[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by Radar

Actually, you don't buy the litmus test (Non-Aggression Principle) because it excludes you. And the reason it excludes you is because you're genuinely NOT a libertarian.

I've told you before I believe you're thinking too narrowly. And if I were not a Libertarian, how could Murray Rothbard have had such an effect on my thinking? Were I not a libertarian, I should have rejected his ideas and turned to others, I should think. What I am is not your sort of libertarian, though this prospect does not trouble me.

You don't buy the Christians without Christ example because it makes absolutely perfect sense and you have no argument to refute it.

More like it's internally logical than that it is so perfectly sensible. As for the reason I don't buy it, reread my above.

I am not making the party hostile to growth. I am merely refusing to sell out our principles for the sake of growth.

And the growth of the Libertarian Party demographic has been what? We've been around since 1974. We're still at one half of one percent, somebody remarked up there. There's something we could be doing better if we want libertarianism in America or anywhere else.

This is exactly what the major parties did, and why everything is screwed up in America. They sold their souls to get in office and promised they'd change everything when they got there. When they did get there, they OWED the politically influential and wealthy special interests who paid for them to get there. They have always worked against the best interests of Americans and for the best interests of others.

Yeah -- Our Enemy, The State. This is, however, a counsel of despair.Just how in hell are you going to have any libertarian influence in anything if you give in to these counsels? You want libertarianism to happen? Best you learn how to win some more elections. That's probably going to mean stumping for Libertarianism Lite. This won't satisfy either the libertarian purists or the LP's philosopher princes, but a struggling third party should always be attentive to politics being the art of the possible. It's a long road to the full goal.

Growth merely for the sake of growth is worthless. Growth while adhering to our principles is slower but more respectable.

There's a difference between being patient and rationalizing inaction. Taking up all your collective time with ever-more-esoteric debates on Libertarian quiddities is the plague of third parties like ours. That is developing not a political party but a debating society whose primary effect is to determine who's "more Libertarian than thee." How about some policy proposals to campaign on, of such caliber as to be salable to the great grubby electorate, even in all its fickleness? A robust political movement should be visible on the American landscape by now: we've had over thirty years. Didn't it take the early Republicans less than ten years to seat a President?

The Libertarian Party is THE ONLY way to achieve liberty in America without a bloody and violent revolution.

And since when have the obdurate slavemakers deserved anything better than a swift death? If they forswear slavemaking and slavemindedness, excellent, for their lives are saved thereby -- but does not humanity have to turn away from unfreedom in order to be free. Considering that humans in general will fight like dogs to gain or keep power, they are going to need pretty substantial motivation to surrender privileges they think power secures to them.

Bruce nailed you perfectly. History is replete with examples of people who thought they could make the world a "better place" if they could just kill all the people they think are bad, and use force to enforce their own vision of what was best for them. They've always been arrogant bullies like Napoleon.

Then be especially careful to avoid even the semblance of arrogant bullying of your own, in your spirited replies. The people I think are bad, you also think are bad. When those bad people are in a position to try and snuff out libertarian ideas in their bailiwick, they present libertarianism with a difficult problem. Tyrants do not fall because benevolent philosophers radiate moral indignation at them; they fall by the bullet. But fall they must, if you want libertarianism in any form. And you know it won't be homogenous.

All of the empires ever made or ever to be made have crumbled or will crumble because you can't change people's minds with force. Though if you use force against them, you can unite your opposition and entrench the ideas you are trying to fight.

How many times must I repeat that I understand this? What the force is for is to remove the obstacles presented by the antilibertarianists, of whom tyrants are the malignant form, and the least curable by calm and reasoned argument.