[Lnc-business] Libertarians doing great things in Florida

[Wes Benedict]

The amount of great things happening with Libertarians is too long to 
list here.

Just this afternoon the Vice Chair from Florida dropped by after having 
attended the OAI event yesterday.

I was also very pleased to see former national chair, and one of our 
newest elected Libertarians, Jim T. attend the OAI event and visit the 
office.

One of our newest staff members has been doing a fantastic job--Jess 
from Florida.

I could sit here all day and write about 50 different exciting things 
happening in Florida, but obviously I don't want to take the time to do 
that right now.

Spending lots of time focusing on a few bad things just gives oxygen to 
the bad elements. It's better not to even mention them.

I'm also sometimes concerned that attacking some people teetering 
between libertarianism and other ideologies, may have the effect of 
alienating them and pushing them further away from embracing that which 
is good, and rejecting that which is bad.

I was once a pro-war, pro-surveillance, pro-police state, 
anti-immigration, bad guy. Early in my transition to becoming a 
libertarian, had I interacted with more mean nitpicking purist 
libertarian activists (not all purists are mean nitpickers by the way), 
or had I interacted with more mean nitpicking moderate libertarian 
activists (not all moderates are mean nitpickers by the way) I might 
have backed away from the Libertarian Party and re-embraced the 
Republican Party along with all of its bad policies--I'm often a team 
player.

Let's be nice to each other. When one of our activists falls short, 
let's not rush to pile on. Let our first instinct be to rally around 
them and support them. Let our second instinct be to rally around them 
and support them again. Let our third instinct be to rally around them 
and support them again. And let our fourth instinct be to ignore them.

There was once a guy seeking the Libertarian nomination for a high 
office in Texas. He would have been incredibly embarrassing and damaging 
to our brand if he had gotten a lot of publicity. I never publicized the 
person. Almost nobody ever found out about him. I treated his 
application for nomination equally to others--it was accepted as was 
supposed to be and processed. He didn't show up to the convention. He 
didn't get nominated. His name never reached the news or the email 
groups. I did not go on a bunch of email groups and start writing about 
how this guy was going to embarrass us if others found out about him.  I 
shall not say his name here either.

Be advised I'm not always the best example of what I'd like to see more of.

-- 
Wes Benedict, Executive Director
Libertarian National Committee, Inc.
1444 Duke St., Alexandria, VA 22314
(202) 333-0008 ext. 232, wes.benedict at lp.org
facebook.com/libertarians @LPNational
Join the Libertarian Party at: http://lp.org/membership