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This is a letter we had hoped we would never have to write. We have been posting this column every week on the Web for nearly six years. During that time we have consistently labeled ourselves "libertarians"...small "L" deliberate. Although Willy has been a member of the LP during this entire period...under his earlier nom de plume Bruce Madison, Gypsy has consistently refused to join, on the grounds that the LP is basically a collection of good old boys with limited sensitivity to the needs and desires of women. In a word, "sexist."
Now it is time to withdraw. We withdraw not from the philosophy of libertarianism, which we consider the far-and-away best approach to reforming politics in America, but from any further endorsement of the LP. This latest election was also the last straw. Not only did we vote for Ralph Nader, we also recommended that other libertarian minded people do so as well.
It's not that we do not like Harry Browne. We love to listen to him talk and to read what he has written. He sounds so mellow and reasonable, sort of like a wise old uncle. That is, until you concentrate on what he is saying. Following the precepts of the LP, he "promised" to eliminate the income tax and the IRS, to end the War on Drugs, eliminate all controls on campaign finance and guns and, in the process, to make government so small we would hardly notice it.
Say what?!?!
First of all, these are things that NO president can do. Not by himself and probably not with even the help of a friendly congress and judiciary. But, more importantly, these ideas rest on THEORY, not PRACTICE. As such, they more nearly resemble religious beliefs than practical politics. There is a big difference between respect for a philosophy and reverence. No one can GUARANTEE that these large changes, even if made, would not be accompanied with vast unanticipated side effects. This is why Libertarian commentators, including Harry, when confronted with difficult questions like "Wouldn't legalizing all drugs lead to sales of heroin on the schoolgrounds?"...they have to answer "Maybe" or even simply "Yes." Before they can follow up with how Libertarians would "handle" this contingency, the audience has completely tuned them out as kooks.
So it is with many Libertarian Party positions. Nor does preaching that the constitution dictates such directions cut the mustard. If the recent election proved anything, it was that the constitution is a VERY dated instrument for legal control. Take the much discussed...at least by the NRA and LP members...Second Amendment. A recent article in Liberty magazine points out that the founders had private "militia" and weaponry sufficient to oppose the government in mind when this amendment was composed, not burglars and hunting. It was ASSUMED that the state would protect us from criminals and foreign enemies and that therefore the principle danger was from the government itself! In the present day, this means that groups like the Symbionese Liberation Army or the Aryan Nation are the "protected groups" and that weapons like cruise missiles, stinger anti-aircraft hand-held missiles, tanks, artillery, atomic bombs, biological and chemical agents are what are really covered by Amendment Two, not handguns and hunting rifles. Now THAT'S some scary shit, doncha think?
But, put aside all this election year hyperbole as business as usual..after all, the OTHER GUYS do it, don't they?...and look at some of the more disturbing aspects of capital "L" Libertarianism. Since the first day this column went live in January 1995, we have been deluged with flames from true-believer Libertarians calling us all kinds of names on the general "principle" that we are not TRUE libertarians. Every presumed deviation from LP...or worse, Ayn Randian...orthodoxy, resulted in a torrent of you-people-are-warmed-over-hippies style letters. No "official" Libertarian publication has EVER reprinted anything we have written, leading us to wonder just how devoted the LP is to the FIRST Amendment.
Not that we can't handle ourselves in acrimonious email debate. We consistently give as good...or better...than we get. However, when you piss someone off, it tends to peel off some of his or her surface camouflage and get to the nitty gritty. One of the most disturbing...to us...aspects of LP true-believers is their disrespect for democracy and the "common" person. Constantly referring to the most conservative of our eighteenth century forefathers as authority, they characterize democracy as "mob rule," voters as uninformed, stupid or "merely" deluded.
It is no wonder, in a country where nearly half of all citizens have measurable sympathies with libertarian ideals, so very few choose to vote for the party that carries that label. Why would you want to vote for a party that disdains YOUR ideas and dismisses your concerns? Why would an African-American mother whose teenage son or daughter is strung out on heroin or crack want to hear some sanctimonious Honkie "explain" that the government has "no business" interfering in what citizens put into their bodies or do to their minds? How can you expect an otherwise freedom loving inner city dweller who has been caught in the crossfire of the Drug War...perhaps having a friend or acquaintance killed or wounded...to "understand" that all drugs should be legalized and guns should never, never be controlled by the government?
Apparently, the "solutions" to these problems can only be grasped by the Truly Enlightened of the Party of Principle. That is the same party that, after a MISERABLE showing in the 2000 election, ran headlines like...
The articles themselves parade statistics meant to prove that the LP got more of this and that kind of vote than other third parties, that so and so many candidacies were mounted, that records were set, hopes on the rise. One almost expected a breathless claim that Libertarians had more ORGASMS than members of the Reform Party during Election 2000!
This from a party, that bills itself as the "third largest party," whose lead candidate got less than one half of one percent of the vote and whose headline candidate, LP Senate hopeful Carla Howell of Massachusetts...who raised hundreds of thousands of dollars and enlisted hundreds of volunteers...could not beat a Pooblioob candidate who spent ten thousand dollars and couldn't even get the support of his own party! Isn't it time for the LP to throw in the towel and start over from scratch?
We have said it before...many times...but it bears repeating again...
We will continue to bill ourselves as libertarians...actually existing libertarians...who practice what we preach rather than preaching what has scant chance of EVER being practiced and, thus, being tested. We occasionally fuck up. We are sometimes very wrong. But we hope that we continue to get you thinking...
Talk to you later...
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