BradSpangler.com

The libertarian movement predates the Libertarian Party and will survive after it is gone. There was a time when radical libertarians like Samuel Edward Konkin III denounced formation of a “libertarian” politicial party as incompatible with libertarianism properly understood. With evisceration of the LP platform in recent years by “small government” statists longing to join the ruling class, the Ron Paul GOP presidential campaign has served not to shout out the irrelevancy of the Libertarian Party so much as serve as the heavy duty exclamation point punctuating that death cry that the LP already delivered to itself.

A shutdown of the Libertarian Party would get radicals and moderates out of each others hair. Radicals could pursue the long neglected non-electoral strategies for long-term radical change and moderates could apply their energies to seeking small reforms inside the major parties, as Ron Paul does. Sufficient social space for needed overlap between wings and their ideological cross-fertilization would exist organizationally in groups like ISIL and the Advocates for Self-Government, as well as out on the internet in political discussion forums of all sorts generally.

The first step in a campaign to shut down the LP would be to develop content for a web site comprehensively laying out both radical and moderate libertarian cases for shutting down the Libertarian Party as counter-productive to the cause of libertarianism.

DEATH WITH DIGNITY?

Is the market ready for this? Does the support exist for such a project? Can libertarians take responsibility for cleaning up their own mess?

Or should the Libertarian Party instead be left to wither on the vine and further become even more of a sad parody of the ideals of the thousands of activists, including myself, who put huge amounts of their lives and treasure into building it?

If the membership of the Libertarian Party wants to shut down the LP, they can do so at an LP national convention by amending Article 2 of the LP bylaws — the part that lists the duration of the party as “perpeptual”. It will take a 7/8 majority.

If the membership are to be persuaded to adopt such a course of action, the case(s) for doing so will have to be properly presented to them.

The domain www.shutdownthelp.info has been registered.

I am seeking $2500 in funding to develop comprehensive content for that site in support of a potential LP shut down effort. It is my opinion that if $2500 can not be raised to fully spell out the case for shutting down the LP, then there wouldn’t be enough potential support for an actual attempt to shut down the LP to be worth trying.

Will you pledge a donation toward Death with Dignity for the LP so that the libertarian movement can develop a consensus to move on to other strategies? Or should the Libertarian Party just be ignored until it goes away?

Pledge using Fundable. You will not be billed if the $2500 pledge goal is not reached.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 29th, 2008 at 6:15 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.