Yesterday on the L.P.website, appeared a story about the recent indictment and guilty plea of Congressman Cunningham of California.
The emphasis and focus of the report read like something straight from Democratic party headquarters and illustrates the lack of appreciation for both the unique nature and the potential of Libertarian solutions.
It quotes…”Shane Cory, Chief of Staff for the Libertarian Party.
“Over the years, politicians of the RNC and the DNC have proved through their actions that they place their personal interests and the interests of their party before the necessities of the nation”
With the 2006 elections around the corner, voters must turn to the Libertarian Party in order find leaders who hold true to integrity and principle.”
But specifically to which principles does he refer? Apparently, that’s not a significant enough matter to bear elaboration
Rather than proposing real solutions that, by reducing the breadth and scope of the federal government by several orders of magnitude, would serve to make public oversight feaseable, we get instead a hackneyed call to “throw the bums out” and replace them with saintly “libertarian” candidates who would put their own interests aside and manage the vast federal conglomerate for the “public good”.
Libertarians understand that it is not the Republicans or the Democrats as individuals that are the problem, rather that the problem is systemic, not personal.That the system is inherently defective, thus merely changing who operates it solves nothing.
Libertarian candidates are beings of the same nature as Republicans and Democrats.An inherently corrupting system will, in the long run,corrupt any party’s candidates.
While it is certainly desireable for L.P. candidates to be elected, they must, if victorious, come into office with a mandate to initiate real fundamental changes, otherwise, why bother?
Clearly, the focus is on winning elections, at the exclusion of promoting an ideology, if necessary.And of course, it’s viewed as necessary.
Libertarians can posture hypocritically as “holier than thou” to try to get elected,but even if that dubious strategy were to succeed in getting candidates elected, what would it accomplish if those elected officials are only mandated by the electorate to carry on business as usual, only cleanly?
Yet another example of the lack of both understanding of and interest in real Libertarian solutiions by those in control of the L.P.’s H.Q.
—The Bikemessenger