[Since this is a Platform-related discussion, I'm cc'ing LPplatform-discuss.]
David F. Nolan wrote: DN) I think the idea of a debate is good, and suggest that we start with a verbal discussion on one of the online "radio shows," (DN Susan Hogarth and I just did back-to-back appearances on webradio shows and are now finishing a written debate. My experience is that the written debate is far more substantitve and is a much more efficient way for an audience to compare the respective positions. DN) I've seen no list of supporters for either Tom's or Brian's proposal. (DN The Directional <http://libertarianmajority.net/directional-principles-subcommittee> Principles Subcommittee now contains 9 of PlatCom's 20 voting members, and our draft is very likely to be the basis of the PlatCom's majority report. Our draft is also backed by the leadership of the Reform Caucus, an organization with over 1000 members. I recall that the Boston Tea Party had several prominent Libertarians associate with it back in 2006, but I'll let Tom provide more information. DN) I find it bizarre beyond belief that the Platform Committee plans to "finalize" its recommendations in February, before there's ANY real debate on the direction the platform should take. (DN With the Platform in such shambles, it would be irresponsible for the PlatCom to repeat its traditional practice of first convening only 48 hours before the convention, adopting a handful of plank proposals, and racing the night before the Platform debate to write and print a report that delegates will only start reading as the Platform debate begins. Instead, we're going to signficant personal expense and inconvenience to meet several months before the convention so we can adopt a Report and give delegates sufficient time to review and debate it. "Finalize" here just means "adopt"; our Report can be amended right up until the floor debate begins, and indeed is likely to need amendment the evening before the Platform debate, when the plank retention results become available. We also hope and expect that adopting a Report will finally spark some feedback -- something we haven't been able to get since publishing our [EMAIL PROTECTED] in LP News and online several months ago. (Well, one guy has sent us five bizarre emails about gerrymandering.) That you haven't looked for the debate doesn't mean it hasn't been happening. Early versions of our draft started getting posted to LPplatform-discuss in March, and you can see what that did to message traffic there (where about half of PlatCom participates, along with 100 other Libertarians). The draft itself is mentioned by name in well over a hundred of the messages: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec 2007 237 <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LPplatform-discuss/messages/1882> 413 <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LPplatform-discuss/messages/2119> 259 <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LPplatform-discuss/messages/2532> 103 <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LPplatform-discuss/messages/2791> 208 <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LPplatform-discuss/messages/2894> 247 <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LPplatform-discuss/messages/3102> 138 <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LPplatform-discuss/messages/3349> 19 <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LPplatform-discuss/messages/3487> 15 <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LPplatform-discuss/messages/3506> 52 <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LPplatform-discuss/messages/3521> 2006 2 <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LPplatform-discuss/messages/1639> 1 <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LPplatform-discuss/messages/1641> 1 <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LPplatform-discuss/messages/1642> 57 <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LPplatform-discuss/messages/1643> 41 <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LPplatform-discuss/messages/1700> 23 <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LPplatform-discuss/messages/1741> 112 <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LPplatform-discuss/messages/1764> 1 <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LPplatform-discuss/messages/1876> 5 <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LPplatform-discuss/messages/1877> On the private PlatCom list itself there have been another 1000 messages since LNC made its PlatCom appointments this summer. I argued that the PlatCom list should be world-readable, but did not prevail. However, I insisted that our subcommittee's proposed draft remain public, and my PlatCom wiki led radical PlatCom alternate Morey Straus to comment on the LPradicals list in August that "so far there is a great deal of transparency in the workings of the committee there". I have repeatedly begged the Radical Caucus for feedback on our draft, right up until I was expelled from their list. Thus there has been plenty of "real debate", and there will be more. Your claim of that there's been no "real debate" -- so easy to make, but somewhat laborious to rebut -- is a perfect example of why written debates are better -- or worse, depending on your perspective. :-) DN) There's a panel schedule for the Leadership Conference in Las Vegas next month, and for the committee to wrap up its deliberations before this debate (the first I know of) is absurd. (DN The PlatCom may very well be meeting on that Saturday, if (as is likely) we aren't able to finish adopting our Report on the previous day. Given the present state of the Platform, it would be irresponsible for PlatCom members to indulge in such a panel discussion on one of the only two or three days between Portland and Denver when they are all in the same city and able to work formally on repairing the Platform. DN) If our goal is to have a platform that anyone from Republican Wayne Root, to Greenie Jingozian, to Libertarian Steve Kubby can run on, then your proposal ain't bad. (DN If our Platform can get a "Republican" to favor drug legalization, gay marriage, and the repeal of all victimless crimes, then it's a lot better than "not bad". And if it can get a "Greenie" to favor abolishing the income tax, repealing all controls on wages, prices, rents, profits, production, and interest rates, and privatizing education, retirement, and welfare, then it's frickin' magic. DN) There's simply no mention of the the issues I cite above (the Iraq War, the PATRIOT Act, the War on Drugs) (DN The DP draft does mention drugs. By contrast, the Platform you just proposed -- 2006 plus the restored 2004 planks -- does not mention the word "Iraq" even once. This is precisely why I want you to defend an actual Platform text, and not just a wistful amorphous idea of what the Platform should be like. On the subject of war, the DP Platform does say: "The United States should abandon its attempts to act as policeman for the world. The important principle in foreign policy should be the elimination of intervention by the United States government in the affairs of other nations. American foreign policy should seek an America at peace with the world and the defense -- against attack from abroad -- of the lives, liberty, and property of the American people on American soil." Let's see Wayne "WAR" Root run on that. Here is your Platform's passing mention of the PATRIOT Act: "Lacking appropriate citizen oversight, government bureaucracies have deprived citizens of their privacy, property, and freedom, under the pretense that such action is necessary to protect us from our enemies. Such actions include the suspension of the right of habeas corpus during the Civil War, the internment of Japanese-American citizens during World War II, the Patriot Act and the classification of 'enemy combatants' today." Here is our draft: "The defense of the country requires that we have adequate intelligence to detect and to counter threats to domestic security. This requirement must not take priority over maintaining the civil liberties of our citizens. The Bill of Rights provides no exceptions for a time of war. Intelligence agencies that legitimately seek to preserve the security of the nation must be subject to oversight and transparency. We oppose the government's use of secret classifications to keep from the public information that it should have, especially that which shows that the government has violated the law." Our approach is that the Platform should proclaim how our principles apply to the full spectrum of public policy areas, and should not be encrusted with laundry lists that attempt to dictate talking points to our candidates. The LP already has ways of generating such documents, yielding: * The LP On Today's <http://www.lp.org/issues/issues.shtml> Issues on lp.org * The <http://web.archive.org/web/20040618162903/www.lp.org/issues/program/> Official LP Program as of 2004 * The <http://web.archive.org/web/20030207233840/www.lp.org/issues/campplat/> 2000-2003 LP National Campaign Platform * The Vermont LP Platform <http://vtlp.org/main/issues.asp> * The California LP <http://ca.lp.org/program/Program2006-2007.pdf> Program * The Texas LP Short and Simple <http://www.tx.lp.org/docs/ShortSimple2006LPT.pdf> pamphlet * The 2004 Libertarian <http://marketliberal.org/LP/Docs/2004%20Libertarian%20Viewpoint.pdf> Viewpoint LP pamphlet * The 2006 New <http://marketliberal.org/LP/Docs/2006%20A%20New%20Vision%20For%20America.pd f> Vision For America LP pamphlet * The New York LP Trifold <http://www.ny.lp.org/literature/lpny-trifold.pdf> pamphlet * The 2000 Harry Browne <http://www.harrybrowne.org/hb2000/misc/trifold.pdf> Trifold pamphlet We don't need to write yet another one using a committee with nearly 30 members and alternates and having mandatory SoP prefix, a mandatory plank structure, mandatory continuity from the previous Platform, minority reports, retention voting, timed floor debate, changes limited to every two years, supermajority approval of all changes, 7/8 hypermajority approval of changes to the SoP, and optional challenge to the Judicial Committee. Instead of being the logical union of all possible documents of the type surveyed above, the Platform should just proclaim the core principles that such documents aren't allowed to disagree with. Do we really need to be able to haul our candidates or publications before the APRC because they don't toe the Platform line on the Civil War, Antarctica, "video terminals", "extra-terrestrial resources", and "digital audio tape"? I don't see that you answered my question at all; repealing the PATRIOT Act is not a principle, but rather an implementation detail of a particular application of our principles. A valid answer would have been either secession or the right to die -- two topics I'm working to get addressed in our draft. So I still would like to know: what do you think is the most important libertarian principle that a majority of NatCon delegates would agree is missing from our draft? And if you can't name one, would you please tell your fellow members of LPradicals to stop claiming that we reformers are pushing a Platform that is "unprincipled"? Any fair reading of it shows that is 100% Pure Principles: http://libertarianmajority.net/pure-principles-platform . Brian Holtz -----Original Message----- From: David F. Nolan [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, January 09, 2008 6:33 PM Subject: Re: Platform proposal debates? OK, Brian, speaking (writing) strictly for myself, here is my response to your question, which will be my opening statement on the platform discussion panel in LV next month, perhaps with minor changes: The Purpose of the Platform The purpose of the Libertarian Party's national platform is to provide our candidates and the voting public with a clear, understandable set of policy prescriptions that are fully consistent with our Statement of Principles. The platform needs to explicitly address issues of current concern (e.g. the Iraq War, the PATRIOT Act, the War on Drugs, etc.) rather than simply taking broad stands that could easily be misinterpreted or ignored. We do not formulate our platform to make it easier to elect people to office; rather, we run candidates to promulgate our party's stands, as codified in the platform. Where your "Greatest Hits" proposal falls down, in my opinion, is in its lack of specifics. There's simply no mention of the the issues I cite above, or many others. If our goal is to have a platform that anyone from Republican Wayne Root, to Greenie Jingozian, to Libertarian Steve Kubby can run on, then your proposal ain't bad. But that should not be our goal. Our platform derives from our principles, and if it makes some people (including prospective candidates) uncomfortable, they should go elsewhere. Maybe the Unity '08 crowd would welcome them. Brian Holtz wrote: I started asking the Radical Caucus for feedback on our draft as far back as April, and gave up hope of ever getting any right around the time they banned me from their discussion list. The question I want answered is: what is the most important libertarian principle that a majority of NatCon delegates would agree is missing from our draft? I've asked this of radicals in about as many ways as I know how, and haven't ever gotten a cogent answer. (Best efforts: 1 <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LPplatform-discuss/message/2823> 2 <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LPplatform-discuss/message/2815> ) Now, five weeks before we adopt this draft, it would be nice to finally get one. Brian
