trust to end the government and not replace it with their own neckbeard government running under the law of Pokemon with the fedora police everywhere. He is someone I can trust.

Putting it as simply as possible, if every anarchist online could learn to be as kind as Darryl Perry, their movement would be far, far larger now.

Chelsea Manning & Edward Snowden.

One thing I heard over and over again from Darryl Perry was his desire to pardon people such as Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden and many other people who risked their lives to make America great again. They are heroes who became criminals in the attempt to save American rights and tackle the corruption of our government. When the Libertarian Party convention was happening, Memorial Day was also going on. These people who I defend and Darryl Perry defends are heroes and on Memorial Day deserved the same respect as anyone of our veterans.

Perry was the one who time and time again said he wanted them to be free and made it a big feature to his campaign. He said it loud and proud and I thought it was one of the strongest features of his campaign.

But that’s the good stuff… Now let’s get to the two things about his campaign I really didn’t care for.

The Bad Things

I don’t think he believed he could do it.

I got to meet Darryl a couple of times before the convention. I spoke to him multiple times online and interacted with a lot of his supporters. I never got the vibe by them that they could pull it off. From day one, everyone knew Gary Johnson was probably going to win this easily (which, he sort of did), but looking at the McAfee or Petersen camps, you had an army of volunteers and delegates who thought they’d win. Darryl Perry kind of felt as though he was to the LP what a Libertarian Party nominee is to a general election. A guy there to spread a message, but not having a hope in hell that he could win. That was sort of the vibe I read from him and his people and felt that lack of positive energy did hurt him going to Orlando.

And saying that, I don’t really believe he ever had much of a shot. However, he had as much if not more of a shot over John McAfee or Austin Petersen. Darryl was also unlike Austin Petersen, not personally despised by over half the party. And unlike John McAfee, Darryl could tell you his actual views and not make what he supports a mystery. Yet it seemed Darryl spent too much time on the assumed fourth place finish and it wasn’t until he saw McAfee’s campaign implode in Orlando that he realized he could take this thing for third, second or maybe even first.

Sadly, I just don’t think Darryl saw himself winning and that was his biggest mistake.

I’m not really a fan of how he presented voluntaryist ideals.

When it comes to anarcho-capitalism, there’s three ways I’ve noticed in how they commonly get presented. The first is a much more Rothbard or Walter Block academic sense. This is normally with deep intellectual talks that are free of sound bites and big cheers. The goal here is high information members of society and arguments mixed with numbers and philosophy. The second is my way. The way that I say in ten years we won’t need police for protection, because we will click buttons on our phones and have in 20 seconds access to private drone companies safely monitoring the situation. The one where we talk about seasteading, Bitcoin, solar power and other mega ideas. Yet I felt Darryl went and presented anarchy kind of like some guy on the Internet.

What do I mean about that? He talked about lowering the age of consent to the age of puberty… He sort of jumped a bit too hard with the taxation is theft meme… He kind of came off as the guy saying the state is evil just in principle and the longer term of arguments weren’t mentioned…

For this, I don’t think he did a bad job. I just feel there was a better way to present these types of ideals and he did better over 99% of people to try, but didn’t quite crack the level needed to have them be more widely adopted.

Closing thoughts

I’m going to say it: If Darryl Perry runs in 2020, I’ll consider casting my vote for him. I like the dude and feel he is working to make libertarianism more pure in a better sense. Doing that, however, I feel he has about a thousand and one things to work on, but I’m confident Darryl is aware of those things and ready to perfect his methods. I’m sure he is aware that this was his first go at it and he can walk out of this experience with pride in how he reached a lot of people and did manage to perform exceptionally well in this whole process.

Closing up on my end, I would like to say from moderating a debate with him in it and hanging out at Orlando that he’s a friend and glad he feels I look like John Stamos.