Click here if you are using Microsoft's
defective Windows Explorer browser. Why?
Posted November 4, 2004
I've long been impressed by the persistence of the Libertarians. Because I agree with so much of what they say, I vote for their candidates nearly every election. But there's a dark lining to this: I also believe that the continued existence of the Libertarian Party is one of the chief stumbling blocks to the establishment of a truly free society.
The reason is simple. Americans only give a new party a limited number of tries to break into the majors.
If the party doesn't make substantial gains early on, then quickly Americans dismiss it as a failure, as a party of cranks and Lost Causes. They dismiss it like they dismiss the Prohibition Party.
Though I suppose most LPers have resigned themselves to perpetual marginality, this resignation is premature. It need not be thus. Perhaps because so many are small businessmen, the idea of a small party seems, well, apt. But a political party has a different justification than a business. A business is there to make money. A small business can meet this requirement without going big, without an IPO, without donning the stentorian tones of enterprise-level corporations. But a party is supposed to do something more than function as a club for misfits and utopians. It is supposed to change the world. It does this by doing politics. By electing people to office. But by never getting their representatives elected above the city council level, the LP is marginalized and worse than useless. It saps the energy of libertarians, redirecting that energy and attention from potentially useful activities to mere wheel spinning and the grinding of gears.
Small-business libertarians should learn something from venture capitalists. They know that start-ups can take time. But they also know that this time can run out, and after that a small business will simply remain a small business forever — forever being, of course, at most a few decades. The LP has proven that no IPO is in the offing, so to speak, and that its marginality is now permanent. And, unlike smallness in a business, that's worse than bad, it's rather embarrassing.
Small-party libertarians should also learn something from the history of minor and major parties. . . .
In the 19th century, leading up to the Civil War, several parties tried to push the cause of abolitionism. First the Liberty Party tried to make waves. After limited votes, this was disbanded. Then the Free Soil Party made several, much larger efforts — including running a former president for the presidency under the Free Soil banner. But this didn't work, and the Republican Party took up the flag and ran with it. To success. (Of sorts. Political success, anyway. Hundreds of thousands dead in an unnecessary war might be considered some sort of failure.)
The Libertarian Party, by persisting in the face of reiterated failures, has condemned its agenda to obscurity. The one thing that Libertarians can be most praised for — persistence — is their biggest fault. For it stands in the way of whatever electoral success their cause has.
Imagine what would have happened had the Liberty Party stood its guns, plugging along with minuscule support from the electorate. Hogging the ballot and abolitionist attention, making sure Free Soil and Republican Parties could not start and eventually win. Would they have succeeded in keeping slavery in the South until the 20th century? Who knows? Maybe, since slavery was such an obvious issue, perhaps even the vile Southerners would have eventually taken up the abolitionist cause. Or perhaps a slave revolt would have brought freedom. Eventually. But I'm not certain these would have been better results.
In any case, freedom now is not an obvious issue for most people. It's merely a word Republicans like to throw around as they consolidate power. To bring real freedom to the fore, the LP should disband, and libertarians should devote themselves to some other venues and institutions, such as:
And then, after a decade or so not soliciting votes for a president and his sidekick, maybe then you can form a new party. And you can fill the positions with the stars from all the activities you've engaged in outside of partisan politics.
Maybe you could call the new party the Liberty Party, or Free Air. I don't care. But a new name and a new organization and a time of cleared air is important.
In any case, the first step is to dissolve the LP. This should be a conscious build-down. The members should be enthusiastic about their new activities, and enter into the legal destruction of their party with gusto. For they should know that their cause, freedom, need not be a failure. And they must realize, now, that their current endeavor stinks of lack of success.
Libertarians keep on hoping for a break-out election, where their candidates and ideas become mainstream. But really, this will only happen after the Libertarian Party is dead, and another party has come into its own, espousing, perhaps, a different mix and emphasis of the basic ideas.
After it is gone, then we can sing sad songs to its memory. But hey: there should be only a limited supply of tears to shed for hopeless failures. Institutions are made for a purpose. And the Libertarian Party's chief function, today, is to stand in the way of its alleged purpose, the establishment of a free society.
 |
Click here for this site's general fair-use permissions statement. |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|