I certainly apologize if anyone reading this believes I am going to talk about football. Baseball certainly, but never football. I was raised a Philadelphia boo-bird and I am proud of it. Even Santa Claus fears real boo-birds.
Before I go any farther, I need to post one small link. It has been more than a year since my last commentary on Third Party Watch, and some may want an explanation of where I’ve been. Reading is not required.
But back to Dallas vs Houston. Yes, that Dallas. The Dallas Accord.
There are relatively few people still around who were in the Libertarian Party during or prior to the 1974 Dallas Convention. But it is legend in their party, and is often quoted as the treaty made between the classical liberals and the anarchists to hold the party together.
With apologies to lpedia.org for the oversimplification:
The party was growing. The number of classical liberals (aka minarchists) outnumbered the much smaller anarchist wing of the party. In order to prevent a split and with a goal of expanding the party, concessions were made and the statement of principles was changed.
I wasn’t in the LP in 1974. In fact, I was still in high school. But if I had been in the party and at that convention, I would have advised against it. The cost, over the years, could be way too great. It allowed candidates some considered lunatics to run for office.
The anarchist wing of the party slowly grew until eventually they were mostly just waving dildos around and calling themselves the radicals. Obviously, by definition, the entire party is radical — at least as far as the media, the “major” parties, and most of the public are concerned. Look up the word.
The original party, far more oriented toward classical liberalism than anarchy, slowly disappeared.
This isn’t to say that anarchists are bad people. Some of my best allies when I was in the LP were anarchists. (Hmmm…where have we heard that before?)
The rubber bands holding the party together began to stretch. By the time I joined in 2005, the fractures were large enough to see, and large battles had begun to take place at conventions. The largest rift started in 2006, when the “Reform Caucus” tried to strip and cleanup the platform. All sides would agree that it was a badly botched job.
Eventually, infiltrators came in, calling themselves “Mises” and we all know what happened next. Yes, some of the Mises caucus members are actually classical liberals who have been fooled. And they fooled some of the anarchists and classical liberals already in the party as well — for a while.
So where am I going with this? Why should anyone care about the Dallas Accord’s failure?
A few days ago there was a discussion on Third Party watch about the actions of the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire and their violation of the ByLaws by endorsing the Republican candidate for President. These actions were preceeded by the equally suspect convention antics, where that same candidate, along with an “independent” candidate were both present and invited to speak. One was even nominated during the Presidential candidate election. I would mention their names, but I have no intention of risking an eventual violation of Godwin’s Law in this commentary.
In this discussion, I recommended a few methods of holding out and purging the infiltrators. I suggested that the definition of libertarian was too vague and that they needed to correct it. A reply to the effect that the composition would be changing to “actual libertarians” was submitted. I suggested that they needed to get everyone to agree on what an “actual libertarian” is.
The next reply was classic: “Oh that’s easy, that’s me.”
And here we have it. Those replies could have been from anarchists, minarchists, socialists, or even the fascist controlled Mises caucus. All sides believe they are “actual libertarians”, so unless you know the players, you can’t tell them apart by that answer.
Which takes us to Houston. Houston, Texas, in December of 2024. A convention of the recently formed Liberal Party USA. A party that understands that in order to keep your focus on the goal, you have to have a standard. Their’s is classical liberalism. Not communism, socialism, fascism or anarchy, but classical liberalism. Go search wikipedia. They have lots of great information on this.
This is why a number of classical liberals who used to be in the Libertarian Party have joined this new movement. They understand that while the anarchists are “fellow travellers” toward freedom, their definitions of freedom in regard to the role of government differ. They understand that the Libertarian Party failed in part due to the desire to appease everyone. So they decided to cut their losses and let others try to save what is left — if they can.
This is your wakeup call. There is still time to get to Houston in December. I wanted to go, and even bought a ticket, but health prevents me from attending. So I’m challenging all classical liberals — you know who you are — to get off the couch or chair you are sitting in and join this new movement. We need to make sure that the Houston convention builds a party structure that won’t result in its own version of a Dallas Accord a few years from now.
Perhaps what is needed is an American version of the Mont Perelin Society: a group of like mind individuals who come from different parties, and operate outside the party system, but work together to assist worthy candidates of whatever party. The whole party structure thing is hidebound not only by state organization and ballot access requirements, but also now by byzantine campaign finance law. One of the really interesting things that the current leadership of the LP has done is to find a way to funnel money to major party candidates with some imagined libertarian tendencies (whether each of us might think them valid), while at the same time allowing its own candidates to run.
Well good luck on your party where anarchists like me specifically are not welcome. Not an auspicious start. I have a prediction where it will end up, but not my business. I am sticking with the LP, and if it sinks, life has many other things to offer.
And as far as fooling anarchists, what you see now (maybe I am naive but I really believe this) is not what the MC started out to be. You will hear the same thing from many who have left. I left the minute my eyes were opened and I am paying dearly for it. But I am a hard deontologist, do what is right though the sky may fall.
I did not say not welcome, just not welcome to try to turn it into LP 2.0, which is not the intent. The same would be true of people from the far left or far right of the political spectrum. We don’t need another socialist party, and we don’t need another fascist party.
Over the years I have known quite a number of anarchists who understood that what they personally desire isn’t something the public will stomach. That they need to try to get as close as they can, which is minimal government. This of course is also the classical liberal goal. Government should play the part that government is needed for, and nothing more.
This means that candidates cannot run as an anarchist and call for the elimination of all government. They also can not run on socialist ideals, or right wing fascist rhetoric. Or wear Civil War uniforms, and possibly claim that they were abducted by aliens as a child and raised on another planet.
A great example of iverreach was the battle for seatbelts in the 1960s. Was it wrong for the legislators to vote to require automobile manufacturers to include seatbelts? The anarchist would probably say it was. A classical liberal might say that they might require them to offer seatbelts as an option for buyers. Note that I said might.
But after requiring them to exist, years later this slowly evolved into requiring people to wear them, followed by the associated nanny state where you can be heavily fined, or even lose your license or go to jail in some states if you or your passengers do not have one on. Doesn’t matter whether you are a careful/good driver or not.
I had several friends in my high school class as a senior who died literally because they were wearing seatbelts. If they had not, they would’ve been thrown from the vehicle and according to police and news reports at the time, possibly lived. They were all decapitated when a truck blew a tire and their vehicle hit it and flipped, going over the metal median guard rail on I95 upside down. Four of them in a convertible. Another friend of mine survived his VW being hit by an 18 wheeler when he was thrown out of the vehicle. Again, wearing a seatbelt would have killed him.
Of course, these are exceptions. I always wore a seatbelt because I felt that it increased my odds of surviving if some moron that did not know how to drive hit me. That was long before the police state told me that I had to wear it.
But please remember that I do not represent this new party in any position I state. These are my opinions. I hope that the liberal party manages to form itself at its initial convention this December as a truly classical liberal party, and that rules and procedures are put in place to prevent a deviation from the core beliefs expected by classical liberals.
I do not control this, and even if I had been able to attend, it would only be to sit on the sidelines and watch. Obviously, if what emerges is not a classical liberal party, or appears to be run by loonies, I will move on. I’m not sure where to, but that would be my problem, not theirs. It certainly would not be back to the current lunacy of the libertarian party and the years and years it would take to recover from it.
How can an anarchist support a presidential candidate who openly cheered when Trump was kicked off of Twitter, supported government monitoring said website, or who supported covid mandates and more money for FEMA?
Those all are Chase Oliver’s positions.
I cast a write in vote.for None Of The Above for President.
I did vote for the Libertarian Party candidates who were on my ballot in down ticket races.
I would have been willing to put my differences aside with Chase by voting for him had he not made derogatory comments about the Mises Institute, Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell, etc…, if he had not avoided going on podcasts with the likes to Dave Smith and Tim Pool and if his vp running mate had not lied to and betrayed the Michael Rectenwald campaign at the national convention when he misused microphone use at for what was supossed to have been for a Point of Order to endorse Chase Oliver, after he had told Recteneald and his campaign team repeatedly for months prior to this that he thought Chase would be a bad candidate for the LP and that he got eliminated he would endorse Michael Rectenwald and would be a vp running mate with him.
If for no other reason than the name… the Liberal Party USA will gain no traction. Sorry to be such a pessimist but it is what it is.
That is certainly a possibility. I think it all depends on how the marketing is done and how the image to the public forms.
By definition, the libertarian party is closely linked to classical liberalism. But very few people in the public actually know that. And they still sometimes mistake libertarian for libertine.
I think this brings up a discussion that I had been actually thinking about over the weekend. How much impact to simply the names of parties have. How much affect do these frequently misleading names have?
Some are better than others. Green, Communist, and Prohibition get their messages across well. Free Soil, Abolition, and Farmer-Labor were OK.
Consider “Prosperity and Freedom” as a Party name.
Whether it ends up a wise choice or a poor choice, that decision has already been made. I am still technically just an observer in the party, and had no part in the selection of the name.
I can only end up a member of the new party if I am able to get others involved in South Carolina and get ballot access. Now that the election cycle is over I may start finding people who are interested.
Here is why the name Liberal Party USA will not work. There is an article in National Review Online that talked about the historic defeat suffered by Kamala Harris and the Democrat Party November 5. The author mentions the woke positions e.g., defund the police, Donald Trump is a fascist, identity politics, America is racist, open boarders no questions asked, non Kamala Harris supporters are garbage, the woke view of American history taken by Kamala Harris and the Democrat Party. The author mentions those views as views of San Francisco liberals, California liberals, progressive liberals, Nancy Pelosi liberals, . . . The key point is that the word liberal has a meaning that has been defined by the left and the right and the definition is not that of classic liberalism. The current definition is what the voters rejected November 5 which is why Donald Trump was elected President, Republicans have control of the Senate and will keep control of the House. Americans at least for now have rejected liberalism.
The word liberal is toxic and should not be used as a name of a political party.
But what would party adherents be called?
I am not sure I understand the question. Personally, depending upon who I am talking to, I call myself either a minarchist or a classical liberal. I no longer use the term libertarian since that is the name of a specific party that I am not a member of.
A large part of the issue is the general public’s general political ignorance. If it can’t fit in a 20 second tiktok or a buzz phrase then the cost of onowledge is to high. Nost conservatives put forward liberal principles while decrying the “big government liberal left” meanwhile many progressives espouse marxist principles and socialist ideology. What we have in the country currently are progressives (left) and neo-cons all of which have a bigger government lean.
Branding is very important, sadley you have to know both what words mean amd what people think they mean. The Free American Party could appeal to dissenters on all sides.
I would encourage LP members and actual libertarians to help this party stand up. Help thwm get signatures and supporters. The more partys teaching polirical intelligence the better we all are.
Well, there needs to be consciousness of an historical development of liberalism from Locke to the present. Locke started out with natural rights; is that where you want to start? Then. Jefferson expanded that to the consent of the governed How far do you want that to go? done to the individual? Adam Smith expanded the idea economic freedom to to include free trade; do we wan that in the Age of Trump? Then John Stuart Mill developed the idea of liberty as “freedom from”
I could go on, but I think the point is that classical liberalism has been a work in process, a movement from “status to contract” as someone in the 19th century said. The fully realized contract society would be the end of liberalism: libertarianism.
Excellent points to consider. But you need to separate the concept of libertarianism from the libertarian party.
The primary reason that classical liberals want their own party, is that the libertarian party, which was founded with an intent of being much closer to classical liberalism than to rampant anarchy, became simply a home for dildo waving freaks.
And to be truthful, I have no idea what political spectrum they represented. I’m sure someone knows, but it really doesn’t matter at this point.
In an event, any new party should not prohibit fusion candidacies, so that, if it happens that the old party – or any other party, for that matter – manages to put forth a candidate consistent with the new party’s principles and goals, then a cross endorsement can be made, even if the ballot laws don’t allow fusion.
The vast majority of the public has no idea who is on the Libertarian National Committee, what they are doing or even that they exist.
The general public pays attention to candidates, not to political party committees.
That is very true. But to use a sports metaphor: there’s baseball, and there’s inside baseball.
This site and the discussions about things written here tend to be more inside politics than politics for the public. Some of the actions of political committees that we discuss can eventually reach the public. And the candidates certainly do reach and interact with the public. Events like the current trial/appeal of the secretary won’t even be mentioned in the media. I doubt anyone other than Reason would ever cover it. And if there is any magazine that is inside politics, it is Reason.
That is part of my concern over candidates who wear Civil War uniforms or Guy Fawkes masks at a national convention that CNN is covering. They may be shown on TV/Internet/whatever people watch these days.
And don’t forget about when someone paid a delegate to strip. When I got back to Charleston after the 2016 convention, people that I had talked into considering voting for a libertarian, none of them politically active, had already heard about it. That one made the party infamous for a day.
The loonies, whether you consider them to be anarchist, minarchist, or whatever they might be, damage any party. For years, a certain mad man who wore a boot on his head, would get at least one or two stories about him, putting the Democratic Party in a bad light. The libertarian party somehow inherited him, and placed him on a pedestal. These are just examples. The public does see this stuff.
And of course, mistakes by the candidates can always hurt you. People still remember Aleppo. MSNBC took libertarians to the cleaners on that one.
The actions of a national committee can help or hurt the infrastructure of the party. The activists who keep it going. The candidates who mught become afraid to run, worried the national committee might decide to fund raise for their competitor instead of them. Or endorse them wearing a clown nose.
Why is membership down? Why are donations drying up, other than of course, the money being siphoned off to Kennedy/Trump. There is no way I can accept the theory that it was the presidential campaign. The numbers were down even before they were selected at the convention. The party was already flatlining.
Hey, Stewart. Yes, you can get covid again after two weeks. You should get a test and see if that’s it.
I read your blog with the full account. I hope you feel better soon and make as full a recovery as possible.
I’m back to using the gmail address , I’m checking it about once every week or two right now due to a legal case that’s ongoing and that I lost access to the protonmail.
Texting me is still a lot better but I think maybe for some reason Phillies won’t approve this if I include my phone number even though it’s already all over the internet but I think you got it already. I usually can’t do voice calls though. I wanted to post my number in case anyone else reading wanted to stay in touch but oh well.
Anyways, freaking forget about it. I told you what about the liberal party last year if I’m remembering right. Maybe some past threads here but my memory is not so good and getting worse.
I aspire to have my level of ignoring politics rise to that of the average person. One of the top internet searches right before the election was “did Biden drop out”? I only wish I could ignore politics that much – I’m getting better but got a long way to go.
By the way your writing was clear even while you were sick, even if it did not seem like that to you.
When I saw “Dallas vs Houston” the first thing I thought is that you were comparing adult entertainers.
I am not aware of a block on your phone number. Perhaps put it in the text of your message.
Yes. That reminds me. I could not remember who had first mentioned them to me, but I believe it was you. And how could I forget your phone number. It is one of the ones I did not delete from my phone when I left the LP.
Adult entertainers. I never thought of that one. Probably should have!
The symptoms I’ve had yesterday and today are not exactly like what Covid was. I don’t know. At the moment whatever I have is much milder, mostly just a bad cough, which I did not have at all a month ago when I got Covid. That started with a scratchy/sore throat, which I have not had this weekend at all.
We’ll see.
I am pretty sure now that I do not have Covid. This appears to either be a stress cold from watching the election, or possibly from the fact that I had to walk around a bit in the rain on Friday.
I have been assured by Dr. Phillies that while the small green monkeys with hats that I observed jumping around on my computer keyboard are real, they flee at the site of human food. I do not see any of them this morning, and the small blue warthogs that joined them later yesterday are also gone. Temperature is down to 97.8 from 99.9.
Glad to hear Stewart. And you have my number. You have taken small (very small) digs at me, but I have no beef with you and would like to repair any bridges that need mending.
I’m not sure what bridge you are talking about. I thought that anarchists did not like roads or bridges. 🙂
I just looked in my phone, and while I appear to still have numbers in it for a few people who have died, I see nothing with your name on it. I don’t remember it ever being in my phone. Of course, I might have it in an old email message, but that doesn’t really matter. I don’t see well enough to look through old email messages these days for anything.
Even though they were smashed, I haven’t even been able to find my glasses since February. They are somewhere around here…
OK… So just to be perfectly honest I was not aware until watching Colbert’s monologue this evening that a whole bunch of monkeys had escaped from a research facility, a.k.a. prison, located some 50 to 75 miles from me.
The comment about small green monkeys with caps was totally unrelated to that event. But now I understand why Dr. Phillies said they were real. Although where they got the caps from is still a mystery…
Liberal Party is just another far left faction. They m8ght as well join the Greens or Democrats.
The real libertarians like Angela are still in the Libertarian Party.
I find that to be an interesting comment. What do you base that on?
Do you understand what a classical liberal is? Or do you just hear the word liberal and jump to the conclusion that it means something bad?
And yes, I am interested in why you say the party is far left.
Thank you for your interest and persistence. I am sorry to hear of your illnesses and accidents. Take care of yourself. I am continuing to consider the Liberal Party as an alternative to the Libertarian Party.
Life is sometimes like a burning bag of dog shit on your front porch. Step on it, and you usually only put out the fire and spread smouldering crap everywhere.
And yes, I woke up today with another case of something. Can you catch Covid again two weeks after you get over it?
Good luck with your party.
If it lasts, it will end up having the same problems the Libertarian Party has had.
But maybe your early candor will force it to actually face/solve those problems instead of slandering and scapegoating anarchists for those problems.
Agreed. And I hope I didn’t get the impression that I believe it was the fault of the anarchists. I believe the problem was trying to create a party that fit both groups in equally. It actually damaged the missions of both.
I have thought a lot about what things would be like if there was some form of anarchist capitalist party, alongside a classical liberal party. Would both be able to make progress in the same general direction as two separate groups easier than they have as one under the libertarian party banner?
That would be an interesting use of a Time Machine to go back and change things in 1974 and see where we ended up.
There certainly are problems in the current political system, and the intent of the Dallas Accord was clearly meant to improve the chances of success for the libertarians.
But it still resulted in a flawed entity that looked crazy at times to the public. The media rarely covered the good, and nearly always covered the strange. Consider how much damage was done by presidential candidates wearing Guy Fawkes masks or Civil War uniforms, or boots on their head? Or the dildo waving lunatics shouting rent is theft? I was there. None of us, including myself, stopped them.
My intent was not to make this a “you guys screwed up“ accusation. But there was a screwup, and bad people are in charge.
And I certainly see the huge potential problems for a new party. I believe there are ways to grow the movement while preventing it from being twisted into something else. A lot of people have been thinking very hard about this for several years.
But for small local races, which is really where winning has to begin, how can someone be taken seriously if their state or national party looks foolish? A national chair giving an “endorsement” with a clown nose on? She should’ve been removed right then. But no… Anyone can do anything as long as they are not harming someone else. Well, that certainly did harm others. It harmed the campaign and it harmed the party’s image, therefore harming all the dedicated activists who had worked tirelessly over the years.
The blame is not on the good people in the party. It is on the fools who run it now. As I write this, those fools are holding a kangaroo court. Granted, the accused is not someone I would consider to be the most stable person in the party, but it is still a kangaroo court. Look at the exposure to legal problems that has already been pointed out elsewhere. Your party has serious problems.
I just hope this new party can avoid similar mistakes. And I do seriously hope that the small number of sane people that remain in the libertarian party are able to salvage it. But it is a long road back.
This sadley doesn’t solve the problem. It will just be a dmaller less i flur tial entity with effectivley the same goal. The differnce now being good people being split between the two. One of two most likely outcomes, the new party is flooded and taken over and your fmdeffinitons are meaningless, or you make the join requirements so tough that you never raise beyond a social club. This is another problem of the current party system. It’s easy to point fingers at a group and say “you opened the door for them.” Ultimatley it is on us to be constantly vigilant and constantly check eachothers principles. Either way I wish the group luck.