From: Phil Osborn (philosborn2001@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat May 24 2003 - 16:22:32 MDT
In reply to Lee Corbin "> Unfortunately, he followed
up this tour-de-force with
> the creation of the Libertarian Party, which was
> largely a disaster for the freedom movement, as I
and
> many others predicted at the time.
You did? Could you say more about why the Libertarian
Party was/is such a disaster? I did not realize that
this viewpoint existed.
From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Wed May 21 2003 - 02:07:50 MDT "
This topic has been extensively discussed here in the
past, altho not recently, I believe. A LOT of
"libertarians" in 1971, including Murray Rothbard
(founder of the modern anarcho-capitalist movement),
Robert LeFevre (pacifist libertarian anarchist), Ayn
Rand (limited constitutional statist who hated the
term 'libertarian,' but certainly qualified), just to
name a few, strongly opposed the creation of a
libertarian party. Rothbard later switched, once the
LP had become firmly established. I, however, can
recall his being asked, ~"if there were a button that
could be pushed that would end the state instantly,
would you push it, without weighing consequences?"
Murray: ~"Yes, immediately."
There were several threads of critique of the
impending LP. From the moral perspective, many
libertarians foresaw that the LP would inevitably
partake of the very system it opposed. Unless an LP
candidate refused to do any of his "duties," once
elected, he would be taking some degree of stolen
funds. Worse, from the perspective of some, he would
be "sanctioning the system" by imputing any legitimacy
to it.
From a practical analysis, the LP would suck funds and
man-years of effort from other promising approaches,
while diluting the message, perhaps corrupting it
entirely. How do you determine WHO is a real
libertarian? Isn't that going to subject to vote
within the LP itself? How are you going to keep the
borderline people from slowly dragging the party
toward the statist end? How are you going to
simultaneously go after warm bodies and also present
the true radical vision of the movement?
Most of the bad that we foresaw has occurred, altho
perhaps not exactly in the proportions we dreaded, and
things that we didn't see as critical turned out to be
the most important of all.
Keep in mind that in the late '60's thru the mid
'70's, there were a LOT of non-LP libertarian projects
happening. Free market banks and investment services,
black market nutritional companies, Vonu, libertarian
schools from pre-school on up, anarchist
communities... Find some of the issues of "Reason"
from that era and look at the classified ads for a
start.
The really important thing, however, was the
intellectual analysis. There was a tremendous amount
of intellectual ferment in the movement of that era.
All that petered out by the early-mid '80's. The
deaths of Rand, Lefevre, Galambos, and Rothbard
certainly left a gaping hole in the ranks. However,
most of the innovative, original, important thinking
had already passed to a younger set of intellectuals
and activists.
What they discovered, however, was that the LP, while
it did do remarkably well at keeping the core vision
intact, was extremely resistant to new ideas - or ANY
ideas, for that matter, BECAUSE it is a POLITICAL
PARTY!!!! The leadership of a political party gets
there by known processes, that don't include
especially having the best political theory. So, the
LP ended up with the intellectual 2nd raters, at best,
who simply avoided any discussion of problems with the
message or the underlying philosophy. The thinkers
simply found themselves without a venue.
Try engaging an LP candidate on Children's Rights.
That issue has been tabled for 25 years or more. Yet
it is crucial to getting the mass support that you do
have a clear, consistent, workable philosophy on that
issue. A lot of people have children. What is the
actual parental authority and how and when can a 3rd
party intervene? Do parents OWN their children? Or
do they have rights inherent to being human or
sentient? These issues should resonate especially to
Extropians, as they come up big time regarding the
issues of uploads, personality duplicates, AI's, etc.
But, the LP cannot even get it straight on abortion.
They have too many members who are "Pro-Life." They
even ran Ron Paul for their Presidential candidate, as
best I recall. So they don't take a position... or
discuss the matter. So much for solving the problems.
Just ignore them.
I have also talked with very active LP members over
the years who DID have highly successful programs and
agendas independent of the LP who had to agree to NOT
DISCUSS what they were doing before an LP audience,
because it might "detract from the proper focus on
political action."
I've attended a fair number of LP meetings of various
sorts over the years. Sometimes I've participated or
contributed to various isolated LP protests or other
projects. After all, I can talk until I'm blue in the
face and it won't change most of their minds. I
dislike giving them credibility, but I weigh that
against the value of the project, just as I do when I
work with leftists on repealing 3-Strikes or drug
laws.
Most LP meetings, however, are the most BORING place
you could imagine. The DMV lines are a riot in
comparison. Some guy or gal gets up and discusses for
twenty minutes how they got 1.23% of the vote, which
is an increase of 0.26% over the previous election,
when they didn't actually have a candidate.... And it
goes on for hours that way without a shred of
discussion of revolution.
What a waste.
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