The Druidic Candidate: Can California deal with a Druid for governor?

In a country just now coming to grips with its millions of Muslim residents, and in a county that not long ago freaked out about the construction of a Hindu temple in Buena Park, a Druid running for governor is bound to raise eyebrows. But Libertarian gubernatorial candidate and Druid Gary Copeland doesn’t just tolerate the flak: he welcomes it, like a guy who wrote the kick-me note he stuck on his own back—even when the flak is fired by fellow Libertarians.

"It doesn’t bother me at all," says Copeland. "It’s not an issue with me. It’s their issue, not mine. When people speak, they speak for who they are. . . . It’s my path to serve, and I’m doing that. I know not everyone’s going to agree, but that’s okay."

But everything’s not entirely okay. Copeland doesn’t mask his annoyance at a Newsweek article that dismissed him as a "whacko" or with postings on a Libertarian e-mail list that chastised him for noting that he’s a Druid in the California voter’s guide, although he didn’t note that he once advocated the use of LSD for spiritual purposes.

Indeed, it seems there’s unease within the party over Copeland’s unconventional religious beliefs—a "culture of peer pressure," Copeland calls it—that one wouldn’t expect from the liberty-loving Libs. It’s as if it’s all right for Copeland to harbor unusual religious beliefs so long as he doesn’t talk much about them.

"Since Libertarians are a third party, we find it difficult to be taken seriously or to be considered by voters," says Mark Murphy, director of a group called Libertarian Activists and a former member of the Orange County Libertarian Party Central Committee. "Obviously, we want voters to see we aren’t any different from many of them. So, when Gary—who’s a friend of mine, by the way—declares himself a Druid, there’s a concern that trying to be taken seriously just went out the window."

Doug Scribner disagrees. "I’m upset that people would find his beliefs a setback to his candidacy. After all, how many Christian politicians openly proclaim their beliefs in ballot guides?" says Scribner, vice chairman of the county’s Libertarian Party.

Copeland remains philosophical about the criticism; indeed, he remains philosophical about everything. When you talk to him, he’s philosophical at a hundred miles per hour and will frequently answer questions as if he’s reading from a Celtic I Ching. Why is he running for governor, for instance? "Because the path brought me here," he says.

It can be kind of frustrating. But beneath it, there’s a refreshing sense that Copeland is deeply invested in his beliefs, both as a Druid and a Libertarian.

"It’s an asset," he says. "I love my Druidry as much as I love my Libertarianism. I describe myself as an existentialist libertarian Druid. If I can’t find an answer from one philosophy, I go to another. Anything that’s indefinable, I go to Druidry."

Copeland says Druidry is a Celtic philosophy of magic, similar to the more popular Wicca. It’s a circle of logic and spirituality based on the ideal of service to others—like The Lion King minus the cheesy soundtrack. One of the central tenets of Druidry is that no one should have authority over anyone but himself or herself—a point Copeland illustrates with a reference to The Lord of the Rings, noting that the ring Frodo carries has "so much power that, even if you did good things with it, it would pervert, subvert and seduce you."

"That is the basis of all Celtic philosophy: that absolute power corrupts absolutely."

That idea led Copeland to the steadfastly secular Libertarian Party. Around 1980, Copeland was working with Timothy Leary’s Brotherhood of Eternal Love to spread the gospel of LSD and enlightenment when he got busted. Fortunately for him, he says, he was screwing the narcotics agent. Not wanting to deal with that, he says, the cops charged him only with low-level possession.

"I was using LSD to be spiritually enlightened," he says. "I was one of those peyote people who for thousands of years had been using hallucinogens to connect to the spiritual world. Who were the cops to tell me I couldn’t?"

Soon after, he began running the Orange County branch of NORML, the marijuana-legalization folks, and soon after that, he fell in with the anti-prohibitionist Libertarians. In 1992, he ran for Congress against Dana Rohrabacher—himself a former Libertarian—and got killed, garnering just 7.7 percent of the vote. In ’96, he ran for county supervisor, beating the Democrat in the race—which tells you something about the state of the Democratic Party in Orange County. He has worked in computers and recently founded his own company, NextCure, which will distribute information on drugs under FDA review.

None of this really gives him a leg up in the gubernatorial race against überbland rivals Davis and Simon, but Copeland would rather run as he is than tailor his biography and message for the mainstream.

"The problem with most politicians is that they’re pretending to be something they’re not," he says. "They’re trying to be something outside their natures. They think people won’t like them if they’re different. But people like to go to a taco stand and try different tacos. I’m not stupid; when I put the Druid thing in, I knew it would be a hook. If I hadn’t done it, I wouldn’t be talking to you right now."

I don't think I need to read much more. I read both some of Ray Bradford's articles in 2000 and Harry Browne's response, after the 2000 campaign. (I'm on his his LibertyWire email service.)

When I read some of Ray Bradford's articles, I admired Ray Bradford for digging out important issues WITHIN THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY. When I read Harry Browne's response, I was surprised that he claimed that Bradford misrepresented some key points.

But once again, this is internal to the Libertarian Party. It simply shows that people high up in the Libertarian Party...as people high up in ANY party...want power, and cut corners to get it.

Unfortunately, by their very definition political parties seek to try to shape as well as seduce their prospective constituencies. If a political party would be a serious party it could not be otherwise. And when their efforts include - justly so, it says here - skewering such corruption among the larger and more well established (entrenched?) parties, it bodes extremely ill if and when such corruption not only exists but is waved away as cavalierly as Mr. Browne seems to have done. Especially in light of the very real point that Mr. Browne's two candidacies showed falling, rather than ascending, vote and registration numbers.

I say again: The party which so proudly proclaims itself the Party of Principle has no damn business sanctioning or abetting that kind of corruption. And you may rest very well assured that the Major Parties' sycophancies thrive only too well upon pouncing on any and every such indicator no matter how much more profoundly those indicators exist within their own parties.

I mean, the Damnocrats had their Clinton. The Republican'ts had their Nixon. Even so, they'll pounce on any smaller party whom they know to be zapping their inabilities to beat back encroaching Statism at the moment they smell a smaller party candidate who gives off even a small whiff of Clintonesque or Nixonian corruption. Always have. Always will. And it is awfully difficult to persuade Major Party sycophants to think twice about their parties' hubris, inertia, whatever you want to isolate as the cause of their abetting Statism, when your own party - which has railed often and rightly enough against political corruption - has only too recently had a candidate who is himself guilty of political corruption.

A FAR more important issue, to me, is what the Presidential candidates from the various parties would have done, if elected. There is simply NO doubt in my mind that Harry Browne would have fought bitterly for a SMALL federal government. He SAID he would veto every bill that came across his desk that wasn't within the bounds of the Constitution--which is basically EVERY bill that would come to him--and I believe him.

By no means do I expect a saint in the White House. But we don't quite need one; there is always an allowance for honest human error. Given that, I find it still very difficult to accept that a man who could not be trusted to play within the clearly enough drawn bounds of a comparatively small set of rules, or who may have converted a party's national committee and apparatus into his personal piggy bank, could yet be trusted to behave as he promises to behave in major elected office. We've seen it only too readily among the Major Party candidates (I did mention Clinton and Nixon above), indeed that was a significant enough part of what it was that drove us away from the Major Parties. An honest mistake is one thing but an apparently systematic pattern of corruption is something else entirely.

I want a SMALL federal government. Harry Browne was WITHOUT QUESTION the candidate who would have fought hardest for a small federal government. That's why, in my opinion, he was without question the best candidate in 2000.

I want a small federal government - and the smaller the better. I voted for Mr. Browne myself; indeed, as I noted above, I spent a goodly amount of time around here (and elsewhere) arguing the libertarian position viz that election, and getting anything from mildly needled to venomously slandered for my trouble.

But I was entirely unaware, as I cast my vote for Mr. Browne, of the matters I enunciated above (I did not learn about them until about two or three months following the election). Had I been aware of them, I would probably not have voted for him.

Then for whom, one might ask fairly enough, would I have voted? My answer: Considering the available remaining choices, none of whom were to my taste, I would likely have cast a vote on behalf of some titan of old whom I knew to believe in freedom, in individual rights and sovereignty, and in properly construed government as opposed to the improperly consecrated State, and on the grounds once enunciated by Albert Jay Nock: that if we can't have a live man who amounts to anything, by all means let us have a first class corpse.

I could sooner have lived with that vote than with the votes otherwise available to me. And I would have slept the sleep of the just man who knew his hand was nowhere near to sharing the responsibility for the election and coronation of the mountebank (I would remind any eavesdroppers that no one is responsible for any man or woman's election except his or her own ability to persuade the right amount of voters to cast accordingly; and, those who actually cast the votes for said man or woman), whichever one it might have been, who just so happened to win the plurality.

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