A few more thoughts on a “divided” revolution

I’m surprised anyone actually found my last blog posting and obviously a few of you did including at least one gentleman with a very different point of view. This posting is more observational and less personal and judgemental than the one I wrote the other day. I will say that Steve Kubby is now a personal hero of mine and I’m sorry he is not Bob Barr’s running mate. He is man of great courage and conviction. I guess I should have known that already but I continue to be impressed by this fine gentleman. He truly is a warrior for liberty and I wish him the very best.

The last few days I have seen a great deal of discontent with the results of the convention and, most pointedly, the nomination of Bob Barr. I’m not just talking about the likes of Christine Smith (who I always kind of liked) and her decision to leave the party but about personal friends who feel betrayed by what took place. Many of these people were enthusiastic supporters of the Ron Paul Revolution and clearly do not see Bob Barr as someone who will carry forward his message. I think much of that has to do with how personal the commitment to Ron Paul is and the sense that it is as much the man as the message that is at play. Whatever one’s feelings about Ron Paul’s message, there have been very few criticisms (though some) of his integrity and political courage. One of his greatest assets as a candidate was that he both talked the talk and walked the walk. Even though Bob Barr may agree with 90% of what Ron Paul says, his record is one that makes one shudder. As I mentioned the other day, not only was he wrong but he was wrong on some of the “hot button” issues for most libertarians. If nothing else, we can all usually agree that the drug war is insane, that legislation like the DOMA is the worst sort of meddling by the federal government and that the Patriot Act is a gross violation of everything the Constitution is supposed to represent. And yet Congressman Barr was closely involved in each of these very offensive abuses of government power and that is awfully hard for a lot of people to swallow.

It is certainly a bit odd to listen to Libertarians talking about voting for the “lesser evil” in this campaign and I’ve heard quite a bit of that lately. I suspect many will simply stay home but others may write in Dr. Paul or vote for Chuck Baldwin or even Obama. I have to say that I am very uncomfortable with the Constitution party folks even though I believe some of them are about 90% right on the issues. That said, I can understand the appeal. Part of Paul’s appeal was the anti-establishment tone to much of his message that one might even call populism: Anti-Fed, Anti-UN, Anti-NAFTA, Anti-War. There is a convergence between the left and right on these issues and you can see that in the fact that many of Paul’s supporters also had a soft spot for Dennis Kucinich who shared most of those populist views.

That, to me, is part of the appeal of a renewed Constitutionalism. It has the potential to appeal to a broad coalition of the left, right and center. Our increasingly centralized government leaves little room for dissent and diversity anywhere on the political spectrum. I may disagree with someone on the role of government in general but I may be able to form a coalition with them if we can both agree that, whatever that role, it should be defined at the state and local level and that the federal government should be empowered with only a small set of enumerated powers. In a nation as diverse as ours, the idea that “one size fits all” will only create a more oppressive nation-state and lead to a more and more bitter brand of political discourse.

That being the case, there are still many libertarians who would like to fight it out on national stage with Democrats and Republicans in our “winner-take-all” electoral system. They imagine that one day they can convert a majority of people to their point of view and then we can “impose libertarianism” on the nation as a whole. I have to say that I can’t see that ever coming to pass, at least not in my lifetime. I think many of the apolitical libertarians out there may have a more realistic vision of what it will take to achieve liberty than these well-meaning but misguided folks.

I’ll close for now. More thoughts as they occur to me. Your comments (even negative) are welcome.

Thoughts on the Libertarian Party

Like most people who consider themselves “libertarians,” I have had a love/hate relationship with the Libertarian Party through the years.  Back in the late 70’s, when I first discovered and embraced the philosophy of freedom, there was a much closer identification between the movement and the party than has existed since that time.  It seemed most everyone I came in contact with in my reading not only supported the philosophy of liberty but also the “party of principle.”  Obviously, people like Ayn Rand or Harry Browne were exceptions to the rule and I’m sure there were many others, but many of the people who influenced my early development as a libertarian such as Robert Ringer and Murray Rothbard explicitly endorsed both libertarianism and the LP.  Those times in the late 70’s and early 80’s were a time of great optimism about the party and its growth.  It seemed to be growing exponentially and on the verge of great success.  As corny as they seem today, I always felt tremendous pride when I saw those little 5 minute spots by Ed Clark back in the 1980 Presidential campaign.  I read the latest LP news with great excitement and it was always filled with success stories and hope.

I don’t have to recount everything that has happened in the last 25 odd years to anyone who has been around this movement or to anyone who has studied the history of this movement.  Like many people, I fell away from the party, yoking my political hopes and dreams to the Democrats for many years.  Many others became Republicans or Independents or drifted away from politics altogether.  I convinced myself that at least Democrats were anti-war and weren’t going to violate civil liberties in the same way that Republicans did.  My visceral distaste for the Religious Right alone might have been enough to turn me away from anyone on that side of the aisle but, whatever their faults, I just felt more comfortable with the likes of Gary Hart or Bill Clinton than I did with the likes of the Bush family dynasty.  I guess I was also influenced by my college experience and maybe by something as trivial as the fact that my Sociology prof was far more interesting than my Psych prof.  I kept tabs on the party and always wished them success but I thought I had “grown out” of my Libertarian phase.  I could never quite kick some of the ideas I’d grown up with such as the idea that the draft was slavery and that prohibiting things like drugs and prostitution were both silly and a terrible intrusion into people’s lives.  They were the “wild and crazy” ideas that I continued to espouse even as I tried to justify Government being involved in the economy and in overseas adventures.

At some point and I’m not sure exactly when it happened, I came back.  While I never formally joined the party again, I started voting for it.  I began to believe once again that, whatever the justification, government involvement in our economy was a bad thing.  Maybe it was reading Charles Murray’s book on “What it Means to Be a Libertarian” that did it.  So I voted for Harry Browne and then Michael Badnarik and I voted for Libertarians when I could at the state or local level but I never got involved.  I guess I never really have.  The War on Terror and the war in Iraq probably galvanized my “reconversion” and I don’t think I have looked back since.  I even managed to influence a few of my friends who are now Libertarians themselves.  Still, I never felt that hope and sense of expectation that I did when I was 16.

Ron Paul changed that.  He made it possible to dream again and believe again that there really might be an audience out there for what I believed.  I gave money.  I registered as a Republican so I could vote in my state’s caucus.  I saw thousands (millions?) of people who believed as I did and were willing to put their money and their time where their mouth was.  I don’t think I ever believed he would really win but it was enough to actually believe that he might matter…and I think he has.  I kind of felt he would eventually give up his Republican primary campaign and accept the Libertarian nomination and hopefully bring his supporters along.  That didn’t happen.

As I flash back to 10 years ago or so, I remember the first time I became aware of Bob Barr.  I thought he was the worst sort of human I could imagine.  He seemed terribly priggish and self-righteous and never moreso than during the Clinton impeachment.  I thought (and still do) that the whole impeachment was a political show trial that had very little to do with lying to a grand jury or anything else that justified Presidential removal.  (Granted, there are certainly legitimate reasons to have impeached Bill Clinton but I could say that about every US President of the 20th Century as well as our current fuhrer.)  I remember hearing about his defeat in 2002 and how the Libertarian in the race may have contributed to it and I couldn’t help but smile.

I remember hearing about Barr’s “conversion” to more libertarian views and thinking that that was certainly an odd thing and that maybe this guy wasn’t so bad after all.  Then I heard that he had joined the party and I was intrigued.  Whatever his faults, he had at least been man enough to admit his mistakes and was taking a turn for the better.  Having had my own “season of error,” I guess I was willing to admit that other people might make mistakes and actually stand up and support candidates and ideas that they might later see as anathema.

The next time I thought about Bob Barr was when I saw his speech introducing Ron Paul at CPAC this year.  I was actually impressed.  And, when Dr. Paul decided not to seek the Libertarian party nomination, I started thinking about Bob Barr.  Apparently at least a few other people did the same.  I saw some sort of posting about a Draft Bob Barr movement and, for some reason, I immediately went and signed an online petition.  In those days after it became painfully apparent that Ron Paul wasn’t going to win a primary, let alone the Republican nomination, I guess I was looking for something and someone to latch onto, someone to support for President this year.  I had looked at other candidates but they all pretty much seemed like the same sort of candidates that we’ve nominated for years and that have managed a fabulous total of 300 or 400 thousand votes.  Barr seemed like he might be different.  I started to hope again.

So I decided I was a “Barr guy” even though I still wasn’t really sure I liked him very much.  His errors in Congress were exactly the sort of errors that tend to enrage me more than most.  He still seemed pretty priggish and self-righteous.  At best, he was a “libertarian-in-training” and I was far beyond that.  I had become pretty much an anarchist, a secessionist, a Constitutionalist.  I was willing to support pretty much any movement that threatened the power of the federal government and I guess I still am.  But one of those things that might threaten that government was a Libertarian party that might actually get some votes and maybe scare a few people in power and maybe (at least) stop some of the insanity that most people have come to accept as part of life.  Maybe, just maybe, if Bob Barr manages to get a few million votes, politicians will have to think twice before they decide it’s OK to take away another one of our rights, to invade our privacy, to invade another country, to devalue our currency, to take another step towards the Police State that we have been running headlong into the past few years.

I have to say that today I feel that same sense of love and hate towards the Libertarian party that have characterized my relationship with it through these past 30-odd years.  I watched a good deal of the convention this past weekend on CSPAN and, while I felt some pride watching the debate Saturday night and seeing a fairly impressive group of people seeking the party’s nomination, I felt disgust Sunday night as I saw people I otherwise might genuinely respect and admire behave like spoiled children.  I would imagine that Mary Ruwart and I would probably agree on 90% of the issues that you could imagine.  She seems like a decent and fairly engaging person and a principled libertarian, but she did not behave like a good Libertarian.  Not at least mentioning Bob Barr or giving a lukewarm endorsement was classless.  This party has nominated plenty of Mary Ruwart’s through the years and we managed to achieve nothing more than to be a curiosity.  Maybe it is time to try something else.  It might fail miserably.  Maybe Bob Barr is simply an opportunist and maybe he’ll be a terrible candidate and turn his back on the party.  I don’t know…and neither does anyone else.  But he is worth a shot, a roll of the dice.  Maybe he can bring millions of new people to this movement and maybe we can make a difference and maybe that’s worth a try.  I think it is.  And I think the party should unite behind him and see what happens.  We’ve been disappointed before and maybe we’ll be disappointed again.  If you have a problem with disappointment, maybe this isn’t the movement for you and maybe this isn’t the party for you.