Skip to main content

Yet another Libertarian Party survey ...

... 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....
Labels:

Comments

Anonymous said…
The consumer advocate made the announcement today on NBC's "Meet the Press." He says most Americans are disenchanted with the Democratic and Republican parties ... From HUbe
February 24, 2008 at 12:50 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Comment Rescue (?) and child-related gun violence in Delaware

In my post about the idiotic over-reaction to a New Jersey 10-year-old posing with his new squirrel rifle , Dana Garrett left me this response: One waits, apparently in vain, for you to post the annual rates of children who either shoot themselves or someone else with a gun. But then you Libertarians are notoriously ambivalent to and silent about data and facts and would rather talk abstract principles and fear monger (like the government will confiscate your guns). It doesn't require any degree of subtlety to see why you are data and fact adverse. The facts indicate we have a crisis with gun violence and accidents in the USA, and Libertarians offer nothing credible to address it. Lives, even the lives of children, get sacrificed to the fetishism of liberty. That's intellectual cowardice. OK, Dana, let's talk facts. According to the Children's Defense Fund , which is itself only querying the CDCP data base, fewer than 10 children/teens were killed per year in Delaw
18 comments
Read more

The Obligatory Libertarian Tax Day Post

The most disturbing factoid that I learned on Tax Day was that the average American must now spend a full twenty-four hours filling out tax forms. That's three work days. Or, think of it this way: if you had to put in two hours per night after dinner to finish your taxes, that's two weeks (with Sundays off). I saw a talking head economics professor on some Philly TV channel pontificating about how Americans procrastinate. He was laughing. The IRS guy they interviewed actually said, "Tick, tick, tick." You have to wonder if Governor Ruth Ann Minner and her cohorts put in twenty-four hours pondering whether or not to give Kraft Foods $708,000 of our State taxes while demanding that school districts return $8-10 million each?
Post a Comment
Read more

New Warfare: I started my posts with a discussion.....

.....on Unrestricted warfare . The US Air force Institute for National Security Studies have developed a reasonable systems approach to deter non-state violent actors who they label as NSVA's. It is an exceptionally important report if we want to deter violent extremism and other potential violent actors that could threaten this nation and its security. It is THE report our political officials should be listening to to shape policy so that we do not become excessive in using force against those who do not agree with policy and dispute it with reason and normal non-violent civil disobedience. This report, should be carefully read by everyone really concerned with protecting civil liberties while deterring violent terrorism and I recommend if you are a professional you send your recommendations via e-mail at the link above so that either 1.) additional safeguards to civil liberties are included, or 2.) additional viable strategies can be used. Finally, one can only hope that politici
Post a Comment
Read more