The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has an article entitled Libertarians to gather for convention. The Indiana Libertarian Convention will host Libertarians from several states Saturday. Mitch Harper will be the keynote speaker.
[Christine] Smith, 40, of Golden, Colo., [a Libertarian presidential candidate] said she thinks many people would identify themselves as Libertarians if they knew the party’s stances.
I used to think that, but now I’m not so sure. I think I am more sympathetic to the Libertarian Party than the average citizen, but I don’t consider myself a Libertarian. More of a small “l” libertarian, and I’m not at all a purist. First, maybe it’s the ballot access and debate access — decidedly skewed against the Libertarians, holding them back. But, I think maybe there is a structural impediment to any third party that flows from the winner-takes-all electoral college system we have in place for electing the President. Parliamentary systems seem to have greater room for third parties. For whatever reason, our democracy never has. Even when we had third parties, they were usually just replacing one of the two main parties. Republicans replaced the Whigs, for example. Maybe it would be helpful just to think of our parties as Party “A” and Party “B”. One of the parties probably represents your views better than the other. The best you can do is to influence the closest party to reflect as many of your views as possible and, hopefully, have as much influence as possible on the government.
Also, like I said, I’m not a purist as far as libertarian idealogy. I think that would put me on the fringes of Libertarian thinking. I tend to think there is a much greater need to act as a community than the typical Libertarian probably does. We’re social animals. Networked activity is a strategy that has given humans a leg up over other animals and has helped us achieve a pretty remarkable standard of living. I tend to agree with Hobbes that pure individualism amounts to a state of war: “every man against every man.”
It is a state where:
men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
I don’t go so far as Hobbes as to think we need a “Leviathan” with absolute power to preserve a state of peace. There are checks on government power that are necessary and proper to preserve liberties. But, those checks aren’t absolute or unlimited. I’m sort of building a strawman here because, I expect that most Libertarians would agree that individual liberties aren’t absolute or unlimited. And, while I suspect that my view of individual liberties are more absolute and less limited than the view of the average citizen, I also suspect that I don’t go so far as most Libertarians.
Big “L” Libertarianism had some appeal to me back in the day (say, back in the college student days). Some of their ideas still make sense, like taking a logical look at the “drug war” & other attempts at government regulation of private behavior. I came to think though a long time ago that they take the small government idea a little too far. At the end of the day, I think most Americans actually DO want a strong government social safety net of some kind, for example, & government regulation of business & environmental issues & so forth. Republicans & Democrats bicker on that as to kind & degree, but Libertarians would rather mostly chuck that altogether. I don’t think most Americans would sign on to that.
Third parties play a useful role as they are often a factor in what is known as realigning elections. But this idea that single elections cause a realignment is problematic as recent history has seen evidence of secular realignments, or changes made over longer periods rather than one defining election.
Obviously, the Libertarian Party of America has yet to rise to any kind of prominence. There is usally a Libertarian candidate for president, but I’m not sure if they’re taking votes from anybody thus contributing to realignments. But I suppose their constant presence could eventually be a drain on a party. Since the Ls tend to sway conservative the party that should suffer would be the GOP, and they’ve done quite well in presidential politics recently.
So yeah, maybe they’re irrelevant. That’s my theory.
If a tree falls in the forest…ahh, never mind.
There is a big difference between being a “pure” libertarian and being a part of the Libertarian Party of Indiana. The Libertarian Party of Indiana is a big tent that is organizing “libertarians” of all degrees and stripes in order to elect Libertarians who will work to make government more libertarian in nature. Volunteers active in the party generally agree on limited government with high standards of service, but there are a large array of views held within that general common belief. Also, there is a myth perpetrated in our culture that the USA has always been a two party system. Numerous factions or political parties of all types existed during the first 100 years. However, restrictive ballot access laws that was the campaign “reform” in the mid to late 1800’s created the two party oligarchy. As with most campaign “reforms”, it really only succeeded in protecting incumbents and the two strongest political parties at the time, the Republican and Democratic.