LP Convention: The Pledge Lives, Dues Return for “Sustaining Members”

YAY! Yep, you still have your pledge, but that’s not a surprise. It would have been a miracle to remove it this fast.

The question now is what’s next? :)

… if this convention had produced clear victory for one faction or another, but what it seems to be producing is a complete muddle — the “reformers” winning just enough to piss off the “purists” and vice versa, and neither faction winning clearly and thoroughgoingly enough to put its own agendas fully into effect.

Before the convention opened, I privately told several friends that I would be surprised if the party could pull itself together enough to right itself financially and still be a functional national organization by Labor Day. Now I’m beginning to wonder if it’s even worth the effort to try.

I doubt this will stand, because, as it says at the LP blog, ‘Normally, the platform retention vote is merely a formality.’ I expect many of the delegates who weren’t there for the first vote, will show for the second. This is probably the reason for the ‘two votes’ requirement (it just now occurs to me in a bolt of illumination).

Even so I agree with Tom’s larger point. I expected the ‘reform’ movement to fizzle in Portland, and I was wrong. It looks like the party is split into nearly equal factions. Presumably that means a nasty fight, wasteful of time and other resources, which will drive many from the party in disgust. Some kind of amicable divorce seems preferable to me, but I don’t see much hope for it.

If the ‘reformers’ really do have a majority at Portland, opposition to prohibition of ‘hard drugs’ will be dropped. They have enough votes to delete the old plank and block any replacement.

The Libertarian Reform Caucus’s proposed ‘drug war’ plank says in part:
‘individuals abusing hard drugs should be handled through “drug courts” rather than criminal courts;’

http://www.reformthelp.org/platform/drugs/p1.php?printerFriendly=y

This is disingenuous wording, as one might expect from ‘pragmatists’. Googling ‘drug courts’ soon reveals that drug courts are a specialized kind of criminal court, not something distinct from criminal courts. This wording presupposes that ‘abuse’ (whatever that means) of ‘hard drugs’ will continue to be a criminal offense.

My significant other’s job requires her to spend 3 or 4 mornings a week in a “drug court,” and my impression is that they are a complete farce — not just un-libertarian, but anti-libertarian in all kinds of weird directions.

Basically, in drug courts, the defendant is offered a plea bargain that ends up requiring:

1) A pledge of future allegiance to the state’s drug laws;

2) Enrollment in a religious or quasi-religious “recovery” program;

3) The court actively supervising the defendant’s life not just to the extent of looking for and punishing future violations of the drug laws, but mandating the defendant’s lifestyle, requiring the defendant to hook into any number of state-funded social programs, etc.

The judge has nearly complete discretion to dump the defendant right back into jail on the basis of things like “attitude.” Or, in one example I was given, to revoke a defendant’s bail … (contd)

Waiting for the dust to settle.

I think everyone can agree that the LRC’s main focus being platfrom reform that we have made a dent. Let’s see what the final result is.

Everybody can decide their best course of action in due time.

I have a question on the subject of “sustaining members” and who does have a say in party decision-making. I just joined the LP a month or so ago… and even though it’s optional these days, did donate $25 or $50 (can’t remember exactly) with the membership online. I haven’t heard or received anything from the national office since then, although I understand that things must be busy given the convention this month.

However, are you supposed to ultimately receive a “membership card” or something in the mail… some tangible evidence of membership? How does that work?

personally i agree the war on drugs benefits no one the only reason i mention an incramental step is because we are talking about public policy and opinion, as shown in the tim west video the other day you say end the war on drugs and people take five steps back. if you say legalize marijuana they only take 2 steps back. I would prefer it be cut immediatly also but as we keep finding out the general public usually needs to be convinced and even those who favor legalizing marijuana don’t always favor ending prohibition completely.

And, after all, Libertarians will still oppose the war on drugs.

(Yep, it’s George Phillies’s new site in action.)

if that’s the case, Dave, then it may be a win-win situation.

We may have left the founding principle against the drug war intact, yet eliminated the bullet-point so easily paraded by our opposition.

..but what do I know? I’m just a guy sitting at home behind his computer.

Stuart,

You seem to be thinking of drug courts as an incremental step in the right direction. In fact, they’re an incremental step in the WRONG direction. This may take a little explaining, but I’ll do my best.

Let’s start with the general state of the criminal justice system: Somewhere between 97% and 98% of criminal cases now result in conviction. Of that 97-98%, more than 90% is from the practice of “plea-bargaining” — “we’ve got you by the nuts, but if you plead guilty, whether you ARE guilty or not, we’ll go easier on you.”

I don’t know about you, but I’m not confident that the police and prosecutors are right 49 times out of 50. It seems much more likely to me that many of those convictions are basically “convictions by extortion” — defendants understand that even if they are not guilty, it’s easier to plead and take probation or a short sentence than to go to trial and have a 60% or so chance of conviction at risk of a harsher sentence. Especially since prosecutors (contd)

If drug courts are fully implemented, police will be able to make MORE arrests and prosecutors will be able to proceed with LESS evidence, confident that they’ll secure convictions with fewer uppity serfs slowing things down and clogging up the court system with “not guilty.”

To the extent that the drug courts are “successful,” they militate toward the continuation and expansion of the drug war. They create the illusion of “success” with the high “conviction” rate, while perversely creating whole new clusters of government employees and beneficiaries — more judges, more clerks, more bailiffs, more parole and probation officers, more social workers to “help” the victims convincingly knuckle under, etc. — all of whom will militantly oppose any attempt to slow down, let alone stop, the conveyor belt which rolls along, daily bringing more people under their power.

The “drug courts” may be the worst thing that has ever happened for opposition to the war on drugs.

Thanks Joe. Enjoyed your reporting. It was sorely needed.

We’ll have to take a gander at this new platform and see how much stupidity has been removed. I’m hoping quite a bit.

Stuart,

Your comment above is precisely why I prefer a program to a platform. Why worry about far-future “half-steps” or “whole steps?” Why not just tell the American people WHAT WE COULD DO FOR THEM IN THE NEXT TWO YEARS, and then two years later see where we’re at and consider the next step?

At:
http://libertyforamerica.net/node/190
it says:
“Eliminating any specific platform plank won’t change the goals of libertarians, nor will it change what we actually do when we get power, which is to shrink that power. It’s chilling to know that there are people who believe the election hopes of the Libertarian Party lie in hiding its principles, but we’ll survive.”

WTF does this mean?
The “Party of Principle” intends to hide its principles? Even admitting that the idea of doing so is “chilling?”

I just got pretty cold.

Essentially you’re advocating lying to voters to get into power and then bringing out our principles, dusting them off, and implementing them after getting power.

Why should I believe an LP politician who says to libertarians “Just elect me and I’ll stick to our principles…Don’t pay any attention that I wouldn’t mention them in my campaign…Don’t pay any attention that I said the same things as my opponents.”

Cont…

I work hard every day to get people to see the sense of principled libertarianism.

I may not see a real libertarian elected to major office in my lifetime. But I am willing to get up tomorrow and continue to fight for the principles that libertarianism holds.

If I need to buy into an idea that we need keep our principles secret until after we’re in power, F$#K it. I need to find another party. No, wait a minute, you need to.

OK Nigel, I stand corrected.

Lenny,

Thanks for the vote of confidence on my ability to offer alternatives (if I had been there).

Cato,

I’m not sure that LRC, or anyone else wants to “hide” our principles so much as they dislike laundry lists within which the implications of our principles are arguable and one side of the argument gets included at the expense of another.

Personally, I favor a VERY short platform, coupled with a new PROGRAM every two years. The platform offers the general approach, and the program addresses the issues that are important in a given election FROM the platform’s stated principle. The solutions we WOULD offer to ANY problem are IMPLICIT in the platform, without the need for factual arguments over 60-odd planks of “perpetual — but no chance of actually doing anything about it now” — content every two years.

However, I don’t advocate the seemingly random platform-cutting (cont)

The deletion of Article IV surprises me. What I read at the LRC site gave me the impression they didn’t have a big problem with the old platform regarding foreign policy.

So, Cato, what you’re saying is you’re perfectly happy if a Libertarian is never elected to office, so long as you get to control the philosophical purity of the party. Further, you’d like to be able to throw out anyone who isn’t pure enough for you.

Congratulations: you’ve just demonstrated the attitude that’s doomed LP efforts the past twenty years and more, the attitude the LRC wants to overcome and marginalize.

Principles without power are useless.

(cont.) Preseting themin a 2-year or 4-year plan instead of what currently reads as the virtual abolition of government ASAP (which will look a bit like anarchy in a week to most voters). Presneting only the end-goal, so to speak, may seem like a statment of principals to us and we may view it as a guiding path to long-term political goals and we may know that it will likely take incremental legislation to get us there, given the modern political climate, but potential voters and the press are not likely to see things that way, IMHO.

I, for one, certainly don’t advocating “hiding” principal at all.

A 2-year or 4-year plan wouldn’t make platform items like no taxes, legal drugs, or uncapped immigration any less embarrassing when read aloud by a telebimbo.

LibertyforAmerica.NET

Minor correction. I bought ads for the site, and wrote specifications as to what sort of a site I would buy an ad in, but it is not my site. I prefered to give the site to the party as a whole as a neutral location for discussions/

David,

You write:

“A 2-year or 4-year plan wouldn’t make platform items like no taxes, legal drugs, or uncapped immigration any less embarrassing when read aloud by a telebimbo.”

I’m not one of those who finds the reading of the platform (by telebimbos or anyone else) embarrassing. I’m an anarchist, so there is no “extreme” of government-cutting that I wouldn’t wish to be associated with.

My reasons for advocating a different way of approaching the platform/program issue have to do with ecumenicalism versus exclusionary sectarianism, and with political relevance.

If the platform is short, sweet, and oriented toward establishing direction rather than toward creating voluminous lists of desired end states, then the party has a chance to appeal to the 90% of libertarians who aren’t extreme sectarians like me. That doesn’t guarantee that they’ll respond to the appeal, but I think it should be tried.

Outside of the platform, the program should say “here is what we’ll do NEXT,” (contd)

(cont’d from comment 58) I don’t see anything dishonest in this proposition (“I” and “you” referring to hypothetical individuals):

“I want to reduce the size, scope and power of government to X. You want to reduce the size, scope and power of government to Y. Let’s start with the A that we both agree on and could accomplish next month instead of arguing about the Xes and Ys that will not be conceivably possible at any time in the next ten years even if we’re wildly successful.”

Sean,

“I’m not terribly worried about the platform. Let’s take the next two years to write a new one.”

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I’ve allowed the LP to fool me way more than twice already, and I’m very much considering whether or not I want to continue holding the football and telling myself that maybe Lucy really will kick it this time.

I’m awaiting more specifics before making that decision, but he outlines of the debacle are obvious even from halfway across the country: None of the competing factions gained total victory, so the LP still suffers, and will continue to suffer, from multiple personality disorder. I could have lived with a “purist” ideological party or a “pragmatist” political party, but the LP is still trying to be both, which is impossible, and the struggle gutted lots of stuff that might have benefited from change in detail but that was absolutely necessary to EITHER kind of party.

cont’d

There was no motion to stop calling the LP the party of principle? Shame.

Stuart got Knappsterbated on the drug courts, which is a perfect example (for Stuart, especially) of the dangers of advocating incrementalism. There is good incrementalism and bad incrementalism. And LRC is utterly incapable of distinguishing betwixt the two. All they care about is incrementalism and “their way or the highway and to hell with everybody else”.

I’m glad that the effort towards a big tent means the platform is eviscerated. Let’s just not have one at all. That would be a truly exciting and compelling reason for people to vote Libertarian or for god’s sake to be an activist! Being Libertarians shouldn’t mean anything at all for fear of offending or EMBARRASING someone. We could change into the non-offensive “nothing to see here” politically correct party. Rename it the wasted vote party, or maybe even the NOTA party because that’s what it would amount to.

Mr. Knapp is correct – a party that ignores the biggest issue of the decade, the war on terror, and all that goes with it (a 20 year period of bigger government, huge debts, loss of privacy, a militarized culture, harm to national security, and loss of life), is not a political party at all.

While Dr. Milstead calls upon the LP to decide whether or not it is a party of anarchism, I call on the LP to decide whether it is the party of conservatism. The absolute insistance on incrementalism is the essence of conservatism. Scoffing at civil liberties and cheerleading for war are also conservative traits.

The LPHQ has been implicitly supporting one proposed pledge replacement: smaller government – fewer taxes – more freedom. They lobby for repeal of the estate tax. They urge us to call talk radio. They do outreach to CPAC. Then there are the Fair Tax and IES folks.

So, is the LP becoming the party of conservatism?

I see nothing pragmatic about creating yet another GOP.

I don’t get all this huffery and puffery. Platforms don’t get elected. Candidates do. Platforms exist to help candidates elected. Get real people, not having a platform plank on something doesn’t mean Libertarian candidates can’t advance Libertarian solutions on those issues. Conversely, the platform won’t prevent anyone from running around saying they are Libertarian when they really aren’t.

Tom, you’ve got the Peanuts allusion backward. It was Lucy who held the football, and pulled it away when CB was about to kick it.

You seem to have missed my point about the program, which was that adding an incremental program to a radical platform wouldn’t satisfy the objections of Tim West and those who applauded his ‘telebimbo’ video. You advocate a moderate platform, which is a different matter.

The platform, while certainly a problem (if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything) is only part of the problem.

The LP no longer feels it’s necessary or proper to impeach criminal white house residents (even if they happen to be far worse than their predecessor by any libertarian measure) because it might alienate potential recruits from the national socialist GOP party (as if even more of those were desirable).

The LP can’t pass a resolution against the war (or even consider a a real one), and believes the official conspiracy theory about 9-11 must note be questioned.

The LP believes the whole country is the property of the state, thuse “we” must protect “our” borders.

Basically, a redundant, retarded, inbred kissing cousin of the NSGOP, it is useful now only insofar as it helps to split the Republikkkan vote.

It’s kind of like watching a fine stuck up bitch I used to go out with (or tried to) degenerate into a toothless crack whore with AIDS.

I’m thinking it might be useful to explain that (#72) in a different way.

Lately I’ve been thinking in terms of two different kinds of ‘libertarian’ party. The labels I’ve found convenient are ‘radical’ and ‘moderate’. The platform you (Tom) describe is appropriate for what I think of as a ‘moderate libertarian party’, which is why I call it a ‘moderate platform’.

BTW, We have both moderates and radicals, purists and pragmatists, here in New Hampshire. The Free State Project’s BEST autocratic decision was the creation of a Statement of Intent that did NOT attempt to split between the two factions. “I will exert the fullest practical effort toward the creation of a society in which the maximum role of civil government is the protection of life, liberty, and property.” How you interpret that can vary, depending on your purism, pragmatism, anarchism, politicism, etc.

The best group decision was the vote picking NH, BTW. If the FSP had picked any of the other states, lacking NH’s open political access, small state size, variety of lifestyles, and economy, many of us would not be a part of it.

There is room in NH for all of the factions… and while we might argue online, put us together in a room, and we all get along rather well, despite our different views on ‘how’ to achieve a Free State. The LP could use a lesson there.

>Tom Knapp: Then you’re not understanding what I’m saying:

David Tomlin: If you say so.

>TK: A party with a directional, rather than end-state, platform, could have EITHER a “radical” or “moderate” program:

DT: That’s what I understood you to be saying. Either I did understand you, or I’m still misunderstanding you in the same way.

What I think you’re saying is that if a radical program could be ‘in compliance’ with Platform A, then it is ‘wrong’ to call Platform A a ‘moderate platform’. I don’t agree.

I hope we understand one another now, and can agree to disagree.

The GOP of 1994 is a perfect example of incrementalism gone wrong. They were going to abolish the departments of energy and education for instance – among many other things. Never happened. Granted, they didn’t really want limited government for both their own political purposes and that conservatism abhors such an idea idealogically. But you get my drift.

David,

Rather than agreeing to disagree with you, I’m just going to agree that I’m not understanding what you’re saying.

I have made it repeatedly clear, speaking on my own behalf, that there are plenty of options on the table. You and your ilk just insist on the pigeonhole strategy and a lack of intellectual honesty. The majority of radicals that I know of and have heard have no problem with progressive incrementalism. The truth and the ideal still should not be abandoned.

It is remarkable what happens when the truth comes out. I point again at Nall’s courageous stand before the Sheriff’s candidates when they resigned themselves to the truth. If she was just pulling for medical mj or decrim, she wouldn’t have likely achieved such a thing, but rather would have been branded as just someone who wants to smoke it with impugnity – not as someone who stands for fundamental truth regarding a serious fissure within our society.

I don’t have a problem with incrementalism if it really is a step in the right direction.

Vouchers actually increase regime involvement in private schools – the money comes with strings attached, and turns them into de facto government schools.

There’s another kind of incrementalism at work: By increments, you water down the platform, bringing in people who would never join the LP previously. After a while, it stands for nothing at all. This happened with the Reform Party.

If your end goals are not firm, it isn’t incrementalism; it’s just a sellout.