Questions for the Candidates for Chair and Vice-Chair

Activists List
1

To the LPSF Chair and Vice-Chair candidates:
1. Do you agree an essential position differentiating us from SF
Republicans, Democrats, and Greens is we are anti-war, when
the war violates the rights of taxpayers forced to fund it (whether
they support it or not), those soldiers coerced to fight it, and the
innocents injured or killed in the attacked country?
Please elaborate.

2. Do you support having an activity as part of every monthly meeting,
e.g., writing letters to the editor, calling elected representatives,
calling registered libertarians, etc.? Please elaborate.

3. How do you feel about LPSF members supporting the Ron
Paul candidacy as a vehicle for spreading libertarian ideas?

4. Would you agree it's not our direct purpose to improve
the lives of individuals, but rather to teach them the freedom
philosophy which, when adhered to, would have the
consequence (we believe) of improving their lives?

5. What new ideas or strategies do you have for improving
the LPSF's impact in educating SF residents of the benefits,
morality, and beauty of liberty? Please elaborate.

I look forward to your responses.

Best, Michael

2

Hi, Michael. My answers from my campaign for Chair.

DrEdelstein@ThreeMinuteTherapy.com wrote:

To the LPSF Chair and Vice-Chair candidates:
1. Do you agree an essential position differentiating us from SF
Republicans, Democrats, and Greens is we are anti-war, when
the war violates the rights of taxpayers forced to fund it (whether
they support it or not), those soldiers coerced to fight it, and the
innocents injured or killed in the attacked country?
Please elaborate.

Yes. The only US war that doesn't violate the rights of US taxpayers is
one in response to an attack on US territory. And this response must
also be against only those who helped the attack happen. To be
specific, because the Taliban provided considerable support to Bin Laden
both before and after the 9/11 attack, the operation to remove the
Taliban from power was justified. However, as you may remember, the
sign I carried in the protests prior to the invasion of Iraq said simply
"Iraq didn't attack us. We have no right to attack Iraq." (I think we
have a photo of that somewhere.)

2. Do you support having an activity as part of every monthly meeting,
e.g., writing letters to the editor, calling elected representatives,
calling registered libertarians, etc.? Please elaborate.

As needed, yes. But I've been a part of organizations that insisted on
creating "busy work" for regular meetings, so they wouldn't do things
like outsourcing direct mail production and postage to a company like
NetPost (the USPS contractor), even though doing the work themselves
took longer and cost more than outsourcing. But I would of course
support targeted projects during meetings with "light" agendas otherwise.

3. How do you feel about LPSF members supporting the Ron
Paul candidacy as a vehicle for spreading libertarian ideas?

I dispute the assumption inherent in the question. I see absolutely
nothing libertarian about these ideas:

http://www.tnr.com/downloads/solicitation.pdf

I strongly suggest that LPSF members find a Libertarian Party candidate
and give him or her their support. I do not wish to see any further
damage to the "Libertarian" brand name due to association with
intolerant views that do not in any way represent our Party. I've been
trying to defend the Libertarian name from such associations, most
notably in a recent article in the Advocate magazine:

4. Would you agree it's not our direct purpose to improve
the lives of individuals, but rather to teach them the freedom
philosophy which, when adhered to, would have the
consequence (we believe) of improving their lives?

We simply MUST do both. The second part comes naturally to
Libertarians, but we've got to get better at the first part. On the
upside, the vast majority of people are quite rational and objectivist
when they are allowed to compare tangible results (less so, when only
allowed to compare rhetoric and promises). They really do vote based on
what's best for their own pocketbook. If they're no better off today
than they were four (or two or six) years ago, or are even worse off,
then they will invariably vote for new leadership. On the downside,
when you're not an incumbent, but rather a challenger (as Libertarians
almost always are), you have no tangible results to sell to the voters.
And if the race is three-way, even when they're tired of the incumbent,
it's easy to lose to the other major party competitor, because voters
are far less rational when comparing rhetoric and promises from candidates.

5. What new ideas or strategies do you have for improving
the LPSF's impact in educating SF residents of the benefits,
morality, and beauty of liberty? Please elaborate.

I think that we do best when we have a big local issue we can associate
ourselves with. For example, I'd like to see the LPSF take the lead in
taking another crack at passing a new condo conversion law similar to
Prop R (a.k.a. H.O.P.E.) from several years ago. Housing constraint is
a problem that won't soon go away in San Francisco, and it's an issue
where most San Franciscans disagree with the Supervisors that "rental
stock" must only be preserved by disallowing condo conversion and not
created via new construction. They instead agree with us that the best
way to make homeownership more affordable in San Francisco is to break
the choke-hold that City Hall keeps on new construction and condo
conversion.

3

To the LPSF Chair and Vice-Chair candidates:
1. Do you agree an essential position differentiating us from SF
Republicans, Democrats, and Greens is we are anti-war, when
the war violates the rights of taxpayers forced to fund it (whether
they support it or not), those soldiers coerced to fight it, and the
innocents injured or killed in the attacked country?
Please elaborate.

I think that especially in San Francisco, emphasizing the issue of war is
a great strategy to attract people to the party, since we have a strong
and consistent position that recent history has proved to be the correct
one. Like Rob, I did support the operation in Afghanistan, though I
disagree with the specific strategies the US Government used.

2. Do you support having an activity as part of every monthly meeting,
e.g., writing letters to the editor, calling elected representatives,
calling registered libertarians, etc.? Please elaborate.

I think that it is very important to actually go and DO things rather than
sit and talk for 2 hours every month, though I would hesitate to say I
think such an activity should occur at EVERY single meeting, regardless of
what is on the agenda at said meeting. Whenever the schedule would
accommodate activities, I think they should be included.

3. How do you feel about LPSF members supporting the Ron
Paul candidacy as a vehicle for spreading libertarian ideas?

I think the Ron Paul candidacy is a very good vehicle to attract members
to the LPSF (after the primary season is over), so I think that being
active in the campaign is a very effective outreach tool, in the same way
as being active in other groups like NORML, the SFLNC, taxpayers rights
groups, small business groups, etc., is.

4. Would you agree it's not our direct purpose to improve
the lives of individuals, but rather to teach them the freedom
philosophy which, when adhered to, would have the
consequence (we believe) of improving their lives?

I think that both are important, and overemphasizing one to the exclusion
of the other runs the risk of alienating a particular segment of the
electorate.

5. What new ideas or strategies do you have for improving
the LPSF's impact in educating SF residents of the benefits,
morality, and beauty of liberty? Please elaborate.

I think there is a lot of work we need to do to to expand our outreach to
like-minded groups and individuals. Probably some of the best outreach
work we've done since I've lived here has been Starchild's participation
in groups for sex workers rights and drug legalization. This is great,
but everyone should be able to find some interest group they can identify
with that would be receptive to a libertarian message. Off the top of my
head, small business groups seem to be a great opportunity for outreach,
since no group is more burdened by the insanity of San Francisco
regulations and bureaucracy.

We also need to ask a question: With so many prominent libertarians who
live in the area, why are so few active in the Party? In the Bay Area we
have the Pacific Research Institute, the Hoover Institute, the leadership
of antiwar.com, the Independent Institute, as well as prominent (and very
wealthy) libertarians like Peter Thiel and Jon Gilmore, yet we seem to do
very little networking with these organizations and individuals. If we
can't already get people who are pretty much 100% of the way there
ideologically to be involved, then we doing something wrong. We need to
figure out why these people feel that the LPSF (and the LP in general) is
not a useful allocation of their limited time.

Jeremy

4

Dear Rob,

I appreciate your prompt response and thoughtful answers! Thanks.

Best, Michael