George Phillies at Gold America Group:
Our usual sources provide us with information that we believe to be correct about LNC acts this past month.
The LNC added LP Maryland State Chair Bob Johnston to their part-time as their Candidate and Affiliate Support Specialist. The LNC has finally noticed that it had inactive affiliates, that it is now trying to revive. Here in New England, Rhode Island and Maine were inactive; friends of mine revived both of them.
The LNC debated changes in the Policy manual to specify what information should be in the Treasurer’s budget. Brad Ploeger was appointed to the Technology Committee. The LNC spent $50,000 in a failed effort to get a particular legal status in New York. The ExComm vote was 4-3. Oaksun voted against, he said. The effort failed and there was then dissension on the LNC. James Oaksun prior to his resignation advised:
Seems @ 41 would make a good article for discussion here. I’ll try to work one up…
You know, it might be instructive for some people to “embed” in some of the alleged “extremist” groups before dismissing a particular point of view as “extremist”. Take the above use of “gun extremism”, for example. The Virginia Citiizens’ Defense League is probably one of the most extreme pro-gun organizations I know of. Their members often refer to the NRA as a gun-control group, for example. Many of their members have become extremely active in the open-carry movement, and they sponsor heavily-attended rallies at the state capitol to press their agenda.
A few years ago, they were widely referred to as “extreme”; however, they have gotten a heckuva lot of their legislative agenda put into place by constantly calling for what they want, and going back year after year until they’ve gotten it. VCDL is largely responsible for improving Virginia’s concealed carry permit laws, and has educated thousands of law enforcement personnell the right of Virginia citizens to carry openly. If the organization survives and continues to prosper, I have little doubt that in ten years Virginia will have “Vermont carry” (meaning the repeal of laws requiring citizens to have government permission (nee license) in order to carry concealed).
In other words, gun extremism has become mainstream, simply because the gun extremists refused to waver in demanding what they really wanted.
And I know a certain someone is going to yank out that old, tired “private newks” bullshit, so let’s nip that in the bud in advance. Here is a perfectly Libertarian answer to the “private newks” red herring.
As an example, let’s consider the case of Bruce E. Ivins. (and yes, I am aware that even his case may be a concoction.) In any event, as the government fumbled its way through the anthrax case, lo and behold it turned out that the only WMD attack on our nation was a sophisticated product traced to the government’s own biological weapons labs.
Yes, I would say a libertarian case could be made to say that weapons too dangerous for individuals to have can be banned — but only if the government is the first entity that has to comply with the ban. Try thinking about an insurance-based model, both for the government and honest (private) sectors — rather than the current monopoly-on-force model. I’ve said this before, and don’t intend to change my mind.
I have yet to find a VCDL position that wasn’t perfectly compatible with the old, “extremist” LP platform position on guns/self defense/weapons. I have met some folks in the VCDL who have taken their conversion to “gun extremism” and applied it, over time, to other areas of their political philosophy — which means if I’m having a discussion with a few of them, and the subject of repealing drug prohibition comes up, their reaction is likely to be more favorable than that of a random voter in the street.
I think “extremist groups” represent our “best bet” outreach opportunities. These are the groups who have figured out that for “coexistence” to happen in a proto-socialist semi-police-state means that you have to get up off your duff and beat the drums constantly for the reforms you seek.
In my mind, the only real problem facing the LP and libertarianism in general is that there are WAY too many “libertarians” who can’t be bothered to:
– organize their own precict
– pick up a petition form
– run for office
– run an information table (even in their own precinct)
– write letters to the editor, or
– meet with legislators.
However, they just LOVE to waste what must amount to THOUSANDS of hours every month (collectively) sitting behind a computer screen writing breathless screeds about all of the things that are wrong with the LP, and dispensing their own peculiar “wisdom” on how to “fix” the LP. The peculiar wisdom that seems to be “politically correct” within the LP at this moment is that the now-deleted Platform and the consistent Libertarians who were comfortable with it are just a bunch of “extremists”.
Only WORK works. If you are spending more time talking to other libertarians about how flawed their efforts are, then you’re working for the enemy. Stop worrying about the platform, pledge, pragmatism, whatever, and instead do what is really necessary to build a proper political party:
WORK.
It simply never ceases to amaze me how quick some are to participate in online discussions yet can’t be bothered to commit even one real political act a week.
G: The eyes are not on the constituent groups, they are not on the apparatus, they are on the candidates. Look, the Republicans, the Democrats and every party everywhere has their fringes. Everyone has their fringe moments. Sometimes fringe today is the hottest thing on the charts tomorrow.
Me: Agreed. However, some fringy positions are more toxic than others. Racism-tinged views and gun extremism tends to evoke a certain image. PETA extremism seems generally more benign to more people, since people love animals.
Because there is a popular opinion in LM circles that ALL political matters can be deduced using the NAP, I am called a “Lincoln idolator” and “gun grabber” for my interpretation of the Confederate Elite Insurrection and 2A. I’m neither Lincoln idolator nor gun grabber, but one can see how an absolutist mindset can reach those conclusions.
One who becomes a D knows that not all Ds are PETA extremists, so I don’t think your analogy quite works.
US Muslims are not supporters of violent militants, so outreaching to them makes sense.
The problem is Muslims in the United States will not and do not react when there is a terrorist attack committed by someone who is Muslim, Arab, or commits a terrorist attack in the name of Islam. I have heard Muslim clergy interviewed about why Muslims in the US are treated with suspicion. They refuse to confront the issue at hand and get defensive (everyone is against us, we are not treated the way Christians are, people look at us with suspicion, etc.).
Muslims in the United States and those in the United States that follow the faith of Islam must every time there is a terrorist attack committed by someone Muslim, Arab, or in the name of Islam must condemn that terrorist act. When in Israel there is a school bus on the way to school and a bomb explodes killing children Muslims, Arabs, and those that follow the faith of Islam must condemn that act. When a terrorist attack kills people in an airport in Russia that act must be condemned. When there is a terrorist attack committed in France, Great Britain, Spain, Italy, Germany, United States, New Zealand, Iraq, Australia, or any other country in the world those terrorist acts must be condemned.
Muslims, Arabs, and those that follow the faith of Islam have a moral obligation to condemn terrorist acts. They must take back their religion. They must say any act of terrorism done in the name of Islam is wrong and does not represent the teachings of Islam. If they want peace and quite in their lives they must act. They will be very busy but that is the nature of terrorist acts being committed in the name of Islam every day all over the world. If they do not act they will continue to be looked at with suspicion and fear and the religion of Islam will continue to be looked at as a religion of fear, hatred, murder, and violence.
RC @36: “It’s interesting to me that IPR has many “left” Ls, yet these sorts of hard-right positions don’t seem to trouble them.”
Nor should they. If they did, their best course of action would be to find someone that they think would be a better person for the position next election. But who cares what a party chair says? The eyes are not on the constituent groups, they are not on the apparatus, they are on the candidates.
Look, the Republicans, the Democrats and every party everywhere has their fringes. Everyone has their fringe moments. Sometimes fringe today is the hottest thing on the charts tomorrow.
The Democrats have a more organic structure at their bottom and the cabal at the top is very good at keeping them dynamic. There are groups all over the map and some of them are way out there. Can you imagine the reaction to a prisoners rights group joining the Libertarian Party? The Democrats were home drug decriminalization crowd and PETA too. and all of those are “toxic” groups.*
Scale drowns out the fringe. If to get scale, you can’t stop and worry about the fringe, nor can you use the some fringe element as an excuse. Put your eye on the ball and go and reach out everywhere you can where you think you will be productive. Don’t worry where the other guy is reaching out, if you are getting the better people and your organization is not set up to let the lunatic minority whack on you, you win.
* Both the Republicans and the Democrats have been losing their coalition. Their only survival has been through momentum and the holding positions of legal coercion and privilege. But the people are leaving them as election laws in many places have allowed them too.
What I see is that their coalitions are breaking up, they have become too top heavy and the base is leaving tired of being caged up or paid lip service. They maintain their numbers because those coalition group are made up of people who are influential with others that either leave with them or hang out until a wind drifts them into an independant/unaffiliated position.
There are masses of people out there looking for a political home and are looking for something solid to hang on to that will give them and society a leg up. The LP and the basic philosophy of liberty can provide that.
The time is ripe for insurgent politics but to pick up the grass roots means getting down on your knees and getting into the soil not pretending that the common man is somehow beneath your outreach.
From Ploeger:
” Thank you for your input. I too agree we must invest in ballot access. My reasoning for classifying the recent experience as a boondoggle is because the LNC put the money down with no consideration of assisting NY’s efforts to ensure that Redlich would garner 50K votes. The team in NY accomplished a significant feat; I am not here to belittle the efforts of them or any other state affiliate.
The failure in my opinion is one of the LNC. Cutting a check to pay petitioners to obtain ballot access was part of our need. I do not however view that act alone as an investment. Being on the ballot and appearing in debates are good things. I am not going to argue otherwise. However, the egregious failure was the LNC’s oversight that the effort needed to obtain 50,000 votes to obtain the stated goal of the expense. We cannot simply continue to throw money at these efforts without a detailed plan to arrive at our goal. Investing requires an analysis of strategy–gambling involves luck. My view of this affair places the expenditure in the latter category. ”
A couple corrections are appropriate in this regard;
1. The LNC spent 25K, not 50K. The LPNY spent about 15K and the campaign about 5K, not counting innumerable hours and volunteer signatures. So the local effort was about par with the LNC contribution monetarily in the end.
2. The LPNY and Redlich campaign put a great deal of effort into outlining our strategy and effort. To suppose that there is some way to ‘ensure’ the effort with additional support is a bit presumptive and doesn’t take into account many factors. We represented sufficient enough risk to make it worthwhile.
3. The almost 50K goal came in a unique year of competitive qualifiers that no one could adequately anticipate or counter. Paladino’s Taxpayer Party accrued 25K, Davis about 20K, Barron about 20K. McMillan was a novelty act that brought in 40K. The LPNY beat all other real independent candidates except Howie Hawkins. Tweaking another 1600 votes might have been done with some more advertising, but making that case to an already reluctant or reticent LNC would have been hard. We were appreciative to be able to be assisted for the most successful petition drive ever.
There is no magic ballot access bullet in NY for the LP. The 2010 effort doubled the previous best effort and exceeded the previous four efforts combined by 11K.
I believe a stable and encouraging model was developed in this effort that could be followed to success in the next effort. Once achieved however, it’s hard to say what success will like like at that stage.
g, I’d not suggest “directing” outreach, but I suspect that certain positions are associated with certain outreach targets that will tend to alienate other outreach targets. For ex., revisionist Ls who emphasize that they believe the CSA’s secession/insurrection was righteous could alienate large swaths of the population and associate the LM with hard-right CSA apologists.
Or, when Hinkle stated in the Giffords release: “Sadly, because of restrictions placed on responsible gun owners by all levels of government, many people avoid carrying weapons that could be used to stop mass shootings,” many might view that thinking as extreme, perhaps more extreme than the NRA or GOA’s views. Interestingly, the LP’s plank 1.6 doesn’t engage in such speculation.
It’s interesting to me that IPR has many “left” Ls, yet these sorts of hard-right positions don’t seem to trouble them.
RC @33:
The idea of a “toxic” organization is not unreasonable, but it is the exception and not the rule. Even in instances of toxicity that you mention, you illustrate that only individuals were affected by their outreach. There is little if any justification in your example of one person or persons vetting the outreach of another.
A properly constructed coalition is immune from guilt by association. Outreach is done by constituents which the organization is not responsible for. It is only when the coalition devolves to a control organization and takes centralized responsibility for the actions of constituents that it become vulnerable.
The simple answer for the maximum outreach with the maximum of benefit and the least cost or liability profile is to cultivate outreach, not to direct it.
Bob@33,
Well said.
ap23: …I think we would have a serious problem if we set up a system or practice whereby we vet the groups we reach out to for adherence to libertarian values…
me: Speaking/outreaching to toxic organizations seems unwise to me. Yes, I’d love the opportunity to convince the KKK to abandon their racial hatreds, but doing so runs the risk of being perceived as viewing the KKK as a target audience, and therefore prone to the L message. My assessment is they are not, so I would not advise Hinkle to speak to the KKK. If he did so anyway, I would be concerned that media might link Ls and the KKK.
There are some Muslims in the US who hate Israel and the US to the point of supporting violent militants in the ME and S. Asia. Steering clear of those sorts of Muslims would be similar to steering clear of the KKK. OTOH, some — probably most — US Muslims are not supporters of violent militants, so outreaching to them makes sense.
Recall that Bob Barr spoke to the Council of Conservative Citizens, a move that dogs him to this day, even though he did not know of the racist nature of the CCC. Recall the Ron Paul took campaign contributions from Stormfront, and soon thereafter his newsletters from the 90s came to light.
In politics, who one associates with affects perceptions. Vetting who one associates with seems wise. Root may himself associate with unsavory figures IYO, but his point is sound, even if he may be a hypocrite in your mind.
IMO.
Maybe Not @25: In 1983 and 1984 I worked with a Sephardic Jewish woman who still had family living on the West Bank. I don’t know what conditions are like for Palestinian Jews now, but at the time she told me that they had no problems getting along with the Muslim and Christian Palestinians. However, the Israelis treated them just like they did the other Palestinians, with travel restrictions, homes demolished to make room for Israeli “settlements,” etc.
Gains @ 27: I intentionally used the word “vet” because that is what Wayne Root is reported to have said. Follow the “continue reading” link, and you will see this statement: “And…I wonder if the views of this Muslim organization have been vetted in detail?”
My intent was to point out the irony of Root worrying about whether a group is libertarian enough for us – and I mean that in a broad sense, as in whether they would initiate force to achieve social or political goals. It’s even more ironic when you consider that his hero Ronald Reagan presided over an administration that was caught red-handed secretly selling missiles to a nation that its own State Department listed as terrorist.
I have often heard that church is supposed to be a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints. Likewise, while we look for allies among like-minded groups, it is those who resort to force and fraud first that most need to hear our message. So, I’m in favor of Mark Hinkle speaking to them regardless of which way they lean.
Well, I don’t the details of Israel’s involvement in that. I do know that the year after we came over, Reagan was elected and the Soviets cut off the flow – from 50,000 or so the year we left back down to the 100s per year. Then a few years later with Glasnost/Perestroika, they started letting people out again, but the US stopped giving them refugee status, so most of them had to go to Israel – including some non-Jews falsely claiming Jewish ancestry just so they could get out of Russia.
I know the immigration process was: first we went to Moscow and lived in a hotel there, I think maybe a few weeks. Then a week in Austria, which is where people left from for Israel, or – like us and most others – several months in Italy, from where we went on to all other countries, mostly the US. In the US, we all came in through New York; some of us stayed there, others went on to other cities.
I think one detail of your post may be wrong – you said “claiming religious reasons for wanting to go to Israel,” but actually I think we were technically claiming ethnic persecution. Jewish was an ethnicity in the USSR, unrelated to religion. Most Jews were not religious. I don’t think I had even heard of the Jewish religion until we got to the US. In our case, claiming ethnic persecution was a big stretch – there were not enough Jews in Siberia for it to be an issue. I don’t really remember any ethnic discrimination that I recognized as such at the time. And claiming refugee status was rather a stretch too; I have seen much more deserving people denied refugee status by US authorities, but that was just a part of the cold war political chess game.
Paulie: “if I was in the Mossad I would be doing anything possible to ferment hatred of Jews in America so that more would move to Israel and extend their demographic lease on life.”
I’d read that back in the 1970s or 1980s, Israel pressured the U.S. to make it harder for Soviet Jews to enter the U.S., so they’d stay in Israel instead.
Israel was upset that Soviet Jews were applying for immigration, claiming religious reasons for wanting to go to Israel. Then, when they got permission to leave the USSR for Israel, they went to the U.S. instead.
So Israel tried to divert U.S. bound Jews through Israel, hoping that some would decide to stay, especially if there were long delays getting into the U.S.
Paulie may know more details about it.
True. However, many of them would object strenuously to being annexed to Israel. They want no part of being Israeli citizens or subjects under any terms. There are many Arabs and Muslims in Israel proper, and not even counting the Arabs/Muslims in the West Bank and Gaza they are on track to become a majority in Israel…would already have done so if not for the recent wave of immigration from Russia.
With that wave, there are no major concentrations of Jews left anywhere except Israel and the US/Americas. Most of the Jews of Europe, Africa and Asia have now been either killed or have immigrated to Israel.
Knowing this, if I was in the Mossad I would be doing anything possible to ferment hatred of Jews in America so that more would move to Israel and extend their demographic lease on life.
Which is why I am glad my parents decide to move to the US, not Israel as they had originally planned, when we left Russia.
AP @23:
I think we agree. Vetting outreach is an oxymoron. You may not get high returns in less adaptable circles but you never know.
The danger is in proactive vetting of others in a coalition. You never know what you are really excluding. Furthermore, you run the risk of creating an opening for pervasive social mischief and strife in both your society and your institution by encouraging the idea that one guy can tell the other what to do.
MN @25:
I think that everyone here recognizes the plight of a war torn people forced out of a homeland by rulers that subjugate people based on ethnic background.
I do not think that there is an ethnic background, a tribe, or a family group that has not at sometime been both the victim and the aggressor in just this way.
Its a sad human condition that I think we all strive to overcome for everyone, everywhere when we try and realize a more ethical society.
@ 25 “There are now many Jews born in Israel, there is really no other country for them.”
True. And they have a right to stay.
But there are also many Muslims born in Israel (West Bank and Gaza included). It’s their country too, and they have a right to stay.
Both sides must learn to share and get along in one multireligious state.
Of course, I don’t expect this to happen. I realize a majority on both sides aren’t open to it.
The reason why some people want Israel to have a right to exist is that for the 2,000 or so years that it did not exist, Jews were killed en masse, forced to convert, exiled repeatedly, tortured, raped, stripped of their possessions, barred from owning land and from various occupations, etc, etc. Many people are justifiably afraid that if Israel ceased to exist, all this would be happening again. There are now many Jews born in Israel, there is really no other country for them.
I support Wayne Root’s right to exist in Israel.
I can’t say whether Wayne was quoted correctly, but I think we would have a serious problem if we set up a system or practice whereby we vet the groups we reach out to for adherence to libertarian values, but not our own spokespersons.
The only way I know of to that in wordpress is if you become an IPR writer, which also gives you the ability to post an article from time to time, although you don’t have to do so on a regular basis.
#19- perhaps the new owner of this site will provide the ability for a poster to delete his/her own post! I feel your pain. 😉
Kevin, the LSLA article is here
https://independentpoliticalreport.com/2011/01/lsla-meeting-cancelled/
The full article from which this one is excerpted is at http://goldamericagroup.com/diary/262/lnc-in-action and contains what people are commenting on here.
sorry on two threads at one time and clicked my message to wrong one. Continue with whatever you are debating.
what does anyof this have to do with an LSLA event being cancelled?
Reminds me of the story about the squirrels on a feeder and the homeowner trying to get rid of them. LOL
Gains,
There are a number of angles to approach this from.
One of them is trying to determine where the line is that divides “Root promoting his own work” from “Root claiming to be/being touted as the de facto public face of the LP, using LP titles and offices, etc. as boosters for his work, etc.”
Remember, until very recently (the Florida resolution), there was no question of anyone “attempting to limit” where/how he did his work — complaints that where/how he did it were unseemly or counter-productive, yes, but not attempts to say “you can’t do that.”
I just find it interesting that after exercising considerable discretion regarding his own conduct, he seems to be arguing for an LNC veto on the chair’s similar discretion.
TK @14: But WAR’s actions are not in a vacuum from clear and present attempts to limit where he goes to promote his own work. We have discussed it here.
The information that we have seems to suggest that there is a pissing contest going on over who gets to tell who what to do. That is the exact opposite of what I want the LNC doing to anyone. This news raises in me doubts to the effectiveness of all the LNC Reps for even allowing such banter as part of business. Even more it feels like even this new LNC is going to fall into the same habits of using the committee as a playground for getting in the way of each other more than carrying out the business of the Party.
@ SRL #3 and paulie #4, while I doubt that the LP has ever criticized Christian per se, I agree entirely with paulie that the LP has its fair share of “evangelical atheists” (good word) as well as a lot of condescending “only fools believe those religious fairy tales” types who may not be as evangelical in their zeal but are hostile to faith nonetheless. Want proof of this. Check out some of the threads at IPR when Ron Paul endorsed Chuck Baldwin. That really brought it out, but it was apparent earlier. For example, check out the threads concerning the Ron Paul “evolution is just a theory” flap. (Some of those may have been at TPW. I don’t recall the time frame exactly.)
The Randians are actually in my experience less obnoxious about this than the “modals” who as paulie suggests are viscerally reacting to the dominant Christian milieu.
Gains @ 11,
Assuming that the excerpts we’re talking about pain an accurate picture (I don’t claim to know whether they do or not, but it seems the only reasonable basis for this discussion absent claims to the contrary), then:
Root is objecting to the chair accepting the Muslim group’s invitation, characterizing the chair’s acceptance as an LNC activity that amounts to “the LNC sending a rep,” etc.
So, it appears that Root is, indeed, “us[ing] his position on the LNC to [attempt to] stop someone from doing outreach.”
Three guesses what his likely response would be if anyone on the LNC tried to tell him what shows/events he could or could not appear at/on.
I agree.
Paulie: “Whether the people of Israel have the right to alter their form of government is another question, but that has nothing to do with whether outside groups, such as for example the military forces of surrounding nations, may do so.”
True. But the Arabs who live in the West Bank and Gaza are not an outside group. They too are the Israeli people.
Israel has long ago de facto annexed those territories, even if it’s not official. Despite any paper “Palestinian Authority,” Israel controls the borders, the air space, the radio and TV frequencies, the underground waters, and enters and leaves and bulldozes and builds on those territories at will.
Israel will never cede control. Any “two state solution” is dead. Israel only avoids formally annexing West Bank and Gaza because then it will be under greater pressure to grant citizenship to people that it already rules.
Yes, only Israelis can alter Israel’s government. But whoever is under Israeli state power is an Israeli. Just as any Mexicans living on land annexed by the U.S. in the 1840s became an American.
You take the land, you take the people.
TK @9: I am with you on being concerned about those perceptions. However, could I rightfully expect WAR, Hinkle or anyone else to reach out to communities they do not find a lot in common with? Probably not. So saying that WAR would excluded Muslims in his outreach doesn’t move me much. Were he to use his position on the LNC to stop someone from doing outreach, I would take a different tone.
Some of the subtext from the above reference (that has very dubious authority and I am trying not to read too much into it’s details), would suggest that WAR feels like he is prevented from doing the outreach that he wants… and there is the slippery slope of exclusion… even the audience of a hate mongering right wing pundit may contain potential converts.
Israel has the same “right to exist” as the US, France, Japan, Burundi, etc.
That is, if hostile armies invaded, killed, occupied, and/or ethnically cleansed any of these areas, that would certainly violate libertarian principle. The same holds true of Israel.
As a non-anarchist libertarian, Wayne Root also believes that the government of Israel has to exist to maintain law and order in Israel, in the same fashion as he believes territorial monopoly governments have to exist in other parts of the world. I disagree with that, but obviously more people – even in the LP – agree with him than with me.
Whether the people of Israel have the right to alter their form of government is another question, but that has nothing to do with whether outside groups, such as for example the military forces of surrounding nations, may do so.
Gains @7,
You write:
“Digesting it down, it appears to me that WAR wants diversity in outreach.”
I’m pretty sure you yourself have pointed out, with respect to internal party affairs, that one does not grow an organization (or a movement, etc.) through a process of exclusion.
Root and his supporters have also played this card in defending his decisions to appear on e.g. Michael Savage’s hate show.
So, so far, so good …
Except that while Root does appear to be calling for outreach to Christians and Jews, he also seems to be explicitly be calling for the exclusion of Muslims from said outreach, at least until he’s satisfied a) that the Christians and Jews have already “got theirs” in terms of outreach share; and b) that the Muslims already agree with him on a particular issue (Israel).
It seems obvious to me that if outreach to Group A is restricted until some kind of quotas are met vis a vis Groups B and C, then Group A is just never going to get its turn at bat.
It also seems obvious to me that if outreach to Group A is restricted on the basis of a substantial portion of Group A disagreeing with this or that pet position, the outreach is never going to happen either.
I’m guessing Root is less concerned with the Israeli people than with Jewish Israeli people.
Yes, all people, Israeli Jews and Israeli Muslims and Israeli Christians, have a right to exist.
The bone of contention is, does Israel have a right to exist as a Jewish State? Some American politicians and pundits are already phrasing it that way, and their answer is Yes. The libertarian answer is No.
The libertarian ideal is to create a society where all Israelis — Jews, Muslims, Christians, atheists — feel equally welcome, secure, and self-empowered.
That’s the libertarian goal for every society on earth. Not necessarily doable over the next decade, but that should be the officially stated goal nonetheless.
Unfortunately, there’s no room for such complex, nuanced thinking in the mass media sound bite culture to which Root aspires. You go on Fox News and it’s:
O’Reilly: Does Israel have a right to exist, yes or no?
You have seconds to answer. If it’s not an unequivocal Yes, then you’re denounced before you’ve finished your first sentence.
Mr. Phillies recounting of WAR’s statements certainly seem to strongly implicate him in motive to advance the State. But those are details that are unwise to accept as fact when the data is admittedly 3rd or 4th hand.
Digesting it down, it appears to me that WAR wants diversity in outreach. I think that he definitely SHOULD start reaching out to a more diverse set of religions.
I might suggest that Buddists might be a good pick to, there is a lot of overlap in the messages and the teachings. If Hinkle can approach people outside of his religious preference (I don’t think that he is Muslim), WAR should be able to do the same… better?
There is nothing stopping him.
@5 I would have phrased it differently if I was Wayne, and if I was trying to write something for public consumption (this wasn’t – it’s a leak of the LNC email list). I may have said that many Muslim groups do not agree with the right of the Israeli people to exist.
The Jordanian state does not have a right to exist either, but if the Israelis were to invade it and toss all the Jordanians out, or administer them as an “occupied territory,” I imagine you and most other people wouldn’t consider that proper, either.
Wayne was most likely trying to express that this is what many Muslim groups have in mind for the people of Israel.
Which, while true, does in no way shape or form justify discrimination by Americans against Muslims, nor does it mean Libertarians should not reach out to American Muslims.
Root apparently said: “The problem here is that many Muslim groups do not agree to Israel’s right to exist.”
I thought it was a fundamental libertarian (and American Founders’) principle that no state has a right to exist. That only individuals have rights. The People alone are Sovereign.
And if the individuals who live under the power of the State (be such individuals citizens or not) wish to change or dissolve the State or its government, that is their right.
This would include so-called “illegal immigrants” in the U.S. who live under the U.S. State’s power, and West Bank and Gaza Arabs who live under the Israeli State’s power.
A State has no rights. Only the people who live within the State’s so-called borders.
When has the LP EVER criticized Christians?
As an organization, to my knowledge, it has not criticized Christianity per se.
And where are these “anti-religious” Libertarians?
Those certainly do exist. The LP has more than it’s share of “evangelical atheists,” including, but not limited to, Randians. Many of them are reacting/rebelling against being brought up in Christian families and/or Christian-dominated surroundings.
How is the Libertarian Party going to look “anti-semitic” by accepting an invitation to speak before a semitic audience?
I think Judaeophobic is a more precise term for what Wayne meant by anti-semitic. And most Muslims are not Semites, although Arabs are. However, I agree that speaking to a Muslim audience does not exemplify or insinuate Judaeophobia.
Also, I do agree with Wayne that the LP should reach out to Jews and Christians, and suggested some materials that may be helpful.
When has the LP EVER criticized Christians?
And where are these “anti-religious” Libertarians?
How is the Libertarian Party going to look “anti-semitic” by accepting an invitation to speak before a semitic audience? And has ANY Jewish group asked for a LP speaker to one of their conferences?
PEACE
The reason the Past Treasurer resigned, is that there was a motion to make him actually do the WORK of Treasurer being discussed.
He seems to be a lazy load of hot air that didn’t want to actually pick up a pencil and calculator.
Aaron Starr as LNC Treasurer: The Good Old Days.
Aaron Starr as LPCA Chair: More Good ol’ days!
and ya wonder why liberty minded individuals are attracted to and then flee the LP ……….