From the Libertarian Reform Caucus:

It’s Time to Win!

“We want to reform the platform so that Libertarian candidates can proudly quote our platform and still win elections.”

This seems to express the basic thesis of the reformers;The L.P. has “failed” because the message in the platform does not move voters to vote for L.P. candidates.

But this is a simplistic logic that conveniently bypasses both the unpleasantries and complexities of reality.

It begs a plethora of questions which it blythely ignores, but which must be faced and addressed before any meaningful changes can be validated.

Let’s touch on a few of them.

Suppose we impliment their proposed changes and we still don’t achieve their criteria for success? Then what? More “adjustments”to the message?

And just exactly what do they mean by “failure”?

It’s been suggested here that the recent history of the L.P. is one of success and not failure. But given that this is not a disagreement about the objective facts of what has transpired (i.e.,there is an nominal agreement about who ran for what office,and what result agrued,etc.)then it must a disagreement about the meaning of these objective facts, that is to say, what rational truths are to be formulated from the facts we more or less agree on?

To draw a “success” or “failure” conclusion, an objective standard must at the very least be clearly implied.On our side, I see frequent reference to the degree of difficulty in the current situation to getting the libertarian message accepted.This at least alludes to the objective degree of difficultly we are faced with.

On the reformer side,these same results are met with an arbitrary dissatisfaction that is a once vague and intense;We aren’t getting people elected often enough to high enough offices, therefore we MUST be doing something wrong.

This verily is the real and crucial failure on the reformer’s part: the failure to first establish an objective criteria upon which to base judgement before passing judgement.

If they would account for the degree of difficulty we face as Libertarians attempting to promote an ideology whose tenents have been so effectively propagandized against to the audience we address, perhaps,as I have suggested before, the mere survival of the L.P.would appear at least somewhat heroic.

Instead, they insist that as the message,as extant,has not produced whatever mimimum level of numerical “success” might meet with their acceptance, then the message must be changed.

Huh? I thought it was supposed to be about promoting the message.

Come to think of it, aren’t there already one or two political parties out there that are adept at adjusting their “message”so that people would vote for them?

I thought it was supposed to be about getting people to understand the unique value and meaning of the radical differences between Libertarianism on the one hand and varieties of statism they had been inculcated into believing to be their only range of choices on the other.

This can only be achieved by getting people to stop and do what made humanity a successful species, what they have been acclimated to not do, as least with regards the matters we address;THINK CLEARLY AND RATIONALLY,AND QUESTION THEIR ACCEPTED NOTIONS.

This cannot possibly be achieved by asking the reformer’s abjectly and shamelessly PANDERING question to the voters: what do I have to say to get your vote?

Sincere promoters of Libertarianism bring the message of a radical new way, and make no attempt to hide it, but rather dwell on why this new way is a better way.

Trying to advance without focusing on changing people’s perscpective is foolish, futile and hypocritical.

The reformer’s approach may possibly produce short term success at the ballot box.But that is an irrelavent speculation, as those would be uselessly pyrrhic “victories”.

No amount of sophisrty, salesmanship or obscuring of message can produce a desirable result if it does’nt lead a given person to change his mind, no matter what they do in the voting booth.

Without popular support, no reform has a chance; witness the fate of Bush’s social security “reform”.Electing “libertarian” candidates without promoting an acceptance of a comprehensive Libertarian agenda would produce the same futility, and might serve to undermine, rather than promote, libertarian philosophy.

Further, the reformers, without realizing it, it seems, having adopted electoral victory as an end in itself.In so doing, they have moved themselves another step towards conformity with their recently adopted Pragmatist philosophy; a perspective, as I have pointed out before,which can find no validity in Libertarianism.

—The Bikemessenger