Article published in California Freedom, the monthly newsletter of the Libertarian Party of California, by editor Thomas Sipos; found at his blog, Libertarian Peacenik. Posted to IPR by Paulie.
My editorial, in the April 2009 issue of California Freedom:
When Mikhail Gorbachev became Soviet dictator in 1985, he announced a policy of glasnost, which has been translated as “openness.” He meant that Soviet media should freely promote a diversity of opinions, rather than parrot the party line. Party decision-making should be transparent. Criticism of party leaders should be welcome. Citizens’ opinions should be heard, however “negative.”
I’ve been told that I shouldn’t discuss America’s foreign interventions. I should only print material that “all libertarians agree on,” otherwise I’m being “divisive.” I shouldn’t cover LNC meetings, or disagreements and embarrassments, or debate and discussion. I should only print “positive” stories. Doing otherwise violates CF‘s Mission Statement.
Yes, CF has a MS. Here it is:
“CF is the official publication of the LPC. Its purpose is to promote and enhance the political success of the party. To accomplish this it provides an informative and entertaining blend of political news, analysis, features and advertising for its members. Its content focuses on: 1. California events, rather than national; 2, Externally oriented politics, not internal debate; 3. Our successes, rather than our disappointments; 4 Libertarian analysis of political positions enjoying support from the mainstream of California voters; 5. Practical guidance on winning elections and changing public policy.”
At the 2007 LPC convention, I asked Elizabeth Brierly about the MS’s origins. She told me that Bruce Cohen had asked her to draft a MS to guide future editors. Elizabeth prepared a first draft, which went round robin between herself, Bruce, and Aaron Starr, with the two gentlemen offering changes until the MS met their specifications.
ExCom approved the MS on August 20, 2005.
Like a Constitution, a MS must be interpreted. To say that CF‘s content “focuses on” X rather than Y can mean either that X articles/LTEs should predominate over Y articles/LTEs (the free speech-oriented interpretation); or that X should exclude Y (the restrictive interpretation).
It’s been suggested that my coverage of LNC activities violates the rule against “internal debate.” Why? Perhaps because it’s an “internal” (party business) rather than “external” (election campaign) matter.
But if we interpret “focus” so restrictively, CF could not promote or cover party conventions. Conventions are “internal.” Yet I assume that, even post-MS, CF always covered libertarian conventions, state and national.
Clearly, there is no absolutist ban on covering “internal” matters.
Perhaps the problem is with “debate”? I may cover “internal” matters, but not debate about internal matters. Actions by party leaders may be reported, but not questioned.
No, I can’t believe that’s what the 2005 ExCom intended, despite some party leaders distaste for glasnost. (One reason the LNC persecuted Angela Keaton was for her live blogging the September 2008 LNC meeting to the membership.)
I interpret the MS’s phrase “focuses on” to mean that X material should predominate over Y (comprising a majority of CF‘s content), but not exclude Y. Certainly, antiwar is a position “enjoying support from the mainstream of California voters.”
I would like to print more about county LP events and election campaigns, but I’m getting few submissions. I assume we’re in a post-election year doldrum. If you want to read about “California events,” then write it. I can’t publish what I don’t get.
Finally, I was told that CF should not print discussion or debate about contentious party issues, because those are properly left to the conventions. The problem is, many members aren’t aware of internal controversies unless they’re reported. If they don’t know, they may not attend the convention. This creates the risk that party business will be ceded to well-organized minority factions.
I have changed the tone of CF from two years ago. I hope I’ve brought glasnost to it. Transparency about party matters, and openness to debate, may bring “divisiveness” and “negativity.” But it would be ironic if a libertarian publication had less glasnost than the late Soviet Union.
* We’re All Demopublicans Now
On March 9, Donny Ferguson, LNC Director of Communications, sent out a mass email, writing: “the most important principle is winning” and “There is nothing more noble and principled than winning an election” and “winning elections is the most important libertarian principle there is.” These sentences were boldfaced and underlined to emphasize his theme.
Winning is also the Demopublicans’ most cherished principle; all other principles are negotiable. Seems the LNC has just equated Demopublicans with Libertarians.
Susan Hogarth reprints Ferguson’s article, with her reply.
* Libertarian Muslims
In every war, The Other is demonized. I’ve never confused Russians with Communists, or Germans with Nazis, yet always, some self-styled patriots will conflate the actions of some with an entire race, religion, or ethnicity.
It needs repeating: most Arabs and Muslims are not terrorists. Some are libertarians. Their website: Minaret.org.
* Independent Political Report
A critic accuses me of insisting on the last word. He’s miffed that I replied to one of his articles.
He’s also wrong. Many of my editorials are sprinkled with urls. Rather than have the last word, I often give you “heads up” on key issues, then send you off to research further.
I often refer you to Independent Political Report.
This is the current “hot spot” for discussions (and flame wars) about the LP. Party leaders post here. LNC meetings are posted — while in progress. The site is uncensored, unmoderated, and easy to post to. Anonymously, if you wish.
Glasnost indeed!
* Rob Power Resigns
Rob Power resigned from ExCom at the conclusion of their March meeting. He writes that he “went to Long Beach with every intention of resigning” and he “merely signed” his resignation letter at the meeting’s conclusion. He adds, “I’m going to be writing a detailed explanation of why I decided to resign.”
Power’s term was to expire in 2010. Now there’ll be an additional At-Large seat to fill at the Visalia convention.
* Late March Issue
The March CF went out late. I finished it in February, but I have no say when issues are printed or go online. Even so, I’m sorry the Riverside LP meeting notice ran late. I advise future LP event notices to be submitted way in advance.
* Libertarian Peacenik
If you can’t get enough of my long, rambling, “antiwar obsessive” editorials, visit me at: Libertarian Peacenik.
Peace. Glasnost.
Brian @ 24: If I am not mistaken, CF is a “Libertarian” newsletter, not a neocon news site that regurgitates the daily talking points of the republican party.
Your site merely relabels discredited neocon talking points as somehow “Libertarian”.
That is not to say that there cannot be a Libertarian argument for this irresponsible war, but it certainly is not to be found on your site.
PEACE
Brian Holtz: “You satisfied the letter of the dare, by just barely limiting your instant rebuttal to the length of my complaint.”
No, Brian, I wrote whatever I pleased. I didn’t count the words. I’m not anal, like you.
You’re so anal, you even count the characters in the urls I post.
And yes, I do expect people to go to the urls. That’s why I print them.
Holtz: “You’ve issued same-page instant rebuttals to me, Scott Lieberman,”
Wrong again. You didn’t do your research.
I didn’t rebut Scott, I answered his question, at his request.
Scott sent me his email, as a personal question. It wasn’t an LTE. I asked Scott if I may print it in CF as an LTE. Scott said that was okay, but added, “I’d rather you answer my question.” (Or answer his point, whatever, I don’t have it before me.)
So I printed Scott’s email as an LTE, and answered it, as he’d requested.
At the 2008 LPC convention in San Diego, Scott even came up to me, and thanked me for answering his question, rather than ducking it.
Holtz: “You even went to the trouble of adding my hometown to make my essay look like a current LTE.”
I told you beforehand that I was publishing it as an LTE, and you’d agreed.
And I didn’t quote Bruce out of context. Once again, I included the url.
Man, there’s no pleasing you.
You publicly whine that you wish I’d print your screed, then when I do so, you accuse me of having “jumped all over Rob Power’s calculated suggestion that you print some liberventionist writing of mine right before I’m up for re-election.”
I didn’t “jump” on Rob’s suggestion. I printed your screed because you were publicly whining for me to do so.
But you’re a real time sink. No matter what I do, it’s just more complaining.
There’s nothing that would please a pair like you and Bruce Cohen, short of throwing straw into your room.
(I wonder if anyone will get that TV reference?)
Tom, how could there be a prior dare “in” an essay I wrote two years earlier for my blog? The dare was included in my blog comment two years later: “I would love for Sipos to publish in CF my main essay on Iraq: http://knowinghumans.net/2007/04/defending-libervention-in-iraq.html. Of course, if he does so, he’s sure to allocate himself as much or more space for an attempted rebuttal. I challenge him [not to use] the last-word advantage that an editor can always award to himself.”
With the Barr LTE — which actually WAS a “letter to the editor”, and not a vintage essay — the dare I included technically worked: “If by chance this letter to the editor is printed in full in CF, take note whether Sipos will once again allocate himself more space to answering a critical letter than he allocates for the letter itself.” You satisfied the letter of the dare, by just barely limiting your instant rebuttal to the length of my complaint. Of course, if you don’t count my postscript dare paragraph, then your rebuttal was in fact longer than the part of my letter that you rebutted.
You say you “rarely rebut LTEs”. What you need to try to say is “I rarely rebut LTEs I disagree with.” I stand by my statement: “Unlike any previous CF editor that I know of, you treat the letters to the editor section as an extension of your own (already-expanded) editorial page, reserving yourself arbitrary space to rebut nearly anything you disagree with.” I challenge you to name a previous CF editor who ever allocated himself equal space to rebut LTEs he disagrees with. You gave a rebuttal to the only other critical LTE in that March issue. You’ve issued same-page instant rebuttals to me, Scott Lieberman, Tim Crowley, and others. In one case you took twice as much space as the original letter, as you needed room to expound on your paranoid “suspicions” about the Reform Caucus planning expulsions and where its financing comes from. (The latter you even questioned twice in the same rambling rebuttal. Great editing. Have you cracked the case of LRC financing yet?)
There was no need for me to write a new essay on libervention, because I stand by what I wrote in early 2007 — as long as the word “now” in it is allowed to refer to 2007 instead of 2009. You even went to the trouble of adding my hometown to make my essay look like a current LTE, instead of just honestly telling your readers when it was written.
You quote Bruce Cohen out of context. Here’s what Bruce said next: “So the liars who say Aaron or I are pro-war, are just, liars. And to [sic] those who say the paper was pro-war, are liars, too. In fact, just as I said to Ted Brown after Kookenaga’s election, they would turn it into an idealogical soapbox for their personal opinions.” What he obviously was trying to say in this sloppy blog comment was that he did not print any articles supporting the war during his tenure. The fact you still don’t dare deny here is that I’d already listed for you — with dates — five anti-intervention pieces that ran during Bruce’s tenure. So now you’ve got a fair-minded Libertarian like Debra Dedmon saying “I did not agree with Bruce and Brian running 0 antiwar articles when they ran CF”. Congratulations, Tom, mission accomplished.
Brian Holtz: “reserving yourself arbitrary space to rebut nearly anything you disagree with. (Indeed, you did so again with my Barr LTE, and I bet that only my prior dare restrained you from doing it to my libervention essay.)”
“Prior dares” don’t work with me. You dared me not to rebut your Barr LTE, and I did rebut.
There was no “prior dare” in your liberventionist LTE. Hence, no rebuttal.
BTW, I rarely rebut LTEs.
Holtz: “I don?t recall CF splitting articles with so many page-jumps before your tenure”
I mostly leave it to our layout editor, Brad Reynolds, on how he splits articles. I didn’t give him any suggestions, one way or another.
Brad is paid much less than our previous layout editor, Muffett Brown. $333 an issue, as opposed to $750.
Layout editors are paid for their time. You and Bruce worked with a layout editor that was paid more than double what my layout editor is paid.
Anyway, both your LTEs were on page 3, from the start, in full, unsplit, no jumping. So it’s no excuse for you not seeing your LTEs.
Holtz: “When I offered my April 2007 essay ?Defending Libervention In Iraq?, I had no idea that you would deceive your readers by letting them assume I had freshly submitted it for the March 2009 CF.”
??? You wanted me to print your piece, and I did so. Why didn’t you submit a fresh piece, if that was an issue with you?
Holtz: “you write about Bruce Cohen that ?under his tenure, CF was silent on the war.? In fact, you had seen me point out multiple times that Cohen ran five anti-intervention pieces in his tenure (and zero pro-libervention pieces).”
Are you calling Bruce Cohen a liar? He claims: “When I ran California Freedom, we never had ANY articles about the war at all. Period.”
I took Bruce Cohen at his word. Was I mistaken to do so?
See his post # 10 at: https://independentpoliticalreport.com/2009/02/6618/
Tom, somebody who has no clue how many antiwar articles he is publishing per issue in a newspaper he edits is in no position to point fingers about knowing all the contents of your antiwar tabloid. Unlike any previous CF editor that I know of, you treat the letters to the editor section as an extension of your own (already-expanded) editorial page, reserving yourself arbitrary space to rebut nearly anything you disagree with. (Indeed, you did so again with my Barr LTE, and I bet that only my prior dare restrained you from doing it to my libervention essay.) You thus trained me long ago not to look closely at your LTE section, because I find that reading your opinions in LPCA-paid-for space is both unrewarding and tedious. So no, I hadn’t noticed that my LTE was included in a letters section that started on page 3, lurched backwards to page 2, and ended on page 7. (I don’t recall CF splitting articles with so many page-jumps before your tenure; I guess that’s another Sipos improvement.) In fact, when my co-worker Jascha Lee alluded to my libervention essay in that issue’s LTE section, I had to ask him what he was talking about.
You say you have clearly improved CF, that you are confident of LP-internal support for what you’ve made your signature topic, and that “most current ExCom members have been very supportive”. If you really believed these things, you wouldn’t have wasted precious CF column inches pleading for the LPCA delegates to save you from what you claim will be my organized effort at next weekend’s convention to fire you. You quote me saying I hope to “fix the California newsletter”, but I guess it hadn’t occurred to you that whatever influence I have comes from my ability to make a case in public writing, and not from backroom conspiracies. So no, contrary to the unsubstantiated paranoid claims you saw fit to print in CF, I have not talked to any current or prospective member of ExCom about firing you. (I’ll continue to try to shame you about your use of CF space and your sloppiness with facts, but I now suspect that my strategy can only backfire. Some people, it seems, know no shame.)
By contrast, you jumped all over Rob Power’s calculated suggestion that you print some liberventionist writing of mine right before I’m up for re-election. When I offered my April 2007 essay “Defending Libervention In Iraq”, I had no idea that you would deceive your readers by letting them assume I had freshly submitted it for the March 2009 CF. My essay said “we have now achieved our two most important war aims”, and any competent editor would know that you don’t reprint a two-year-old essay with such temporal language and let it look like it was written last week. I’ve favored U.S. withdrawal from Iraq for almost three years now, but you misleadingly titled my essay “A Case For War”, inviting casual readers to think I favor continuing the war. Touché, Mr. Sipos. I obviously have a lot to learn about pre-convention machinations from you and Mr. Power.
These machinations of yours are an interesting contrast to your outright mendacity elsewhere in that issue. In the same issue as my LTE busting you for getting your facts wrong in an earlier editorial, you write about Bruce Cohen that “under his tenure, CF was silent on the war”. In fact, you had seen me point out multiple times that Cohen ran five anti-intervention pieces in his tenure (and zero pro-libervention pieces). I had even given you the list of articles — with dates — to rebut your earlier claim that “Bruce ran the paper without mentioning the war.” How many times can you print this documented falsehood before it qualifies as a lie? Again, sir, have you no shame?
Re: “obsession” — I use quotation marks to faithfully report what people have actually and verifiably said, and don’t indulge in using them around paraphrasings for dramatic effect as you’ve been known to do. If I wanted readers to think you’d called your antiwar focus/priority an “obsession”, I would have put it in quotes. When I say “your admitted X” and X is not in quotation marks, then X is my characterization of something you’ve made an admission about.
“This is the current “hot spot” for discussions (and flame wars) about the LP. Party leaders post here. LNC meetings are posted — while in progress. The site is uncensored, unmoderated, and easy to post to. Anonymously, if you wish.”
Thanks Tom! We try.
Brian Hotlz: “You have claimed that you print critical letters to the editor, but CF readers will apparently never see the one I sent in January (below)”
Again, not true. So not true, it casts doubt on all your other rants and ravings.
Just how much journalist research do you do?
You LTE appeared in the March issue, which is online at: http://www.ca.lp.org/cf/CF-200903.pdf
I’ve already received the April issue, so the March issue has long been out, on paper and online.
“your own admitted personal anti-war obsession,”
I’ve never admitted it was an “obsession.” I’ve called it a priority.
I only call it my “obsession” in quotes, as a joke on you.
sunshinebatman,
No one suggested otherwise.
speaking of math mistakes:
(1/7) > (1/9)
Hope this helps.
Tom, if you’re ever in doubt about the relative space to give to topics in CF, here’s some advice: instead of being guided by your own admitted personal anti-war obsession, just take a look at the Libertarian Party platform. Of its 27 planks, fully 18 deal with personal liberty and economic liberty, while only 3 deal with intervention. Thus intervention is only 1/9th of the planks of the LP Platform. (And if you complain that the 2008 Platform was adopted by delegates you classify with your vile “Republican lite” smear, then note that the vaunted radical 2004 platform touched on intervention in only 1/7th of its planks.)
I don’t know where your “20 articles” pseudo-fact comes from, and I doubt you’ll try to back it up. In the thread next door you just saw me write that you included 8 anti-intervention pieces in your first 3 issues. I just hopped over to ca.lp.org and sampled the 3 latest issues there, and again found 8 anti-intervention pieces. That rounds to the 3 per issue that I said, not the 1 per issue that you said. If you’re not sure whether you’ve been averaging one anti-intervention article per issue or three, then that explains a lot here.
You like to claim that I have trouble with reading, but this is yet another instance where you have trouble with arithmetic. You have claimed that you print critical letters to the editor, but CF readers will apparently never see the one I sent in January (below) documenting another spectacular math mistake by you.
As for “anal”, I’ll let our readers decide which is more anus-related, my carefulness with facts or your carelessness with them.
Editor Tom Sipos writes in the Jan 2009 California Freedom: “Bob Barr only contributed millions of PAC dollars to GOP candidates running against LP candidates, while he sat on the LNC.” This is a recklessly extravagant falsehood.
Barr joined the LNC in Dec 2006. OpenSecrets.org tells us that the Bob Barr Leadership Fund donated a total of $41,300 to 25 non-LP federal candidates in the 2008 campaign cycle. Even if by some miracle all 25 had Libertarian opponents, Sipos’s reckless charge against our party’s recent presidential nominee would still be wrong by two orders of magnitude.
Meanwhile, during the 2008 cycle Barr’s PAC relied on its presumably conservative/Republican donors to finance contributions of $4,300 to federal LP candidates, $21,000 to the LNC, and $5,000 to the South Carolina LP. I seriously doubt that any other source donated more to LP causes during that cycle. Barr has also personally donated thousands of dollars to the LP and its candidates, including several hundred dollars to the LPCA. Meanwhile, Sipos is paid by the LPCA about $4000/year — surely much more than any other state LP editor — for stuffing California Freedom with multi-page editorials and multiple antiwar articles per issue. I find no record of any donations by Sipos to the LP or its candidates. (Full disclosure: I’ve donated over $10,000 to the LP and its candidates in the last 5 years. Details at http://libertarianmajority.net/bh-lp-activism.)
we don’t need to average 3 anti-intervention articles per issue.
I don’t think it is 3 per issue. You once counted 20 articles total, no? That averages to one per issue.
Not that I counted. I’m not as anal as you.
BTW, do you think “We don’t need 3 economic liberty articles per issue”?
Or would you say “We don’t need 3 personal liberty articles per issue”?
Everybody needs to think something.
I think I’ll get another drink…
Well that’s what you get for thinkin’
I suspect most people in the LP are pro-individual liberty, including both Brians.
Well, I was talking to their mothers just the other night; I said I think that they’re pro-individual liberty, they said yes, we think you’re right….
I suspect most people in the LP are pro-individual liberty, including both Brians.
Paulie, thanks for pasting the readily-available evidence that Miller’s “social conservative” charge is a blatant lie — one that he doesn’t even try to defend from your rebuttal.
“Big government” is of course another lie. I oppose all laws regulating prices, minimum wages, maximum hours, equal pay, plant closure, family leave, hiring, firing, occupational licensure, insurance policies, zoning, rents, product safety, drug efficacy, fuel efficiency, parental media control, media copying technology, education, health care, health insurance, agriculture, retirement savings, etc.
“Big war” is yet another Miller lie. While I agreed with the 2001 LNC resolution on pursuing al Qaeda into Afghanistan, I have for years opposed policing any civil war in Iraq and advocated withdrawal of U.S. troops.
“Equal time” is still another Miller lie. When I was a CF contributor I gave zero time to libervention, and have never said that CF should give anything like “equal time” to it. What I’ve instead said is that we don’t need to average 3 anti-intervention articles per issue.
“Pro-uterus-regulation” is also a Miller lie. I adamantly defend Roe v. Wade and the absolute right to terminate a pregnancy in the first trimester. I also defend the right to end a pregnancy in the third trimester if it leaves a healthy fetus unharmed or if the fetus has serious congenital defects. 90% of abortions in America are in the first trimester, and many of the remaining abortions are of fetuses with congenital defects. What I would outlaw is just infanticide of healthy viable children that happens to be done while the umbilical cord is still intact. Thus saying I’m “pro-uterus regulation” is a lie.
Miller’s claims about the Domestic Partnership Initiative are a smoking cinder at https://independentpoliticalreport.com/2009/04/news-from-outright-libertarians and elsewhere.
That my “positions were more-or-less identical to the positions of his Republican Party opponent in his Congressional run” is stunning news to me. I’d love for Miller to have the courage to try to back up this fascinating claim. Don’t bet on it.
While Brian H. is not as categorically antiwar or anti-tax as I am, he’s certainly for less taxation
I’m not anti-tax, anti-war or anti-big-government.
I am pro individual liberty.
Efforts to grow government to wage war, redistribute income, or otherwise impose an agenda are anti-individual-liberty and thus unlibertarian.
Mr. Holtz’s positions in favor of big government interventions in the economy, the operation of foreign societies, and in apparent support of pro-uterus-regulating sorts are anti-individual-liberty.
It’s really that simple. One of the greatest victories of the so-called “Reform” caucus is that it’s changed clear-cut issues of individual liberties into some “spectrum,” as though it’s possible to be a “libertarian big government interventionist.”
I don’t believe that the attack on Brian Holtz as a Republican type is accurate.
I know plenty of “moderate atheist Republicans.” One doesn’t need to be a religious nut-case to be a neoconservative. After all, neo-cons are largely atheist former liberals who like big government and view telling “the big lie” as a “noble lie to rally the people to the right course of action.”
Mr. Holtz shares that belief, and has certainly been key to advancing Republican Party goals in California, including the advocacy of the bizarre statist Domestic Partnership Initiative.
While Mr. Holtz might position himself as an atypical Republican in Arkansas or Georgia, he’s the epitome of a California Republican. His positions were more-or-less identical to the positions of his Republican Party opponent in his Congressional run, for instance. That Republican was also able to push his pro-gay and humanist credentials as evidence that he “wasn’t a conservative.”
As one religious book (accurately) says, by their fruits shall ye know them. Big war, big government = Republicrat.
Further background
https://independentpoliticalreport.com/2009/01/thomas-sipos-on-angela-keaton-and-ron-paul/
Previous debate
https://independentpoliticalreport.com/2009/02/6618/
While Brian H. is not as categorically antiwar or anti-tax as I am, he’s certainly for less taxation (and, I believe, less warmongering) than the Democrats and Republicans are, and from the above it should be clear that he is not socially conservative (at least in the political sense).
Brian, as I told George Phillies on another thread earlier today:
I don’t believe that the attack on Brian Holtz as a Republican type is accurate. As Brian wrote at https://independentpoliticalreport.com/2009/04/news-from-outright-libertarians/comment-page-1/#comment-55371
I’ve been told that I shouldn’t discuss America’s foreign interventions. I should only print material that “all libertarians agree on,” otherwise I’m being “divisive.” I shouldn’t cover LNC meetings, or disagreements and embarrassments, or debate and discussion. I should only print “positive” stories. Doing otherwise violates CF’s Mission Statement.
The Libertarian Party’s newsletters exist to promote the LP platform on the issues.
While I know that Mr. Holtz *wishes* that the LP was a Republican-Lite pro-war anti-tax socially conservative party, the role of the newsletter is not to give “equal time” to all points of view.
The job of the newsletter is to promote the actual policy prescriptions of the Libertarian Party. The fact that a minority of social conservatives like Mr. Holtz disagree with the decisions of Libertarians in convention is immaterial — the newsletter exists to facilitate the will of the convention-goers, not the agenda of Mr. Holtz.
https://independentpoliticalreport.com/2009/04/california-libertarian-party-officer-addresses-newsletter/
No sweat on the RivCo notice, Tom. We know you did your best on that, and we appreciate it!
FWIW, the next RivCo Meeting is May 20, same time and place as the last one.