Why I Stopped Contributing To the Libertarian Party

by Joe Pulcinella

I let my LP membership lapse (oh, horrors!) as it has become a parody of libertarianism. What I mean by that is that the Party has determined that it must answer every conceivable question on every topic and in doing so, steps in doo-doo more often than not. Jason Kuznicki at History News Network seems to think so, too. Although his approach seems like more of a middle-of-the-road approach to not turning anyone off, he tends to lack principle in my opinion. However, he is right in that the LP turns off lots of folks who would vote for change by addressing stupid issues such as Children's Rights and Abortion (both planks in the platform).

Although I do liken myself to Rothbard in my thinking, I just can't get into answering questions of how a privatized road system would work such as in his Libertarian Manifesto. Indeed, I think that Rothbard was somewhat detached from society at large brought on by being a member of academia for so long. Yeah, it might be fun to imagine such a thing but to sit down and right a manifesto on it tells me that he had presumably exhausted every other avenue of persuasion. True, I never met Rothbard but I fail to see how this piece could provide an invitation to someone who isn't already a libertarian thinker of the highest order.

However, I do see Ron Paul's approach as being probably the best of all. He obviously saw that the LP was a dead end. He also sees the importance of GETTING ELECTED but was able to do so by jettisoning the LP but not his principles. ASfter all, which is more important? I'd vote for Hillary Clinton if she suddenly woke up and espoused (and executed on) libertarian concepts of individual liberty above all.

As a matter of fact, I spoke with my pop a while back about libertarianism and the first thing he asked was that if he a libertarian got elected to the presidency, would all roads be privatized. So right there I saw just what the LP looks like from the outside (and increasingly, from the inside). I pointed him to Ron Paul who, for the most part, focuses on dismantling harmful government regulations that stand in the way of personal freedom.

There. I had to get that off my chest.

Posted 3/28/2005 4:32:58 PM by Joe Pulcinella

I would be more than happy to get behind private roads AFTER we do things like eliminate government education and funding foreign despots. Again, Ron Paul has the right plan here. Eating an elephant starts with the first bite.

Posted 3/30/2005 7:29:04 AM by Joe Pulcinella

Ive become a convert for most (not all) privatization schemes. My argument of choice is wearing down people who think schools should be public. My wife fought the good fight, but now agrees. She once wrote "extortion payment" on our check for the school tax bill. As I wear poeple down, I see how hard it is for people to give up what they think is their birthright, and I marvel at how they are so easily convinced that only the govt can provide THAT particular service, while every other service they want they would go private every time...

Posted 3/29/2005 10:03:50 PM by sm

As far as privatizing roads goes, my short answer is that if government stopped doing anything that was worth doing, the private sector would pick it right up. The "privatizing roads issue" in fact, is the easy argument for committed, reactionary liberals to make when we start making sense on an issue - "You mean you want to charge everybody a toll just to drive down the street? That's crazy!" or some such. That's the kind of argument people in the LP are always stuck at. My answer is "NO, I don't want to charge a toll - let the people who will OWN the road charge a toll if they want to, or not". The problem with trying to set forth everything that would flow from a libertarian form of government is that no one is enough of an expert on everything to think of everything. That's the beauty of a pure libertarian system - no one alive has any idea how the problems will actuallyget solved - we just know that the solution cannot possibly be as evil as the ones government invests our money in now.

Posted 3/28/2005 5:40:33 PM by Vince Daliessio