[635] in libertarians
Re: Harry Browne for President
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Vernon Imrich)
Fri Feb 10 17:18:34 1995
To: libertarians@MIT.EDU
Date: Fri, 10 Feb 1995 17:17:33 EST
From: Vernon Imrich <vimrich@MIT.EDU>
|> Actually, I'd be very surprised if Browne gets more than 1%
Depends on who the candidates are, whether another third party
runs a candidate, and how the campaign turns out. In any case
its out of the LP's hands really.
|> >I argue CATO has done more than the LP has ever done.
|>
|> Yes, definetely. I interned at Cato in the summer of 1992, and most of
|> them didn't want anything to do with the LP. (hence, they call themselves
|> "market liberals" rather than libertarians). David Boaz, Cato's exec. VP,
Well, every time I read about Cato in the newspapers (a lot recently)
they are described as "the libertarian think tank." Everyone from Barney
Frank to the Wall Street Journal used this term.
|> told me that he thought the LP had become a real embarrassment to many of
|> the people seriously trying to make some progress in Washington, and that
|> many libertarians there wished it would just shrivel up and evaporate.
The LP has problems to be sure. Sorry to say it, but IMHO most of them come
from hard liner objectivists.
|> My only other point is the old objectivist one -- the whole intellectual
|> basis of big government is altruism. Right now most people still buy into
This is what I mean. The LP has for years tried to couple itself to a
certain personal philosophical outlook. That makes it seem like the only
way you can be libertarian is to be a selfish, individualist, atheist. Good
luck. In fact, libertarianism predates objectivism by at least 200 years.
You can be a altruist, Christian, and even a collectivist in your personal
views and still be a libertarian. The reason is that only ones views on
government are important. A commune is libertarian if it is voluntarily
funded, but it is never objectivist. The US is about 85% Christian, at
least 50-60% fairly well comitted to that. Telling people they have to
get rid of altruism in order to get rid of welfare is dead on arrival.
Anyway, whenever the LP has tried to reform itself into a more realistic
party it is the hard liners who stop it. The LP tried to get rid of
the Pledge and the Platform and essentially replace both with stuff
essentially designed by CATO (such as the Project Healty Choice, Operation
Safe Streets, etc.) but were accused of "selling out" by the hard liners
almost all of which are objectivists.
The funny thing is that more an more the country is libertarian but
there is no political wing for it because the hard liners refuse to
allow it. IMHO the GOP is joined at the hip with the religious right,
and the Dems are in total disarray. A moderate libertarian party
would soar right now no matter what it's name was.
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| Vernon Imrich | market failure, n. The inabilty of the |
| MIT, Dept. OE | market to recover from a blow by |
| Cambridge, MA 02139 | intervention. (The Exchange) |
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| MIT LP: http://www.mit.edu:8001/activities/libertarians/home.html |
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