Responding to Jim Davidson’s Why two libertarian parties are better than one, Brian Holtz writes at Libertarian Intelligence:
Another freedom party makes sense only if your goal is A) to displace the LP or B) to start an explicitly anarchist party. Competing with the LP to improve it makes about as much sense as Henry Waxman starting his own Democrat Party in order to replace John Dingell as the Energy And Commerce chair. Instead the Democrat caucus narrowly chose Waxman over Dingell, and then united to shove that choice down the throats of the Republicans.
The difference between a Party and a Caucus is politics 101. A Party is for uniting all the voters who cluster around a common policy goal/direction. A Party uses caucuses to settle internal disputes over strategy, tactics, or candidates — and then comes out united and swinging. Splitting from the Party over such disputes is inane if killing the old Party isn’t your goal.
He continues in an older linked article on the same subject,
Offering multiple parties/candidates to the voters in our quadrant of Nolan space is dumb for multiple reasons:
* Having multiple liberty-oriented choices tells voters that libertarianism is too incoherent to be worth understanding.
* Having multiple liberty-oriented choices tells voters that the freedom movement is too poorly organized to be worth supporting.
* Having multiple liberty-oriented choices vastly increases the cognitive/investigative burden imposed on a voter asked to cast her single vote for liberty.
* Having multiple liberty-oriented choices tells politicians that pro-freedom voters are far from being a coherent caucus whose votes can be earned (e.g. by the party not running an opposing candidate).
* Getting liberty-oriented candidates on the ballot requires a threshold amount of signatures/fees.
* Getting a liberty-oriented party ballot-qualified requires a threshold amount of voter registration and/or votes in statewide races.
* American elections generally do not allow fusion voting.
* American elections do not allow approval voting, but instead uses plurality voting.
* Duverger’s Law suggests the natural tactical response of voters to plurality voting is to gather into two parties straddling the political center along its major axis, or into one party for each natural cluster of voters in the political space.
Continues here.
One of the other noteworthy annoyances of Holtz is his claiming victory through substitution.
“Well, you vilified me. That means I win. You’d only vilify me if you thought you were losing.”
No, really, anyone in their right mind would vilify Holtz just to pass the time of day. It is a silly and illogical move only a debater would use.
Holtz remains “dumb,” as well as semi-literate.
Repeating your lame ideas doesn’t make them more true.
Jim I’ll cut and paste my very first sentence above slowly, so you can keep up: “Another freedom party makes sense only if your goal is A) to displace the LP or B) to start an explicitly anarchist party. ”
Hulsey’s point is spot-on for third parties that advocate different policy directions/destinations, and that sort of signalling argument is precisely why multiple freedom parties remains dumb.
@91. foolish, adj., see also Holtz, Brian.
The LP is not a given. It appears to be in considerable danger of becoming more trouble than it is worth to the activists.
I certainly don’t agree with Holtz, and I never will, that it is necessary for me to demand the destruction of the LP in order to have a large number of valid reasons for liking the BTP.
With regard to Duverger, Terry Hulsey makes the point that alternative parties are not stocks, they are options. The price of a third party is much lower, and it is an option which may be exercised at any time the voters are fed up with one or both of the “major” parties.
As a fourth party, the BTP seems to be an option, increasingly exercised since May of this year, on the failure of the LP to satisfy the desires and preferences of many liberty activists.
BH: It’s obvious from his effective surrender
JD: he asserts that I have said something that I did not
effective adj. adequate to accomplish a purpose; producing the intended or expected result
JD: I am happy that Holtz has been exposed for the liar he is
dramatic irony n. irony that is inherent in speeches or a situation of a drama and is understood by the audience but not grasped by the characters in the play
@82 My favorite page on this site.
http://pauliecannoli.wordpress.com/2008/12/04/video-montage-for-lnc-in-sandy-eggo/
@86 In the comment section, TWV notes that there is no reason to suppose there are multiple freedom parties. The GOP isn’t one.
The LP might have become one, but has failed to attract much interest, has destroyed its own credibility by axing its own platform in 2006, failed to restore it in 2008, and nominated a Dixiecrat. The LP is now destroying itself by fighting over whether Angela Keaton should twitter and whether Bill Redpath should sell out the party to GOP candidates like Paul and Barr.
So, really, the assumption Holtz makes that the LP is a given is in error. The LP is not a given, and it isn’t even clear that at the national level it is operating as a pro-freedom party. There’s no doubt that the state groups and activists would like it to be a pro-freedom party. But, there’s many a slip twixt cup and lip.
Link to comments section
http://www.haloscan.com/comments/thomaslknapp/7503795338539222692/
Not only is he full of lies and distortions, at 83 he asserts that I have said something that I did not. I did not surrender, scum. You lost.
@82 My favorite page on this site.
I am very happy. I am happy that Holtz has been exposed for the liar and egotist he is.
That facebook page lists him as a Democrat (which he is) but under ideology he put “Libertarian”. I dont see anything inaccurate or wrong.
As for whether he “gets it right most of the time”, Ron Paul has taught us that it is hard to “rate” people according to some perfect liberty scorecard.
http://knappster.blogspot.com/2008/12/multiple-freedom-parties.html
As previously noted, Joel is democrat whoaccepts the label, and he gets it right most of the time.
Just messin with ya pal. =)
Trent, I was already happy, and I’m even happier now. It’s obvious from his effective surrender in @76 how happy Davidson is.
My new goal for my every online conversation is to have Susan follow it to all the way to the end and then make a remark about boys needing to get a room.
“Headboard?”
As in, bashing in each other’s heads on a headboard of a bed. rough sex. Thus why it followed Susan’s statement about getting a room.
@78 Yes, Susan, takes one to know one. Your courtesy and deference to others are also legendary. -grin-
@79 No, Trent, I have no plans to engage in violence toward Holtz. He’s slime, but he’s easily exposed as slime. Sipos, Donnelly, Hogarth, and others have noted on this site the sophistry, distortion, and lies of Holtz.
Headboard?
No kidding. They wont be happy till they smash each other’s skulls…might as well do it on a headboard and hit 2 birds with one stone.
And, of course, you enjoy mocking what other people do.
Unlike the ever-courteous Jim Davidson.
You boys should consider getting a room.
@73 I don’t sell real estate. I only have this info because I recently bought. (Wife made me do it.)
@74 “You’re an anal retentive nit-picker, who twists and teases words in a tireless and desperate attempt to try and seem right at any cost.”
On this very site you demand party loyalty for all Libertarians by invoking a poorly re-worded version of Regan’s 11th Commandment. You clearly invoke it selectively for those friends of yours from the neo-conservative, war monger wing of the Republican party who support bigger defense contracts, especially in high tech.
You have repeatedly made calls for party loyalty on this site. And, of course, you enjoy mocking what other people do. Stuff it.
You demand that no one use the label libertarian unless they agree with your hate filled rants, your mockery, and your abuse of decency. You support every twisted insider clique corruption of the LP, yet pretend to be for transparency. You are a toad wearing the costume of a prince, and asking everyone for kisses. It gets quite laughable.
And dull.
“I even have offered encouragement and praise to the Democratic Freedom Caucus (whose platform would be better than the LP’s after five smallish deletions: http://libertarianmajority.net/democratic-freedom-caucus-redacted-platform), although I’ve never heard of a self-identified libertarian getting elected to legislative office as a Democrat.”
Brian–Joel Winters, NH State Rep, is a Democratic Free State Project Member and quite the libertarian.
Oh look, Jim Davidson has again made a farce of his verbal tic that he ignores me, and has actually tried to do some web searches to back up his recklessly false claim that I demand that libertarians be “loyal” to the LP.
“I am in the Libertarian Party, and the Libertarian Party is in me…†I love this one. It’s from an argument I made to an evangelical Christian who buys the latter-day doctrinal invention that Jesus claimed to be God incarnate. The guy was arguing from the Jesus quote that “God is in me and I am in God.” So I gave this quote as a counter-example and said “Mutual partial inclusion is indisputably not the same thing as ontological identity. (Jesus would never have said that God is exclusively or totally in Jesus.)” It’s just addled for Jim to claim this is a demand for party loyalty. Still, Jim gets an atta-boy for actually trying to put some of my words between quotation marks.
The quotes about the Greens can be rebutted simply be repeating my claim in the title of this thread: “multiple freedom parties is dumb”. The Greens are a socialism party, not a freedom party or an incumbent party. The list of arguments against investing in multiple protest parties only gets longer when the other protest parties are not freedom parties. That’s not a demand for loyalty to the Libertarian Party, that’s a demand for loyalty to libertarianism. I gleefully plead guilty to the latter charge.
The fact remains that I have never criticized self-identified libertarians (like Ron Paul) just for deciding to use the GOP as a means to get elected, nor have I ever criticized Libertarians who choose to support such candidates even in races where the LP has mistakenly decided to field a candidate. I even have offered encouragement and praise to the Democratic Freedom Caucus (whose platform would be better than the LP’s after five smallish deletions: http://libertarianmajority.net/democratic-freedom-caucus-redacted-platform), although I’ve never heard of a self-identified libertarian getting elected to legislative office as a Democrat.
The fact remains that I encourage self-identified libertarian candidates who want to infiltrate the incumbent parties in order to get into elective office, and I’ve never demanded that libertarian voters boycott incumbent-party candidates. I do still claim that it’s a waste of resources to invest in multiple freedom parties (and multiple protest parties), but I explicitly admit that a libertarian could honestly and intelligently want to replace the LP if he considered it unsalvageable. I stand by my nine distinct arguments that “competition” among multiple freedom parties is wasteful, and it remains inane to insist that any such argument constitutes a demand for blind party loyalty.
@72 Not a lot, Paulie. Limon province is not favored by the elites in the capital. It is out of favor because English is the common language, the people are a diverse array of races and nationalities, and they are not interested in the pure Castilian blood and Spanish language elitism of the capital.
@64 Don’t cry too many tears, Vin. Go have a nice life and smile when you call me a loon, m’kay?
@65 It depends on what you want out of life, Thomas. If you want to live like a prince among peons, you can find pricey real estate in any country. If you want to live a healthy life flat with the salt of the Earth, you don’t pay as much. You might like reading “Down and Out in Paris and London” (or is it London and Paris?) by Orwell.
If you prefer English, I have friends in Belize and in Limon province of Costa Rica. Panama is also good in this respect, and again, I have friends there. But, then again, you might find a freedom enclave in the USA more to your taste. Not only do I understand this language better, I also understand the culture more clearly. There is something to be said for tending to one’s own garden.
With regard to foreign languages, I have found that immersion in a foreign culture, combined with a sincere desire to understand, can overcome any language difficulties. However, if you never learned any other language before you were 15, you may not have the necessary mental functions for it. There seems to be a developmental stage for language learning, and past a certain age the brain sets a pattern for knowledge in just one language if it hasn’t been exposed to others. I’m not really sure why that is.
@66 Buy a condo from George. He’s good people.
@68 Did you say something, Brian? I couldn’t hear you over all your demands for party loyalty. “I am in the Libertarian Party, and the Libertarian Party is in me…” “Never mind that to support the Greens is to give aid and comfort to the…[enemy]” “Never mind that to support the Greens is to solidify their claim to being America’s third party despite the LP….” Of course, as a lapsed Republican, perhaps your true loyalty is to the GOP.
@69 April is a better time to move to NH, I would think. March is still quite icy there.
@71 Circumventing government rules is what freedom is all about. There’s nothing illegal, or even controversial, about having a round trip ticket and changing the return date, nor about leaving the country and getting an exit stamp, then returning the next day to get a new entry stamp and start the 90 day clock ticking. In many Caribbean countries, there is a ferry boat which runs to an island in another country which counts on significant traffic from visa renewal patrons. Most countries that benefit from tourism accept this behavior as part of the opportunity.
East Coast of CR is predominantly English speaking. However, it’s also not nearly as developed economically, and may not have amenities that many Americans may want and/or expect. It’s been over 20 years since I have been there, so maybe that has changed.
Thomas M. Sipos –
1. You can live very cheaply or very expensively, your choice, in Costa Rica, based on my research. Just Google “Costa Rica real estate.” You can get a pretty nice 2-3BR, 2BA apartment or condo (or even house) for $700-900/month. This is near a major city (the boondocks are even cheaper). You can have a luxurious rental for the $1500-$3000/month range. Comparable housing in Hawaii would cost double or more.
2. From what I hear, you need to be prepared to learn Spanish. I took four years in high school, one semester in college, but it was all book-based. My wife is the same. Still, we have a decent foundation and I think we would do well.
How realistic is it that we move? Well, I don’t have $150,000 in cash, so that might be a deal breaker. I would be nervous about trying to “get around” that law, like Mr. Davidson suggested, and even more nervous about the official ban on home-schooling (though it is said to be ultra-laxly enforced). These are my areas of concern. Take those away, and all I’d need to move is the price of one-way tickets for three. I could rent a nicer house than I currently have for less money, and still do the same work I do now. That would not be an obstacle at all.
Andy –
1. Shall be prescribed in each STATE by the LEGISLATURE THEREOF
2. May be altered by the CONGRESS (i.e. that branch allegedly accountable to the people) — NOT THE COURTS.
Paul, yes. I’m moving to NH around Mar/Apr.
I have VOIP phone service though with a us number.
Davidson’s powers of inference lead him to think that I apparently can’t read. I challenge him to cut and paste some text from the BTP’s platform or program that asserts a position with which the LP disagrees. I’d promise to get my 8-year-old to read it to me, but of course no such text exists, and so Davidson won’t be pasting it. But he’ll definitely again be vouching that I bore him and should be ignored. Bank on it.
Davidson apparently doesn’t know how to step back from a lie, even after it’s been exposed. I’ve never demanded “loyalty” to the LP, and (as I said above) instead advocate the freedom of the LP and its members to endorse across party lines when that is the best play for liberty. Davidson is again lying when he says that “some research would turn up a few of his calls for loyalty”. Instead, it would turn up quotes like these:
2004-06-07: I would define a true libertarian as an advocate of increased liberty, no matter whether delivered via elephant, donkey, torch lady, or carrier pigeon.
2004-06-14: I’m in fact a minarchist liberty monger whose primary loyalty is to human freedom rather than to any elephant, donkey, or torch lady.
2005-09-08: The goal is liberty, and the path to liberty is — increasing liberty. There aren’t any teleporters or wormholes available to warp us forward. I’ll take any conveyance along that path, be it donkey or elephant or torch lady. I’d forsake my lifetime LP membership in a heartbeat if the Demopublicans or Republocrats came to their senses and enduringly supported increasing liberty.
2006-07-11: My loyalty is to liberty, not to any politician or torch lady or elephant or donkey.
2008-03-01: we need to 1) work with other third parties on electoral reform, and 2) cure the LP of the brain damage that makes it reject fusion candidacies or any other possibility of supporting the most freedom-increasing ballot choice when that choice is labeled with a donkey or elephant instead of a torch lady.
2008-03-12: I personally don’t care if increased liberty comes from a donkey or an elephant instead of from a torch lady, and I wish more of us had the time to be moles for liberty in other parties while also working within the LP.
When will your lying stop, Jim? I guess your answer is in @58: “I’m obnoxious and disliked, I know it’s true. So what?” Your comment 58 also tells us everything we need to know about the BTP, when you say somebody who disagrees with you “ought to shove off and run his own stupid little party.” That comment broke my irony meter.
You’re in Colombia now? That would certainly explain not wanting to make phone calls, LOL. OK, just email me.
@65 and re Colombia
1. You can get a very nice 106 sq m apartment, 3 bedrooms, 2 bath on the 6th floor of a new apt building in Envigado (upscale-ish suburb of Medellin) for ~$110K now that the dollar is strong. There are more expensive options but the option I’m referring to is very very nice and new construction, built by a reputable company here.
2. In Colombia you must have good Spanish, or a Colombian friend to guide you.
Perhaps the methods of instructions you’ve been exposed to are antiquated. I think Chomsky is right in this area. (I taught EFL for 6 years.) You might to try a lot of input. IOW, watch a lot of Spanish-language TV, listen to Spanish-language radio, get an easy reader in Spanish, etc.
Re: Costa Rica…
1. How expensive is it? One thing to look for in a “foreign paradise” is a place where the dollar goes far. But many of these foreign paradises have “Western enclaves” where houses are very pricey.
2. How much Spanish does one need to know? I tried to learn Spanish, but I have no ear for foreign languages. I just can’t seem to pick them up. Three years of high school French left me with virtually no French skills, and I haven’t been able to do much better with Spanish as an adult.
Jim,
My opinion which you so graciously attacked had less to do with you and more to the inclination that so long as the BTP allows one of its loony members to rant and rave on the top front of its website, the BTP will be regarded as loony too.By doing this, the BTP is making Jim the face of the party. And sadly, Jim has proven to be less than professional, credible or inspiring. If I were those things then I would go run my own stupid little party, but since I’m not, I prefer to say what I want… An option apparently only designated to unofficial BTP spokesmen.
@62 I wanted to endorse Chris Bennett. The other members of the national committee who voted for the endorsement did so for reasons of their own. I thought it was useful to illustrate that we could endorse an LP candidate for president.
George made it clear, repeatedly, that he was running a campaign consistent with our platform. Although Tom Knapp expressed concerns with several of the initial position papers George distributed early in his campaign, these were changed by the time the endorsement question came up.
I will say that the motion didn’t gain enough votes on our committee until Chris was named as VP for the ticket. That put it over the top.
Actually, you know, the more I think about it, why would there ever be a question of why the Boston Tea Party did something? You can read all about our stated reasons in the national committee’s Yahoo groups. Our deliberations are open. I’m probably forgetting half a dozen steps in the process anyway.
I stand by my distrust of the reform caucus. I stand by my disgust with Holtz. He bores me.
“Recently, I’ve been asked by many different people, in different ways, why have a Boston Tea Party? My answer includes the following: I see the Boston Tea Party as a watchdog for the LP, staying firmly to the tip of the Nolan Chart, and giving the radical, hard core, dedicated anarcho-capitalist LP members a place to go if the Reform Caucus pursues its idiocy.”
I just happened upon this in an article from a few months ago in The Libertarian Enterprise. The author is Jim Davidson.
This begs the question of why did the Boston Tea Party endorse George Phillies in New Hampshire when George is not an anarcho-capitalist or a radical who is at the tip of the Nolan Chart?
“JimDavidson // Nov 30, 2008 at 3:11 am
@56 I have also encountered a number of libertarians who find Costa Rica to be less to their taste than they prefer. I also know some who enjoy living there.”
My point was not to say “Don’t go to Costa Rica,” but rather to give people a realistic picture of the climate there for libertarians.
Well, it’s not the best way to grow a party.
Who knows, it worked for Andrew Jackson…
@56 I have also encountered a number of libertarians who find Costa Rica to be less to their taste than they prefer. I also know some who enjoy living there.
There is also a Movimiento Libertario in Costa Rica which has been very successful, compared to the USA LP, in getting members elected to Parliament.
One of my very good friends from ISIL, Rigoberto Stewart, has had a project to make the Limon province of Costa Rica into a liberty paradise. This project first came to light around 1999. My buddy Spencer MacCallum helped translate the project book “Limon REAL” into English. My buddy John Kingman worked on it in country for a time.
@53 No problem, Mike. My comment was directed at the despicable whig Vin who thinks he has some standing to tell the Boston Tea Party to implement a gag order on one of its members. Not only does the party have no such power, the whig ought to shove off and run his own stupid little party.
I’m obnoxious and disliked, I know it’s true. So what?
@51 The BTP has the option to endorse candidates from other parties. This year, we endorsed nearly two dozen LP candidates and one of our state affiliates endorsed a GOP candidate. And two of our endorsed candidates now hold public office.
There clearly isn’t any room in the LP for various voices to be heard. Any voices ever criticising the LP, especially with regard to corruption and abuses of power, are told very firmly by many people to shut up. These include very often every reformer voice in hearing distance. It gets tedious. The LP also has never been willing to do anything meaningful to the people who are corrupt within its party. It lets sleaze and scum slide.
Since we weren’t able to get Jay on all the ballots, we did endorse an LP candidate for president in New Hampshire – George Phillies and his running mate Chris Bennett. (Chris was, at the time, serving on the national committee of the Boston Tea Party.)
“Andy – No shit it’s not a libertarian paradise. That’s what I was just saying.”
I was just letting people know that some Libertarians who I’ve spoken to who’ve been to Costa Rica indicated to me that they were disappointed.
“And there’s no such thing as a ‘federal election.’ All elections are state elections, period, and Mr. Winger is very fond of using the military might of the federal government to overrule state law.”
Here’s what the US Constitution has to say on the matter.
“Section 4 – Elections, Meetings
The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Place of Chusing Senators.”
So according to the Constitution, the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter election Regulations that were passed by a state legislature concerning the election of Congressmen, so this would indicate that there are cases when elections are a federal issue.
@50 GE, there’s a simple method to avoid that residency issue. Every three months you take a trip to visit one of my friends in Belize, or in Panama. Or you make a little trip to Mexico, Nicaragua, Honduras, or another country. Doing so keeps your tourism “visa” status valid. Generally you only have to be out of the country one day out of 91 to make it work. I put “visa” in quotes because Costa Rica accepts USA visitors without visa, provided you have a valid passport.
You might want to book your travel into Costa Rica through another country, such as Mexico or Panama. Costa Rica wants you to have a “return flight” ticket. You can generally get these rescheduled if you buy a ticket that allows for changing the dates for return. Of course, the permanent traveler scheme is not for everyone.
@49 Holtz apparently cannot read. The Boston Tea Party’s platform is significantly different from the LP’s platform.
There is no evidence that the self-destruction of the LP is going to leave much to salvage.
I don’t believe Holtz when he asserts that he has never called on any LP member to remain loyal in the face of idiotic LP actions. I get a very large number of hits on party loyalty with his name and the name of the party. So, some research would turn up a few of his calls for loyalty, if it weren’t so boring just thinking about him.
I dozed off after the second 1.
I like Jim Davidson, but I sometimes think he says things to piss people away from the BTP. Sorry Jim. ):
@48 Vin, screw you with the horse you rode in on. I’m just a member of the party. I’m free to say anything I please. If you don’t like it, stuff it.
I think the example of the socialist parties should show where multiple libertarian parties would end up. Perhaps the Communist Party USA is the most successful of them all since they simply endorse Democratic Party candidates. If the LP could endorse other party candidates when they have no horse in the race it may help.
In the mid nineteenth century in Pennsylvania the Democratic-Republicans were having problems with elections to county offices. Even though they vastly outnumbered the Whigs, they would get many candidates running for the same office while the Whigs could only field one. The result was the Whigs were getting the plum county offices.
In Crawford County they came up with a fix for this problem in the form of a primary election. Once they got it down to one candidate per office, they again won the offices. Not that the LP has dominated in the electoral process, but creating multiple parties would have the effect of diluting the vote with multiple candidates.
It is bad enough when there are Libertarian, Constitution Party, and Green Party candidates vying for votes to attain or retain status for ballot access, I’m not sure why anyone would want to make that more difficult. There should be plenty of room in the LP for various voices to be heard.
I thought Charles Jay did a good job talking to the media when I did see him once in his BTP presidential bid, but endorsing other party candidates may also provide an opportunity for media exposure. Maybe the better reform is to change the LP bylaws to allow such endorsements.
Thomas Sipos – I have been researching Costa Rica. I’d like to move there. But they have sort of difficult residency requirements that I’m still trying to understand. It sounds like, in order to stay there for more than 3 months, I’d have to deposit $150k in one of their banks, and I don’t like the prospect of that.
Andy – No shit it’s not a libertarian paradise. That’s what I was just saying. And there’s no such thing as a “federal election.” All elections are state elections, period, and Mr. Winger is very fond of using the military might of the federal government to overrule state law.
George, the current multiplicity was born over differences on issues — either the Portland platform changes, or Barr’s less-than-libertarian positions as of Denver. Nevertheless, the BTP has indeed done utterly nothing to differentiate itself from the principles of the LP Platform, despite all the talk about a “market for ideas”.
Given that the BTP-US can’t even accept contributions, your point about resources makes little sense in the current context. LP donors don’t need competing national freedom parties in order to target their donations. They can selectively donate to state affiliates, to party caucuses, to individual candidates, and to groups like your own organization.
Jim, you fantasize that I make “demands”. I can’t make you stand and face my argument that a caucus is better for reforming a salvageable party than is inter-party competition. I can’t make you stop telling lies about whether I “demand” party “loyalty” when in fact I argue for tanspartisan endorsements and targeted non-campaigns. All I can do is marshal evidence and arguments. You can try (again) to ignore them, but that demand-y feeling in your head isn’t me. It’s logic. You may as well complain that I “demand” you think of 2 when I say “1 + 1”.
My personal view is that Jim Davidson significantly brings down the credibility and seriousness of the BTP. I admire his personal convictions, but it does the party a complete diservice to allow him to rant and rave as a focal point of their website. I always liked the idea of the BTP but Davidson as a public face — whether it is officially sanctioned or not — in my personal opinion is a liability. Someone like Thomas Knapp would be much more credible and has the ability to offer potential members a second look. Again, my opinion.
I think it is sort of silly to ask George Phillies whether he thinks there is anything wrong with having two or more libertarian candidates for the same office on the same ballot. This matter has come up, in New Hampshire, this year. He was one of the Libertarian Party candidates for president on the ballot in that state. Bob Barr was the other.
The Earth did not collapse into a black hole as a result. Neither Barr nor George won a majority of votes for president. Neither one a single electoral vote.
Judging by the outcome of that election, many New Hampshire voters were unsatisfied with the LP candidate Barr. Many hundreds.
I think this whole discussion is pointless. Holtz believes that he can demand that a new political party in the liberty movement be and do what he says it must be and must do. But he has no such power. This frustrates him, so he calls people liars and pretends he knows something of economics, etc. Big whoop.
My answer to ‘one party or five?’ and ‘radical, Republican, centrists, conspiracy nut, or Paulian’ is “Mostly, that;s a wrong question.”
Brian,
Why do you think I view two as better or worse than three or one? The desirable number of libertarian leaning parties is determined by current constraints of all sorts, not some ideal theorizing.
Having said that, what I described does not refer to differences over issues. I referred to two parties having identical stands, not different stands.
That is not the only possible purpose of a second liberty-oriented political party.
I completely agree with Dr Phillies’ comments in 42.
Like I said, the purpose of a second freedom party should be to replace an unsalvageable LP. George, do you consider the LP unsalvageable? If not, do you think that the best way to improve the LP is by putting more freedom parties on the voters’ ballots? What is the optimal number of ways to divide the electoral resources of the freedom movement? If two is better than one, why isn’t three better than two? Why not a different party for every combination of libertarian views on abortion, foreign policy, federalism, etc? What better way to decide these intramural disputes than through the general-election ballot box?
The advantage of two libertarian parties having identical positions, one with effective political strategies and one with bad political strategies, is that by and by the market will transfer the resources from the bad strategies to the good strategies.
The advantage of two libertarian parties having identical positions, one honestly and competently run and one run by an ineffective old boy network, is that by and by the market will transfer the resources from the bad libertarians to the good libertarians.
@40 George, I’m for being as radical as possible, given my ambition to build hotels on the Moon. I clearly can’t get that done in the current environment. Too many political and bureau-rat impediments. But, my own vision is not the only relevant one for the Boston Tea Party.
Procedures and processes do make a difference. The means become an issue in themselves, especially where corruption and abuse of power are typical.
I can see a point in having two libertarian parties — one minarchist/federalist, the other radical anarchocapitalist. That would make sense in terms of moving the Overton Window.
But if there’s no ideological difference between the two parties — if the only differences between them are internal things like meeting procedures and central office operations — then there’s no advantage that I can see.
Hey, don’t get me wrong – you’ve been doing great work. In fact I can not think of anyone who is actually implementing more things that get the kind of results we need. No hurry on the call either. I like the Holtz short videos. We should use them (assuming he doesn’t mind), and if we have other people who can make more, we should have a lot more like them.
Paul I got busy and then a series of controversies arose, work got busy and my plate filled up with a bunch of new projects. I’m trying to decide how to fit them all together. Those are my excuses and I’m sticking to them. 🙂
To my credit I have been doing a lot of research and testing out different software to see how best to do the liberty activists idea.
I will call you. Promise. Either tomorrow or Monday or at the soonest time that works for you.
I think we need a caucus that focuses on transparency in the administration of the party.
Yes, and if we want to have an impact this round we’ll need to start rolling soon. Whatever happened with the Liberty Activists page idea?
I think we need a caucus that focuses on transparency in the administration of the party. I may get around to starting it one of these days.
I have not done that. I’m not aware of any current BTP officer doing that.
I agree that ad hominem is out of place at best.
Would you expound on this disconnect you mention?
Don’t forget Colombia. The armed forces and police here are so busy with the war on drugs (in the jungle mostly) and the fascist and marxist guerrillas that there is very little enforcement of the laws.
You can run red lights all day long here. People keep to themselves and avoid causing problems for others. On any given day I encounter people smoking joints out on the street – in public – at least twice. Many people carry, concealed sadly.
Note that I’m not advocating anyone move to Colombia, just being jocular.
brokenladder,
To the best of my knowledge, the voting systems that you mention have not been tried on any substantial scale. Thus, it would be inappropriate to apply Duverger’s “Law” to them, since, as I mentioned earlier, it’s based not on theory, but rather on the post hoc interpretation of empirically observed data.
Picking a physical country is so…. so…. Congress of Vienna-ey.
Nation/states all have their problems, all have a monopoly on the use of force. Even if it’s just a little force.
I must admit I just don’t get the BTP/LP split thing. Why can’t the BTP be a caucus within the LP, the grain of sand that produces the pearl?
“For as long as I can remember (decades long), I’ve heard libertarians and conservatives announce which foreign countries they plan to move to in the future, after everything crumbles in the U.S.”
Truer than ever.
Me and my brother are always saying Canada, but he’s talking about the Australian bush now.
But your second paragraph sounds about right. I’ll probably live out my days armed to the teeth in Montana.
Growing potatoes…
langa,
duverger’s law does not apply to all single-winner (“winner take all”) voting methods. Score voting and its simplified form, approval voting, both presumably do not result in bipartism, mainly because they pass the favorite betrayal criterion. They also are superior to options like IRV/Condorcet, based on Bayesian regret meausurements (the “one right metric”).
G.E., you serious about moving to Costa Rica?
For as long as I can remember (decades long), I’ve heard libertarians and conservatives announce which foreign countries they plan to move to in the future, after everything crumbles in the U.S.
I’ve heard Costa Rica, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Switzerland, Ireland, England, Baja California, Israel, Morocco, Cayman Islands, Holland, Russia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Bulgaria, Hong Kong, and nations too numerous to mention.
It usually all comes to naught. All the guys who’ve threatened to leave the U.S. over the decades are still here (or dead). Two have moved out of California (to Florida and Nevada), but they were forced by circumstance.
So, when do you plan to move? Soon, or some distant and hazy far future date?
“G.E. // Nov 29, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Oh dear what?
Richard Winger, a frequent advocate for using federal force against the states, is suggesting that a pro-affirmative action party in Costa Rica is ‘libertarian enough,’ and I’m saying, ‘no, it’s not.'”
If you are refering to Richard Winger supporting federal court cases that effect FEDERAL ELECTIONS (in other words, races for Congress and President which effect the entire country), then I’d say that Richard Winger is correct in those instances.
“G.E. // Nov 29, 2008 at 4:50 pm
The Costa Rican Libertarian Party purged its radicals (or had a walk-out by them). The so-called “libertarian†party of Costa Rica now supports mandatory hiring quotas for women, etc.
Yes, I DO think Costa Rica (my future home) needs a second libertarian party — a REAL one.”
GE, from what I’ve heard from some people who have actually been to Costa Rica, it is NOT the libertarian paradise that some Libertarians (the ones who have not been there) think it is.
Oh dear what?
Richard Winger, a frequent advocate for using federal force against the states, is suggesting that a pro-affirmative action party in Costa Rica is “libertarian enough,” and I’m saying, “no, it’s not.”
“Yes, I DO think Costa Rica (my future home) needs a second libertarian party — a REAL one.”
Oh dear…
The Costa Rican Libertarian Party purged its radicals (or had a walk-out by them). The so-called “libertarian” party of Costa Rica now supports mandatory hiring quotas for women, etc.
Yes, I DO think Costa Rica (my future home) needs a second libertarian party — a REAL one.
The most successful Libertarian Party in the world seems to have been the Costa Rican Libertarian Party. I doubt anyone who supports that party would think it is a good idea for Costa Rica to get a 2nd libertarian-ideas political party.
mscrib, I wouldn’t say that there’s a disconnect. They’re very young, and I’m excited to see where their experimental type of party actually takes them.
@ paulie
I stand corrected. But I think it makes my point even clearer.
@ George Donnelly
If the BTP is able to achieve its goals, more power to it. But calling other libertarians who happen to not be as radical “scum,” for instance, is not a recipe for success. From an outsider’s perspective, there appears to be a disconnect between BTP in theory and BTP in practice.
Chris, try reading and quoting what I actually write, instead of what Jim Davidson lies about what I write. Contra Davidson’s lie, I’ve NEVER said you owe the LP your “loyalty”. I just explained above that I think we should be more loyal to liberty than to party. My point here is just that it’s addled to think that the way to improve the LP is to compete with it via another libertarian party. I explicitly said that trying to replace (as opposed to improve) the LP is one of the two valid reasons to start another libertarian party. Creating an explicitly anarchist party would be the other reason, and I’ve never said that the BTP is trying to be an anarchist party.
George, you’re new to the LP, and so perhaps you haven’t yet learned that the constant Internet jabbering of the same two dozen LP activists — most of whom are not in any sense LP insiders — has very little relationship to the actual health status of the LP. The current little synthesized controversies are nothing compared to the scandals, both alleged and real, of the late 90s and early 00s. Even if BTP membership were mutually exclusive with LP membership, its current numbers might still be lost in the noise of the LP membership graph.
The example of multiple “statist” parties is only relevant if you think there is no difference in the policy goals of liberal and conservative voters. Standard anarcholibertarian analysis indeed lumps all the nanny state “sheeple” together, so you get to decide whether such anarcholibertarian analyses meet your own standards of rigorousness. Much more relevant is the example of the myriad socialist parties and candidates. I don’t see you saying that “the people just go mad for them”, just as I don’t hear anybody saying that competition has been a boon for them. That’s an inconvenient reality, so it’s just ignored.
Thomas, I’m going to take it as a given that the current and previous editors of California Freedom have a shared working conception of what “liberty” is, and are able to recognize the flaws in nanny staters’ advocacy of “liberty”. If you believe what you’re saying, then you would assert the following: “The best way for the freedom movement to, say, choose a political platform is to create separate freedom parties advocating for platforms like the BTP’s, the Restore04 platform, and the current LP platform, and then let the voters decide which is best in a general election.” So, do you dare assert that? Of course not. Choice is indeed good, and that’s what caucuses and conventions are for. The deafening silence you hear is all the multi-freedom-party advocates here saying absolutely nothing about why multiple parties is better than multiple caucuses. Nada. Zip. Zilch. It’s only my central point, and yet nobody here has anything to say about it.
@mscrib The Boston Tea Party is about having a transparent, open, member-oriented, bottom-up, decentralized libertarian party.
If you don’t care enough about those values/goals to give the effort – a very new effort by the way – any credibility, then I wonder what your goals/values are?
Maybe your values and goals simply are not libertarian or transparent in nature. If not, then definitely the BTP is not for you.
If you simply want to trash the BTP, by all means, but honorable people usually give new efforts a chance before doing that.
Wasn’t Davidson the *elected* national chairman until recently?
Appointed.
“My point there is just that wasted-vote arguments will tend to motivate each cluster of voters to concentrate their votes in a single party. The dominant effect in plurality-wins systems will indeed be to pull voters into two larger parties, but there should still be a similar secondary effect working on any voters who cluster outside a primary one-dimensional distribution.”
What you’re suggesting is possible, but there’s not a lot of evidence to support this secondary effect, particularly here in America. In fact, the history of 3rd parties here actually shows just the opposite in many cases (e.g. the multitude of socialist/leftist parties).
I think this points to a wholesale rejection of the entire “lesser of two evils” mentality by American 3rd party voters. Of course, this “no compromise” position seems symptomatic of a deeper dissatisfaction with the entire concept of democracy, which is a system built on the notion of compromise.
(Even in democracies that employ proportional representation systems, compromise is still a key element, although it primarily occurs after the election, with the formation of pragmatic governing coalitions, which by their very nature demand a great deal of ideological compromise on the parts of the various factions.)
@George Donnelly
Wasn’t Davidson the *elected* national chairman until recently? I therefore conclude that the BTP contains *enough* members like Davidson to prevent me from taking the party seriously.
Re Duverger’s Law: I’m not sure if someone hasn’t said this already, but it doesn’t mean that third parties can’t be successful or can’t play an important role. If you look at the spoiler effect, it could be argued (even though I don’t necessarily agree with using the strategy or this analysis) that third parties are influential when they use it.
But if you had a Libertarian Party that was successful in certain locales and even had a member of Congress or two, I wouldn’t call that unsuccessful at all, even if the two party system is largely intact.
@mscrib if you refuse to join organizations because they have a member you don’t like, are there any organizations you won’t exclude?
And isn’t that a rather collectivist way of thinking, to say that because Jim is a member therefore all other members must be like Jim?
I conclude you have some ax to grind here that you’re not telling us about.
When people like Davidson are out of the BTP, I’d maybe consider treating it seriously (i.e. as something other than a club with “700 of [Davidson’s] friends”). The fact that he can’t go five minutes without writing a 1000-word online screed denouncing other libertarian activists as “scum,” among other things, speaks volumes to the quality and competency of BTP leadership (or extremely recent leadership).
Brian Holtz: “* Having multiple liberty-oriented choices…etc.”
Who decides what a “liberty-oriented choice” is? Almost every party in the U.S. claims to be “liberty-oriented,” as defined by them.
The voters decide.
Having many choices is beneficial, because it lets “liberty-oriented” voters decide which party is “liberty-oriented” as they define it. Some voters may think the Democrats are the most “liberty-oriented,” and others may think that title belongs to the GOP, LP, BTP, Greens, or whoever else.
I’m not afraid of leaving the decision up to voters.
And may the most “liberty-oriented” of all the “liberty-oriented” parties win the title of “liberty-oriented” in the hearts and minds of voters.
Choice is good. Choice is inherently “liberty-oriented.”
Be that as it may, the wheels of the train called Libertarian Party are screeching nastily on the rails as it moves closer to derailment and disaster.
I don’t intend to meekly wait in my seat for disaster to arrive.
We have multiple statist parties and the people just go mad for them, so multiple freedom parties sounds like a great idea to me.
Btw if you consort with the kind of people who laugh at liberty, then you’re consorting with the wrong kind of people.
I have been a big-L Libertarian all of my adult life. I first joined in 1980, during the Ed Clark campaign, when I was only 16. Having said that, I resent the implication of Holtz that I somehow OWE the LP loyalty, regardless of the gutting of its platform or the nomination of self-described “true conservatives” for national office. I would also point out that his reference to Duverger’s Law has precisely the opposite implication from what Holtz intends: having a small-L libertarian alternative keeps the LP honest to its own principles, lest it lose loyalists to the competition, just as the Conservative Party and former Liberal Party do to the Ds and Rs in New York. And in spite of his decrying of strawmen, his own finger-pointing at “anarchists” is just that. I am no anarchist, but I am certainly an orthodox libertarian. Fortunately, our state party in NC has remained much more loyal to its principles, so I feel no compulsion to leave, but that doesn’t mean that I will automatically remain loyal to the national LP.
@7 “What does Davidson think a “Reform†Caucus is all about, anyway?”
I think it is about a boot smashing a human face, forever.
@6 Michael, I think you are correct. It was those headlights that turn when the wheels turn that made me think of Turner. But Tucker was the film, too. Thanks for getting my facts straight for me.
Read Ezekiel Chapter 5.
And the Archangel Gabriel spoke unto me, saying, “Know you that even the stars cry out the name of Jehovah?” Alas for you, James Dobson, I, yes, even I, the chairman of the Catholic Trotskyist Party of America, will outrank all you so-called talk show hosts as I take over the title of the greatest radio and TV talk show host in America, bringing forth the ideologies of left Christianity, left Islam, socialism and libertariansism and Democratic liberalism. Amen.
Jim Davidson has apparently repudiated his judgment from less than 48 hours ago that “nobody cares” about my criticism of his rationale for the BTP. He now cares enough to write a lengthy screed filled with ad hominems and straw men far too clumsy to even bother diagnosing. I’ll address only the few substantive points he embeds among all his childish excretions.
His charge that I say we “cannot criticise the party, nor its leaders, nor its nominees” is laughable. I have been highly critical of the LP and its leaders and nominees. What does Davidson think a “Reform” Caucus is all about, anyway? I’ve been especially critical of the idea of “party loyalty”, and have for years said that I’ll take liberty from a torch lady or a donkey or an elephant or whoever will give it to me. I’ve defended the idea of cross-nominating Ron Paul if he were winning the GOP primaries, and I’ve specifically criticized myopic LP rules against endorsing candidates from other parties.
As an LP reformer I of course agree that the LP has not been nearly as effective as it should be. As an LP reformer I indeed advocate a “different path” — one of mainstream ecumenical libertarianism rather than our old path of crypto-anarchism. We’ve been on that path for only six months. It’s simply inane to reason that 1) there has been only one freedom party and 2) it has not been successful, and so therefore 3) we need more than one freedom party.
The LP indeed needs “new ideas”. The main idea it needs is ecumenicism and unity. It’s bizarre to say this idea “hasn’t been working” when the LP has barely started to try it.
Davidson rails against “uninformed, uneducated, and idiotic” voters trying to govern him, and he seems to think that having two freedom parties on their ballot will induce voters to study libertarianism twice as much as having just one. The flaw in this logic is obvious, even to people who don’t know about how poorly this has worked out for all the various socialist parties and candidates.
Davidson pretends that I see freedom voters as a well-disciplined “caucus”, but he ignores what I added about this point: “e.g. by the party not running an opposing candidate”. Removing the freedom ballot line is in fact the only practical way to achieve any caucus discipline among freedom voters, and it’s obvious what implications this has for how many freedom parties is the optimal number.
I’ve schooled Davidson about the economics of natural monopolies in another thread.
Davidson fantasizes about alternate universes in which fusion voting is allowed everywhere and ballot access barriers are low — and where Brian Holtz somehow isn’t happy about either. Davidson obviously has a very rich (and paranoid and hate-filled) fantasy life, but the question under discussion is whether a second freedom party is a waste of resources here in the Real World. I am usually the first to point out that activist efforts are often not very fungible, but only two of my nine arguments against multiple freedom parties relies on the fungibility of activism. Most of my arguments are about diffusing the effect of the pro-freedom ballot line on voters and politicians, and those arguments assume nothing about the fungibility of activism.
Langa, I agree that Duverger’s “Law” is nowhere near as unequivocal as, say, Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem. My point there is just that wasted-vote arguments will tend to motivate each cluster of voters to concentrate their votes in a single party. The dominant effect in plurality-wins systems will indeed be to pull voters into two larger parties, but there should still be a similar secondary effect working on any voters who cluster outside a primary one-dimensional distribution.
Joe Tauke, your article (like Seebeck’s one-liner) makes a fine case for separate party caucuses for clusters of party members with shared candidate/strategy preferences, but makes no case whatsoever for having separate parties for clusters of voters with shared policy goals/direction. (Hey, if you’re a northeast Iowa Tauke, we may be related.)
The End Times must be nigh, because I’m now going to explain the role of caucuses to all you memory-impaired radicals by pointing you to a 1980 essay by none other than Murray Rothbard: http://web.archive.org/web/20051215190040/www.lprc.org/caucuses.html
Jim, I think that was Tucker, not Turner. 🙂
And the argument can be summed up simply without going into the long and incoherent Holtzisms:
“Competition without collusion keeps the activity and ideas fresh and healthy.”
Duverger’s Law is 100% correct. Even though in Britain and Canada, third parties are able to win some seats, they are never able to win the entire election.
On more important topic, the Lord God spoke unto me tonight, as the liturgical year winds to a close, endorsing my spirited defense of our Holy Messenger Barack H. Obama. He also endorses my attempts to develop a radio and TV show in order to spread the glory of Catholic Trotskyism. I am in negotiations with Clear Channel in attempt to get them to take away one hour per day of Rush Limbaugh’s, Sean Hannity’s, or Dr Laura Schlessinger’s show and give it to me. I may also become a substitute host of Coast to Coast AM with George Noory. Finally, there is rumor that I may get a one-hour daily show on MSNBC, replacing one of the Maddow or Hardball replays. IPR readers and commenters, especially Jim and Brian, will be invited guests on the Catholic Trotskyist Television Hour, which will be the name of my show. Amen.
Why Holtz is fundamentally wrong:
http://www.meltingpotproject.com/mpp/2008/11/truth-from-the-bestnamed-party-in-america.html
“* Duverger’s Law suggests the natural tactical response of voters to plurality voting is to gather into two parties straddling the political center along its major axis, or into one party for each natural cluster of voters in the political space.”
Actually, Duverger’s “Law” (which is really more of an observed empirical tendency, buttressed by some rather questionable post hoc theory) suggests that supporting ANY 3rd party is a waste of time in a “winner take all” system like the one here in America.
Your assertion about “one party for each natural cluster of voters in the political space” comes from his description of what happens in countries with proportional representation. Applying this scenario to America is wishful thinking on your part.
“Having multiple liberty-oriented choices tells voters that libertarianism is too incoherent to be worth understanding.”
Sorry Jim, but this one strikes me as true just off the bat. I spend all day at school trying to convince people that libertarianism alone is worth a second thought. When I bring up the second libertarian party, I just get laughs.
Happily for the world, things which don’t make sense to Holtz do make sense to others. Equally delightful, he does not have to be involved in things that he doesn’t find sensible. Nobody has invited him to do things he thinks “is dumb.”
Since I am not now, and never have been, a member of either of the two major political parties, I won’t argue with his analogy to the workings of committee chair selections in the Democrat party as it functions in Congress. I’ll simply note that the process by which the two major parties operate Congress is not to my taste, was not of my design, and has operated in a fashion deleterious to my liberty, property, and prosperity. If Holtz would rather be a part of what he deems a successful political party, I’m sure he would be at least as happy with the Democrats as with the GOP.
Politics 101 may tell Holtz the difference between a caucus and a party, but it doesn’t tell him anything about why Tom Knapp founded the Boston Tea Party, why I rejected the notion of having it continue to pursue a caucus relationship within the LP, nor why I and 700 of my friends have gotten together to make the Boston Tea Party larger and more successful today than at any time in its history.
I am indifferent to the survival of the LP. If it changes its behaviors and becomes worthy of my involvement, I’m willing to consider being involved. If it continues to be run by unprincipled slack jaws with reprehensible behaviors, I don’t expect it to survive. But its death is not in any way my obligation. I don’t need to bury it.
I have addressed all of his points on various other blogs, repeatedly. And, he refuses to address my points on why two libertarian parties are better, because he doesn’t have answers. Mostly, Holtz wants to refuse to let other people do as they please, because he knows better. You know, he’s eddy-cated and took that course on politics 101. And stuff. M’kay?
Here’s a quick review, though, for Holtz never seems to listen.
Liberty is significant, it is complex, it is many splendored, and it means different things to different people. It obviously means something less significant to an authoritarian like Holtz than it does to me. I find it very difficult to work with a guy like Holtz in the same party. Among other things that I don’t like about it is the despicable tactic of party loyalty – you cannot criticise the party, nor its leaders, nor its nominees, because they must be honored by the supposed “social contract” amongst party members – a load of hogwash, of course. But much easier to circumvent by simply joining another political party while criticising the LP.
Perhaps libertarianism is incoherent. I think it is a very appealing message. Freedom is very popular. But the LP as a part of the liberty movement has been incoherent, and has failed to deliver a simple, clear, and consistent message. Voters have had many, many, many chances to weigh the LP in the balance since 1972, and each and every time they have found it wanting.
If something isn’t working, why not try a different path? Obviously, Turner was under no obligation to join General Motors to create the Turner automobile. DeLorean was under no compulsion to stay with Ford – where he had developed the very innovative Mustang, as I recall – but struck out on his own. Of course, Turner and DeLorean faced critics, idiots, and power made politicians and bureau-rats – scum who behaved much as Holtz is behaving now.
The freedom movement is clearly not well organised. It is not a successful movement, currently. Having a single liberty party has proven to be unsuccessful as the organising principle of the liberty movement. So, whether Holtz likes it or not, we’re going to have more than one liberty party.
Given that Holtz is an authoritarian, I’m sure he is unhappy with the prospect of people breaking out of the LP and forming their own parties. But, I welcome it. With change and competition come innovation. We clearly need new ideas. The ones Holtz has been pushing have not been working.
There is a cognitive and investigative burden on voters. They have to know what they are doing. Scum like Holtz don’t want voters to be informed, they just want voters to take automatic choices. I am against uninformed, uneducated, and idiotic people attempting to govern me. Among the many reasons I don’t consent to be governed is the entire absence of evidence that anyone else has the least clue what to do by, for, or about me – except me. So, I choose to govern myself.
Rather than thinking it a bad thing to educate voters, and non-voters, about self-government, liberty, private property, privacy, prosperity, and the other things our movement is about, I think these are great ideas. Holtz finds the idea of educating others to be burdensome, it seems.
Pro freedom voters are not a coherent caucus. To pretend that they are would be deceptive. Of course, Holtz has no difficulty with the idea of being deceptive.
The fact is that to earn the support of all the pro-liberty voters, a Democrat or GOP elected official might have to not run at all. I recognise that Holtz finds that idea unappealing, since what he really wants is to be able to convince Democrats and Republicans that he can “deliver” the libertarian vote. He is, of course, mad with power.
Getting candidates on the ballot requires effort. Yes. Of course, we could change the laws to make the effort lower, but Holtz wouldn’t like that. He likes a good high barrier to entry to limit competition. Like other authoritarians, he views political parties as “natural monopolies” whatever that might mean. (What it means to an economist is: Holtz doesn’t know much about monopolies.)
Getting the Boston Tea Party ballot qualified is not his problem, so I don’t care what Holtz thinks about it. It is none of his business.
American elections don’t allow fusion voting in some places, and do in others. So what? If fusion voting were worth having, it is possible to change the laws. These are not laws from God, but from men and women, mostly corrupt and venal. So challenging these bits of legislation is worth doing anyway.
Rather than fusion voting, the Boston Tea Party has provided endorsements to many candidates, including one in Florida who won his race there.
I don’t think approval voting is required for starting the Boston Tea Party. Indeed, the evidence indicates that, much to the dismay of Holtz, we went ahead and started the Boston Tea Party and helped elect politicians this year, without his permission.
Duverger is presumably some sort of authority figure to whom Holtz pays obeisance. I do not. I don’t really care who Duverger was or why Holtz quotes his “law.” It is a rule of behavior like many others in the social pseudo-sciences which fails to explain all available cases, and ignores what it doesn’t explain.
The Boston Tea Party exists. It is a fact. I gather that Holtz doesn’t like it. So, I would be happy if he were to resent it.