One response to my article "Ron Paul and the Libertarian Party" here at the Nolan Chart, stated that political parties by their nature exist to control other people. In that sense, if the Libertarian Party were to rise to parity with the other two, "I" wouldn't belong to it. What is so attractive about Ron Paul "is that he leaves people alone."
Another response classified my optimism for the potential of the LP as pure "fantasy."
A third response stated that it would be great if Ron Paul would or could come home to the LP but if he doesn't and the LP dies on the vine, it would not be ideal but it would be "O.K." because Dr. Paul has accomplished as a Republican libertarian what the LP has tried in vain to accomplish for more than thirty years, and in so doing he has given libertarians a place to live politically, and a place to fight for the cause.The implication is that we still wont' win, but we'll get more attention losing.
These three comments encompass all the comments received on my Ron Paul article and my article "How Libertarians Can Win." They capture the three primary conflicting forces that continue to hold libertarianism back both inside the LP and beyond it.
The first is ambivalence about party politics. The nature of libertarianism is so anti-institutional that we either eschew the LP or we belong to it, but do our best to consciously or unconsciously sabotage the party to ensure we'll never have to deal with the question of what to do if we suddenly become the majority party.
The second is a lack of faith, pure and simple. A lack of faith in our ability to effectively communicate our positon to the masses. A lack of faith in the American people's ability to know the truth when they hear it, and allow the truth to set them free.
The third is a variation on the first two. It is settling. It is the assumption that (and/or ) a wistful resignation to the "fact" that the Republicrat monopoly is unbeatable. It is a preference for the role of gadflly over governor.
And my answers:
To the first point, it takes a village to raise a child and it takes a party to defeat a party. If we don't feel comfortable belonging to a party, or belonging to a party that has at least a modicum of power, then we need to acknowledge that we really don't want to achieve liberty, we just want to idealize it.
To the second point, there is a fine line between fantasy and faith, between dreams and determination. Usually we won't know which is which until sometime well into the future when the results of our efforts (or the lack of which) are known. But if the alternative to fantasy is fatalism, give me fantasy every time. Becasue somewhere in fantasy is at least a few seeds of faith. Faith is nothing more than fantasy with a plan. Sure, it probably is impossible for the LP to ever defeat the Republicrats. Pure fantasy, no doubt. It was probably impossible that the Contential Army would ever defeat King George.
To the third point, we have to fight our natural preference for being rebels over being revolutionaries. The difference is the objective. Rebels exist to challenge authority, swim upstream, go against the grain. Refvolutionaries exist to change the direction of the stream. If we are rebels then liberty isn't the point, it's the weapon. We cease to exist if we become the majority. If we are revolutionaries then liberty is the point, the goal, the destination. Instead of losing our identity with victory, we achieve fulfillment.
©2008 John Wingspread Howell, all rights reserved. You must have written permission from the author in order to republish this work.
Published: Monday, September 1, 2008
Last modified: Monday, September 1, 2008
The views expressed in this article are those of John Wingspread Howell only and do not represent the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. John Wingspread Howell is solely responsible for the contents of this article and is not an employee or otherwise affiliated with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.
Report violation by John Wingspread Howell of Nolan Chart LLC's terms of use policy.
| More Articles By John Wingspread Howell |
Reader Comments:
Posted By: No Name Supplied
Date: 2008-09-01 00:04:02
write in ron paul for our leader
Posted By: Adamantane
Date: 2008-09-01 07:39:19
(Reposted as the original submission wasn't confirmed.)
>>... [W]e have to fight our natural preference for being rebels over being revolutionaries. The difference is the objective. Rebels exist to challenge authority, swim upstream, go against the grain. Refvolutionaries exist to change the direction of the stream. If we are rebels then liberty isn't the point, it's the weapon. We cease to exist if we become the majority. If we are revolutionaries then liberty is the point, the goal, the destination. Instead of losing our identity with victory, we achieve fulfillment. <<
In my almost four adult decades of being libertarian, I've never seen this insight identified before. The named distinction between rebels and revolutionaries is worth giving great thought. It is too fresh in my mind now for me to fully parse, or to use as a prism to deconvolute the libertarian movement, but there very well may be something of great importance there.
One thing that always has made me uneasy about how libertarians often self-classify is the tendency to identify libertartian thought with conservatism. How the most audacious political philosophy ever in the history of the world, when its core was articulated in the Declaration of Independence, can be classified as 'conservative' has always struck me as mistaken and ironic at worst, or confusingly misleading at best.
'Conservatism' per se is by definition a matter of temporal relativism. 'Liberalism' whether in the original classical liberal sense or the hijacked post-New Deal sense, is not essentially temporally relative, but rather a view of man's place in his world, at its core independent of time.
Whether rebel or revolutionary, libertarians are at most tangentially conservative, i.e., if the American Revolution and the cultural mindset that grew out of it are used as the reference point. We are liberal in the sense that there is a time-independent nature of the interrelationships among thinking individuals, and identify with one particular constellation of thought as to that nature.
Posted By: Larry
Date: 2008-09-02 12:56:06
I've always been a rebel.. Don't know what I'm gonna do after the revolution.......... I never even gave it a second thought! Thanks for an excellent work.