OFF: was Kev, now Libertarians

[M Holmes]

K Henderson writes:

> FoFP responds...

> >> Sounds a lot like the (I think it's called) "shortest political
> >> quiz" that's floating around on some libertarian website.  No
> >> matter what your answers to the quiz are, it will tell you that you
> >> are (surprise surprise) actually a libertarian, and you never knew
> >> it the whole time!

> >Weirdly enough I did this years ago when I didn't know there were
> >such things as libertarians and it turned out I'd been one the whole
> >time.

> I have always been confused by libertarianism...I mean, to me, the
> idea of a 'libertarian politician' is oxymoronic.

In the current political system, that's true to an extent. In a more
reasonable system a libertarian politician would just be someone who
wanted to organise something and invited folks to join in with effort or
funds, rather than the current sort who appropriates your funds whether
you want to help or not. The problem is of course that to get from here
to there, someone has to dirty their hands by playing the game.

> I couldn't imagine
> the libertarian platform ever being an important factor in US
> politics, 'cause all of the people who might be behind it are the kind
> of people (like me) who are so cynical and so apolitical, they would
> have zero organization and completely unable to voice a mass opinion.

The way that most minor parties succeed is through changing the climate
of opinion enough that the major parties see swing votes being avaioable
through appropriating parts of their platform. That's pretty much how
the Greens have worked. The LP in the US has actually surprised me by
succeeding at the local level. Then you have folks who are libertarian
but who work through the major parties. Gary Johnson in New Mexixo is
doing pretty well to redefine the War on Drugs as a medical rather than
a legal problem for example.

If you don't want to vote then don't (I attend regularly and scrawl
"None of the Above" because I refuse to be labelled "Too apathetic to
vote"). However there's always the risk that your vote might just
occasionally help the right candidate. Personally I'd vote for Gary
Johnson in a heartbeat.

> I assume that I'm 'libertarian' at heart as well, but I really have no
> idea what the party is truly all about

P.J O'Rourke described the US Libertarian Party as "a bunch of math
professors arguing about how to privatise the sidewalks". This is
neither entirely unfair nor entirely fair.

> nor do I care.  They do have a
> visible champion in Bill Maher though (a guy that is at times quite
> funny and insightful, but whose show is nearly always rubbish)...but
> my guess is that when he attacks the left, the Republicans go 'Yeah!'
> and when he attacks the right, the Dems go 'Yeah!' and neither budges
> from their loyalty to one or the other.

If you want a fun way to find out about the idea then try P.J.O'Rourke's
"Parliament of Whores". I'll buy your copy if you don't guffaw out loud
at least a dozen times.

On the basic principles side, David Friedman's "The Machinery of
Freedom" is a good read, not least because he identifies the difficult
problems and admits that libertarians don't have all the answers.

This and other books of his convinced me that I'm an anarchocapitalist
sort of libertarian (yeah, we have subsects but usually we still buy
each other beer. I'm with Doug on the Randians though - I simply just
don't get it).

> Grakkl (FAA)

FoFP