“a detailed Platform is going to cause factional warfare.”

So you’d rather we not take stands on anything? Why have a platform at all? Details let people know *how* we plan to accomplish what we propose.

“There is NOT A SINGLE CLAUSE in the LP Platform that endorses any necessity or monopoly authority for the State to protect individual rights.”

I’m no anarchist, but I’d bet an anarchist begs to differ. Merely acknowledging a role for government is an endorsement to some.

I’m not saying we should have a platform that screams “smash the state,” but there’s certainly a way to word things that doesn’t give a role for the state also. This can be accomplished without many even realizing it, as countless readers of Ruwart’s Healing Our World can attest to.

Also… if your mention of the Cato Handbook wasn’t a joke, what was it? Grade-school “nana nana I can top you?” nonsense?

“Explicitly against their values” is the strawman here.

As long as the LP tent is big enough for both anarchists and minarchists, then a detailed Platform is going to cause factional warfare. My mention of the Cato Handbook was not a joke, though I don’t necessarily advocate every policy in it. If minarchists pushed for a lot of Cato policies in the LP Platform (e.g. vouchers), there would be a bloodbath.

I agree that restoration of crypto-anarchism into the LP platform is unlikely, because the Platform Wars are over.

As I just said in another thread, we clearly have different definitions of the term ‘radical.’ Most of the ‘radicals’ I know don’t necessarily think we should have all the items you continually bring up (i.e. my labeling of them as strawmen, because you’re using those specific items though no large movement is currently proposing their reinstatement that I’m aware of), but they *would* like to see the platform not so explicitly against their values at the same time (i.e. giving government a specific role, watered-down language so tame it attracts maroons [yes, maroons] like Barr, etc.).

And, yes, we all know you love Crane/Cato. Obviously, 700 pages is too much, and I fail to see the humor in your suggestion of its handbook. Though I do enjoy the handbook as a solid backer of most/many of our positions.

The extremist positions I’ve listed above are hardly “strawmen”. They are all taken directly from past LP platforms.

I can agree with this translation of your final statement: “the only people who’d be making an issue of an anarchist platform are the very people who wouldn’t/won’t be voting for an anarchist candidate anyway.”

The issues I listed above aren’t about “a more specific platform”, they’re about a more anarchist/extremist platform.

If instead of a more radical platform, all you’re really asking for is a more detailed platform, then I’ll see you and raise you, by proposing this 700-page platform: http://www.cato.org/pubs/handbook/hb111/index.html

Do you really think that because it’s in our platform, voters will automatically assume it’s what our candidate is campaigning on? Even if the strawman positions you bring up aren’t a part of his/her campaign? I continue to submit that the only people who’d be making an issue of a more specific platform are the very people who wouldn’t/won’t be voting for an LP candidate anyway.

Did you really mean to say that unrestricted immigration and zero laws against pollution are positions supported by “much higher than 5%-10%” of eligible voters? If so, then your position is self-refuting.

Clark spent more than MacBride, got higher vote totals isn’t really saying much, though.

“settle environmental clashes in court, permit open immigration […] if taken literally, the Libertarian platform is so far out of the mainstream as to be high and dry […]” New York Times, 1992-10-22

Brian says:

I don’t seek “approval” from the New York Times. I just want it to be that when the NYT accurately reports on the LP’s official positions, it doesn’t repel what I believe should be our natural target market of 5%-15% of eligible voters.

Looks to me as if the NY Times DID accurately portray the LP Platform way back when. Once.

And I don’t believe the quote would turn off our “natural market” (which I believe is much higher than 5-10%). As a matter of fact, the idea that the NY Times does NOT approve of our Platform could open up vast new markets for us!

But your plan to water down the LP Platform so that any clown or elephant could feel comfortable with it will not bring liberty. And it will not bring higher vote totals.

The only thing that will bring higher vote totals will be when our candidates work as hard as, and spend as much money as our opponents.

PEACE

Like this “Big Lie” joke — that’s a pretty funny parody of somebody committing the classic sin of intellectual sloth, by assuming that one’s opponents secretly admit that one is right.

It strikes me that most readers probably recognize a joke when they see one.

That you don’t is one of your weaknesses — and probably at least as self-damaging as your propensity to default to the Big Lie technique when you’re wrong, when you know you’re wrong, when everyone else knows you’re wrong and when you know that everyone else knows your wrong.

God bless the intra net, the inter net, and sites like IRP!

Tom, in this context, “crypto-anarchism” clearly refers to tacit anarchism, not “an ideology that expounds the use of strong public-key cryptography to enforce privacy and individual freedom”. But thanks for confirming my earlier diagnosis of your taste for writing things that are “technically correct” but misleading to your readers. When it comes to Knapp, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caveat_lector

Morey, I didn’t ask whether you personally “support” each of those positions. I asked if you “demand that the Platform again advocate all of the following”. So your choices now are to either 1) repudiate your Restore04 signature, or 2) admit that your Restore04 signature is not a “voice in my head”.

Yes, I know that you want a platform that talks comprehensively about abolishing every function of government. That’s small-tent. You can campaign on whatever abolitionist/anarchist stances you want, but don’t try to deny our minarchist candidates the platform wiggle room to advocate government protection of the rights of every individual to her life, liberty and property. I just don’t agree that the Platform should contradict minarchists, but should never contradict anarchists.

Erik @51, I stand by my arguments that the Democrat and Republican platforms don’t serve the same function for their parties as the LP platform does for ours. The fact that I’ve linked to those arguments, or that I’ve offered them before, doesn’t make them any more or less valid. I invite you to quote any assertion from my argument, and explain why you disagree with it. If your core thesis really is that the LP platform should be primarily for an internal audience of “party volunteers and activists”, then that explains a lot of our disagreement here.

Steven @52, I don’t seek “approval” from the New York Times. I just want it to be that when the NYT accurately reports on the LP’s official positions, it doesn’t repel what I believe should be our natural target market of 5%-15% of eligible voters.

” New York Times Corrections on Fast-Forward:
In the past six months, the Times has, according to its own corrections page, said Arizona borders Wisconsin; confused 12.7-millimeter rifle ammunition with 12.7 caliber (the latter would be a sizeable naval cannon); said a pot of ratatouille should contain 25 cloves of garlic (two tablespoons will do nicely); on at least five occasions, confused a million with a billion (note to the reporters responsible — there are jobs waiting for you at the House Ways and Means Committee); understated the national debt by $4.2 trillion (note to the reporter responsible — there’s a job waiting for you at the Office of Management and Budget); confused $1 billion with $1 trillion (note to the reporter responsible — would you like to be CEO of AIG?); admitted numerical flaws in a story “about the ability of nonsense to sharpen the mind;” used “idiomatic deficiency” as an engineering term (correct was “adiabatic efficiency”); said Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride occurred in 1776 (it was in 1775 — by 1776, everybody knew the British were coming); “misstated the status of the United States in 1783 — it was a country, not a collection of colonies” (dear Times, please Google “Declaration of Independence”).

The Times also “misidentified the song Pink was singing while suspended on a sling-like trapeze;” confused the past 130 years with the entire 4.5 billion-year history of Earth (see appended correction here); misused statistics in the course of an article complaining that public school standards aren’t high enough (see appended correction here); said Citigroup handed its executives $11 million in taxpayer-funded bonuses, when the actual amount was $1.1 billion (in the Citigroup executive suite, being off by a mere two zeroes would be considered incredible financial acumen); said a column lauding actress Terri White “overstated her professional achievements, based on information provided by Ms. White;” identified a woman as a man (it’s so hard to tell these days); reported men landed on Mars in the 1970s (“there was in fact no Mars mission,” the Times primly corrected).

The Times also gave compass coordinates that placed Manhattan in the South Pacific Ocean near the coastline of Chile (see appended correction here); said you need eight ladies dancing to enact the famous Christmas song when nine are needed; said Iraq is majority Sunni, though the majority there is Shiite (hey, we invaded Iraq without the CIA knowing this kind of thing); got the wrong name for a dog that lives near President Obama’s house (“An article about the sale of a house next door to President Obama’s home in Chicago misstated the name of a dog that lives there. She is Rosie, not Roxy” — did Rosie’s agent complain?); elaborately apologized in an “editor’s note,” a higher-level confession than a standard correction, for printing “outdated” information about the health of a wealthy woman’s Lhasa apso; incorrectly described an intelligence report about whether the North Korean military is using Twitter; called Tandil, Argentina, home of Juan Martín del Potro, a “tiny village” (its population is 110,000); inflicted upon unsuspecting readers a web of imprecision about the Frisians, the Hapsburg Empire, the geographic extent of terps, and whether Friesland was “autonomous and proud” throughout the Middle Ages or merely until 1500; inexactly characterized a nuance of a position taken by the French Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress (philosophy majors must have marched in the streets of Paris over this); confused coal with methane (don’t make that mistake in a mine shaft!); on at least three occasions, published a correction of a correction; “misstated the year of the Plymouth Barracuda on which a model dressed as a mermaid was posed;” “mischaracterized the date when New York City first hired a bicycle consultant” and “misidentified the location of a pile of slush in the Bronx.” ”

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=easterbrook/100209&sportCat=nfl

Good one, Steven.

WTF???!!! The New York FUCKING Times?? You are seeking approval from the New York Times?? Even republicans usually find THAT one futile.

And you only had to go back ten to twenty years to find those quotes.

PEACE

BH: “I’ve said for years that the Wasted Vote Fallacy is our biggest obstacle. Our number one message should be to distinguish the Libertarian brand from Left and Right, and our number two message should be to tackle the WVF head-on. ”

Response: This is all fluff. No matter how non-left/non-right sounding our brand is, it doesn’t separate the fact that plurality voting makes people generally vote *against* brands instead of for one. Most Republican voters aren’t fully satisfied with Republicans, but they’re horrified of Democrats (and vice versa). Watering down our platform based on the myths from your analysis does nothing to advance the education of liberty, and will not do anything to help elect Libertarians.

BH: “For about three decades, any opinion leader who invested ten minutes in evaluating the LP quickly discovered that we were crypto-anarchists. That’s not been the case for only 22 months.”

Response: I disagree. Anyone who was looking for a reason not to support us *might* have gone this route (e.g. an opponent), but not the general public. I have many friends who are LP-friendly, but still vote for Democrats or Republicans because they hate/fear Democrats or Republicans, not because of some plank of our platform or representative of our party they thought were crazy. Hell, I know many a Ron Paul supporters who said they wouldn’t vote for him in the general election if he ran third party / independent… because they feared Obama or McCain. No matter how much they liked Paul’s message, plurality voting changed the way they vote.

BH: “The Democrat and Republican platforms don’t serve the same function for their parties as the LP platform does for ours. For the full explanation, see http://libertarianmajority.net/platform-purpose.”

Response: Just because your analysis says so, it doesn’t make it so. You can reference yourself as much as you’d like, but it’s not going to make me suddenly go, “oh, you’re right…,” because you’re not. Platforms are generally for party volunteers and activists, not independent voters. Campaign messages (in this case, campaign messages trapped within plurality voting) define a person’s view of a candidate – not their party affiliation.

I assert that “compromise and concealment” are the wisest electoral strategy for anarchists, and that anarchist candidates implicitly admit this every time they conceal their anarchism from a general-voter audience. I remain astonished that they … demand that abolition of all functions of government be the the platform that other LP candidates have to go out and campaign on.

Was my campaign minarchist, because I took a bold stance on a few issues, or was it anarchist, because those positions are too bold?

For the umpteenth time: I want a comprehensive platform and a candidate who takes an abolitionist stance on the issues he/she campaigns on.

I don’t recall a single mention of crypto-anarchism in the previous platform.

Holtz is da bomb and gets it.

I’ve said for years that the Wasted Vote Fallacy is our biggest obstacle. Our number one message should be to distinguish the Libertarian brand from Left and Right, and our number two message should be to tackle the WVF head-on. E.g.

I’ve said for years that fixing the Platform is not a silver bullet — rather, it’s the biggest obstacle that we impose on ourselves. I’ve also said for years that the positive effects of Platform reform would take time to be realized. For about three decades, any opinion leader who invested ten minutes in evaluating the LP quickly discovered that we were crypto-anarchists. That’s not been the case for only 22 months.

The Democrat and Republican platforms don’t serve the same function for their parties as the LP platform does for ours. For the full explanation, see http://libertarianmajority.net/platform-purpose.

Morey, I complained about radicals who “demand that abolition of all functions of government be the the platform that other LP candidates have to go out and campaign on”. Do you or do you not demand that the Platform again advocate all of the following?

• personal secession
• immediate non-enforcement of all tax laws
• privatization of all streets, pipes, and wires
• policing pollution only through private torts
• elimination of all restrictions on immigration

It wasn’t a “voice in my head” that told me you were signatory #12 on the Restore04 petition, and the 2004 platform included all of these things.

I should think that by now my position on platform reform is reasonably transparent. I invite you to read e.g. this and this and quote the parts with which you disagree.

Or, just keep chanting “watered-down platform” and pretending that constitutes an argument.