I recently resigned as a County Chair in the LP. I've been to at least one national convention as a delegate. (I scored 43 on the test, although at various times, I might have scored as high as 100.)

The reason the platform doesn't include planks on Iraq or 9/11 is that it's almost impossible to make changes in the platform -- I think it requires a 7/8th majority to do so, with a majority required to even put the issue before the body. (That's why it took so darn long to get the Moon treaty plank out of the platform.)

At the last convention, the big deal was removing a plank calling for the elimination of the "big brother" type services, you know the FBI, CIA, etc.

It became clear to me after just a short time within the party that most of the people there didn't have the first clue about foreign policy. On economic matters, most of the folks are pretty sharp.

The fundamental failing I see with the LP is the stubborn belief in the supremacy of reason. There is a failure to recognize that people act based on emotions or that some may choose to select guiding principles based on spiritual values instead of purely rational ones.

I won't go back. I still maintain a lot of libertarian leanings, still believing in compassion for my fellow man and still believing that the government is the least efficient means for providing such compassion.

I'll probably vote Republican for the first time in 20 years this next time around. Up to this point, it really hasn't made a whole lot of difference, but 9/11 changed all that.

The battle we're in is driven by religion, not reason, and as such, reasoned responses really won't allow us to win in this all or nothing fight.

Thanks Bill. Thanks Allen.

Yes, I too have leaned heavily into the Libertarian camp only to find myself recoiling after this past year. I did a little digging into the roots of the movement and why it continuously keeps company with the Ayn Rand Institute and some others that I found odd. Short and simple: Libertarianism is the political arm of the Objectivist movement. Sadly, its adherents are very dogmatic and almost cultish. As Allen pointed out, they rely heavily on a "belief" in mans perfect reasoning, which common sense and science overwhelming have demonstrated is false.

Here are some links I uncovered in my research. I encourage you to make use of them.

http://world.std.com/~mhuben/revisionism.html
http://world.std.com/~mhuben/libindex.html
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7842/otjindex.htm

Libertarians - as opposed to mere libertarians - tend to be very doctrinaire. They are a sect...a cult, almost.

Their ideals may be nice, but they have to ignore the real world to stick to them. It's not a recipe for success.

As a former demorcrat who moved to the right on social issues I only scored a 19.

I suspect many of my ilk would do the same.

I was actually shocked how high several people I read scored. I think some of that stuff was really out there.

I broke from the Libertarians as well. Back in the salad days, as some might say, when Ross Perot's floppy ears were televised nationwide with colorful charts and graphs and the birth of the dramatic 19% showing of the Reform Party made some of us think that change was actually possible - I took that luxury and threw away my vote on Harry Browne in 1996.

If Bob Dole was the best the Republicans were going to offer against Clinton, "well screw the Republicans" I thought. Relevant third parties are not going to be an issue for sometime after this next election as the big boys aren't wasting anymore time trying to herd the cats in.

I remain convinced that this test - like so much of the literature produced by libertarian apologists - is specifically designed to suggest agreement when it doesn't necessarily exist. For example, it asks whether a respondent believes zoning laws are "too strict," a question which is difficult to answer with any real sense of truth (which zoning laws, where, when, etc) but more importantly doesn't address the fundamental libertarian question: do you believe the government has the power to enact zoning laws at all? I can easily feel that a law is too strict (or poorly drafted, etc) without agreeing that government doesn't have the power to act as it does.

Re: Zoning laws

I read a proposal some time back by a libertarian thinker (small-l) which proposed to make zoning laws hierarchical (after a fashion.)

What he proposed was alone the lines of more restrictive uses were always possible in less restrictive zones. An example is a downtown area zoned commercial. Since commercial is a less restrictive zone than residential, residential uses would also be permitted in these commercial zones. While someone probably wouldn't up and build a house in a commercial zone, this adjustment would allow apartments to exist above store fronts without any sort of zoning changes or variances.

These less restrictive uses wouldn't be allowed in more restrictive zones, however, so commercial buildings would still require a variance to be placed in a residential zone.

It was quite a novel concept and seemed to allow for quite a bit of additional uniqueness in neighborhoods without going the pure libertarian route of tossing zoning altogether.

I have a pretty strong libertarian streak myself, and I voted for Browne in 2000 because Bush and Gore were both big government guys. That said, when I read this column written by Browne the day after 9/11, it sickened me, and I can never, in good conscience, vote for the Libertarian Party candidate ever again.

With respect to Jody's comments, I have to note that the Ayn Rand Institute very much does *not* keep company with the Libertarian movement; quite the contrary. There is rather a lot of friction between the two groups, actually. For example, Objectivists tend to be pretty strong supporters of the war, whereas Libertarians seem to tend anti-war. (The Libertarians have always taken a lot of their foreign policy cues from the New Left.)

There are a lot of people in the Libertarian movement who were influenced by Ayn Rand; but to say that the Libertarian movement is the political arm of Objectivism just isn't true.

Hi Kyle,

I will have to go back and look at the patterns which gave rise to my assertion about the Ayn Rand Institute and the Libertarian Party. However, It was based on my understanding of the founding of the party and the use of the term by declared Objectivist. For that you would have to review the parties history. I don't recall seeing evidence to the contrary; that the ARI and the LP shun each other. If you have evidence of that please feel free to reference it. I am more interested in understanding the guiding principles of each.

I do know that there was a great divide among libertarians concerning the war and Middle East policy. But I think the patterns involved actually reinforce my assertion about the party being a political embodiment, or arm, of the objectivist movement. Some within the party refer to the anti-war faction as being unprincipled because their objections are in conflict with the sanctity of the rational being, a fundamental tenet of the Objectivist philosophy. Basically, the hard core Libertarians view the anti-war/isolationist as not very pure or "little l" libertarians. These hawks are also the most focused on the economics of politics, free markets and liberty, too.

63 was my score.
But I refer to my self as a hypocritical libertairian. There are just too many issues where the Gov ought to be involved. But I'll continue to vote libertarian because both parties are run by crooks for the benefit of their paying constituents.

(unless jfk runs a close race here in CO)

I scored a 43. But no Big L for me either. I think before 9/11 and my total rethink of absolutely everything I would have scored a fat 5. LOL

20 hit it for me. I'm softcore, hehe.