Brian Peotter’s Strange Libertarian Platform

Who the heck is Brian Peotter, you might ask? Peotter’s Libertarian campaign for U.S. Senate holds some interest for people beyond those in his quirky party because of his potential role as “spoiler,” especially since Republican Ron Hanks endorsed Peotter over Republican Joe O’Dea. You might recall that O’Dea beat Hanks in the primary, and Hanks seems to remain sore about that.

Peotter on Abortion

Why would Hanks (maybe) torpedo his chances to run another high-profile Republican race to endorse Peotter? He writes:

Foremost among conservative principles is protecting the unborn. Libertarian Brian Peotter is Pro-Life. The COGOP’s candidate, Joe O’Dea, pretends to be, but he supports murderous abortion before 20 weeks of gestation. To O’Dea, apparently, some murders in the womb are acceptable, depending on the calendar.

Hanks’s remarks seem to imply that O’Dea is for (some) legal abortion while Peotter is not. Can that be right?

In 2020, O’Dea signed Proposition 115, which sought to impose a 22-week abortion ban. A spokesperson for O’Dea’s campaign told the Colorado Sun, “Joe supports a woman’s right to choose in the first five months of pregnancy and opposes late-term abortion.”

What about Peotter? I don’t know how Hanks formed his views of Peotter’s position on the matter. Peotter doesn’t say anything about the legality of abortion on his web page. Instead, he writes:

I believe that life begins at conception. I will vote against government funding of abortion services and will vote to defund Planned Parenthood. I believe no public money should ever be spent on abortion procedures, abortion pills, or embryonic stem cell research.

This seems to imply that Peotter thinks that abortion should be legal, just not tax-funded (a pretty widespread view among libertarians).

I asked Peotter if he could clarify. Following is our October 11 Twitter exchange:

Peotter: This is my stance on federal laws regarding abortion, homicide, anything not in the constitution. “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Me: Okay, so I take that to mean that you would be opposed to any federal law restricting abortion. Is that correct? Do you support state-level restrictions on abortion? Have you supported any of the Colorado efforts to restrict abortion?

Peotter: I support state level restrictions on abortion. Defining abortion as ending a pregnancy that would otherwise produce a healthy child. Extreme circumstances involving the life of the mother where one person dies are terrible events. Requires far wider discussion than 240 char.

Me: I’m sure many voters would be interested in your views on this. You could write up an essay explaining your views; let me know if you do so, and I'll check it out.

Peotter: That's a good idea, I'll work on one.

So Hanks was basically right: O’Dea wants to keep most abortions legal, while, it seems, Peotter wants to outlaw most abortion at the state level. (I’ll provide an update if he further clarifies his views.)

Whether banning almost all abortion is the “conservative” position, as Hanks has it, I guess I’ll leave to the conservatives to decide. It is a religiously motivated position.

Peotter on Selling Children

Here’s where things get strange. (It’s unusual, although not strange, for a Libertarian candidate to want to ban most abortion.) Peotter also thinks women should be able to sell their children:

The preferred option is that every child lives with their mother and father. That said, Adoption across America is broken. It often costs tens of thousands of dollars, leaving it out of the reach of many in the middle class who want a child. It is legal to be paid as a surrogate yet if you are pregnant with your own child you can’t sell it for adoption. Why not? Parents are already paying middlemen money to adopt, women can already offer surrogacy. Why can’t a woman sell a child to parents who want one? In many states with legal abortion, this could save lives.

Update: Soon after I hit the “publish” button on this piece on the morning of October 15, I realized that Peotter has made changes to his web page. I was relying on an open browser window, which showed the older text. (I have screen captures of the original and edited versions if anyone is interested.) Peotter has revised his position as follows; the rest of this article, except for a new section on transgender care, remains as it was.

The preferred option is that every child lives with their mother and father. That said, Adoption across America is broken. It often costs tens of thousands of dollars, leaving it out of the reach of many in the middle class who want a child. It is legal to be paid as a surrogate yet if you are pregnant with your own child you can't sell it for adoption. Why not? Parents are already paying middlemen money to adopt, women can already offer surrogacy. Why can't a woman sell a right to raise a child to parents who want one? In many states with legal abortion, this could save lives. No one can own a child, but only the right to raise one. Anyone who abuses or neglects a child, abdicates all rights to raise him or her. 

Somehow, in his letter endorsing Peotter, Hanks neglected to mention Peotter’s position on baby-selling.

As you might imagine, Peotter’s views on this matter raised a few questions for me.

Is this already or properly a federal issue? Presumably Peotter thinks this matter too should be left to the states. Offhand I can’t find a general federal law on the matter (see Wikipedia). There is federal law outlawing the buying and selling of children for sexual exploitation.

How did Peotter reach this view? I’m not sure, but “Mr. Libertarian” Murray Rothbard articulates this view in The Ethics of Liberty (first published in 1982):

[W]e must face the fact that the purely free society will have a flourishing free market in children. Superficially, this sounds monstrous and inhuman. But closer thought will reveal the superior humanism of such a market.

Of course Rothbard also thought abortion should be legal: “[E]very woman has the absolute right to her own body, . . . she has absolute dominion over her body and everything within it. This includes the fetus.”

Whether or not Peotter got his views on baby selling directly from Rothbard, I suspect Rothbard at least indirectly influenced Peotter’s views.

The big question is whether this view is as crazy as it undoubtedly strikes nearly everyone. I’ll defer discussion about that. Talk of selling guardianship rights would make more sense than talk of selling children.

For now, I want to discuss Peotter’s claims that baby-selling “could save lives” (of fetuses) in “states with legal abortion.” I think that’s obviously wrong. Instead, some women might be less careful about not getting pregnant because they could perhaps fall back on selling their baby, and some women might get intentionally pregnant in order to sell their baby. The result would be more abortions. Women who got pregnant for that reason would not be especially committed to bringing their pregnancies to term.

Just on the level of immediate strategy, why Peotter would choose to include such a bizarre plank in a U.S. Senate race is beyond me.

Peotter on Ukraine

His position:

End the war in Ukraine. We are borrowing money to support a dictator in Ukraine who just outlawed his opposition party. Neither Ukraine or Russia are allies to the United States or aligned with our interests. The Biden administration has cut off all communication with the Russian foreign ministry and is an active belligerent risking world war three for no reason. The number one priority of this country would not be appeasement, but to genuinely work towards peace.

This is moral equivalence at its worst. Russia under Putin is the clear and vicious aggressor that has raped, tortured, and slaughtered countless Ukranian civilians. Putin’s puppets have threatened violence against other European nations, and Putin has threatened the use of nuclear weapons.

Unfortunately, Putinist propaganda such as Peotter offers is all too common among today’s American “libertarians.”

Meanwhile, the Libertarian Party of Russia properly calls Russia’s violence a “war of aggression.” Ilya Somin writes:

The Libertarian Party of Russia understands basic libertarian principles, and can apply them to Putin's war of aggression. The US LP—not so much. They’ve become a bunch of right-wing nationalist Twitter edgelords.

Just so.

Peotter on Emergency Restrictions

Apparently Peotter thinks Jared Polis and indeed almost all governors belong in jail for the pandemic lock-downs. He writes:

All Americans must have freedom of movement and person under the “Privileges and Immunities” clause of the United States Constitution. . . . All leaders who violate this freedom, or have violated this freedom in the name of “Emergency” should be prosecuted and held accountable. 

Notice here that Peotter can find in the U.S. Constitution a clear ban on emergency stay-at-home orders but nothing relevant to abortion. Huh.

No serious person thinks government may never under any circumstances restrict freedom of movement because of a pandemic or some other emergency. I think it’s plausible that some pandemic restrictions overreached and therefore violated the Constitution. If so, the Constitution also properly restrains state interference with abortion. But then the proper outcome would be a ruling against certain emergency orders, and perhaps some financial compensation, not the criminal prosecution of most U.S. governors.

Peotter on Voting

The Libertarian in the race also advocates “getting back to same day voting, and removing the USPS from the equation”—i.e., eliminating Colorado’s wildly popular and highly functional system of mail-in voting (which also includes drop boxes and the like). Peotter instead wants a “decentralized, open source solution” to voting, but I have no idea what that means. Again, isn’t this an issue for the states?

Peotter on Guns

He writes:

When the second amendment was proposed, our founding fathers owned cannons. Americans have rights, not permissions. The right to own weapons of war, shall not be infringed. It is an act of war to disarm any American. Red Flag Laws, background checks, magazine limits and assault rifle bans all infringe on the second amendment.

Almost everyone who takes the Second Amendment seriously (including me) thinks it protects small arms, not things like cannons. Although I think Colorado’s red-flag law has problems that should be corrected, there’s nothing about a well-crafted red-flag law per se that violates rights. And a reasonable background check system could be crafted.

When Peotter says “it is an act of war to disarm” someone under a red-flag law, he seems to be sanctioning violence against those in government carrying out the order. Such language is extremely irresponsible for anyone, much more for a candidate for Senate.

Peotter on Transgender Care

I added in this section once I realized Peotter has updated his web page. Here is the new language he includes with the revision:

Any hormone therapy, or surgery practiced on a child for the sake of gender ideology is child abuse. All offenders should lose medical licenses, or parental rights. Government should not be involved in funding gender transition surgeries, or providing funds to educate employees on sexuality.

This is boiler-plate anti-LGBTQ conservative rhetoric. There is a lot wrong with it. I share a concern that “social contagion” might be behind some cases of minors claiming to be transgender. I think some kids who identify as transgender probably later will not identify that way. Even if that’s right, it’s ridiculous to say that all cases of transgender care for minors is “child abuse.” Peotter is literally saying that the state should send in armed agents to rip minors away from the arms of their parents, if, with medical guidance, they provide their minors with any sort of transgender-related hormone therapy. “Libertarian” indeed.

A Reflection on Republicans

O’Dea is a decent Republican candidate who is not a hard-liner on abortion. Hence, various party leaders have been lukewarm in their support for him. Some, like Hanks, have thrown their support to the Libertarian, whose only possible effect on the outcome could be to cost O’Dea victory. I can only conclude that a lot of Republicans do not wish to be taken seriously as a political party in Colorado.