... and I'm beginning to think they're clueless.
The Libertarian Party Platform Committee is at it again, with a turgid rehash of old bits and pieces of party platforms thrust out in a survey that appears (to me, at least) intended to stifle any reform movement within the party.
There are three fundamental problems with the approach to this platform:
1) It is absolutist to the core, recognizing no special situations in which ideology might have to bend to pragmatic solutions in times of crisis or change. That's not a political platform....
2) For a party of personal responsibility it places all the onus of what NOT TO DO on government, and actually accepts little if any personal responsibility at all. According to the revised platform, governments may not discriminate based on race, creed, gender orientation etc etc, but American citizens are free to do so to each other. That's a problem.
3) It's also a problem that this platform hides corporatism under the veneer of individual rights. You cannot--with any intellectual consistency--argue for personal responsibility and then seek the out of corporate limited liability for all your deeds. Just like you cannot so narrowly define initiating force as physical force and ignore all the various forms of coercion that are employed by governments, individuals, and corporations to accomplish the same end: unwilling compliance with policies or procedures that are at odds with an individual's self-interest.
If Libertarians want to become a legitimate political power, then they're going to have to grow up and really enter politics, instead of continuously rehashing the absolutist ideological mantras that have never worked in the past....
The Libertarian Party Platform Committee is at it again, with a turgid rehash of old bits and pieces of party platforms thrust out in a survey that appears (to me, at least) intended to stifle any reform movement within the party.
There are three fundamental problems with the approach to this platform:
1) It is absolutist to the core, recognizing no special situations in which ideology might have to bend to pragmatic solutions in times of crisis or change. That's not a political platform....
2) For a party of personal responsibility it places all the onus of what NOT TO DO on government, and actually accepts little if any personal responsibility at all. According to the revised platform, governments may not discriminate based on race, creed, gender orientation etc etc, but American citizens are free to do so to each other. That's a problem.
3) It's also a problem that this platform hides corporatism under the veneer of individual rights. You cannot--with any intellectual consistency--argue for personal responsibility and then seek the out of corporate limited liability for all your deeds. Just like you cannot so narrowly define initiating force as physical force and ignore all the various forms of coercion that are employed by governments, individuals, and corporations to accomplish the same end: unwilling compliance with policies or procedures that are at odds with an individual's self-interest.
If Libertarians want to become a legitimate political power, then they're going to have to grow up and really enter politics, instead of continuously rehashing the absolutist ideological mantras that have never worked in the past....
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