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Interesting, but factually sloppy at best. Here's the response I was going to post, but found out they're no longer accepting responses to that entry:
The author clearly failed to do much research for this article, simply
assuming Stuart Alexander was a libertarian because he owned guns and
thought the government was out to get him. As a Libertarian from San
Leandro, I can confirm that Stuart Alexander was never a Libertarian. I
should know, since I maintain the database for the East Bay Libertarians,
and have voter registration records going back to the days long before he
ran for Mayor. I even met Alexander a few times because he regularly
invited elementary school classes to tour his sausage factory, and I
chaperoned two such field trips when my children were in the first grade.
He was indeed a card carrying, rock solid Republican. He wouldn't have
joined the Libertarian Party if I'd offered to pay him to do so.
He became somewhat unstable when he felt that the meat inspectors were
harrassing him, and he began putting up some bizarre signs in the
neighborhood around the Linguisa Factory, warning the public that the USDA
were watching his every move and were intent on shutting him down, despite
the fact that no one had ever become sick as a result of his family's
products. He wrote numerous letters to the local newspaper to tell the
public his side of the story, warning citizens that the USDA wasn't
interested in protecting their health, only in shutting down his business.
This went on for several months before the murders. The USDA inspectors
were really just citing him for poor recordkeeping. He contended that he
made linguisa following the same traditions that had been used in his family
for generations, and the meat inspectors were forcing him to change the way
he made sausage. In fact, the harshest violation that I ever remember being
given to him was that he failed to maintain consistent temperature records
for his refrigerators.
Of course, he was paranoid and went nuts when the business began to fail,
and he blamed many of his problems on the government. But that does not in
any way make him a Libertarian (or a libertarian). Clarke simply uses this
example for an ad hominem justification to bolster his already weak
argument. For someone who fancies himself a witty wordsmith with a solid
background for his attack on libertarians, Clarke strikes me as a fairly
lazy and careless critic.
Terry Floyd