The Lonely Goatherd Blog And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats - Matthew 25:32
Up to the minute notes on the current state of free thinking and free living: Kentucky moonshine - original analysis and reporting from MoreThings, and all round pop culture museum of sight and sound - photo galleries, mp3 and video downloads.
Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
Hostile bearers of unproven and mostly unlikely evil conspiracies tend to come across to me as hateful seekers after cheap self-aggrandizement for the sake of their supposed arcane knowledge rather than actual seekers after truth or the better benefit of the country. Conspiracy mongering doesn't get me hard.
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To explicitly state the obvious, these external links go to interesting and provocative websites, but they speak for themselves. I don't necessarily agree with anything they say - especially that no-goodnik Richard Marcus.
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All original content on MoreThings.com copyright 2008 Albert Barger or the respective authors
January 27, 2003
Libertarian Party futility? Peter Bagge has a cartoon mocking the Libertarian Party on the Reason website that deserves a response. Writing for Reason, he presumably comes from a sympathetic philosophical standpoint to the party. It's not ideology that's his issue. Instead, he depicts us as a bunch of flaky losers, happy if we manage to occasionally play spoiler.
First as to flaky, this doesn't describe our Indiana party accurately at all. I haven't heard any of our members mention helmet laws as their big issue. The biggest policy issue in our local party recently has probably been the court-ordered overhaul of the whole state property tax system. That's a pretty big deal. Also, our state chair has been with the party for a good many years now, as have most of our officers and candidates.
Bagge's main attack is that we only get 2 or 3% of votes. For one thing, I don't pick out which party to support based on which one I think will get the most votes. It's not just a horse race. Libertarians represent the things I believe in whether or not they win elections.
In fairness, however, we do win SOME elections. We've got most of a thousand officeholders nationally. They are mostly in local offices, but that's often where the action is.
Moreover, we wish to effect public policy much more than we care about specifically being elected, otherwise most of us would be Republicans. Getting elected is one way to accomplish things, but not the only one. Since our Massachusetts party got 40 odd percent vote for a ballot initiative to completely repeal the state income tax, the Republicans and Democrats have got a clue that tax increases are not going to be a viable option. We've definitely done some good there.
Bagge specifically criticizes us for being "spoilers" who at most accomplish the feat of getting a Republican beat. However, spoiling some hack's election is not just a spiteful gesture [though that's a nice bonus]. It is a legitimate way of leveraging our support, and keeping Republicans at least halfway honest. Mostly we spoil elections for "moderate" ie liberal puke RINO type Republicans. Some Republican idiot looking for "moderate" or "mainstream" positions who starts getting squishy about gun control laws, say, might find a Libertarian opponent getting 5 or 6% instead of 1 or 2%. Can't afford that. Better watch your right flank.
The Libertarian Party has effects on public policy debates in many different ways. It's taken a quarter century of effort, but we're starting to substantially re-frame and reform drug policy, if only by baby steps. In the opposite direction from our spoiler effects, we tend to give decent Republicans and Democrats alike some room to maneuver. If we're standing there in a debate calling for repeal of the income tax, a Republican proposal for a Steve Forbes flat tax becomes a much more moderate and reasonable alternative. We ask for legalization of all drugs, and now support for medical marijuana has become a respectable position even for conservative mainstream politicians.
Truthfully, most Americans do not support libertarian ideas, at least not in the pure form the party espouses. That cannot reasonably be denied. We strive, however, to make the best of what we've got to work with. The public will support us on SOME issues. We have to figure out how to get them to support our ideas more, and leverage that support. Whether that support comes from voting for a Libertarian Party candidate or a better than average Republican matters little.
