No, it’ll be the Tuscaloosa Hungarians.

Or perhaps the Birmingham Czechs, or Montgomery Swiss.

…and behind the scenes the Auburn Austrians run the show! CFR style.

Another of my comments from earlier today disappeared.

It’s also the reason why the LP will never, ever grow

Well then, leave already.

there is no way we can even begin to attract moderate libertarians

Then go create a moderate libertarian party. Better yet, there are already un-principled, moderate parties out there and they are call the Rep/Dem party. Join them.

If you think the LRC ruined the LP, people like you saying exactly things like this for the past 30 years created the stimulus for it more than anything else. It’s also the reason why the LP will never, ever grow – there is no way we can even begin to attract moderate libertarians, much less the regular moderates needed to win elections, if the members call everyone who isn’t in the top corner of the Nolan Chart or anyone who believes that there is any valid function for government whatsoever socialists, Demopublicans, retards, et al.

I never wanted to fight. It just makes me genuinely sad that someone is so intent on compromising everything he claims to value by burning bridges with most of his potential allies. You’re not alone, either. I see it often. I won’t be surprised 30 years down the road to find you even more embittered, stuck in the same loop. I won’t waste my life inherently compromising liberty, quixotically pretending the LP is actually shrinking government.

Nick says the only reason he’s staying is because you want him to leave. If you wanted him to stay, that might encourage him to leave.

I don’t know if Tim’s motivations are in any way similar.

I don’t think it matters that much who leaves and who stays.

The socialist movement did not die when the Communists left the Socialist Party to start their own, and other socialists left to infiltrate the major parties.

On the contrary, it became quite successful, to the point where not only have most of its policy proposals actually been enacted, but it is now “lunatic fringe” to be against them.

With any luck the libertarian movement will be just as successful, even if we splinter into separate radical and moderate parties.

I was going to stick around until 2008, but if Tim goes post-election, I’m going too. I’d rather spend the next two years working to rebuild the Reform Party as a moderate libertarian party or work on a new party than waste my time here bickering and going nowhere.

Please do leave. Tim, what can we do to encourage you to leave, taking your rag-tag retard circus with you?

Go water-down the reform party, create a “moderate Libertarian oxymoron party, or join your ideological equivalents the rep/dem party.

Stop threatening to leave, just leave already!

Doesn’t that mean that the bickering is in fact productive then, from your perspective? You’re actually claiming that it’s the only thing keeping you in the party and thus allowing you to do whatever else you do as a result.

The problem is that when new recruits come to the LP, the first thing they hear is this sort of bickering and namecalling. The impression they get is that all libertarians hate each others’ guts because we always have to be more right than everyone else. That’s one of several reasons (perpetual losses being another) why most of them don’t stay very long. There’s easily 12 times the number of ex-LP members as there are current ones. Blaming the government for our failure is too easy of a scapegoat – we can’t do much to change the government until we change the way we approach politics, average people who might be future libertarians and each other.

Instead, we sabotage ourselves politically (in so many ways), we scare away potential recruits who come to a new party for answers, and those of us who stay become the brunt of enough peoples’ hatred that either we harden to it or we get so fed up that we leave. Seriously, we have a lot of good brains – but zero common sense!

The only reason why I’m not leaving the party right this very second is because that’s exactly what Mike Nelson wants me to do – as if I’ll run away crying because he’s resorted to calling me prepubescent putdowns after he ran out of productive things to say.

I was going to stick around until 2008, but if Tim goes post-election, I’m going too. I’d rather spend the next two years working to rebuild the Reform Party as a moderate libertarian party or work on a new party than waste my time here bickering and going nowhere. The LP is mostly doomed because of its members’ inability to listen to anyone but themselves.

We’ll welcome you back to the real world of nitpicking, debate and highly entertaining name-calling after you return from the bi-annual mass delusion that we’re going to make a big difference any time soon through the electoral process.

Are those my only two possible options?

Lots of detalied info on this at radgeek.com. Some examples

http://radgeek.com/gt/2006/03/21/the_humane

Who do you want to work for if not a corporation, the government?

and you cant apply 21st century hindsight to 18th century people. No doubt our great great great great grandchildren will laugh and sneer at us for our societial practices and declare how horrible it was that our lives were largely spent chasing money and material things and working for artifical constructs called corporations.

Weren’t George Washington’s slaves emancipated after his death at his prior request?

Which brings up another point. The LP has a golden opportunity it is not using.
That is to criticize corporate welfare and be for separation of business and state.
Most everyone hates state sponsored monopolies all across the political spectrum.
Libertarians need to hammer away at corporate welfare in the Media thru op ed pieces!!! The free-market should be truly free. That means no company should be allowed to use the government to help it in any way or intervene in the economy. Thats fascism (big business in bed with big government creating an unfree and an thus unfair market)