Advice to a Losing Party
November 12, 2004
Well, one more election come and gone. One more election of getting your butts kicked; despite good ideas that just about anyone you talk to agrees with. Once more unto the breach, and coming up short.
When will you ever learn? It has been said that the chief symptom of insanity is doing the same stupid thing over and over, and expecting a different result. Well, that shoe looks awfully good on you. Want me to wrap it, or will you wear it out of here?
Oh, I’m so sorry. If you are a Democrat, you must think I’m talking to you. There, there. No, I’m afraid you all are hopeless—what with all the talk about ratcheting up obstructionism, seceding, and observations that moral sincerity is the key, and once you can fake that, you’ll be back. But it's all evidence to me that you should just drink the poison, and get it over quickly. I give you maybe two election cycles until you are totally irrelevant.
No, I’m talking to the Libertarians.
Once again, we took it on our collective chin; while in many respects the game is rigged against us, I concede, in most ways we are the authors of our own marginalization in American politics, namely, we keep adopting and applying the same failed and discredited tactics year in and year out. I first became a Libertarian after George the First reneged on his “Read my Lips” pledge, but until the Great Betrayal of the “Contract With America” I still voted Republican about half the time. In all that time, year after year, I find myself saying, “Will we ever learn?”
Not even 400,000 votes—second banana to RALPH-friggin-NADER, for crying out loud—in the 3rd party Olympics. Strap yourself in. Time to learn from the drubbing we received – or time to just disband.
First of all, we are a political party. We run candidates, participate in the process, and presumably believe in a proper role of government, however small. We are “Minarchists,” then. And we are by extension, “Statists.” Accept it. Stop letting it be a dirty word. It’s long past time to expel the Anarchists from our ranks, they are an anchor on our asses and are not our friends politically. Next time some S.O.B. makes the “Statist” canard at a Party function, the proper response is to grab him by the rearmost belt loop, the scruff of the neck, march him to the door and firmly plant shoe leather to his butt. Don’t let the door hit ya where the Good Lord split ya, as the saying goes. These kind of folk think we are “statists” for even participating in elections, and includes those who want to boycott the political process, voluntaryists, and all other manner of pie-in-the-sky, unrealistic utopianists.
These people are not Libertarians. They follow a tangential libertarian (small “L” intended) philosophy. Toodles.
Same thing with the Anarcho-Capitalists. Give ‘em the Heave-Ho. We are not capitalists. Capitalists believe in rule by those with Capital. That’s an oligarchy of the wealthy, if you don’t get it. We are free marketers. The role of Government is to insure an open and free market, to guard against fraud, and enforce such contracts as do not conflict with the first two. Anarcho-Capitalists believe that the moneyed should be able to close the market and commit fraud at will; and they can put whatever lipstick on the pig they want, but those are the facts. We don’t want that kind. Lew Rockwell does. Let Lew Rockwell have them. And hell, they aren’t even real Capitalists anyway, more of the “Corporatist” collectivist type anyway.
We also have to make a few significant changes in attitude. First off, one can be practical and principled at the same time. In other words, it’s okay to accept a partial victory. Time and again I see Libertarians shoot themselves in the foot by dropping any chance of any change at all out of pure childish spite, just because they didn’t get the whole enchilada. Grow up. First rule of politics is that the last word is never the last word; and we can always build on a success this year in the year to come. It does not have to be all or nothing, it took decades for things to get in the mess they are in, and we are not going to change it overnight with a wave of a magic wand. And if nothing else, we need the fast-food chains to expand their franchises so that they can assimilate the hordes of lazy, overpaid government workers who are going to be displaced with only a sufficient personal skill-set to ask “Do you want fries with that?”
I swear, I could pull my hair out when I hear some pointy-headed party apparatchik go off on the annual election-time purity rant, and claim that anything less than 100% adherence to the end goals of the party, and nothing less, is heresy worthy only of hot pokers and thumbscrews.
Along those lines it is long past time to get over the love-affair with moral relativism and moral neutrality. It is possible to believe that an alcoholic or drug-addict is an irresponsible dreg of humanity, and not believe he is a criminal at the same time. It’s possible to deplore prostitution, but believe that draconian laws against it are a case of the cure being worse than the disease. It’s possible to believe that anti-smoking ordinances are an abomination, and still put a “No Smoking” sign up on the wall of the Business that is your own personal property. We can condemn same sex marriage on the basis that the government has no business regulating it to begin with, and it’s an unconscionable extension of government interference; same with bigamy and a host of other things. (Besides, I’ve always felt that having two wives is the natural punishment for bigamy.) The Federal Government has no business weighing in on the Abortion question. And so on. And so forth.
Liberty is not license, and we need not give ammunition to those who characterize us as the “Libertine” party. Democrats are the ones who want to give license to people to behave like turds, and protect them with the government from the consequences. We are all about personal responsibility, and this means accepting the consequences of choices and behavior, no matter how unbidden.
While we’re at it, it’s time to de-canonize St. Ayn Rand and the long discredited philosophy of “Objectivism.” It’s laughed at in serious academic circles, and it’s little more than a cult of personality. Ayn Rand was at best a socially maladjusted writing genius who had little to recommend her on a personal level, at worst she was a narcissistic neurotic with delusions of grandeur, who got hysterical at the slightest criticism of herself or her works. Might as well have Werner Erhard and EST run things.
As far as the platform goes, we have a good one, but we have to understand – I know I am repeating myself, but it bears repeating – that things did not go into the gutter in a few short years, and it will take that time, if not more, to undo it. If we cannot get a seat at the table, we haven’t a prayer. And if that means compromise in the short term with the Republicrats, so be it.
And I, a Reagan Volunteer from back when, well understand the disillusionment, sense of betrayal, and disenchantment that surrounds the Republicans. Yeah, I know we are trying to distance ourselves from the Republicans, and that politically they are at best sometimes convenient allies. But, and pay attention, the socialist, collectivist Democrats are most assuredly NOT our friends.
Where we constantly come up short is our foreign policy, or should I say our overall lack of even a vision for our Pollyanna-ish, head in the sand, excuse for a foreign policy. We have no foreign policy. We have a utopian ideal that if we just mind our own business, everyone else in the world will see what wonderful folks we are, and will all be our friends.
Bah. Who writes this crap, Barney the Purple Dinosaur?
It’s not the 19th century. And while there are many things in history which would have been better done another way, those are genies long since let out of the bottle. Less than twenty third-world, unwashed, camel-jockeys managed to stage a destructive attack on us. And I will give you a whack with the clue by four: it doesn’t matter that we have sided with Israel; the biggest part of what they hate about us is that we have what they want and have not sided with them.
At the risk of betraying my age, in an old episode of “The Rockford Files”, our erstwhile hero, pursued by a thug trained in the martial arts, retreats to a bar, buys a roll of nickels from the bartender, goes into the men’s room and spreads soap on the floor. When the leg-breaker comes in and goes into his Bruce Lee routine, he slips and falls on his butt; whereupon Jim Rockford cold cocks him, observing that karate is based on the stupid principle that the other guy is going to fight fair. As idealistic and moral as our policy of non-aggression is, it is based on a similar principle. It is stupid to wait until we get potshots taken at us to fire back, when all evidence indicates those potshots are coming as sure as Christmas. (Well, unless the ACLU has a good year.) It is also stupid to assume that those libertarian principles we see as self-evident will be equally self-evident to any given person, and that they will respond with equal reasonableness, when they have not in any way demonstrated that they see things our way.
Principle or not; one can be right and also be dead right. Security Moms don’t like that. How we address that is open for debate. It needs to be addressed.
In a similar vein is the question of immigration. Open borders is a wonderful idea, because in a perfect libertarian world, such people would be expected to come and stand on their own two feet. Well, hate to break it to you all, but this isn’t a perfect libertarian world, and a good many go straight to the welfare office, after giving birth to the latest “American Citizen” and sign up to be supported. Immigration for residence or tourism is one thing. Nobody objects to that. Transient Immigration for benefits, or to undercut the American Labor market and send money out of here to Mexico is a problem for people. People need to have a vested interest and professed willingness to abide by the social contract before they can legitimately claim its protection. It needs to be addressed.
Having friends and partners in the world neighborhood is not a crime against purity. And we have enemies just by being (mostly) white, rich, or different. We need to stand by our friends, and keep a close eye on our enemies. Even if that means spying on them. Most people see this as a thing moral and upstanding people do, and demand it of their nation. It needs to be addressed.
We don’t address them. Our foreign policy is chock-full of platitudes. It’s a loser issue. Time to re-examine it.