(By the way, Rob's Subject line is wrong. I didn't "claim that anti-war hurts the LP"; I just claimed that the evidence suggests it doesn't help the LP.)
Fellow PlatCom member Rob Power wrote:
RP) You mean you would have voted for it before you voted against it? (RP
No, I mean I supported the invasion until it had achieved the aims of 1) elimination of any WMD capability or international terrorist infrastructure, and 2) deposing Saddam's regime in favor of a federal democratic constitutional framework designed to protect minorities and fundamental human rights. After the Iraqis decided in 2006 to hold a full-scale civil war, I decided that we owed them no further effort in consolidating and defending achievement #2.
That's quite different from Kerry's flip-flop on whether WMDs justified disarming Saddam by force and Kerry's ill-advised commitment to continuing the occupation after the Iraqi civil war intensified dramatically in 2006.
BH) The LP remains (allegedly) neutral on [...] abortion (BH
RP) LOL. Read the current platform. It opposes government interference in abortion at all levels of government. (RP
Note that I said "allegedly". I wouldn't write the above without knowing the LP Platform's position and history on abortion. It currently says: "Recognizing that abortion is a sensitive issue and that people can hold good-faith views on both sides, we believe that government should be kept out of the matter, leaving the question to each person for their conscientious consideration.
" It's position is of course thoroughly pro-choice, but it pretends to be ecumenical on the question, in a way that it does for no other issue. BH) death penalty (BH
RP) Since when? The Portland Purge? You've got to know that mistake will be corrected. (RPRead the pre-Portland platforms. Opposition to the death penalty has never been in any national LP Platform.
RP) By the way, everyone who thinks we can change the platform and everyone will immediately stop referring to old platform positions (RP
That's not the goal of Platform reform. The goal is to make it not possible to accurately report that the LP officially asserts ridiculous positions.
RP) even if the LRC succeeds in removing all positions of consequence from the platform (RP
What "position of consequence" is missing from the leading LRC proposal:http://marketlibera
l.org/PlatComWik i/Greatest_ Hits_Draft_ Platform ?Brian Miller is back after not responding to this, writing:
RP) I'm fairly certain that he's living in a bubble of Republican talk radio (RPBH) I don't know which is funnier -- 1) someone from San Francisco accusing someone not from San Francisco of "living in a bubble" (BHBM) Insulting residents of the principal Bay Area city (at least you didn't call him a "San Francisco Democrat!") And let me not even get started addressing the laughable idea that those of us in our lovely San Mateo County digs in Atherton or San Carlos or East Palo Alto are somehow "more worldly" than those horrible San Franciscans (BM
I made no such insult and said no such thing. The only potential insult here was Rob's false and unapologized-
for charge that I "live in a bubble of Republican talk radio". I simply tried to point out that San Francisco is the most politically outlying county and city in America. Do you dispute that? "More worldly" are not my words, so it's mendacious for you to put them in quotes. Nor did I say San Franciscans are "horrible". By the way, I now live in Los Altos Hills in Santa Clara County. BM) Taking pot-shots at the LPSF (BM
I didn't even mention the LPSF, which I think is a shining star in the LP and LPCA firmament.
BM) Transforming the LP from the largest party with a principled stance on military conflicts (BM
Are you claiming that the LP is larger than the Greens, and/or that the Greens aren't principled in their opposition to war? The Greens are by most measures larger than the LP -- as San Francisco Libertarians should be painfully aware.
BM) Pre-emptively claiming (along with our National Director) that our party has a "neutral" position on a host of issues where we actually have a definitive stance (BM
False. I addressed abortion above. Can you quote any national LP Platform ever taking a "definitive stance" on any one of the other issues on my list?
AB) I was not able to read the article you quote in its entirety; the doublespeak was more than I could handle (ABBH) Talk about living in a bubble... The article is also in the current California Freedom, so you're going to have to keep your head pretty deep in the sand to continue avoiding it (BHBM) Berating party members for not reading California Freedom (BM
I didn't berate Amarcy for not reading CF, and in fact my comment assumes that Amarcy does read it.
BM) Assuming that, even if we have read it, the simple fact it was published makes it valid; (BM
The CF editor published a critique of my essay in the same issue, so anybody holding that inane assumption would soon have smoke issuing from his ears.
BM) Ignoring stances from the rank and file. (BM
I've been the loudest voice on the Platform Committee arguing for making our deliberations public so as to maximize feedback from the "rank and file". With myPlatCom wiki and my unmatched amount of participation on LPplatform-discuss, I've been by far the PlatCom member who's worked hardest at engaging the "rank and file" on Platform stances.
BM) If you want to "grow the party," you don't grow it by making it into a Republicrat Lite entity (BM
Congratulations, you just won a copy of my standard reminder of how the Democrats and Republicans differ from moderate/minarchist libertarians:
The Democrats support laws regulating prices, minimum wages, maximum hours, equal pay, plant closure, family leave, hiring, firing, occupational licensure, insurance policies, zoning, rents, product safety, drug efficacy, fuel efficiency, pollution mitigation technology, parental media control, media copying technology, etc. The GOP failed to use its legislative majority to start privatizing any of our Democrat-supported socialized systems of education, health care, health insurance, agriculture, and retirement savings. The GOP supports regulations and bans ongambling, suicide, substance use, pornography, gay marriage, sexual services, reproductive services, and cloning.
Unforunately, your offering of "lite" was not original enough to add to my collection of epithets used to disparage efforts to make the Platform more accommodating of non-anarchist libertarians: "nerf", "lite", "more-of-the-
same", "wishy-washy" , "watered down", "timid", "debased", and "unprincipled" . BM) We haven't even tried to make a good faith effort to reach out to the left (BM
You don't think averaging more than 2 anti-war articles per issue in the last three editions of California Freedom counts as outreach to the left?
BM) More importantly, the Libertarian Party remains mostly male, mostly white, mostly older, and mostly heterosexual. (BM
I'll bet you that non-heterosexuals are better-represented in the LP relative to the general population than is another group that I'm a member of: parents. Angela Keaton was onto something when she chided us from the podium of the 2007 LPCA convention "I don't see you people having a lot of offspring...
". BM) modifying our fundamental platform to mollify them ["the extreme right"] (BM
The only Platform reform in play I can think of that remotely meets this description is a proposal to align our extremist pro-choice position on abortion with what the majority of Americans -- not the "extreme right" -- believe. People say that abortion is divisive, but I don't think they realize just how much consensus there is on the issue in America. That consensus is obscured because the two incumbent parties pander to their hardcore base, but just look at the polling results. Americans were asked: "Do you think abortion should generally be legal or generally illegal during each of the following stages of pregnancy?" The answers were:
“Legal” “Illegal” First trimester 66% 29% Second trimester 25% 68% Third trimester 10% 84% The Democrat position (legal in every trimester) has only 10% support, and the Republican position (illegal in every trimester) has only 29% support. If we advocated legal in the first trimester and illegal in the third, we would be consistent with the views of most of the remaining 59% of the public. I'll donate $100 to the LPSF if anybody here can identify any other position we could take that 60% of Libertarians and 60% of Americans support and that is not already staked out by the Ds or Rs or Greens or CP. Any takers?(And no, my position on abortion is not determined by polls. The two extreme positions on when personhood begins -- conception and birth -- are both obviously wrong. The two tenable positions available are viability and neurological development. I used to assert the former, but the technology-driven malleability of that line brought me around to the latter position.)BM) Self-described far-right conservatives represent about 8% of all Americans. . . whereas small-l libertarians represent 19%. And small-l liberals represent over a quarter! The numbers don't match the "strategy." (BMAnd anarchists represent about 1/100th of 1%. The reform strategy is to build a big-tent Platform that can accommodate the 16% to 20% of Americans that polls show are non-anarchist libertarians.BM) The majority of registered Libertarians do *not* support this attempted top-down makeover of our party, and this effort to ram watered-down, wishy-washy Republicanesque Clintonian language down our throats. (BMAfter wiping away the spittle here, I see that you came up with a couple new epithets for my list. Thanks! Now, do you have any hard evidence for your "majority of registered Libertarians" claim? Do you even realize that RegLibs are more numerous and more moderate than Pledge-signing LP members?BM) We don't support founding members of our party being shut out of the process. (BMDavid Nolan says he wants the LP to be an educational "cadre". The LNC wants to grow the LP to represent those small-L libertarians you and I care about. I've never heard of a "cadre" that constitutes 16% of the population. However, I hope Nolan will help me try to get the LP to endorse the Liberty Amendment, which he used to work on even before he founded the LP.BM) when your agenda is put forward for a popular vote in the LP -- where it counts -- it will fail (BMIf this prediction is as well-informed as some of your other statements above, then I'm not too worried. :-)BM) because it is inconsistent with what it means to be a Libertarian. (BMCan you identify even one way that the Greatest Hits Draft is "inconsistent with what it means to be a Libertarian"? P.S. I see you forwarded your message to LPradicals, and your cross-posting was approved by a moderator there. I've cc'd them with this message, but the moderators (Susan and I think somebody named Marc) will of course censor my posting, as they have so often before. For other postings that they have censored from reaching the virgin ears of those cloistered at the LPradicals convent, see:<515390119>
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