Hinkle, Root, Knapp and others running for Chair to

Knapp is not running for chair.

Please present to us all the wonderful things you’ve done over the last decade in terms of MALP Membership?

Better or worse than national?

Just curious.

Hinkle, Root, Knapp and others running for Chair too – feel free to drop in with what your approach to membership growth will be and what you’ve done in the past to grow your organizations?

Thank you and look forward to the chair debates where you all will have to answer these questions one way or another!

PS – I am a likely gold package delegate for my state and even though my chair is willing to purchase basic packages for us, I have declined but like my chair offered to buy one for another delegate who can’t afford it themselves.

make that: “diversity of political philosophy”

The Accord doesn’t and CAN’T supercede the Bylaws. It merely recognizes that the path to liberty has many tributaries.

Actually, the St. Louis Accord reduces the diversity recognized in L thought by narrowing the LP’s purposes from several to one.

The SLA recognizes diversity in L thought. Party member’s inability to respect diversity of thought is a significant basis for intra-party judgment and condemnation.

No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t slice and dice, either. Don’t oversell it.

All dysfunction can be healed. The first step is to end the denial. The second step is to end the judgment. The St. Louis Accord does that.

Libertarians do get elected to office, but more often than not as independents. Jesse Ventura probably comes closest, and Id say he probably embraces more libertarian ideas and policies than many of the “Libertarian” posters I’ve seen on this website, and I include Wayne “It’s all about me” Root in that list.

“Right now the single best reason to support the LP is that it has been, for over three decades, the primary source of new recruits to the Libertarian movement.”

The operative words being “right now”, are the very reason I have problems with supporting the LP. Right now the face of the LP belongs to people like Wayne Root.

Forbidden issues like drug legalization and abolition of the income tax almost seem trivial compared to issues like the expanding war on terror, wholesale surveillance, the increasing militarization of the police and society in general, massive long-term debt combined with unfunded liabilities for entitlement programs, the largest prison population in the world, and on and on, leading up to having a regime that believes it is acceptable to assassinate American citizens abroad SUSPECTED of having ties to “terrorism”.

Wayne Root is concerned about what the imaginary Marxist from Kenya has to say about Las Vegas and many LP members cheer Root on as he warms the hearts of right-wing idiots living in talk radio land.

Most people who now speak for the LP are relatively soft on serious issues – or years behind the curve. I assume this is to avoid offending the moderates and the neolibertarians in the LP, or perhaps the general public.

I could not agree more with this statement:

“Electoral politics for libertarians isn’t about the elections themselves yet, because we’re not yet big enough to win them. Electoral politics is about retail sales of libertarianism as an overreaching philosophy.”

Unfortunately, many LP members don’t seem to understand that. Current thinking among many in leadership roles claim winning elections is the sole purpose of the LP and members are often led to believe that by selling something other than libertarianism, elections can be won.

There are many great people in the LP, and it is a sad thing that the LP has become what it now is. At this point, I don’t know that it can be fixed. I also suspect that there are those who seek to sabotage the LP.

I would love to support a LP that sells a strong libertarian message, not just in theory or hidden within a platform, but through candidates, LP spokespeople and members. There is just not enough of that going on.

I apologize for what must seem like an insult to those who work and have worked hard for the LP for many years. The work has been important in many ways that are hard to quantify, but it really is time for some major changes in the LP. The entire culture of the LP, the marketing tactics, the message, the target audience, and the platform need radical change if the LP is to continue to exist and function as a force for freedom.

I hope the current LP membership comes to see that what they are doing now is like digging a grave for libertarianism as well as the LP.

My purpose in visiting some blogs where LP members come has been to plead with them to stop embracing people like Wayne Root, and even Glenn Beck. These people are an embarrassment to the entire libertarian movement and they are doing nothing to move society in a libertarian direction.

Root may be great at pushing the emotional buttons of reactionaries with his conservative talking points, but he isn’t selling the fundamentals of libertarianism. He’s not changing minds out there. He’s merely reinforcing existing beliefs and trying to attach a libertarian label to them by inference.

LP members should hear Marc Montoni loud and clear when he says:

“I want an ideological LP because there are already libertarians out there, and it is our job to find them and get them into the movement. A mild approach isn’t going to set their underwear on fire to read more about, and then join, the LP.”

Marc has spent most of his adult life as a LP activist and has done a remarkable amount of work. He ain’t stupid. I think we all want to see flaming underwear (except on airplanes). Listen to him.

You aren’t going to find libertarians listening to right-wing talk radio shows and hanging out at CPAC conventions. You find them among the young people and you find them among the non-voting people who are truly politically homeless.

Several years ago, doing outreach for the LP, it dawned on me that it was easier to sell the ideas of freedom to the general public than it was to a lot of members of the LP.

Sometimes there is a lot of truth to that.

I too have come across “libertarians” who opposed the outright repeal of drug prohibition, or who couldn’t support abolishing the income tax without replacing it with some other tax.

There are “libertarians” who don’t support the private provision of transportation infrastructure (roads, bridges, train trackage), while D and R pols are tripping over each other to get private enterprise to take over the costlier projects.

There are “libertarians” argue against the privatization of police, fire, and ambulance services, despite the fact that, nationally, thousands of listings for private companies providing the same or similar services can be found in the Yellow Pages — and despite the fact that government provision of these services has been rife with fraud, waste, union violence and cronyism, massive misallocation of priorities, police abuse, the highest incarceration rate in the world, and so on.

Fortunately, though, there are also a lot of LP members who do understand all of these things. At a meeting a few nights ago with 15 local LP members, both complete repeal of drug prohibition and abolition of the income tax and the IRS were openly discussed without any “but you can’t say those kinds of things” complaints. Even the nonlibertarian guests had good things to say for both ideas.

So, if the goal is to move society in a more libertarian direction, there may be better ways to do this than with a third party that seems to think its purpose is to elect candidates and in order to do that, become more conservative or mainstream. The reality is that the LP will never win more than a handful of local/state elections and it serves no libertarian purpose in having national candidates that promote what appears to be a conservative or neoconservative agenda.

You know, Tom, I was looking through some old issues of LPNews from 1985 today, and I noticed one LTE basically saying the LP had to stop talking about “legalizing drugs” and should moderate its position on the income tax and immigration. These people have always been in the LP, and unfortunately they probably always will be.

Being part of an ideological third party is a tough row to hoe. The constant losses at the ballot box are hard to take for anyone. Those who don’t understand the role the LP plays will always try to find a way to smooth the path to success for the party by trying to cut off its most non-mainstream views.

It is important to note, here, that when I use the phrase “non-mainstream”, I mean according to LP members who have weaker constitutions about ideological issues. Compromising libertarians THINK they are non-mainstream issues (which gets back to your “easier to sell the ideas of freedom to the general public than it was to a lot of members of the LP” thing). For instance, these folks think we shouldn’t talk about abolishing the Income Tax and IRS; that the idea is not supported by the mainstream of society. However, what they refuse to acknowledge is that oftentimes the public is willing to support much more radical ideas than they are given credit for. Evidence in that example would be the “near miss” for repealing the MA state income tax in 2000 (?); and that a growing group of Republicans have been advocating the same thing for years at CPAC conferences.

In the end, I believe these periodic calls to moderate the LP’s ideology will always fail in the long term. Sure, they will win a few battles and hold sway for awhile; but the LP has been molded in the image of the reformers wet dreams now for almost two years, and membership, revenue, and other metrics are still falling. These people have claimed to have the expertise to lead the LP to success but it just ain’t happening.

Things will eventually swing the other way. They can’t keep allowing the boat to sink without, at some point, being asked to walk the plank.

The reality is that there is nothing the LP is doing that you can’t do without the LP. People can run for office as independents (without the LP baggage). Individuals can design, print and distribute material promoting libertarian ideas (the LP is doing much of that these days). Individuals can form clubs and hold meetings to socialize and listen to guest speakers.

That’s certainly true; but it’s really hard to build up a suitable donor base that way.

Now, maybe someone can tell me why the LP isn’t a waste of time, energy and money. Why wouldn’t the money sent to LPHQ be more effective sent to lobbying groups that are working on issues you feel passionate about? What is the LP doing that you can’t do alone or with a group of like-minded individuals?

Right now the single best reason to support the LP is that it has been, for over three decades, the primary source of new recruits to the Libertarian movement. Not a single other think tank, issue group, etc has anywhere near the recruitment success the LP has had. Even anti-LP libertarians are largely people who were first brought into libertarianism by the LP. Here, then, is where I place value in the LP. Electoral politics for libertarians isn’t about the elections themselves yet, because we’re not yet big enough to win them. Eletoral politics is about retail sales of libertarianism as an overaching philosophy. When we’ve recruited a sufficient “backbone” of libertarians in the organized libertarian movement, the election results will eventually follow.

This is why I do not agree with the direction the LP has been heading. If I want to win elections, sure — moderate to your heart’s content. But that accomplishes nothing because there are already two established parties through which to do that. I want an ideological LP because there are already libertarians out there, and it is our job to find them and get them into the movement. A mild approach isn’t going to set their underwear on fire to read more about, and then join, the LP.

Go back another decade and membership grew up from around 7,000 at the end of 1988. So what changed? What was done right from 1988 to 1998 that was reversed?

Not quite. Membership grew pretty steadily from the end of the Paul campaign through the end of the Marrou campaign

I worked at LPHQ from 11/89 through 02/1993. Then-ED Nick Dunbar left a few months later. One year later, in the spring of 1994, membership had crashed to a bit under 8,000. Thankfully that trend reversed by the end of 1994, inching back up to 9500 by year’s end and then pretty consistently rising until November 1999.

I know correlation isn’t causation, but it seems that the ascent of Dubya and then 9/11 triggered a downward trend for the LP, at just the time our “I told you so”’s should have gained traction.

Nope. It had very little to do with dubya and 9/11.

It had everything to do with squeamish leadership from the LNC. Just when Libertarian leaders should have begun shouting angrily from the rooftops, everyone fell silent. In fact several “leaders” tried to “shush” the few libertarians — like Harry Browne — who *were* shouting angrily from the rooftops.

Immediately after 9/11, the LP appeared to retreat into a shell. No fundraisers were sent out for months; even renewal notices became sporadic. The slide in membership accelerated (it had begun after December 2000). In 2001, the LP shrank from about 29,000 members to 23,000. One of the best opportunities the LP ever had to make its case to millions, and the LNC chose to “hunker down and wait”; to go all shy about its beliefs, and to “stop making waves”.

The LP basically did NOTHING to fight the predictable attack of jingoism and fear-mongering that was about to be released on the American public. If anything, it adopted a wishy-washy stance about terrorism that pleased no one. Phillies and his friends would have everyone believe this was mostly because of all the “faux libertarians” recruited by Project Archimedes. However, there were dozens of Libertarians — many of them long-timers who way predated Project Archimedes — who trashed Harry Browne for writing and speaking the very same things that Libertarians (and Ron Paul) had been saying for three decades: that militarism and imperialism generates blowback, and the best way for Americans to be safer is by a strict noninterventionist policy and removing all of our troops from overseas.

In contrast to the meek/timid/emasculated LP, in the year after 9/11, the ACLU engaged in an agressive membership recruitment drive. They used Project Archimedes-style direct mail to do it, too. The result? Almost 1,000,000 new members. Other leftist organizations were just as agressive. Hell, I have in my files one mailing that simply flabbergasted me — a letter from a Democratic organization, saying (paraphrasing) “see, these horrendous attacks are what happens when you let Republicans run our country!” I received the letter on SEPTEMBER 14TH!

Libertarians sometimes seem determined to not have a clue about how to build the organization. The ACLU spends hundreds of thousands of dollars on marketing professionals to help them promote/sell their ideology to willing donors. The LP pretends it either can’t sell its ideology as it is and must change it to make our opponents be nice to us, or it pretends it doesn’t have to sell its ideology. Sometimes, like right now, it pretends both.

I find it interesting that George Phillies is decrying the decline in membership and fundraising since 1998.

Phillies and a couple dozen factional allies, including some on the LNC, bloviated constantly about the National LP’s membership recruitment drive that ran from 1995 (going serious and large-scale beginning 1997) through 1999. At the fall 1999 meeting of the LNC, Phillies got his wish and the project was ended. The results were predictable: the LP first stopped growing, then a nosedive. The smell was in the air — the Party was not growing any more, and average “length of stay” as a member of shortened. Existing members could see where it was going and voted with their feet. Attrition rates rose to a level where new members weren’t coming in fast enough to keep pace with those leaving. The rest is history.