You can please some of the people....Libertarian Platform Issues

You may have heard it said that libertarians agree on 95% of all issues, but fight tooth-and-nail over the remaining 5% (or is it 99% and 1%?). Its true, and I'm not the first to say that. However, the bickering and arguments over that 5% is often tedious, nit-picky, divisive and for me tiresome. Spend a few minutes in a libertarian Facebook discussion and you'll see libertarians are rarely of one mind.

If a libertarian nirvana is an endpoint, I ask why bother talking about endpoints when the reality staring us in the face is far from ideal? Furthermore, the road to that nirvana seems to be getting longer. It's a bit like arguing about where to put the furniture before the house is built. First, lets build the damn house.

As for those people who are not libertarians, and know little or nothing about us, and who may have the mistaken belief that libertarians are of one mind, and right wing to boot, well, that's wrong. If you don't believe that, just look at libertarian views on marriage, "Illegal" drugs, immigration, war, military action and so on. Not exactly traditional "right-wing."

The issue for me and the Ontario Provincial party, is trying to strike a balance on a platform for the coming election that is acceptable to our members, our candidates, our supporters, and let's not forget the voters. The whole point of being a political party is to present an attractive case to voters and to get someone elected. So a platform that appeals to the libertarian spectrum ranging from anarcho-capitalists to classical liberals and also the general public, is a challenge.

What we did is opt for an incremental approach. That's because it's taken generations for governments to reach their current bloated size, generations for taxation to reach the 50% levels that oppress us now, and generations as we watched our independence, choices and responsibilities slowly erode. It will take time to unwind the mess. That fact needs to be acknowledged. I suspect the unwinding will be hastened by the economic crisis that lingers, I'm not sure if that is good news.

So, as more and more people become aware that government cannot solve the problems it has created (in Cyprus most recently), Ontario Libertarians have posted short and long term goals that we hope will appeal to those voters who understand that limited government is a worthy goal, and we hope that libertarian ideologues will also accept our policies and work toward that goal.

Here is the link to the short version of our new Platform, and I'll have more to say on each of the planks soon.