Skip to main content

Taking an interesting plunge: The Boston Tea Party

I've probably spent a lot more time thinking about this than it probably deserves. Or maybe not.

I believe that the national Libertarian Party is day by day proving itself a hopelessly lost cause for those of us who believe that the cause of limited government, personal liberty, and individual freedom can be furthered at the ballot box.

I have been talking for several weeks about something like a Libertarian Alliance of state parties organizing from the bottom up. But while I think it's a great idea, I keep wondering whether or not it's viable, whether or not anybody will do the necessary legwork to create it.

At least for now, I'm thinking that the Boston Tea Party represents the best vehicle currently available.

Yes, I know the BTP has a checkered organizational past, and that this could be merely another incarnation for dreamers who are not necessarily doers.

The BTP has a simple platform:

The Boston Tea Party supports reducing the size, scope and power of government at all levels and on all issues, and opposes increasing the size, scope and power of government at any level, for any purpose.


I'll be brutally honest: the simplicity and absolutism of this platform put me off for awhile. That for any purpose clause is not one I could swear safely on a lie detector that I embrace.

Yet then I thought: but 95-98% of the time I'd be cool with what that means, and--this is critical--95-98% agreement is higher than my current level of agreement with the Libertarian Party platform.

When I look at this year's program, I'm considerably more comfortable:

1. The Boston Tea Party calls for a complete and unconditional withdrawal of US troops from, and a cessation of US military operations against or within, Iraq.

2. The Boston Tea Party supports repeal of the USA PATRIOT Act.

3. The Boston Tea Party calls for an end to the federal prohibition of marijuana and hemp.

4. The Boston Tea Party calls for the immediate repeal of the REAL ID Act and any and all National ID plans.

5. The Boston Tea Party calls for legislation adopting an annual, regularized increase in the personal exemption to the federal income tax of $1,000 or more, and the additional application of said personal exemption to all FICA/Social Security taxes paid by employees and employers.


I can live with all that.

So while I am not severing my ties with the Libertarian Party, and certainly not with the Libertarian Party of Delaware, I have decided to join friends like Jason Gatties and Tom Knapp in taking out a membership in the Boston Tea Party.

I've always wanted to Party Like It's 1773.

Besides, I'm in early enough that if this thing really does take off, I'll have a membership number lower than 350.

Comments

ChrisNC said…
As an endorsed candidate of the Boston Tea Party, I agree, though I'm not really keen on that name. And I honestly wish that Charles Jay were a qualified candidate in North Carolina. I would feel much more comfortable voting for him than I am the LP nominee. Barr has repudiated the rest of the LP ticket. Therefore, I feel free to lend my loyalties elsewhere.
PlanetaryJim said…
Thanks, Steve, and welcome to the party. It's going to be fun, in the tradition of TE Lawrence taking 50 guys across the empty quarter to attack Aqaba from the desert and calling it "fun."

The program you quote is 2006's program. We are to adopt a whole new program at our national convention starting 24 October. The national committee has agreed to place before the members the four points of the Campaign for Liberty that Ron Paul had Nader, McKinney, and Baldwin endorse at his press conference earlier this month. The members are free to choose whatever program they wish.

North Carolina ballot access rules are especially heinous, as anyone in the LP of NC knows full well. I don't know if there are any rules for registering (and identifying electors) write in candidates in NC, but we'd welcome a team for Charles Jay doing just that in any state.
Anonymous said…
Sounds reasonable, but one problem I do have with the group is the name.... How do you self describe if a member?

Boston Tea Partian?

Tea Party Animal?

BTPer?

I mean most of the other parties seem to have a pretty obvious and clear one word name for themselves, "Boston Tea Party Member" seems excessive...
Anonymous said…
I like "Boston Tea Party-goer." If it were 1773, and I lived near Boston, I'd have been there at the docks dumping tea.

Popular posts from this blog

A Libertarian Martin Luther King Jr. Day post

In which we travel into interesting waters . . . (for a fairly long trip, so be prepared) Dr. King's 1968 book, Where do we go from here:  chaos or community? , is profound in that it criticizes anti-poverty programs for their piecemeal approach, as John Schlosberg of the Center for a Stateless Society  [C4SS] observes: King noted that the antipoverty programs of the time “proceeded from a premise that poverty is a consequence of multiple evils,” with separate programs each dedicated to individual issues such as education and housing. Though in his view “none of these remedies in itself is unsound,” they “all have a fatal disadvantage” of being “piecemeal,” with their implementation having “fluctuated at the whims of legislative bodies” or been “entangled in bureaucratic stalling.”   The result is that “fragmentary and spasmodic reforms have failed to reach down to the profoundest needs of the poor.” Such single-issue approaches also have “another common failing — ...

More of This, Please

Or perhaps I should say, "Less of this one, please." Or how about just, "None of them. Ever again. Please....For the Love of God." Sunshine State Poll: Grayson In Trouble The latest Sunshine State/VSS poll shows controversial Democratic incumbent Alan Grayson trailing former state Senator Dan Webster by seven points, 43 percent to 36 percent. A majority of respondents -- 51 percent -- disapprove of the job that Grayson is doing. Independents have an unfavorable view of him as well, by a 36/47 margin. Grayson has ignored the conventional wisdom that a freshman should be a quiet member who carefully tends to the home fires. The latest controversy involves his " Taliban Dan " advertisement, where he explicitly compares his opponent to the Taliban, and shows a clip of Webster paraphrasing Ephesians 5:22 -- "wives, submit to your husbands." An unedited version of the clip shows that Webster was actually suggesting that husba...

A reply to Salon's R. J. Eskrow, and his 11 stupid questions about Libertarians

Posts here have been in short supply as I have been living life and trying to get a campaign off the ground. But "11 questions to see if Libertarians are hypocrites" by R. J. Eskrow, picked up at Salon , was just so freaking lame that I spent half an hour answering them. In the end (but I'll leave it to your judgment), it is not that Libertarians or Libertarian theory looks hypocritical, but that the best that can be said for Mr. Eskrow is that he doesn't have the faintest clue what he's talking about. That's ok, because even ill-informed attacks by people like this make an important point:  Libertarian ideas (as opposed to Conservative ideas, which are completely different) are making a comeback as the dynamic counterpoint to "politics as usual," and so every hack you can imagine must be dragged out to refute them. Ergo:  Mr. Eskrow's 11 questions, with answers: 1.       Are unions, political parties, elections, and ...