WSU = Wichita State University. Sorry dude. :)

or even talked to their campus advisor at WSU

Hey, I didn’t realize we were nearly neighbors! I’m in Seattle. I get out to your neck of the woods once in a while, too.

There are some things more important than the economy, and free speech is among them.

Megan’s thinking on this is exactly backwards on this, for two reasons:

1. The interested rent seekers that would flock to fill the need for functionaries of Obama’s economic regulation schemes will be extremely hard to dislodge. Once they have a foothold, they’ll fight tooth and nail to keep it, since they will almost certainly be using their regulatory position to their own advantage.

Restrictions on free speech tend to be much more transitory since fewer people can use them to their personal advantage. A simple examination of history shows that we’ve recovered our expressive liberty much more often then we’ve recovered our economic liberty.

2. Once we lose economic freedom, social freedom is never far behind. There is a significant segment of the population already who won’t speak out against the state on anything… because they’re already dependent on it. Bringing that same dependence down on the rest of us through socialized medicine will only erode our will to speak out.

Sure, the right to free speech will still exist de jure in the Bill of Rights, but we’ll be chilled out of it because we fear that Uncle Sam could cut off our medical care.

I don’t have time to pen a huge essay on the subject, but the short answer is that we don’t miss the point.

The existence of a strong state makes it easier for the people who believe that ‘might makes right’ to have their way. The only way to limit the violence is to develop a cultural bias toward living at peace with each other.

I don’t have the link handy, but there’s an article on the web soemwhere that looked at the collapse of the closest thing to an anarchy that’s well documented historically, the stateless period of Iceland. They were quite stable (2 centuries) until the priests got the population to accede to a tithe to support churches. The tithe ended up functioning as a tax, transferring money from people who didn’t have churches on their property to those that did. Within three generations, that small tax had resulted in 5 families owning all the chieftainships and most of the land. And, judging from records, the final two decades, when the violence has spiked to such high levels that the islanders voted to bend their knee to an outside king, the violence per capita was lower than what most people living in U.S. cities experience today.

A nation state can help on occasion when it suppresses rival criminal gangs very brutally, but otherwise leaves people alone. Places like Singapore essentially follow this model. There, the level of violence will decrease to the point where people can develop a cultural habit to living at peace with each other and can prosper almost as well as if they were living in a peaceful anarchy. But that depends on the uncommon benevolence of the dictator. The power of being allowed to use violence on their neighbors that government officials wield is attractive to people who are predators who are decidedly not benevolent. There is no way to structure a government so that these people are kept away from the reins of power. Furthermore, people’s obedience to the state can make these guys more devastating.

Look at how energetically the American people submitted to state control of the economy, ruinous taxation, and conscription when that racist demagogue Woodrow Wilson decided to bring “freedom” to Europe at bayonet-point.

I don’t miss that point at all, which is why I am anti-state and not anti-government.

And I also find it curious how they seem to think that a society in which we don’t have a government to arbitrate and enforce contract disputes won’t eventually devolve into a “might makes right” situation and, eventually, tyranny.

I also find it curious how the people who are so willing to screw each other over in their daily lives suddenly become guardians of the public liberty when you put a badge on them.

I always like how libertarians advocate an idea of small government – an idea that will never be implemented.

If you’re saying that there will never be a point at which we can have a limited government that we won’t have to still keep tabs on then you’re right, and most libertarians already realize that…the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. But I believe there are some functions that we need government for and I’m willing to accept the tradeoffs.

I agree, which is why I’m an anarchist.

I find it interesting how anarchists (who I’m fairly sympathetic to) always seem to miss the point that these private defense groups they often advocate are really just a smaller form of government. And I also find it curious how they seem to think that a society in which we don’t have a government to arbitrate and enforce contract disputes won’t eventually devolve into a “might makes right” situation and, eventually, tyranny.

I agree, which is why I’m an anarchist.

You’re not gonna get good LP leadership until good people fight for the positions.

I catch your point now…unfortunately the LP here has no regular constituency beyond the dozen or so guys who meet at the steakhouse so it’s not really a battle worth fighting because whoever wins is still going to have to build a party from scratch (and I’ve got enough on my plate with my actual job). They may get a couple hundred votes in each election, but it’s not because they’re in contact with any of those voters…the protest voters are just casting a ballot for the party name.

Don’t take that to mean that I think LP is the best vehicle for our movement; I don’t.

I completely agree with you there. That’s why I’m looking at getting involved with the GOP in this area. I think the Republicans in my city are very open to libertarians and I’ll probably look at working my way in with them.

Don’t take that to mean that I think LP is the best vehicle for our movement; I don’t. I believe we need to force out the statist elements of the major parties. Regardless of your chosen path, though, the only way to get anywhere is to take an active role and step into the vacuums. Once you have a foothold, start working up the ladder until you’re in a position of real influence.

I would remind you, though, that they are probably still in their positions because no one else wants the positions. Like anything else, you won’t get a good product without a healthy dose of competition.

Tough to insert competition into the equation when you never bring in new members and you screw over people who try to work with you by failing to honor agreements (as when some of the LP guys here reneged on their promise to publicly back a libertarian Republican for a bid for local office because one of their buddies decided he wanted to run, again, as a protest vote in a campaign he put zero work into).

I would remind you, though, that they are probably still in their positions because no one else wants the positions. Like anything else, you won’t get a good product without a healthy dose of competition.

Maybe that competition won’t occur until enough people cast pissed off protest votes.

The chicken? or the egg? Who knows…

That would only be the case if people outside the movement were watching. Do you think that’s actually the case?

I think that it has more to do with the fact that the Libertarian Party tends to do a very poor job of giving their constituency a focus or holding them accountable for what they do. Bringing up my own personal experience with the LP in my area, the party membership here consists of a handful of guys who have no interest in networking, no interest in running credible candidates for office, no interest in supporting candidates from other parties who support their agenda (even after the LP drops out), no interest in updating their website, and no interest in even showing up on time to their own meetings. The only apparent reason that the party in my region exists is because the guys are older, retired people who like to get a good table for the Early Bird Special at the steakhouse where they meet. And yet, the state LP has never stepped in and asked this chapter why they haven’t had a membership drive or even talked to their campus advisor at WSU (probably the best recruiting ground here for new members and volunteers) for two years.

And yet the state LP still keeps the leadership in this area around because they still get a handful of libertarian protest votes in each election despite the fact that my four year old niece could probably run a better campaign than they do.

Protest votes for incompetent libertarian candidates, in my opinion, don’t do much more than encourage those incompetent candidates to stick around and discredit the movement by continuing to run. So if Wayne Root makes a serious stab at running a campaign, I’ll cast a ballot for him…if he doesn’t do anything more than put up a website I’ll probably leave the presidential slot blank or just spend my election day working or finishing off my campaign of “Dead Rising” (which will be infinitely more satisfying than casting a meaningless ballot).

Because I won’t vote for a candidate who I think is unfit for office simply because I agree with him on some issues

I understand that, but I disagree, because I know there’s no chance in hell he would ever have the chance to prove he was unfit.

I think it may be a setback to vote for incompetent people as a protest vote.

That would only be the case if people outside the movement were watching. Do you think that’s actually the case?

Did you ever consider that perhaps the reason why so many libertarian-leaning candidates are incompetent is perhaps because we don’t hold them to high enough standards of leadership ability in addition to ideology?

Yes, but I think it’s just because the pool is too small. If the LP suddenly became cool and an instead ticket to office, we still couldn’t fill all the seats. The movement is just too small and most people don’t want to run a campaign that has no conceivable chance of winning.