The Cellar - View Single Post - The Libertarian Party Stance on Capital Punishment

Undertoad · 01-07-2003, 09:32 AM

For about a decade the LP has not elected a single person to a position where they would have any influence whatsoever on a death penalty law or case.

But the reason there isn't anything in the platform is because it's hard to find consensus amongst LPers on any matter not covered by the non-aggression principle (NAP).

Roughly, the NAP says one does not believe in or advocate the initiation of force as a means of achieving political or social goals. Originally, this sentence fragment was written by party founder David Nolan as a pledge for potential members to sign. It was 1971 and there were a lot of groups that were violently anarchistic, and Nolan wanted to make sure the LP wasn't full of bomb-building students seeking violent overthrow. The LP is about seeking change within the system.

However, over the years the "pledge" morphed into a unifying philosophical theory of sorts. A kind of universal guide to everything from which all other political philosophy springs. LPers routinely apply the NAP to every political question to determine how they should think about it.

For example, how should we think about taxes? Well, the first clear force involved with taxes is when the citizen is forced to pay them. Therefore, tax = force = theft = wrong. (If this doesn't seem exactly right to you, you're not a Libertarian, because the application of a single unifying principle means that everythng becomes very black and white.) (Sidebar for deep navel gazers: the entire question really rests on your thinking on the "social contract" - what, if anything, an individual OWES to his/her society. Part of the LP approach assumes that the NAP means there is NO valid social contract at all. Therefore the non-taxpayer is not initiating force by ignoring the social contract.)

The problem is that the NAP is NOT a good jumping-off point for an entire philosophy. The fact that you CAN develop almost an entire political philsophy from it doesn't mean you SHOULD or that it's CORRECT.

And one example of how the NAP doesn't address everything is capital punishment. Ergo, no entry in the platform.

01-07-2003, 09:32 AM	#11
Undertoad Radical Centrist Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Cottage of Prussia Posts: 31,423	For about a decade the LP has not elected a single person to a position where they would have any influence whatsoever on a death penalty law or case. But the reason there isn't anything in the platform is because it's hard to find consensus amongst LPers on any matter not covered by the non-aggression principle (NAP). Roughly, the NAP says one does not believe in or advocate the initiation of force as a means of achieving political or social goals. Originally, this sentence fragment was written by party founder David Nolan as a pledge for potential members to sign. It was 1971 and there were a lot of groups that were violently anarchistic, and Nolan wanted to make sure the LP wasn't full of bomb-building students seeking violent overthrow. The LP is about seeking change within the system. However, over the years the "pledge" morphed into a unifying philosophical theory of sorts. A kind of universal guide to everything from which all other political philosophy springs. LPers routinely apply the NAP to every political question to determine how they should think about it. For example, how should we think about taxes? Well, the first clear force involved with taxes is when the citizen is forced to pay them. Therefore, tax = force = theft = wrong. (If this doesn't seem exactly right to you, you're not a Libertarian, because the application of a single unifying principle means that everythng becomes very black and white.) (Sidebar for deep navel gazers: the entire question really rests on your thinking on the "social contract" - what, if anything, an individual OWES to his/her society. Part of the LP approach assumes that the NAP means there is NO valid social contract at all. Therefore the non-taxpayer is not initiating force by ignoring the social contract.) The problem is that the NAP is NOT a good jumping-off point for an entire philosophy. The fact that you CAN develop almost an entire political philsophy from it doesn't mean you SHOULD or that it's CORRECT. And one example of how the NAP doesn't address everything is capital punishment. Ergo, no entry in the platform.