Dear Libertarian Party member,
If you are interested in being considered for the bylaws, platform, or credentials committee for the 2014 national LP nominating convention, you can nominate yourself by sending an email to[email protected], [email protected], or [email protected], respectively.
If you have not already done so and wish to be considered, please send a self nomination email explaining your qualifications by noon on Thursday, March 14, if at all possible.
Any nomination and up to a one-page attachment will be distributed to members of the LNC, who are expected to vote on committee appointments this weekend at the Chicago LNC meeting. If the attachment is more than one page, only the first page will be included.
Any emails received after noon on Thursday are not guaranteed to be included in the distribution. However, the name of anyone who sends a self-nomination email will be included in the nominations if it is received by 9:00 a.m. Central Time on Saturday, March 16 (when the LNC meeting begins).
Thank you.
Yours in liberty,
Geoffrey J. Neale
Chair
Libertarian National Committee
49 bh: The whole point of the LP Platform is to tell the state what should count as criminal.
me: Could be. It seems even more ambitious than what you suggest. This looks like the money line: “…that force and fraud must be banished from human relationships….”
“Banished” seems histrionical to me, but I certainly appreciate the sentiment. Unfortunately, then the lysergics kicked in, and the means to “banish” force and fraud were asserted to be to “challenge the cult of the omnipotent state.” Maybe they mixed in too much speed. It’s a theory….
“Convicted” is a legal term that you can’t morph into what you want it to be.
I wrote “duly convicted”, and explained that in the context of the Plaform, the “crime” has to involve actual aggression — i.e., as libertarians define it. For example, when the Platform says that “criminals” have to pay restitution, it’s not talking about everybody that the current police state happens to label as a “criminal”. The LP Platform doesn’t need the state to tell it what counts as criminal. The whole point of the LP Platform is to tell the state what should count as criminal.
It’s true that even in Libertopia, not all aggressors would get convicted. That doesn’t mean that Libertopia cannot have any legal sanctions for people duly convicted of actual crimes. A libertarian can advocate sanctioning criminals (as libertarians define them) without also endorsing every conviction the current police state perpetrates.
By “peaceful”, I mean just what the Platform means where it already says: “we defend each person’s right to engage in any activity that is peaceful and honest”. The use of such a word in the Platform does not constitute an endorsement of the very police state against which the Platform takes its stands.
*if relying = of relying
@42:
No strawman, Holtz. I simply pointed out the fallacy of your own words if relying on the state to indicate what is libertarian and what isn’t. That doesn’t work.
What is and is not libertarian is not dependent on whether the state prosecutes and convicts one. “Convicted” is a legal term that you can’t morph into what you want it to be.
So now you claim it’s conviction of a “victimful (is that even a word?) crime.”
Well, you’re still wrong, because by that definition combined with @36 you get, once you rearrange the wording to have it make sense after the substitution:
“To a libertarian, “peaceful” means not having been convicted via due process of a victimful crime of aggression involving violence.”
IOW, if one commits the aggression but is not convicted via due process, they are considered “peaceful”.
Peaceful aggression.
Next bullshit, please.
I pointed out that this is not much different from current federal law
All you’ve pointed out is that the government uses some of the same words (e.g. “convicted”) as I do. Libertarians can use the word “convicted” without defending every conviction that the government has ever perpetrated.
It is you who have erected a strawman.
That’s impossible, since I haven’t characterized your views in any way whatsoever.
you indicated that persons “duly convicted” of “aggression involving violence” have lost their “gun rights” in your view
Actually, all I said was that I think the LP should qualify its advocacy of gun rights, so that LP candidates aren’t accused of advocating gun rights for children and violent criminals. By advocating that the LP be silent on the gun rights of children and violent criminals, I haven’t actually told you my views on the subject. As a 4-time PlatCom member, I’ve never considered it my job to rewrite the Platform to reflect my my species of libertarianism.
Brian: It is you who have erected a strawman. First you indicated that persons “duly convicted” of “aggression involving violence” have lost their “gun rights” in your view. I pointed out that this is not much different from current federal law: people who have been “duly convicted” of even slight domestic violence offenses (so slight that they may not have served so much as a day in jail) are now barred FOR LIFE from possessing firearms. If they so much as possess a firearm they face up to 10 years in federal prison.
Please don’t try to evade the subject.
@40 If this is your idea of libertarian
It’s not; that’s merely your strawman.
My idea of a libertarian is embedded in this interactive libertarian-detector test. Try it out, see how you score.
@40 I wrote “aggression involving violence”. To a libertarian, “possession of a firearm that has traveled in interstate commerce” is not aggression involving violence.
Next strawman, please.
@38 I wrote “duly convicted”. To a libertarian, “duly convicted” means convicted of a victimful crime via due process.
Next strawman, please.
Current federal law also exposes anyone who gives or lends a gun to such a “prohibited person” to a possible ten-year prison term. If you grant the federal government power to prohibit those “duly convicted of aggression involving violence” from possessing firearms for life, you probably also support laws that make it a crime to provide a firearm to such persons. I recently represented a client who was sent to federal prison for merely allowing an old friend to stay in his RV where there happened to be a handgun in a closet.
This is “libertarian” in your mind?
Holtz @ 36 & Capozzi @ 37:
“To a libertarian, “peaceful” means not having been duly convicted of aggression involving violence.”
Respectfully, this is ridiculous and quite similar to current federal law. 18 U.S.C. Section 922 prohibits FOR LIFE anyone who has ever been convicted of a domestic violence MISDEMEANOR (and anyone who has ever been convicted of any felony). Mere possession of a firearm that has “traveled in interstate commerce” (which means almost any firearm, according to the case law) subjects the possessor to up to 10 years in federal prison.
If this is your idea of libertarian I would like to know what your idea of a statist is.
@Nicholas 22:
I think the bylaws get changed too often. I propose the bylaws committee send each other about 500 emails (so they feel like they did something), then pass a resolution saying “the 2014 bylaws committee recommends leaving the bylaws alone.” I urge convention attendees to vote “No” on all bylaws proposals unless it is overwhelming clear the change is needed. Too many hidden agendas and unintended consequences.
Mr. NOTA, you are just the man to carry this proposal forward! : )
@36: Horsefeathers.
To a libertarian, “peaceful” means not having been committed aggression of force or fraud against other people in the first place!
“Convicted” means ascribing to the state’s definitions of aggression and violence, which as we know tends to not be connected to much of any reality.
By your reasoning, one can defraud or harm another all they want, escape state punishment, and be considered a libertarian. That’s absurd.
33 RR: I honestly can’t see how a libertarian could support the modern scheme of federal gun control laws.
me: I don’t know any, either. Are you suggesting that Holtz’s proposed language DOES support the current regulatory regime?
For the record, I don’t, and in truth I can’t see how you’d come to such a conclusion, actually.
To a libertarian, “peaceful” means not having been duly convicted of aggression involving violence.
Jill, the entire dynamic about Manson has been laid bare by John Douglas, the originator of the FBI’s profiling program and ISU (the group most responsible for the FBI having ANY focus on proper law enforcement). Manson was a guy who had a little gang of doltish and uneducated leftist followers, including a real “bad apple” sociopath named Charles “Tex” Watson. Watson started to take over the group, hijacking Manson’s radical rhetoric and then criticizing him for not putting his ideas into action. By being the guy who actually intended to live out the deranged fantasies (that Manson was using as a means of getting laid), there was a scuffle for “alpha male” position. Douglas contends, if I remember correctly, that Manson would likely have been a more or less harmless combination of hippie-asshole-guru, but when pushed by a rival into a game of one-upmanship, he encouraged Tex’s suggestions for insane murders.
Think of it as an object lesson about what happens when several low-functioning sociopaths encounter each other, and form alliances out of a lack of better options. So, Manson isn’t the “evil mastermind” he’s made out to be, but neither is he blameless. It’s Douglas’ position, by the way, that there should be no victimless crime enforcement. He goes further than that, and actually points out, with strong evidence, that the existence of victimless crimes is responsible for all the serial killings that happen after a killer’s first one. (The first one can’t be prevented, except by private gun ownership in law-abiding hands, but there are 50 or so operational serial killers in the USA at any given time according to Douglas et al.)
The problem of denying firearms to mala in se criminals is simple: If they can be free, they can be armed. To be free is to be armed. Manson (and other murderers) should never be free again. If you are not armed, your life isn’t able to be defended, because being armed is the only adequate self-defense against a possible determined adversary.
To hell with the entire manson family, it would be better for them to be killed. They deserve to die. However, no state anywhere is smart enough to decide who should die, so the state shouldn’t kill anyone. (There are lesser murderers who are not put to death, and even innocent people on death row.) If manson or his scumbag hippies had murdered anyone in my family, I would have done my best to kill them. This is because, when it comes to performing its alleged core function, our degraded democracy, and “the law,” is an ass.
Let’s imagine I now have a choice:
Option 1) Set free hundreds of serial killers, but also let every law abiding citizen be armed, via “Alaska style concealed carry” (no restrictions). End all forms of “mala prohibita.” (Crimes with no “injury” and no “intent to injure” a specific party.)
Option 2) Keep the serial killers in prison, but continue “gun chaos” mislabeled as gun control, and keep all the rest of the 2.4M of prisoners in prison as well.
There’s some benefit to keeping serial killers in prison, but I’d still choose option 1. Why? Because it’s harder for me to personally set free 1.44 million victimless crime offenders than it is for me to protect myself from the random serial killer. 1.44 million innocent lives ruined is not a rational tradeoff for about 200-2,000 lives ruined by serial killers every year. Also, if every proper-law-abiding citizen has a gun, I might be protected from the random serial killer, even if I don’t have a gun. Further, as soon as a few serial killers were dealt with permanently, there would be a large incentive for them to stick to fantasy and sadism porn (as Bundy claims, truthfully or not, was the precursor and motivator to his murdering).
Under freedom and the rule of the (baseline amount of) common law or “golden rule” that exists under western anarchy, I’d be free enough to correct any of my problems. However, under statism, the problem of unfreedom is institutionalized.
Now, I do advocate for minarchy, because the common law provides a better state of existence than raw anarchy does. I’m not really ready to experience the problems of Liberia. Also, such a condition (benevolent minarchy) is accessible to the common voter’s mind, whereas anarchy is not (and won’t be, until we have a great movie made about a possible anarchist future that doesn’t look like “Mad Max”). Moreover, common law jury trials are all that is necessary to have a libertarian society, and that they will exist after an incremental alteration to the existing state, is far more likely than the total abolition of the state. (…Unless there’s a technological Singularity.)
Please uprank if you agree, and mail your greasy keyboard to IPR if you disagree. Thanks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRuSS0iiFyo
RR @ 27: I live here in LA during the Manson murders, and I’ve read quite a bit about the cases I think Charles Manson most certainly should be locked away along with all of his surviving minions. Some people make choices that deem them unfit to live among us, and he’s one of them. Perhaps a mental hospital would be a better place for him, but that’s not realistic. The man is stark raving nuts, and clearly dangerous, in my view.
I honestly can’t see how a libertarian could support the modern scheme of federal gun control laws. Or a scheme of gun control that is based on government determinations of whether an individual is “peaceful” or “nonpeaceful.” From there you get to background checks, the Brady law, the imprisonment of thousands of citizens for mere gun possession, etc. And remember that “nonpeaceful” citizens with arms are our protectors. So-called “law-abiding” gun owners (a term often envoked by NRA-types) can never be counted on to defend liberty from the government; most of them will comply with orders to turn in their guns, board the vaccination buses, etc.
Cross posting.
OK, so these modern-day Tom Paines DON’T have the right to pack heat in the hoosegow.
So I take it that you are not a 2nd Amendment absolutist, yes?
Cool, if so.
RR, deflection.
But OK Bundy prior to execution. They slop his plate, he heads to the picnic style table, and he puts his Glock down next to his Brussel Sprouts.
@28. No I wouldn’t say a prison inmate necessarily has a right to keep and bear firearms while in custody. But by the way, there used to be prisons in Arkansas and other southern states where inmate trustees were actually armed with rifles and shotguns. They were knowns as “building tenders.” The federal courts, including the Supreme Court, documented this in a number of cases.
BTW, as I recall, Bundy was executed years ago.
27 RR, just trying to scope and grok your mojo here, dude. So you think those in prison have gun rights, too? Does Bundy get to tote a pistol into the prison cafeteria? Can Berkowitz strap a machine gun to his back when he’s in the joint’s’ gym?
Of course they have gun rights. But then none of those 3 will ever get out of prison. Having read up on the Manson case, I’m pretty convinced that he was wrongfully convicted. At the very least, he did not commit any “hands-on” murders; the allegations were that he was some sort of mastermind who directed his underlings to commit murders. If the allegations are true, they demonstrate the futility of trying to prevent murder by depriving “nonpeaceful” citizens of their rights to bear arms.
Make that Manson…
23 RR, if, say, Mason or Berkowitz or Bundy get out of prison, do they in your mind have gun rights?
21 z, right, so if you chose to prohibit a bazooka toter from your spread, I’m glad we agree you have a right to do so. An abstract right is one thing, the enforcement of a right another. You COULD hire private security, but that seems cost prohibitive for most.
For a political philosophy and its advocates to have any credence, it seems wise to have a semblence of how a contention would be put into effect.
Brian Holz @ 16:” ?gun rights are for peaceful adults”
This requires some explanation. Do you support laws such as 18 U.S.C. Section 922 which prohibit a long list of persons (probably tens of millions of adult males) from possessing firearms for life because the state views them as not “peaceful adults”‘?
Remember that Americans owe their independence from Britain to non-peaceful adults who dared to fire on their government on April 19, 1775. Did they lose their “gun rights” on account of their nonpeacefulness?
@20: I don’t follow your comment. I think what you actually want is for the members of the Bylaws and Platform Committees to put forward proposals that actually have a good shot at being accepted by the convention delegates. Or are you really suggesting those committees submit no proposals at all?
@16 Of course. It seems we agree on this. Property owners have the right and should be able to prohibit, permit or require weapon possession by those who wish to enter.
I urge members of the Platform Committee and Bylaws Committee to vote “nay” on all proposals. Re-wording the platform and re-tweaking the rules just makes more wasteful administrative work for people. Last cycle, the Starr-Root faction dominated the bylaws and platform committees, yet most of their proposals failed to pass by the delegates. Radicals should prepare for similar results if they dominate the committees and go overboard with bylaws and platform proposals.
As a top-5 state, Ohio has submitted its members to the following committees, via approval from the LPO State Executive Committee:
Credentials: Paul Hinds who is looking for an alternate from Ohio to help him.
Platform: Long time LP members John Fockler with Ann Leech as alternate.
Bylaw Committee is fully elected by LNC. LP Ohio Member Michael Johnston is indeed running and is presently on the same committee. He has the needed skill sets to do well on this committee.
Kevin Knedler
State Chair Executive Committee LP Ohio
The Brevity Caucus agrees. Proposal updated.
Actually, I’d say “property owners” over “owners of property”…..
z, yes, how that is enforced is a different matter. Holtz is simply proposing this: “However, owners of property should be free to restrict the possession of weapons on their property.”
As I see it, that’s the same argument as The Great One was making about behavior and speech on someone else’s property.
@14 Exactly. Which means, as a violator of property rights, only civil charges seeking damages brought by those injured, not criminal charges brought by the government.
So Speaketh Moses, aka, MNR:
“For, logically, the shouter is either a patron or the theater owner. If he is the theater owner, he is violating the property rights of the patrons in quiet enjoyment of the performance, for which he took their money in the first place. If he is another patron, then he is violating both the property right of the patrons to watching the performance and the property right of the owner, for he is violating the terms of his being there. For those terms surely include not violating the owner’s property by disrupting the performance he is putting on. In either case, he may be prosecuted as a violator of property rights; therefore, when we concentrate on the property rights involved, we see that the Holmes case implies no need for the law to weaken the absolute nature of rights.”
“Even the Bible, a.k.a, For a New Liberty, points out that one can’t shout fire in a theater!”
RC, you actually have this one wrong, though you repeat it often.
As I remember it, Rothbard refutes the mistaken argument that: free speech is limited because “you can’t shout ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.”
He, in fact, explains that government may not restrict your freedom of speech right to shout “fire” in a crowded theater.
There may in fact be a fire, so you might want to shout and warn the others.
Even if there is no fire, your freedom of speech ensures that you can indeed shout “fire” although you will most likely be violating your unwritten contract with the owner of the theater not to disturb his other guests.
In such a case, the owner may eject you from the theater, or pursue you for damages, but your freedom of speech is still intact vs. the government. It isn’t the “speech” that causes the problem, it’s the disruption and commotion of the private property rights of the theater owner. Shouting “fire” is no different than shouting “beer” in this oft cited crowded theater.
11 B4, interesting reading of these words. If these changes are adopted, it would not be the “LP” restricting anyone’s freedom, but simply a general suggestion about a gray area.
A parent may be “responsible,” but a minor does choose to do all sorts of things without his or her parents’s consent, yes? And some parents endanger their children, too.
I’d note that many adults behave like children as well.
Good Heavens – what gives the LP the right to restrict anyone’s freedom? Anything other than full freedom requires someone to make a moral judgement for enforcement.
“An armed society is a polite society.”
This will resolve all issues of whom is responsible with their weapons and whom is not.
A parent is responsible for deciding if/when their child requires any drugs – no one else need decide this. Some children behave more adult like at 10 than others that have reached some abstract age of adulthood.
@9 Nominate yourself. The last LNC vote suggests that the interesting people are not close to having a majority on the LNC.
I’d nominate myself for Bylaws, but I have no chance in Hell of getting on there, because I scare the crap out of the LNC in that position–primarily because I’d rewrite the damned things to be consistent and logical instead of being M Carling’s Kleenex. 😛
more…
Aside from perhaps Andy – who wants to either tote onto other people’s property against their wishes or to have some sort of written indemnity, iirc – I would think that even Rothbardians can’t argue with your modest weapons addition.
Even the Bible, a.k.a, For a New Liberty, points out that one can’t shout fire in a theater!
BH, adding this sentence would be a winner:
“However, owners of property should be free to restrict the possession of weapons on their property.”
Add that, and delete the SoP, and the LP might be an interesting vehicle for political expression, rather than an elaborate word game.
My PlatCom application included this:
Qualifications
Secretary, and 2006 California rep.
after the 2006 plank massacre.
LP Platform history): http://libertarianmajority.net/platform-portal
Agenda
My agenda is transparent:
guide and protect our candidates.
and protecting candidates.
of the 2012 PlatCom’s attempts to rewrite various platform
planks. For 4 of that PlatCom’s recommendations to rewrite
entire planks, I was the only vote against the recommendation —
and delegates rejected all 4.
Proposed Changes
I advocate 3 clarifications to protect our candidates:
For all the Platform changes I advocate, see http://libertarianmajority.net/2014-lp-platform-proposal
LP Resume
Full resume at http://libertarianmajority.net/bh-lp-activism
a 4-way race. Served as board President in 2012. On town water
conservation committee, I proposed a market-based alternative to
the state’s onerous default water-conservation ordinance, and
got my proposal passed by our city council.
district for third-party vote share.
candidate support, newsletter editing, and website construction.
John Wayne Smith, Lynn House, Diana Visek, and Chris Maden are listed as applying to the platform committee in the first message, but not the second. I alerted the LNC to the oversight.
Krzysztof Lesiak wrote:
10 credentials (5 appointed by the LNC, 5 by the 5 largest states)
10 bylaws (all 10 appointed by the LNC)
20 platform (10 appointed by the LNC, 10 appointed by the 10 largest states)
How many members does each committee have, Chuck?
I strongly endorse Nick Sarwark and Rob Latham for the Bylaws Committee.
From staff in an attachment to an email on the board business list:
Note: Norm Olsen points out Nick Sarwark self-nominated for bylaws but isn’t on the list.