[Lnc-business] David Nolan on the LP – Re: LNC blogging / LP News columns

[Starchild]

	I recently stumbled across an audio clip of Libertarian Party co-founder David Nolan appearing on the Lew Rockwell* show in December 2008, a couple years before he died. Although it's a relatively brief conversation, he had something to say on the topic of blogging on LP.org, as well as some other well-placed criticism of the party's operations. 

https://secure.lewrockwell.com/assets/podcast/2008-12-16_085_david_nolan_what_happened_to_the_libertarian_party.mp3

	'Nolan didn't pull any punches, and I've transcribed some of the more trenchant remarks here, underlining the words on which it sounds like extra stress or emphasis was being placed, and highlighting in bold what seem to me particularly salient points:

"What's been happening is what happens I think with an awful lot of human endeavors, which is that enterprises that were created to serve a particular purpose or achieve a particular mission gradually assume a life of their own and become more and more involved with internal concerns, internal disputes, struggles for power, position, etc., and I think that's happened to the Libertarian Party. We have unfortunately created, or the party has created, a little class of mini-bureaucrats who are more concerned with keeping their job and perpetuating the institution as an institution, raising money, then they are with spreading the message.

	"A little class of mini-bureaucrats" is rather harsh, but if we just react angrily to that characterization, we might miss what I think Nolan may have been seeing, which is that compared with the prevailing culture he witnessed in the party's early years, the LP's leadership had come to feel like that by comparison. He continued as follows:

"When we started out, our goal was to spread the word, that was sort of evangelical I guess you'd say, to spread the word about liberty, out into the world at large, and we had people like Murray Rothbard and John Hospers and many other distinguished thinkers of that era involved in the party. Now we're down to the level of people who are, I think for the most part well-intended, but compared to those men are, you know, several orders down the intellectual scale, and they're absorbed with minutiae, they're concerned with budgets, and fundraising, and they're afraid to say anything that might scare people, because that might keep people from voting for them, so it's become a very timid organization in the last six or eight years."

	He goes on to talk some about the party's membership being roughly half, in the wake of the Bob Barr campaign, what it had been after Harry Browne in 2000, and then Lew Rockwell responds with the following:

"Although I was involved in the LP for a time, and had the honor of being on the Platform Committee with you, it's been a long time since I've been a member, and I guess I've sort of become what Gerald Celeti(?) calls a political atheist, I don't see too much use in politics, but as a libertarian, I think if there's going to be a Libertarian Party it ought to be libertarian. If I were a member of the Vegetarian Party, I'd be upset if they started eating chicken."

	Nolan makes the point that the party hasn't abandoned its principles, but that it had lost something else:

"We now have a platform that states all the principles. If you go through the 2008 platform, it's not bad in terms of the principles that it enunciates, but boy, there are no specifics, as to well, what does this actually mean, if you apply this principle in a given area, what are the implications. All of that has been stripped out, using the rationale that, well, our goal is to get elected, or in the case of the presidential campaign, to get the maximum number of votes. We can't say anything too scary, let's just talk about a general direction."
	
	Then he says something that floored me, because I've often made the same point myself, but didn't recall hearing it from Nolan in so many words:

"My observation is that the grassroots membership of the Libertarian Party is far more radical, in the proper sense of the word, than the so-called leadership, the people on the National Committee."

	This I think is key to why we need a bottom-up Libertarian Party if we are going to have a sustainably libertarian Libertarian Party. Unfortunately, it poses somewhat of a Catch-22 situation, in relation to Nolan's previous comments above about the party focusing too much on internal concerns:  How do you address a problem like this without making internal party matters a focus of concern? 

"The people on the National Committee are the kind of people that you would find in the student government in high school. They like sitting at the table, and having a title, and being important. Now that's not true of all of them, but it does seem to me again we're looking at that institutionalization of the Libertarian Party where for a lot of people, having a title or role in the institution is the most important thing. And they spend a great deal of time talking about fundraising and budget, which are important things, but..."

	Is comparing us to student government going too far? Part of me thinks it is, but then I remember the often fierce resistance to letting non-LNC members sit at the table with us during LNC meetings, even when there's room for them at the table and everybody knows they aren't members so there's no risk of confusion. In practical terms it allows people to hear better and feel more a part of the team (which they are), so whence the vehement objections? David Nolan goes on to talk about the budget for 2009 being the smallest since (if I recall correctly) 1992, and then Lew Rockwell interjects to ask about solutions.

Rockwell: What's your prescription?
Nolan: I think we need to re-radicalize.

	Clearly, in the context of his preceding remarks, when Nolan says "re-radicalize" he does not mean merely in ideological terms. He then says the following:

"In my mind, there is no point to having a Libertarian Party if it is not a radical party, and I use the word radical in its proper sense, from the Latin word... for root. We need to strike at the root of the problems in society. The idea that we can simply sort of clean things up, and get rid of some of the excesses and make things work a little better, the traditional reformer position, I think is silly for a third party, because if people want to go that route – and tactically it may make sense– they've got two existing parties who are far better at getting people elected. If you want to be a reformer, and trim away at the edges of the ever-growing Goliath in Washington D.C., to some extent state capitols as well, why start a new party, or why support a third party, which has far less electoral clout, far less chance of electoral success. If you want to reform, if you want to trim spending by 7%, you're better off doing it, as I see it, within the Republican or Democrat parties."

	He makes some points about how some of the language being used by Republicans like Dick Armey and others using more radical, libertarian language in some cases than Libertarians, and then says:

"The Libertarian Party seems to be more and more trying to ape the style and rhetoric of the conservative wing of the Republican Party."

	Now I think that was a bit more true in 2008 than it is now, but I don't think the threat has gone away. We are still in danger of gradually becoming a conservative party if we are not vigilant about balancing not just our messaging but our style and culture, and making deliberate efforts to reach out to those on the left.

	The last Nolan quote I'll leave you with is this, where he mentions the blogging issue that initially led me to post this here as relevant to our current discussion:

"The national Libertarian Party has become very timid, very much concerned with preserving its own status, the members of the party and the national office. The national staffers now basically thumb their nose at the membership at the membership, they don't allow any comments on the blog they have on the national website. It's become a little ingrown group of administrators, who think 'we are the party now'. And they can think that all they want, but the price they pay is people direct their dollars elsewhere."

	Again some harsh language, but I think there's a kernel of truth there. We don't want to see that kernel metastasize over time until we are like the statist cartel parties, and I think allowing LP members to comment on our blog posts will help avoid it. Letting the members speak is even more important, imho, than letting LNC members blog.

Love & Liberty,
                                  ((( starchild )))
At-Large Representative, Libertarian National Committee
                                (415) 625-FREE
                                   @StarchildSF

P.S. – For those who want to listen for themselves, here's the link again:  https://secure.lewrockwell.com/assets/podcast/2008-12-16_085_david_nolan_what_happened_to_the_libertarian_party.mp3

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