LP founder David Nolan last year gave the following speech
to the Ohio LP convention (transcribed by Dan Sullivan):
http://www.ernesthancock.com/archive/media/2006-06-18-bonus.mp3
DAVID NOLAN: Our membership is now at 17 or 18,000, a little
under half of what it was at the peak. Our revenues are now, projected
for this year, are probably going to be barely a million dollars if
current trends continue as I've been told, as opposed to 3 million
dollars in 2000.
This is a party that's taken some severe hits. I'm going to try to explore
some of the reasons why, and what I think we can do about it.
So moving on to the next point on my agenda, I have here a reprint of
an article called "The Case for a Libertarian Political Party." Have any
of you ever seen this? Has anyone ever actually read...? Robert Butler.
One person! You're the only one? Gentlemen I was talking to in the
back. You've seen it? OK, so two people out of 50-60 in the room?
This is the article that I wrote that appeared in the Individualist
magazine in the July-August 1971 issue. It was in fact written in April
or May of that year, and since the Individualist, like a lot of small,
struggling new publications of that year perennially came out late, it
probably actually appeared in September or October, which turned out
to be very auspicious timing. Think about it. What happened in
August of 1971?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Wage and price controls.
DAVID NOLAN: Wage and price controls! We had Richard Nixon
going on television, saying we're demonetizing the dollar, and we're
imposing wage and price controls -- the first time that was done
during peacetime. Yes we were at war, but it was an undeclared war,
and he had no real authority to do that.
This outraged a lot of people, a lot of free-market supporters who had
erroneously believed that the Republican party was the party of laissez
faire capitalism, free markets, low taxes, private property, etc. So this
article appeared at a very auspicious time, and at the end there's a little
blurb saying "If you'd like to help us start a libertarian party write to
this address etc., etc., and that is the thing that lifted us off the ground.
Now the reason I reprinted this article is I'd like to read about three or
four minutes of excerpts from the closing portion of the article. I'm
not going to read the whole article 'cause we don't have the time and
you'd find it very very boring. But I'm going to read some of the
things, the closing section that I wrote because I think it offers some
insight as to why we actually have a Libertarian Party -- something
that perhaps has been lost sight of in the intervening 35 years. I'm
going to take off my glasses because like all people over the age of 50
I have to put on and take off glasses. You can relate to that, Gary.
All right, this is from the article "The Case for a Libertarian Political
Party," published in 1971.
The time has come for us to form our own party. We have the
numbers to mount a meaningful effort nationwide. We have both a
desire and a need to achieve visible results. And, despite the fact
that we certainly aren't going to elect one of ours as President of
the United States, at least not in 1972, there are a number of
advantages to be gained by such action.
First, and perhaps most important, we will be able to get a great
deal more news coverage for ourselves and our ideas than we have
ever gotten before. Public interest in political issues and
philosophies is always at an all-time high during presidential
election years, and the media people are actively seeking news in
this area.
As a direct consequence of this fact, we will probably reach and
hopefully convert, far more people than we usually do. Hopefully,
some of these people will turn out to support our candidates, and
will thus enable us to locate hitherto unlocatable libertarians, or at
least sympathizers.
Third, we will be able to get some idea of how much support we
really do have, at least in potential form, around the country.
Fourth, a libertarian political party will provide a continuing focal
point for libertarian activity -- something that one-shot projects do
not provide.
Fifth, we will be able to hasten the already emerging coalition
between the libertarian left and the libertarian right. (I put those
words in quotes.)
At the moment, the former group is supporting people like Eugene
McCarthy, while the latter is supporting people like Barry
Goldwater.
A true libertarian party could draw support from both such leftist
groups as the Institute for the Study of Non-Violence and the
American Civil Liberties Union, and from rightist groups like the
John Birch Society and the Liberty Amendment Committee.
This would increase the political impact of the libertarian
movement as leftist and rightist libertarians usually wind up voting
so as to cancel each other out, when they vote at all.
Furthermore, libertarian votes now get lumped in with liberal and
conservative votes, whereas the votes received by a libertarian
party would not be hidden in this manner.
A sixth point in favor of establishing a libertarian party is that by
its mere existence it would put some pressure on the other parties
to take a more libertarian stand.
And finally, there's always the possibility that we might actually
get some libertarians elected.
I think all of that is pretty much still valid. The point I would like to
make, and the reason I read this, is you will note that the order of
arguments is, first and foremost, outreach, communication, education
and only as the seventh and final reason listed, "and we might actually
get some libertarians elected," meaning that was never intended as our
primary reason for existence.
The whole idea of forming a libertarian party was always that it would
be an effective way to reach people, locate people, educate people,
motivate people, organize people, and become a significant voting
block. And the idea that we would elect people was, that will be nice
if it happens, we might actually do it, but it was certainly not the top
of the list, in fact, it was the last thing on the list, and it was a one-
sentence afterthought.
That leads me to a little story. This is not a true story. This is a fable,
or a parable, whatever you might call it. And some of you probably
heard it before. The story goes as follows:
Once upon a time there was a man who lived in a kingdom ruled by a
despotic king, and he was sentenced to death for some crime -- It
doesn't really matter what -- and he had an idea.
He went to the king and he said, "Your majesty I'd like to make a
proposal to you. If you give me a year, stay my execution for a year, I
will teach your horse to fly."
The king looked at him, and thought about it, and thought, "A flying
horse! That'd be kind of cool."
And he said, "OK, you have a year. If you teach my horse to fly I will
set you free, and if you do not, you will be executed."
And the man said, "Thank you, your majesty" and he left the king's
royal chamber.
And a friend of this came up to him and said,
"What are you doing? You can't teach the king's horse to fly. Why did
you do that?"
And he said, "Well, here's my reasoning. There are four things that
can happen in the next year. First, the king might die. Second, I might
die, anyhow, of natural causes. Third, The horse might die, and
finally, I might actually be able to teach the king's horse to fly."
(laughter and applause)
I don't know how the story turns out. It's only a myth after all. I
suspect that in fact the man was not able to teach the king's horse to
fly.
But I told that little story because it illustrates a point. And the point is
that hope springs eternal. You know, human beings are by nature
mostly optimists. They look at what could be and they say, "We could
do that, we could teach the horse to fly." People like to have a positive
outlook. They like to believe they can accomplish things that in fact
they may not be able to accomplish, but having a positive outlook is
good and it gives them the motivation to go forward and at least give
it a good try.
Unfortunately, we have a phenomenon that exists, not only with
libertarians, who by and large fall into the category of human beings,
a phenomenon called "the triumph of hope over experience." You all
know what that is?
There are libertarians who, for years, for the last, forever, would
continue to support Republican candidates, and they do it because
they figure, when this guy gets elected, he says libertarian-sounding
things, and when he gets elected, he'll be pretty libertarian.
What does experience show? With the rare exceptions like Ron Paul,
when Republicans get elected, they aren't libertarian. But every year,
there are certain libertarians who to out and support Republican
candidates because they hope, contrary to experience, that will
advance the cause of liberty.
On the flip side, we've got people in the libertarian party who
continue to support candidates who say, "Support me. This year is
different. I can win, and when I do, unlike those nasty [garbled]
Republicans, I actually will stand up for liberty and move things in an
appropriate direction."
The problem here is that the experience is that the great majority of
the time, people don't get elected.
Certainly we have elected libertarians at the level of city councils, and
water boards, and parks commissions, and numerous, we have
hundreds of elected libertarians, but with rare, rare exceptions they're
all at a fairly low-level office in non-partisan races. And yet the
triumph of hope over experience continues to cause candidates to run
saying they can win and libertarians to believe that they can win.
This is, I will submit, the equivalent of every year saying, "This is the
year we're going to teach the horse to fly."
Well, how many times, how many horses do we have to sacrifice
before we come to the conclusion that maybe this isn't the smartest
strategy? Maybe we're doing something wrong?
This is our very own Mission Impossible for the most part.
Incidentally, I saw the new movie with Tom Cruise a few days ago; it
was a preview, and if you like action movies, and you like Tom
Cruise, it's fun. It's not very plausible, but as you might guess, I don't
think I'm giving away big surprise here, Tom and his buddies save the
day, ok?
Well, unfortunately we don't have Tom and his buddies to rush in and
save the day for us. An impossible mission is probably going to
continue for the forseeable future, to be an impossible mission. Its
impossibility or extreme difficulty not withstanding, the Libertarian
National Committee some years ago, as far as I can determine, around
1992, adopted the following resolution. They came up with the
statement as follows:
The mission of the Libertarian Party is to move public policy in a
libertarian direction by electing libertarians to public office.
It appears in small print in the lower gray box on page two of the LP
News every month. It has for many years, and as far as I can
determine it was adopted in 1992 or 1993.
Well, that's very nice, except that if you state that your mission is to
teach the horse to fly, and year after year you don't teach the horse to
fly, people become disillusioned, burned out, they feel that they've
been tricked or misled or whatever. They go, "Well, you know, I
joined this party, and this is its mission statement, I gave it my best
for a year or two or three years, and it's not going to happen, and this
isn't what I want to do." And so they go away.
Yet we continue to promulgate the idea through our national party's
communications, that that is our primary mission.
Consider for a moment the following:
We have a national, toll free, 800 number. How many people can tell
me, I bet at least some of the people in this room can tell me what that
number is, the gentleman in the back.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: 1-800 ELECT US.
1-800 ELECT US. That is a direct outgrowth of the concept that our
mission is to elect libertarians to public office, but, I will submit, is
content-free advertising. It tells people nothing of interest or value. It
tells the public who are watching us on television or see a bumper
sticker -- it doesn't give them any reason to vote libertarian. Why
didn't we choose 1-800 LIBERTY, or 1-800 FREEDOM, or 1 800 NO
TAXES, or something that actually communicates what we're all
about?
1-800 ELECT US is a politically neutral and meaningless statement.
A Republican can use it, a Democrat, a Socialist, a Green, anybody
could use the number. Any party could have the number, 1-800
ELECT US. It tells people precisely nothing about our party, what it
stands for, or why they should be motivated to call the number. I
suppose it could be worse. they could have gone with 1-800 BITE
ME. (laughter) Maybe that might get more calls, might be more
interesting.
But 1-800 ELECT US really doesn't communicate anything.
But it's an example of the kind of strategy or tactic or advertising
slogan that you come up with if you start from the premise that our
primary mission is to elect libertarians to public office. If that's our
primary mission and you accept that notion, then 1-800 ELECT US
makes a certain amount of sense. It ties in with our mission
statement.
Which causes me to suspect that, perhaps, maybe our mission
statement was wrong.
Did any of you see this little document that was mailed out about a
month ago, the annual report of the Libertarian Party? Most of you
probably received it in the mail. I don't know if opened that big 9x12
envelope it came in, but this is what you'll find inside along with a
reply card.
This document, in my humble opinion, is one of the worst documents
the Libertarian National Committee or the Libertarian National Office
has ever produced. It is appallingly bad. And I say that, not just
because of my observations, and I'll give them in a minute, but my
member, the member of the national committee from the state of
Arizona where I now live, told me a few days before I left, that this
annual report mailing produced exactly so far one-half as much as all
the ones in the past produced. It has been a failure. It has bombed.
People are not responding to it. And, you know, I don't blame them.
It's not a very good document. It doesn't motivate people. And I'd like
to read you a quote from here that is really almost mind-bogglingly
bad.
It says, it's talking about, the person who wrote he says, "By reducing
dues to zero dollars," which the National Committee did late last year,
"we can focus heavily on our core mission, electing libertarians, rather
than chasing membership numbers. In the past, significant weight was
placed on the LP's membership numbers," (Oh, my God!) "and the
headquarters staff dedicated their time and great expense pursuing
new members and renewing lapsed memberships."
What a terrible thing to do.
"You will notice we did not enclose a membership card. This may be
disappointing to some of you, but with the passing of zero dues, we
now have nearly 100,000 members!"
This is called "magical thinking." This is the way an eight-year-old
thinks. "Well, we have 17,000 members, but by changing a some
words on a piece of paper, all of a sudden we have 100,000 members,
because now all the people who were lapsed members become active
again!" (laughter) That is magical thinking, my friends. Its a
reflection of an unwillingness or an inability to grasp reality.
"The expense of providing membership cards to all of our active
members would place us in a financial crisis." Yeah, that 30 cents or
so per card would just push us over the edge.
"Zero dues allows us to reduce costs, and we can offset this benefit."
This is the logical conclusion of the strategy that you adopt if you say,
"Membership is not important. Our goal is to elect libertarians; our
primary goal is to elect libertarians to public office."
Well, folks, if you adopt as your mission statement, something you
don't do very well, your organization is not going to grow and
prosper. (laughter) It's kind of obvious.
The libertarian party over its 3 1/2 decades of existence has shown
that there are quite a few things that libertarians are quite good at in
the political arena. We're very good at stopping bond issues. The San
Diego Libertarian Party alone has prevented bond issues and tax
increases approaching ten billion dollars -- one county. (applause)
That's an achievement. We've worked to prevent bad losses. We've
heard to day about successful coalitions or successful actions working
with restaurant owners to fight smoking bans, working with small
businesses to support their interests. We're very good at single-issue
actions, working in coalition with people, whether it's gun owners, or
people who want to decriminalize marijuana, or at least reduce or
prevent further penalties for non-criminal, non-violent drug use.
We're good at that.
We're good at building coalitions, if we have enough of a network of
activists, were very good at issue-specific activities. But we're very
bad at electing people to public office, above the local level, and the
reason is very simple. We're very small. Instead of 75 or 80 members
per congressional district, we how have about 40.
And that's nowhere near enough to be a significant political force. As
Doug MacIntyre pointed out today, you've got something like 700
registered libertarians in Ohio, out of 7 million registered voters.
Were not taken seriously in many cases.
When we go into the political arena and say "We're going to run
candidates and we're going to win," people know; they can look at the
records as well as we do.
If we state that our primary goal is to elect people to public office, we
won't be taken seriously either by the public, or by the other political
parties, or even eventually by our own members. That's not to say that
we shouldn't run candidates. We should, but we should do so with a
realistic expectation of what those campaigns can accomplish.
For example, in the gubernatorial race you're facing here right now, a
realistic strategic goal would be to become the balance of power.
Deny Mr. Blackwell, who was so kind to you two years ago, deny him
the governors office. (applause) That's a very realistic goal. And it's a
laudable goal. It would make people sit up and take notice if the on
election night the score is 49, 46 and 5, 5%'s an achievable number,
and it could very easily be the balance of power, and it would cause
people to sit up and take notice, so that next time we said, "Hey we
can do that again," we'd be credible.
But if we run people and continually say, were going to elect someone
to a higher level partisan office -- we've had a few state legislators, a
couple in Alaska and a couple in New Hampshire, and a couple of
those at least were fusion candidates who were endorsed by the
Republican party. And above the state legislature level, as far as I
know, we've never had any candidate elected to any partisan office
above the level of state legislature. We've run something like a total of
over 10,000 candidates for various offices over the last 35 years. So
zero out of 10,000 isn't a particularly good batting average.
And the more we insist that our mission is to affect public policy by
electing libertarians to public office, the less successful we're going to
be. We're going to see that graph go down instead of up.
I will suggest that for the Libertarian Party to regain momentum, to
attract members, to became a viable, credible political force, we need
to change our mission as follows. I would say our mission statement
should be something along the following lines:
The mission of the Libertarian Party is to move public policy in a
libertarian direction by building a network of pro-freedom activists
who can effectively support positive policy changes and oppose
negative changes on an issue-by-issue basis.
We have done that. If we make that our mission, we'll be able to say,
"Hey, this is our mission and you're accomplishing it." And the
feeling of success of being able to point to something and say, "This
is our declared mission and look at the success we're having," is going
to be a much better motivator, I think, in terms of attracting new
members and getting old members to rejoin, than pretending we're
going to teach the to fly this year. "Hey, rejoin. This is the year we're
going to teach the horse to fly." No.
How about, to continue the analogy, "Hey, rejoin, and this year we'll
teach the horse to carry us across the valley and into the hills on the
other side by training him as a horse, who can run well, and who's a
fast runner, and so forth." Play to your strengths, not your weaknesses.
Play to reality, not to fantasy. Figure out what you do best, make that
your mission, and go forth and accomplish it.
And you know what? As I said at the end of the article, "The Case for
a Libertarian Party," You know, eventually we might just elect some
libertarians if we use that strategy.
I think it's kind of like the young married couple, or the middle-aged
married couple, that wants to have children, and they keep trying and
keep trying and keep trying, and it doesn't happen, and they "give up,"
and within a year it happens. That's been documented countless times
in medical history.
We don't know why it happens, but by not trying too hard, and by
doing the things that are necessary to build the network that will make
the longer-range goal possible, we can reverse that decline, we can
make that curve move upward. But the first step is we've got to accept
reality; we've got to reframe our mission statement. We have to build
our network. I love those Verizon ads. Have you all see those Verizon
ads where the young guy is out in the middle of a field in nowhere,
and this other sinister-looking guy with his two thug bodyguards
comes up and says, "I thought I told you to come alone."
And the young man says, "I did, I did."
"Who are all those people?"
"That's my network."
We need to build our network. When we have, 50, when we have a
hundred or 200 or 300 members per congressional district. When we
have 500 members per congressional district, we'd have 217,000
members -- about twelve times what we have now. If we had 500
members per congressional district on the average, which means we'd
have 1,000 or 2,000 in some and none elsewhere, we would be a force
to be reckoned with, because if we had 500 active people in a
congressional district, and the majority would turn out and for
campaigns and write checks, we'd have candi... our candidates, not
only would we have better candidates because we'd bee picking from
a pool of 500 rather than a pool of 40, but we'd have better candidates
and we'd have more resources and a better network of supporters who
could help them make contact with the small businesses or the gun
owners or the people who are threatened by eminent domain.
You can't have a political party without members. You have to build
the network. So my advice to you, to any libertarian, state libertarian
party at this time is -- build the network. Adopt a mission statement
that says, "Right now our priority is to build the network," and then go
out and actually do it because that's the only way we're going to
succeed.
Thank you all very much. (applause)