Quoth hrearden: > That sounds like a good idea and I might join but I have a few > comments.
Actually, they look like questions, and thanks for asking them! > 1. Didn't you attempt to start this group a couple years ago? I floated a version of the idea a couple of years ago, but decided not to go forward with it because there didn't seem to be a reason to (the LP was acting like it was about to split over the Badnarik nomination, but fortunately it didn't -- and hey, it may not this time, either; if you read the site, you'll see that I'm hoping the LP pulls through and beats the tar out of the BTP). > 2. Why does a political party and especially the LP have a political > responsibility to the American people? Because a POLITICAL party puts up candidates and asks the American people to elect those candidates to administer an existing system of governance (even if it proposes, in doing so, to substantially alter, or even eliminate, that system). When you're asking people to do that, you have a responsibility to tell them what you stand for and what they can expect from you. For the most part, candidates carry the water of that responsibility, but a new, small or "third" party has the additional burden of "branding" itself to the public so that those candidates can go out in the expectation that the public already has "the basic idea" and that they just have to prove themselves as knowledgeable/competent/trustworthy within the context of that "basic idea." > 3. Isn't forecefully advocating libertarian solutions anti- > libertarian given that libertarians oppose the innitiation of force? I didn't say "forcibly" ;-) > 4. Wasn't the Boston Tea Party anti-libertarian given that the men > who threw the tea into the harbor were not the owners of the tea. > That teas was private property owned by the merchants who ordered it > from the East India Company. A boycott is fine but isn't it anti- > libertarian to destroy property that doesn't belong to you? The Boston Tea Party was a fairly complex incident. Yes, the tea was the property of the East India Company. On the other hand, that company was operating under special advantages conferred on it by the government, including but not limited to that government forcing (at bayonet point) the port operators to host the ships carrying it. On the third hand, the reason the colonists were upset was because the tea was being imported tax-free. On the fourth hand, (yes, I'm Shiva) the reason it was being imported tax-free was that the British government was trying to bust the competition coming from those who had refused to pay the tax in the first place. And on the fifth hand, the East India Company was substantially the government of Britain and/or vice versa (you think corporate/government collusion is bad now, you're right -- but it was bad then, too). I picked the name because it hearkens back to a moment in American history where Americans, in the belief that they were standing up to a tyrannical government, took matters into their own hands. Hopefully, our actions won't be as questionable with respect to initiation of force. > 5. Again I think this is a good idea despite my questions and > comments that are criticisms. I was considering the possibility of > establishing a party called the Bill of Rights Party that emphasizes > supporting the Bill of Rights with the BOR as the platform. That's a good idea, too, and one I and others have considered in the past. Ultimately, I'd rather just stick with the LP, and hope that it will give myself and everyone else who joins the BTP good reason to re-merge into the LP. Regards, Tom Knapp ForumWebSiteAt http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Libertarian Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Libertarian/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
