One can use terms accurately and still tailor a message to an audience. In fact, that’s what should be done in the first place, since to do otherwise simply loses credibility once the disparity and inaccuracy is pointed out.

I believe I call it “couching a libertarian message in populist tones”. It’s something libertarians in general suck at, because they get too stuck in the eggheaded arguments and people’s eyes glaze over.

But that doesn’t create a pass for inaccurate terms, either. We’ve seen enough of that horrible practice in the Supreme Court.

Hospers knows better. So do you.

Strikes me that the explicitly liberty-minded are too few to exclude any branch of the movement. Since politics is largely a numbers game, excluding seems contra-indicated.

http://web.archive.org/web/20030621022306/archive.lp.org/rel/19970411-Clinton.html

http://aaronstarr.com/

Nice picture!

I respectfully disagree. Communicating effectively means tailoring your language to meet the needs and understandings of the audience.

To use an extreme example, if I wrote something in Mandarin Chinese, it would be meaningless to a typical American reader, even if I wrote it perfectly.

In other words, it’s not what you say, it’s what people hear that matters.

Many of us libertarians seem perfectly content to write in a way that appeals to us, rather than to someone who is not yet familiar with us. I suspect that approach keeps us from expanding our base of support because we wind up only talking to ourselves.

My position on Ron Paul hasn’t been as simple as endorse vs. oppose. Anyone who cares what I’ve said about him should start by reading http://libertarianintelligence.com/search/label/Ron%20Paul

That’s hilarious on multiple levels.

I’ve got an alternative suggestion for how to test potential LP leaders: how wisely they spend their LP-related time, e.g. in feeding IPR trolls. In the last few days, I’ve been failing the test miserably.

“And if you’re going to write a book review intended to be read by the general public, rather than us philosophy geeks, you don’t waste time defining the meaning of terms. At that point, it’s no longer a book review.”

No, you use accurate terms accurately. If the terms are sued correctly, no definition is needed, and if people aren’t sure what they mean, they look them up and learn something.