TJ,
Thanks for your appreciation. Some responses follow...
Starchild,
I applaud this fine essay my friend. I too believe we need to stop this "she/he IS or she/he IS NOT libertarian" talk and define it more as "they have many or have few libertarian principled ideas" etc....
We similarly can say this when defending against the wasted vote fallacy. I often tell people, it's not that I hate Mitt Romney or Alan Keyes, or even John "McINSANE", I guess I may "hate" Hillary, but I am rather fond of alot of things about Obama or Richardson, or Edwards... funny how no one "wasted" their vote in the primaries on Mitt, Edwards, Clinton, Obama, McCain, or Huckabee, but they did "waste" their vote on Ron Paul, Mike Gravel, Fred Thompson or Bill Richardson.
It's just that Bob Barr, Mike Gravel, Wayne Root and Mary Ruwart have more in common with my political ideologies personally and that's why I will support one of them for president vs. someone else from the D or R parties. I supported Ron Paul much the same way. He was not as "libertarian" on many issues as I would have hoped, but compared to any other Republican candidate, it was a no-brainer.
Similarly, John Inks may not be a radical L. Neil Smith "libertarian", but compared to the candidates against him for Mountain View City Council (plus his being a registered libertarian helps), I will support him and vote for him over the other choices.
But as for my vote and my support I will vote for the more "libertarian" choice, with another factor invovled which you will hopefully read below.
I agree with everything you say up until this point, except maybe for supporting Barr or Root! If one of them (heaven forbid) gets the nomination, I might have to write in Ron Paul or something.
I believe that as long as our platform discusses non-initiation of force as it's backbone, and has many of our issues addressed, I don't see how Wayne Allen Root, Bob Barr or Mike Gravel could destroy our party.
I do. I believe they could help lead to its destruction by any or all of the following means:
(1) Turning off voters, and driving away good activists, who expect the LP to value integrity and adherence to libertarian positions and principles more than winning.
(2) (In the case of Barr and Root) Accelerating the LP's trend toward the political right by drawing more people with conservative values on board and simultaneously alienating left-leaning Libertarians until the LP becomes a right-wing party.
(3) Attracting even more opportunistic candidates or takeover bids down the road by those who see how far Libertarians are willing to compromise for a chance at winning. Is it sheer coincidence that we have a crop of presidential candidates with such little grounding in libertarian ideas in 2008, two years after our platform was gutted in Portland?
I know you probably disagree with me here or didn't intend for the following to be related to your writing but I feel I should add that I believe we have to take into account political experience in all our candidates, whether they run for President or Congress, state assembly or city council. As we are a political party, we should be stressing quality of candidates vs. quantity as we should have as our goal electing people to office first and foremost and part of the qualities I look for is experience.
You're right, I do disagree. Having more experience in politics, on the whole, seems to make politicians *worse* officeholders, not better ones! So why on earth should Libertarians seek experience in our candidates and officeholders when it is first-term officeholders who tend to be the most libertarian? (I know I've seen a study or something done on the spending habits of newly elected versus experienced politicians, don't make me go find it!)
Yes, they should be quite "libertarian" but I don't need a litmus test to know we need someone who has experience to A. run a successful campaign and B. get our message out and C. know what the hell to do in case they actually get elected, so as not to hurt our parties chances to re-elect them or elect more Libertarians to take their places.
At the presidential level, the chances of our candidate winning are so slight that I am more focused on how the hopefuls will represent us on the campaign trail than what they'd do if elected. A candidate's ability to articulate our message, and who he or she is as a person, are the key things as far as I'm concerned.
If campaign experience does matter to you, I hope that at least rules out Root, who has apparently never held or run for office before!
Politics, outside of a Libertarian Party convention hall, work quite different than many in those halls may understand "politcs" to work. Many compromises have to be reached to get what you want. It's how politics has been done since the first representative government was started and I tend to think it is how politics will be done until the last one is ended. I really want us as a party to really begin to work to elect people to office and fight bad ballot proposals, the things most other political parties do, and stress less over labels, platforms, bylaws and libertarian theories/debate clubs.
If the "reform" faction were less bent on distancing our party from its ideology, there would be less internal debate! Radicals, not seeing the foundation of the party under assault, would be more comfortable spending more time on things like electing candidates and fighting bad ballot proposals.
What's always kinda weird to me is that the Libertarians who tend to stress compromise as an important value in politics do not seem any more prone to compromise on these internal party disputes than do those of us like myself who tend to see political compromise as a slippery slope to the abandonment of what the LP stands for! The Dallas Accord was a compromise. Will you join with me in supporting a renewal of this agreement between minarchists and anarchists?
This is where many an anarchist will part their ways as they feel we need to end government, no debate, no compromise. That is why I do wonder if the LP is the right place for an anarchist or if the LP is the right place for a non-anarchist. Should anarchists not even take part in political parties in the first place. Was the Dallas Accord a mistake, was it fair to tell anarchists they can't participate in a political party, no matter how hypocritical it may seem? I don't think so, and I think it was fair.
It sounds like you may be confused about the Dallas Accord. It was not about telling anarchists they couldn't participate in the LP! As I understand it (not having been there myself), it was a compromise between those Libertarians who believed in a limited government and those who believed in no government at all, to have the party remain neutral on the question.
As both sides can be better off if we stress "less" government over "no" government. Once anarchists have helped minarchists get less-government, anarchists can then continue to run for office but oppose the "minarchists" in office and work for no government, and after an experiment of less government, which very few of us in this country have ever experienced, many minarchists may change their tune and be more accepting of "no" government. Wow, was that a HUGE digression or what?
I don't think it was a digression. But successful political reforms would result in limited government before we reached anarchy, proponents of limited government are guaranteed that the anarchists are going where they want to go, while the anarchists do not have the same guarantee.if we hold as our party's end goal "a world of liberty; a world in which all individuals are sovereign over their own lives and no one is forced to sacrifice his or her values for the benefit of others," as it says in the Preamble to our platform, then anyone who wants to to see society move in that direction, even if only a little way, can join and support the LP. Since, At any point when all the freedom has been secured that a person wishes to see in society, he or she can quite the LP and work against the anarchists who are still seeking to go the rest of the way toward a world without governments. After an experiment of less government, if it seems to be working, many anarchists may change their tune and be accepting of "limited" government. That seems as likely as the possibility you suggest above, doesn't it?
So, in closing, I don't litmus test anyone. I take into account their political experience as well as their issues to find the "more perfect" choice for my ideology.
I look at political experience for clues about what a candidate has said, done, and stood for in the past. If their experience reveals a record of advancing the cause of liberty, then I consider it a positive.
Someone who has 100 percent libertarian views and schooled in the "Rothbardian way", but never held a job longer than 3 months, lives in their parents basement apartment and never got elected to anything will hold less weight with me than some successful lawyer or businessperson who has held or came very close to holding an appointed or elected office and understands why the laws were written in the first place and how best to change or eliminate them. I welcome comments on my views stated above.
TJ, I'd much rather have you in the Oval Office, fresh off your hotel security guard job and never having held political office before, than Dick Cheney with a political resume the length of a small book. My life experience tells me that career experience is overrated. Wisdom (being able to perceive the right thing to do) and integrity (doing it) are more important leadership qualities than experience (having done something significant before that more often than not is a bad precedent).
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))