Jim Rosica
Augustus Sol Invictus, the Libertarian candidate for the U.S. Senate from Florida, participated in an “Ask Me Anything” session Thursday night on the Reddit news and social networking website.
The 32-year-old Invictus recently made headlines when he told the Associated Press he was a pagan who once killed and drank a goat’s blood.
But he is also a working lawyer licensed to practice in four states and federal court. He is running for the seat being vacated by Republican Marco Rubio, now seeking the GOP nomination for president in the 2016 election.
Among his top answers were that current members of Congress were “cowards … who sell themselves to special interests.”
“This is a time for revolutionaries, not backscratchers,” he said. If elected, he will be “kicking asses all up and down the aisles.”
Invictus (his full name means “majestic unconquered sun” in Latin) also challenged former Libertarian Party of Florida chairman Adrian Wyllie, whom he said wrongly maligned him. Wyllie called Invictus a “fascist” who was “promoting a second civil war.”
“… Wyllie abhorred my religion and disagreed with the direction I wanted to take the Libertarian Party,” Invictus said. “Third parties must adopt radical stances to pressure the major parties into giving up ground.
“Wyllie turned this disagreement into a personal matter and deliberately spun my defense of controversial clients into a political endorsement of them,” he added. “If neo-Nazis were to vote for me assuming that I was going to enact racist policies, they would be sorely disappointed.”
A short biographical statement was on top of the thread: “… My story recently went viral, and I have received a surprising outpouring of support, especially from Pagans and metalheads. I am an attorney who has represented controversial clients in court, including a notorious murder trial and a case involving the American Front. I am a father of four, a scholar, and a lover of symphonies & tattooed women.”
He also responded to the story about the goat, which he had said he sacrificed as a thanksgiving ritual.
“I think the media has done a wonderful job of demonizing Pagans in a literal witch hunt because of my ritual,” Invictus said. “Had they done even the least bit of research, they would have discovered that Pagans are not slaughtering goats at record speed. They might rather have pointed out the meat industry, which does slaughter chickens and cows and all other manner of mammals at millions per year as sacrifices for a tasty meal.”
Other answers sounded textbook Libertarian: “I hope to work toward the repeal of as many superfluous laws as possible, and I hope to abolish as many superfluous Government agencies and departments as possible,” including the Internal Revenue Service, he said.
“I also hope to work toward ending the War on Drugs and eliminating the rampant violence we see enacted by the police against our own people.”
On lighter topics, Invictus also said he enjoyed “grindcore, jazz, industrial (music and) Wagner operas,” but he strongly dislikes pudding.
He also made another admission: “Technology is my weak point. I had to learn how to use Reddit just for this AMA.”
The entire AMA can be read here.
