Wild Caucus
Wild Caucus | |
General Information | |
Chartered: | 2022 |
Officers | |
Chair: | Elijah Mack |
Contact | |
Website: | Website |
Social Media | |
Twitter: | |
The LP Wild Caucus is a caucus formed in 2022 in order to serve the growing environmentalist, naturalist, and homesteader communities within Libertarianism as a broader movement, and to get these communities active within the Libertarian Party. The caucus currently acts as the 'green caucus' in the LP. The organization is based on the idea that not only is Libertarianism compatible with environmental concern, but that Liberty and the more nuanced philosophy of Naturalism go hand in hand.
The group was originally going to be called the "LP Naturalist Caucus", but the name "Wild Caucus" was ultimately created and chosen by the caucus founder/chair because, "To be wild, means to be both natural and free". This phrase is one of two caucus slogans, the other being, "LP Wild Caucus: Free, Naturally".
The Wild Caucus states three main objectives on their website;
- Spreading the ideas of Naturalism, individual autonomy, free exchange, and mutual aid on a grassroots level.
- Filling local and regional offices with Wild Libertarians who can make direct small-scale change to defend the environment, and natural living, and Liberty.
- Bringing often overlooked ecological issues and Naturalist ideas to the forefront of discussion in the LP.
The full party platform can be found on the caucus' website.
Naturalism
The Wild Caucus espouses not merely concern for the environment from a Libertarian perspective, but it also represents what it's founder calls a general "Naturalist variant of Libertarianism", with influence from Transcendentalist thinkers like Henry David Thoreau. The LP Wild Caucus Platform, Written in 2022, and ratified on February 7th, 2023, defines the general notion of Naturalism:
"Naturalism is the recognition that our environment is a robust, decentralized, interdependent, and self-regulating collection of organisms and inorganic phenomena, governing every facet of the material world. The Naturalist then, holds two things to be true;
A. The human being's condition is crafted by the environment to suit a natural way of life, rather than an artificial one. This natural life is most healthy. Man is most psychologically satiated when he is autonomous, free, and able to provide for himself and his community directly, living a life healthy for his human body and mind, in closeness to nature.
B. Industrial progress and modern human civilization can have a significant impact on man's natural surroundings, leading to damage of our interdependent environment."
-WC Platform 1:2
Opposition to Caucus War
The Wild Caucus, via social media, has expressed concern about the increased division in the LP between culturally left wing and culturally right wing Libertarians. The Wild Caucus has promised that wherever WC members are put into power in the LP, they will display principled branding while not pandering to the left or right in particular. The primary concern of the Wild Caucus is showing a "green side" of the LP.
The 2023 preamble of the Wild Caucus Platform confronts the issue of caucus power overriding the authority of Libertarian Principle when it comes to the Platform and Branding of the Libertarian Party. Elijah Mack, the chairman of the Wild Caucus calls for an inter-caucus movement to finalize an unchanging LP platform which shall be a permanent authority over all LP activities, so that the party can ascend from the state of "Wasting utilities on trying to stop the LP from shifting one way or another [politically]".