The time has come for a running street battle with the two political parties. Are you ready to do battle with evil? by Josh Koch
(libertarian)
Saturday, July 12, 2008
We got pushed around in the GOP when we supported Ron Paul. We got pushed around after 9/11, when we were supposedly "weak on national defense." The GOP took our economic ideas, the Democrats took our civil liberties ideas, and we got left for dead on the side of the road.
The time for lying in a gory heap has come to an end. If the Democrats and the GOP think they can use our policy items as false advertising for their ends, the time has come to take the fight to them. Like it or not, they took the bait when they pretended to be libertarian.
The hook has been set. Obama and the Democrats have been spreading the line that "Obama is more libertarian than Bob Barr." Explain to me why Obama voted for FISA after attacking it. Explain why he wants to extend the presence in Iraq for a couple more years. Explain why he wants to turn American youngsters into brownshirts.
For the GOP, too, the moment to pay the piper has arrived. So, you RINO's think you can fake support for the free market for twenty years and call yourselves libertarians? What about your new environmentalism? What about strengthening the Federal Reserve cartel? Why is the US taxpayer bailing out banks that made bad investments? Some kind of free market that is! What about new "free pills" and "green" bureaucracies and taxes you want to create?
You, as a libertarian, need to be mean. The time for allowing the usurpation of the Libertarian platform and our traditional issues has passed. Libertarian principles appeal to people, which is why the major parties parrot our principles until they get elected. What can we do about it?
We can get mean. We can start asking the hard questions. If they want to fake it, we have an obligation to take the fight to them. I call on state LP bodies and activists to start taking these steps:
Issue press releases that ask hard questions.
Look at the GOP and Dem platforms, finding planks they mysteriously abandoned.
Analyze the competition. See where they cheated the people who voted for them.
Bury the press in analysis and exposures of duopoly hypocrisy.
Hit them where they think they are invulnerable: their disappointed base constituencies.
It means leaving "meek and mild" at the door. It means that you refuse to pass quietly into the night. It means being "the bad guy" who won't take "sit down and shut up" for an answer. It's exactly what your forefathers did in 1776, just without the muskets. Are you up for a guerilla PR war?
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Posted By: Jake, the champion of the constitution
Date: 2008-07-13 01:17:08
Josh - What's your recommendation for a wall to get behind? Seems to me there is plenty of debate at least at the Chart about changing the Reps from within or joining the LP. Campaign for liberty aside, I am a bit politically homeless right now.
From your article's tone, have a book recommendation for you but it will seem counterintuitive at first. If you like, you can email me and I'll share it and my thoughts with you. And what, exactly, is a RINO?
Posted By: Floyd W. Whitley
Date: 2008-07-13 08:26:17
What you propose, by extension of your logic, is an application essentially of litmus tests, which is no differently really than the use of such in the Communist Manifesto, or in Mugabe's or Chavez's regimes, etc. They are constructed no differently really than the suspect "survey" that places a star up on that Nolan Chart.
Regardless of how you promote it, your conceptualizations are merely rabble rousing.
You claim by implication that the Libertarians even have a "platform" worthy of the name. You then assume that your disjointed message (adequately demonstrated here) will appeal in any way to the big box "disappointed base constituencies". That is highly doubtful.
Doubtful because your party is, when distilled in the public perception, a consortium of (a) open narcotics advocates, (b) homosexual radicals and apologists, and (c) abortion proponents. And, it is also perceived as being greatly confused, certainly conflicted, and esoteric to the point of useless utility. Not for nothing the Libertarian vote has stalled at 400,000 nationally over the past five election cycles.
You take this "freedom-loving" rabble (as only you apparently are able to style them to be), and then you attempt to wrap that patchwork of so-called "principals" into a hypocritical appeal to the misinformed whilst claiming to project "intellectual" superiority.
Regarding your self-assumed semblence to "tradition", roughshod, you trample over the common law, and somehow derive the belief that in so doing you arrive at "patriotism", and that what you do amounts to the utmost fulfillment of "liberty". It does not.
Throw in guns and bark about "conspiracies", and voila, you supposedly have a poltical party that can accomplish something meaningful. You don't. As the foundation goes, so goes all.
Lastly, the question you failed to anwser elsewhere on this site regarding your gross misrepresentations [e.g. "Tree of Liberty Needs Watering"], Josh, remains open.
Here, however, all you have is invective and incendiary speech. Sound and fury. Nothing.
But nevertheless so long as you are reactionarily attacking something, regardless of direction under the constraints of that original litmus imposition, these actions are supposed to pass for sensible accomplishment.
Far be it from me to point out that the yelling of "Charge!" and the obtaining of an objective are two very different things.
What you propose, by extension of your logic, is an application essentially of litmus tests, which is no differently really than the use of such in the Communist Manifesto, or in Mugabe's or Chavez's regimes, etc. They are constructed no differently really than the suspect "survey" that places a star up on that Nolan Chart.
So, we're a bunch of communists now? Really? That's a leap. Find me a communist who believes in the Constitution and the rights of man. Heck, find me a communist who revels in capitalism!
It would be more truthful to call Obama and McCain supporters as supporters of fascism because McCain and Obama both subvert the needs of the individual to the needs of the state. Am I to assume you agree with this latter group?
Posted By: Floyd W. Whitley
Date: 2008-07-13 18:12:18
I am not calling you anything whatsoever, I merely extended your apparent logical argument..
What I am saying is that, in all your rhetoric here, your litums tests are no different than any other such silimar tests--whether they be for membership in the Communist Party, the local neo-Nazi, Code Pink, PETA, Libertarians, or any other.
All I know is this: when you shout for a charge up a hill to take it, you had better be sure that it it the hill you think it is, and that it is worth the sacrifice of the taking of it.
The question put to you at "The Tree of Liberty Needs Watering" remains open, Josh.
Do not be ephemeral in your attention. For if you are, you can never ever hope to be successful in anything, simply because you are incapable of staying engaged long enough to be so.
Why do you believe the government has a right to stick its hands inside of the citizenry's zippers?
Do you honestly believe that common law reigns in American jurisprudence.
Exactly what part of common law are you referring to in regards to narcotics?
Please explain to those of us who are uninformed "narcotics advocates", just how the War On Drugs has done anything positive whatsoever. It has funded both-sides of civil wars, and has done nothing to stem consumer demand. Who is your choice for President this year, John McCain with his goodwife, Cindy McNovocaine, who was able to commit a multitude of serial narcotic related felonies, and walk-away without doing even one day behind bars? Who are the REAL narcotics advocates again?
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