Thoughts on Libertarian Party Campaigning

I've been think about the LP and how its candidate run their campaigns. I'm guessing the problem is at least partly in delivery. Most LP members have apparently never heard of Emily Post. Then there are non-focused statements that meander off into libertarain obsessions regarding the evils of the state. But back to the campaigning:

IMHO, the top five issues that libertarians should communicate better to non-libertarians should closely align with public opinion polls.

LP candidates should describe to non-libertarians the issues that concern mainstream voters, and tell them how libertarian policies help them. And I use the word "them" intentionally. Most voters are greedy selfish bastards, so they want to know what's in it for them. Even voters willing to cut programs are not willing to cut their own handouts.

According to polls like this, voter priorities are the economy, Iraq war, healthcare, immigration, and terrorism. They don't want to hear about libertarian obsessions with guns, drugs, 9/11 conspiracies, and the military-industrial complex. Candidates should communicate voter issues, not libertarian ones. Keep it short, simple, and focused.

So in summary, perhaps LP candidates need simple focused sound-bite descriptions of libertarian policies and expected results for the top issues of interest to mainstream voters.

Should the US Withdraw from the United Nations?

Ron Paul, other libertarians, and some conservatives talk of withdrawing the US from the United Nations. Sounds good. However, William F. Buckley and others on the right think another course of action might be better. Stay in the UN, but don't vote -- except to veto the really bad stuff.

As Willaim Rusher writes:

What to do? Pulling out of the United Nations would not eliminate it. It would keep on doing its best to body-block the United States, and hostility to this country would not only continue but increase, dramatically highlighted by our solitary absence from the organization. But staying in and doing nothing is scarcely better.

Ideally, the best course would probably be to encourage the founding and growth of a new group of the world's truly democratic nations, dedicated to addressing the world's problems with their wealth and wisdom, and gradually diminish the United Nations's pretensions. But such undeniably democratic nations as France and Germany would undoubtedly refuse to go along with such a scheme, preferring to pursue their current strategy in the United Nations.

In the circumstances, therefore, the best course may be the one proposed by the late James Burnham: for the United States to announce that it will continue supporting the beneficial activities of the United Nations in such matters as world health, but henceforth will not participate in, or vote on, its deliberations involving major political issues. (We would retain, however, our veto power, to block seriously offensive actions.) The United Nations would undoubtedly continue, and probably increase, its issuance of anti-American manifestos of one sort and another, but their essential unimportance would become steadily more apparent as the years rolled by.

Freedom through Aggression

I was challenged by a friend, presumably of the libertarian-left, to respond to the following claim: "There are absolutely NO examples of acts of aggression expanding the freedom of those who were aggressed against."

Talk about a target-rich environment. I quickly came up with the following examples:

- German Nazism
- Japanese imperialism
- Italian fascism
- North Korean communism
- Soviet communism
- Afghan Taliban
- Saddam's Baathism
- British colonialism

All these were eliminated partly or totally through US intervention, aggression, and the military’s superior ability to kill people and break things. The US intervened, and its military used massive force and aggression to achieve those victories. People bled profusely and many died. In each case, greater liberty was the result.

I think many left wingers, libertarians, and others live in a dream world – a kind of Shangri-La – where they fantasize that all is free and peaceful until some bully American president screws things up by intervening and ordering the US military into action. Well, that’s not the way the world works. Indeed, even at an individual level, people would rob you blind and hurt you severely without the police or some other collective aggressive security force.

The world mostly sucks as far as liberty is concerned. Other than the Western nations, most of the world is run by thoroughly corrupt and often unelected thugs who care not about individual rights of any kind. Fortunately, freedom is on the rise, largely due to American intervention and aggression. That these are forceful acts of intevention tells us nothing about the purpose for which they’re used. You can kill someone to secure liberty or to take it away. You must always be willing to fight for freedom, or you will soon lose it.

In the real world, blood must often be shed to obtain and preserve liberty. Even the overly-admired Swiss selfishly keep their own little piece of freedom by arming all able-bodied males in a system of compulsory military service. No one attacks them because they are so well prepared to respond aggressively.