Tuesday, July 12, 2005

FMNNClip: The party and the moment have met

My reply to Lew Rockwell -- more on the "exit strategy" and its implications for the Libertarian Party and the libertarian movement. Excerpt:

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"For a "political" party, the Exit Strategy makes perfect sense -- for exactly the reasons that Rockwell condemns it. The LP, Rockwell correctly asserts, has developed "a bad case of beltway brain." It "regards the powerful -- as versus just regular people -- as the target audience of all one's ideological work."

Newsflash: That is how America works now. On any given issue, the self-designated intellectual elites fight an ongoing internal war "inside the Beltway," attempting to capture the ears -- and minds -- of a few hundred "movers and shakers" in government and media. They jockey for position on the Sunday morning "round table" programs until, eventually, two nominally different ideas (neither of which in any way threatens the foundations of the establishment they are attempting to move ever so slightly in one direction or another) emerge as "the choice." The talking heads sally forth with two tablets of stone, the afternoon and evening "news" shows ask America to flip a coin and express a preference, and life goes on.

Yes, it does look an awful lot like making sausage, doesn't it? As a libertarian and an anarchist, I find it disgusting. As a politics junkie, I find it irresistible. And I suppose I'll continue to work both sides of that street, fishnet stockings and all.

The LP has stood with one toe in the Beltway water for 35 years. Now it's wading in. It's making a choice, taking a stand and deciding what kind of party it's going to be.
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Click here to read the rest.

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