The third party presidential debate was refreshingly serious

Last night, three people who knew they wouldn’t be president but were running for office anyway took the stage in Los Angeles for a spirited third-party debate.

At the debate, hosted by Free and Equal, Libertarian Party candidate Chase Oliver, Green Party candidate Jill Stein, and Randal Terry of the Constitution Party discussed whether government should be made much smaller, much larger, or entirely new to Jewish- Christian values ​​should be aligned.

Being the ideological troublemakers that they are, the third-party candidates have all presented their opposing ideas about government in a refreshingly undistilled way.

Oliver has done an admirable job laying out the basics of libertarianism and then applying them to individual cases.

“If your behavior does not cause harm to other people, your behavior is perfectly acceptable and should not be regulated by the government or any other body,” he said last night, arguing that we should abolish zoning laws to make housing affordable Spend, sell federal lands to reduce debt, and stay out of foreign wars.

The other two candidates offered some new perspectives that were at least interesting to listen to, even if not all of them are necessarily recommended.

Terry argued that we should build a wall on the northern border to keep Canadians out, drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to pay off the national debt, and eat raw broccoli to cure cancer.

Stein said building a wall on the southern border would not stop drugs from entering through legal “ports of entry” but would destroy wildlife and natural ecosystems along the U.S.-Mexico border. She also astutely argued that we are stumbling into a major war in the Middle East without any real acknowledgment or discussion.

The fact that everyone on stage knew they weren’t going to the White House opened room for productive agreement, particularly between Oliver and his two debate opponents.

The Libertarian candidate actively agreed with Stein that we should end foreign aid to Israel and nodded to Terry’s inflammatory tirades against the property tax.

One would think that the appeal of watching gadflies say wild things in a debate format would diminish at a time when Donald Trump (who skipped last night’s debate) is the Republican nominee.

Barely. Last night’s third party debate managed to produce its own unique and refreshing brand of oddity.

Whether it was the candidates who went beyond mainstream diagnoses of widespread obesity, panel moderator Christina Tobin who spoke at length about the power of music to heal the psychological distress caused by “the system,” or just the sheer sheer weight of it Frequency of musical guests (there was… music break about every five minutes towards the end), the debate was all so wonderfully strange.

That being said, there were also a lot of boring, terrible, and wrong mainstream ideas being thrown around.

Stein repeatedly argued that we could balance the federal budget by taxing the rich, cutting military spending, and passing Medicare for All. She called for emergency rent control and vacancy taxes to reduce housing costs. She said we could end mass illegal immigration by lifting sanctions on the socialist economies of Venezuela and Cuba.

Not only are these ideas wrong, but they’re also nothing you wouldn’t expect from a progressive Democrat (or, in the case of rent control and debt reduction fantasies, a mainstream Democrat running for president).

Similarly, Terry dusted off Mitt Romney’s old idea that millions of illegal immigrants could be forced to “self-deport” if we just made their lives difficult enough. His closing statement also ended with a call for the complete destruction of the Democratic Party. One wonders why he doesn’t just run as a Republican if he thinks one of the two major parties is so evil.

The positive aspect of Terry and Stein mimicking Republican and Democratic talking points is that it reinforces the idea that the Libertarian Party is the only true third party. Oliver did not represent a more extreme version of any of the mainstream parties. He presented a unique message and vision of government. It’s a shame more mainstream audiences probably won’t hear it.