A Few News Items…
Small Government Blog presents this disturbing report on the financial status of the Libertarian Party. Currently the party does not seem to be raising enough to cover operating expenses.
Alice Green, the Green Party candidate for mayor of Albany, is picking up some favorable press coverage. This may be a race worth watching when voters head to the polls next week.
The Gotham Gazette presents this nice little “guide for last minute voters” that includes info about all of the candidates for office in this year’s NYC elections, including third party candidates.
November 1st, 2005 at 11:52 am
Many of us who have had some reasonable amount of contact with the Libertarian National Party over the least few years are not at all surprised by the recent news indictating that the party is on the ropes.
In fact, I’m surprised that the former Party of Principle has survived this long, given that it has utterly failed to live up to its billing as a political organ based upon a specific idea.
I continue to believe that the original, principled Libertarian Party (and not the “deformed” one that could nominate the likes of Messrs. Bednarik and Pawlowski) is a viable idea.
The best thing that could happen is that the current LP would disband and a new organ be formed, rededicated to limiting its membership to those who would not only take the Pledge, but actually believe in it and act on it in the political realm in the face of criticism and controversy.
November 1st, 2005 at 3:09 pm
The realm you speak of does not have a political goal. The goal of the Libertarian Party since 1983 has been to convert other people into libertarians. Politics was not top billing – it was a sideshow.
The goal of any political party, no matter how idealogical it may be, is to get other people to vote for your candidates so they can form governments to do what they were elected to do by mandate.
The LP is not the entire head of the entire libertarian movement, properly. It can’t represent all of the different libertarian beliefs, now should it try to. it should do exactly whats in the current mission statement and no more.
November 1st, 2005 at 7:55 pm
The Gotham Gazette did a very nice job on the NYC voter’s guide.
They provided alot of useful info on all of the candidates, no matter the party, and the issues. I was also surprised at the large number of pages it had, until I realized that it was actually two guides in one, one in English, and the second, of course, was in Spanish!
You gotta love this country!
November 1st, 2005 at 7:58 pm
Plant food.
Political parties do lots of things in and through campaigns, even as the clear object should be to be elected.
An ideological party, particularly one whose ideology is generally less popular in a representative democracy, must do organizational and informational spadework before it can put people in office.
It is true that the LP has never tried to be a political party in any organized, systematic way; however, that fact is not necessarily connected to its ideology.
If anything, and because of the misnamed and misdirected LP “reform” movement, the LP has attracted many activists to its ranks who are simply not libertarians by any traditional definition of the word, and who wink at the pledge and its moral and political implications. These people have “captured” the LP and are leading it away from both proper and necessary principles of political organization and traditional libertarian political thought. A double-negative whammy.
A new LP is needed, organized like a traditional political organ, but ideologically oriented . . . like always.
November 1st, 2005 at 10:15 pm
R. Paul:
Are you saying the LP is too big? That it needs to be purged further?
And are you saying the Badnarik was not pure enough??????
Objective reality: you have to win a plurality (at least 35%) to win a partisan race (in all but those few areas with at-large races). So where are these districts that are at least 35% ultra-pure snow white libertarian?
November 2nd, 2005 at 12:09 am
I pledged that I do not believe in violence (force) to achieve political or social goals.
I dont.
I dont believe libertarianism flows out of the ZAP / NAP principle. I believe it flows from poeple who want to be free. The ‘no use of force’ gang has taken a credible position to not use force between people and used it to make the LP a laughing stock.
The ZAP /NAP principle is a laudable goal among people. It is sheer madness to try to apply it to government. Of course, if you dont believe in any government, that does not matter to you.
November 2nd, 2005 at 12:13 am
“These people have “captured” the LP and are leading it away from both proper and necessary principles of political organization and traditional libertarian political thought. A double-negative whammy.”
Yeah, right. Show me your sterling examples of LP political success from 1983 to 2004. I want to see it. Where’s the LP congressmen? Where’s a vote for POTUS over .44% since then?
if traditional LP thought means wasting the rest of my life trying to support a political party that tries to make everyone believe as they do instead of obtaining their votes for the party’s candidates, you better believe I’m going to lead it as far as possible from that, should I be blessed with the power to make it a reality. Count on it.
November 2nd, 2005 at 1:11 am
By all means, I see no reason why the likes of Tim West and ersatz-R. Paul should try to coexist in the same party. Let’s have two parties and see how well each one does. R. Paul, when you start your new radical libertarian party, please consider incorporating “Liberal” into the name of it. (Not joking. Explanation: In my view, one of the few useful contributions of the LP in its history has been helping to popularize the word “libertarian”. Since mainstream politicians now go out of their way to deny that they are liberals, maybe now is the time to try to seize back the older meaning of “liberal”. How about “Free Liberal Party”?)
By the way, if libertarians—even slightly radical ones—are serious about getting elected to stuff, I’d say they should pour most of their energy into achieving proportional representation first. This would mean they could be elected without needing a plurality. It might also be smart to target races in places (extremely few) that do have PR already, such as Cambridge, Mass. Cambridge Libertarians weren’t doing yet this the last time I checked (to be fair, that was in the late 1990s!)
November 2nd, 2005 at 1:26 am
Inching your way up the political ladder in friendly areas is the way to go.
Look at the Greens. They have city councilmen in several major cities… and a state representative. From this pool, eventually, a viable candidate will meet the right opportunity and the party will gain a Congressman. It might take 10 years, and they might destroy themselves from within before that… but if not, it works.
The LP desperately needs to stop nominating “Some Guy” for major offices. If a candidate for Congress doesn’t have at least a very basically compelling resume with a lot of community involvement and past public service… then that candidate should be running for dog catcher.
Just agreeing with a candidate won’t get many people to vote for them. You have to agree on some issues, feel the candidate is well suited and well qualified for the job, and most voters like to feel that there’s at least a reasonable chance the candidate could win the election.
November 2nd, 2005 at 5:21 am
I no longer teach political science and the art of practical politics, so you’ll have to educate yourselves.
Suffice it to say that there are established methods of developing political parties, none of which have ever been tried by the LP leadership in any systematic way. They have always assumed without evidence that because their ideas were either unknown or unpopular that traditional political organization was inimical to or at least inconsistent with their ultimate success.
Elsewhere on this site Mr. Cassidy provided a link to a hit piece by Steve Adubato on Murray Sabrin’s candidacy and beliefs. I spoke with Murray about this piece. He indicated to me that to the best of his knowledge, no libertarian or any other free marketeer has ever responded in defense of Sabrin’s support for free markets and political liberty.
I have since spoken with Steve Adubato about his hit piece on Mr. Sabrin. After a 25-minute conversation, Adubato admitted that he and almost everyone else in the media misunderstood Sabrin and ware unfamiliar with libertarian ideas. He informed that he and others saw a few issue positions that he perceived were typical radical right-wing “conservative” and issued an anti-conservative piece. Same old story. This after almost 30 years of the LP’s existence.
The LP lacks and has never tried to develop the basic organization and the skills to properly deal with all the misinformation disseminated by and through an antagonistic media.
My congratulations to the convervatives who have managed to infiltrate and corrupt the LP. They couldn’t beat the LP in the realm of ideas, so they joined it.
Libertarians are now the new politically homeless.
November 2nd, 2005 at 12:16 pm
B.Shetlick/R.Paul said – “I continue to believe that the original, principled Libertarian Party (and not the “deformed” one that could nominate the likes of Messrs. Bednarik and Pawlowski) is a viable idea.”
Pawlowski ran a very libertarian campaign. No he didn’t come out and say that we would sell the roads to private developers or any of your other crazy suggestions, but he did a good job steering the debate towards smaller government. On one hand you want him to take wacky positions on road ownership, yet you fault him for being too libertarian on the drug laws. So what is it, is he too libertarian or not libertarian enough? You really sound as though you just want to attack for the sake of attacking. I’m proud of Jeff’s perfomance.
From the Center for Small Government ( http://www.centerforsmallgovernment.com/pawlowski.htm ):
On Tuesday, October 18 th , New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Jeff Pawlowski (Libertarian), who has signed the Small Government Pledge for Candidates, participated in a televised debate with 3 of his opponents. He successfully redirected several questions posed in the debate from Big Government to small government.
Like most questions from the media, the questions they asked the candidates suggested government solutions to Big Government problems. Rather than fall for this bait, Jeff Pawlowski redirected the discussion and identified Big Government as the heart of the problem. He proposed shrinking Big Government and making it much smaller than it is today.
Below are excerpts from the moderators’ questions and his responses:
Moderator Question:
Both of the major candidates in this race have either offered rebates or cuts in order to help home owners deal with high property taxes, neither of which really changes the system that relies primarily on one tax to pay for education. So my question is should the tax structure be diversified and should the State do more to pick up the cost of education so the communities don’t have to bear most of the burden.
Jeff Pawlowski Answered:
The question of whether the tax structure should be changed kind of glosses over or points to the symptom, rather than the real problem. The real problem is that spending is out of control.
I am old enough to remember when there was no sales tax, no lottery, no income tax, no Atlantic City, and no gimmickry to get by with the budget. The deal is you have to bring back the spending question. No one wants to talk about this. Everyone wants to talk about giving away 30% here or giving away 40% there. It doesn’t matter how you get hit by the hammer, or where you get hit: The idea is not to get hit by the hammer. The idea is to reduce that hammer of property tax that breaks apart our families.
Many families have spouses that just work basically just to pay taxes in New Jersey, and this is the problem that causes families to break up and causes the need for more social services. The answer is “Let’s shrink the size of government, let’s shrink the spending, and then, where we get our taxes will be a much easier problem.”
Moderator Question:
Everyone has talked about ending pay-to-play corruption in politics and curtailing the power of political party bosses. What are your specific plans to end awarded contracts in exchange for political contributions and how difficult will it be to fight political party patronage?
Jeff Pawlowski Answered:
Willie Sutton, a famous bank robber, was once asked why he robs banks. He said, “That’s where the money is.” When you look at pay-to-play, that’s the problem. As long as the government stays big, and there is lots of money, people will find a way to wiggle around everything. They have this pay-to-play, and they have wheeling, and the people that write the laws write it so they can wiggle out of it. If we shrink the size of the government, and get the money out of it, then no one is going to be there to take it. All this pay-for-play stuff didn’t matter 50 years ago, or 60 years ago, when Trenton was a quiet, sleepy town. Nowadays, it is the biggest growth industry in town. God, when you come to Trenton, all you see is cars going back and forth and doing what, I’m not sure anyone knows there what’s going on.
But if you get rid of the money, you’ll get rid of the people taking the money. It’s as easy as that. You’re never going to solve the problem, because if there is one thing that our politicians are good for, it is that they can figure out a way to wiggle around a law, because they write the laws.
November 4th, 2005 at 12:28 am
I see the LP Thought Police are at it again.
For a party that claims to be for individual liberty, there sure is a lot of demand for marching in step with the party line.
1984 exists in the LP
November 4th, 2005 at 11:49 am
I do not know who this Jay Edgar guy is, but I am going to say it again: smaller government is a conservative goal, not a libertarian goal. The support for limited government is what separates libertarians from conservatives. If Pawlowski does not understand this, then he is not a libertarian. A libertarian could not possible call for an increase in a gasoline tax, as was done in the debates. Libertarians do not support drug use. Libertarians support individual liberty and personal responsibility. I am going to ask Austin Cassidy to cut this dialogue off, because it is not going anywhere.
November 4th, 2005 at 12:27 pm
Bill,
“smaller government is a conservative goal, not a libertarian goal”
What are you smoking?
“Libertarians do not support drug use.” – I completely agree, but they do not support the drug war.
To me you sound like the conservative. You don’t want smaller government and you want to continue the drug war?
Jay Edgar
November 4th, 2005 at 3:15 pm
We can agree that we have a government that is not limited. The problem with it, is not that it is “big” or “small” but that it is not based on any principles that would limit the government’s power. Government can be “small”, but it may involve law enforcement agents bursting into homes, and confiscating anything they choose. A smaller government can be as tyrannical as big government. The other question is, “Smaller, compared to what?” Is it one cent smaller than the budget for next year? Is it smaller than the size of government, circa 1975? The real question is, ”What are the legitimate functions of government?” A government that is limited in nature, that protects individual liberty from government intrusion, is what the libertarians support. Conservatives, on the other hand, keep talking about “smaller government”, while never defining what it means. Because they do not believe in limited government, we end up having… well, the Big Government that we have.
Libertarians certainly do not support drug use. They also do not support murder or rape.
November 4th, 2005 at 5:37 pm
The so-called “drug issue” is a red herring. Always has been. Just like the so-called “pro-gun” issue.
Libertarian politics is based upon principle, not issues like the so-called “drug war”. Libertarians understand that individual emancipated adults have the right to ingest whatever they want because they own themselves, but then must take the consequences . . . all of them. Libertarians running for office must state this principle clearly as a first principle undergirding any other statement made by that candidate respecting the drug issue. Accordingly, no legitimate Libertarian Party candidate could support legislation acknowledging the usurped power of the state to regulate the production and sale of any drug or any other consumable substance. Thus, no Libertarian Party candidate can support government-regulated medical marijuana, a position favored by Mr. Pawlowski. Libertarians do not favor the ingestion of drugs; rather they recognize the right of people to make that decision themselves (based upon the principle of self-ownership) and not the government. Pawlowski, as a Libertarian Party candidate, indicated that he would see to it that medical marijauna was available to those who needed it. Wholly incompatible with libertarian principle.
Libertarians consider taxes (government confiscation of privately owned resources) alternatively as either theft or extortion. Libertarians oppose theft as violative of individual rights to property; thus, no legitimate Libertarian Party candidate could ever support an increase in gas taxes.
Libertarians believe that the only proper function of government is the protection of individual rights respecting person and property; thus, government should not be owning and operating roads. Basic libertarianism 101. A Libertarian Party candidate, when faced with a question about publicly-funded roads MUST AT LEAST STATE HE OR SHE OPPOSES GOVERNMENT OWNERSHIP AND OPERATION OF ROADS ON PRINCIPLE. After that statement, the candidate is free to fashion any remedy or program to fund roads not inconsistent with the principle. But under no circumstances are Libertarain Party candidates free to IGNORE the principled libertarian idea when formulating those suggested programs.
Libertarians are not necessarily for smaller government, per se. That is a traditional conservative position, one that conveniently avoids the idea of limited government . . . limited by principle. Assuming a large, omnipresent threat to individual rights and liberty, government may have to be BIGGER than it currently is . . . such a “big” government would still be consistent with libertarian doctrine as its sole function would still be the same. But even the smallest of governments can violate individual rights if it is not limited by principle.
Conservatives can say they favor both an increase in a gas tax AND smaller government because one position is not necessarily inconsistent with the other. A libertarian cannot say that he favors an increase in a gas tax BECAUSE an increase in taxes is wholly inconsistent with the libertarian understanding of limited government.
The founders of the Libertarian Party viscerally felt and understood this critical difference. In fact, the Libertarian Party was founded in large part to give voice to the understanding of this simple difference. Somehow, over time, this distinction has been lost by the Libertarian Party and its candidates so that there’s really no longer any real difference between positions taken by Buckleyite conservatives and Libertarian Party candidates. Now they talk about being “pro-gun” and “pro marijuana” as if either had anything remotely to do with libertarianism and the principles of the Libertarian Party.
A quick read of the history and genesis of the LP will confirm this assessment. The libertarians split from the YAFer Buckleyites because libertarians indicated that Nixon’s drug prohibition, the Draft, the conduct of the Vietnem Aggression and domestic wage and price controls violated the peaceful principles of liberty . . . no initiation of force or fraud against anyone by anyone to achieve political or social goals . . . especially not the government.
That this has to be explained over and over again to the putative “leadership” of the Libertarian Party officials and its campaign staffs and candidates is a sad testament to the Libertarian Party’s ideological default and the failure of the Party to protect its only unassailable capital: ADHERENCE TO AND ADVOCACY OF PRINCIPLE.
Having lost that, nothing is left of the Party of Principle. The Party of Principle is dead as a doornail. Long live the Libertarian Party. It could have been a contender.
“I do not believe in nor shall I ever advocate the initiation of force or the threat of force against any person or property to achieve political or social goals.” Pretty simple stuff.
Everyone who joins or has joined the Libertarian Party since its inception has supposedly taken that pledge or something close to it. Many think it should be discontinued because they don’t wish to be bound by promises and principle. I think it should be strengthened and everyone signing it should be required to have their signature on the affidavit or certification either notarized or taken orally at a general meeting of party members. Solemnizes the occasion . . . appropriately.
To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever been forced to take this pledge. So no one is or has been forced to join the LP. But one is or should not be both free to take the pledge and to ignore it at one’s leisure and pleasure whenever one feels it convenient.
But that is precisely what Mr. Pawlowski has done in and through his campaign. Pawlowski said many things in the so-called “debates”, that much is true. But it more than strains credulity to claim that ANY of those statements were consistent with libertarian principle and legitimate Libertarian Party positions.
BTW: Assume a real libertarian was the Libertarian Party candidate for governor and was asked out the basic problem with the government in Trenton. Her answer would be something like this: ” . . . the real problem with government in Trenton is not that spending is out of control as the conservative Mr. Pawlowski claimed, but that the spending is based upon and funded by confiscatory taxation, and the money is being spent on programs that do not involve the protection of individual rights, the only legitmate function of government”.
See the difference????