Liberty Group

The Liberty Group (Kiravic: Rán Violirsk) is a caucus in the Kiravian Stanora comprised of politicians espousing civil libertarian, libertarian-conservative, and strict fiscal conservative views. It has historically been a major political force, and along with the Conservative-Reformists served as the leading opposition to the Kirosocialist régime until the emergence of the Shaftonist-Republican Alliance. The caucus and its member parties draw on a long Kiravian tradition of limited government, civil society promotion, rugged individualism, and distrust of state power, and recieve support from a broad variety of voters.

Platform
While the Liberty Group is often cast as a party by the Western media, most Liberty Group politicians and supporters differ philosophically from Western right-libertarians in key aspects. Most prominently, while the Liberty Group supports a capitalist market economy as the system most conducive to human liberty, caucus Chairman Kírin Vendikur has described the LG platform as focusing on "Free men more so than free markets". It rejects Western laissez-faire policies and anarcho-capitalism as materialistic and does not support a free market as an end in itself. Furthermore, the Liberty Group tends to take conservative positions on matters such as bioëthics in line with most of Kiravian society.

The Liberty Group is the most strongly antifederalist and decentralist of the major caucuss, seeking to curtail the power of the federal government and maximise the fiscal and political autonomy of the states. The caucus's manifesto calls for the abolition of "Federal grants and programs that serve to keep the states in line more than they serve the Kiravian people."

Many LG members advocate for a deprofessionalisation of government, on both the federal and state levels, and regularly introduce bills to reduce and restrict Federal salaries, place tighter regulations on campaign finance, and establish term limits for Federal officials. As most LG Delegates were independents and many hail from states where political parties are banned, the Liberty Group often promotes measures to reduce the power of parties and caucus.

Voter Base
The strongest base of support for the Liberty Group comes from rural voters living in the forest and mountain regions of Great Kirav (especially the Western Highlands), as well as in the more remote overseas colonies. According to the political science journal Review of Politics, Liberty Group candidates do best "where people are most independent and self-reliant as a result of geography, and least-likely to benefit from government programs." However, there are nonetheless significant numbers of votes cast for the Liberty Group in lowland agricultural areas, as well as in micropolitan areas. In suburban and exurban settlements, candidates from LG-affiliated parties are often very successful on the local level, campaigning on platforms to lower taxes and abolish intrusive local ordinances.

Ethnically-speaking, Ĥeldican Coscivians, Celts, Kaskem, Saskem, Dark Coscivians, and (to a lesser extent) Sëorans and North Elutes are the most likely ethnic groups to vote for the party, and Ĥeldicans are disproportionately represented among LG politicians. Liberty Group-affiliated parties are also popular among Coscivian groups who migrated to Kiravia fleeing totalitarian régimes in Democratic Bodwara and Brystolville. Kiro-Kyians, who were expelled from Logan & Ky for their support of the Rising Tide libertarian separatist movement in that country, are a small but loyal ethnic constituency for the Liberty Group in Cascada and Lataskia.

Liberty Group voters fall heavily on the analogue side of Kiravia's sharp digital divide On average, Liberty Group voters have the lowest rate of internet access and the second-lowest rate of cellular phone ownership of all the Stanora caucus (behind the Agrarians).