[extropy-chat] Lorrey - Who thinks the Bush admin lied over Iraq? Onwhatbasis?

[Mike Lorrey]

--- Brent Neal <brentn at freeshell.org> wrote:

>  (7/15/05 18:06) The Avantguardian <avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> 
> >But that doesn't answer my question. I want to know
> >what party I most identify with. Every party I have
> >examined would force me to compromise something I
> >believe in to "fit in". The greens are a waste of
> >time. The communists are just plain unrealistic. The
> >democrats are too statist. The republicans are too
> >jingoist and "holier than thou". And if this list is
> >any indication, I don't even know what the
> >Libertarians are. I guess my friends hit the nail on
> >the head when they call me a Stuartarian.
> 
> 
> Let me turn the question back on you. Why do you want to identify
> with a political party? 
> 
> In my time, I've been registered Libertarian, Republican, and
> Democrat.  But I vote for whoever I feel most comfortable with, no
> matter what their party is.  From what you said, it sounds like you
> probably do too. So why do you care?

An excellent point. However, you shouldn't feel the need to find a
party that you agree with 100% on everything. If everyone felt that
way, we'd have hundreds of political parties and everyone would have to
take the WSPQ or something like it to figure out where they stand from
election to election. Shile such a scenario is not necessarily a bad
thing, it can be quite confusing and you'd have orthodoxy police in
every group to make sure you believed in this but not this (i.e. people
like Lindauer everywhere) making politics even less pleasant than it
already is.

There is a reason why people like Lindauer are not running political
parties, and that is because the point of parties is to get votes and
get meaningful things accomplished, not pontificate pompously on
orthodox fundamentalist political philosophy and run Star Chamber
inquisitions on every members political reliability, while never
accomplishing anything of merit. Such stalinist exclusionary behavior
hardly becomes someone who claims to be a libertarian, but then again,
Lindauer spouts stalinist political propaganda with abandon as well, so
who knows his real motives.

For a long time on this list, I've been considered a 'strong' or
hard-core libertarian by many members (SIAI even described me as such
in the lead-in to my 3 Laws Unsafe essay). While my ideals of how
things 'ought' to be are right up there in the peak of extreme
libertarianism, my realism of dealing with the world as it is, and
reaching out to people all over the libertarian terrain, as well as my
willingness to determine my own position from first principles rather
than dogmatically sipping the kool-aid of certain libertarian writers,
distinguishes me from intolerant schmucks like Lindauer has shown
himself to be.

For instance, I would never go into a online community that a
libertarian I disagreed with held a long history in and start
agressively attacking him, saying he wasn't a libertarian, and
demanding he get out of politics. The smear and attack campaign that
Lindauer and his fellow kool-aid sippers have undertaken since I
started my blog has spilled over here on this list. I'm sorry if other
list members are having their list experience damaged, but I'm not
responsible for Lindauers bad behavior, and I hope the membership will
support my right to advocate practical current day policies that rest
on any valid point in the broad libertarian terrain, that covers nearly
a quarter of the political spectrum, and still call myself a
libertarian.

I will not respond to Lindauers attacks from here on. He is now in my
kill file. 

Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
                                      -William Pitt (1759-1806) 
Blog: http://intlib.blogspot.com

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com