LP Chooses Their Presidential Candidate Today

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Sun, 30 May 2004 12:00:00 GMT
# Rational Review's Editors - On-The-Spot Coverage of the LP's 2004 National Convention - I forgot all about this. It's happening this weekend in Atlanta. They'll pick the presidential candidate today. There was no news on how the Boortz speech went, but Tom Knapp posted the below comment on Friday: [butterbach]
Tomorrow morning, it's the anti-war protest, concurrent with the Boortz breakfast.

There's high potential for ugliness, but it looks like the libertarian wing of the Libertarian Party may finally pull a victory out of the old hat.

# Brad Spangler at Butterbach.net - It Is a Good Time to Be an Anarchist - the American experiment in constitutionally limiting a government is over. It failed. What remains is to speak the truth that no government has ever been kept from becoming tyrannical, and no government ever will be. While the dinosaur goes through its death throes, we must work to ensure that it is replaced with nothing. [root]

The Republic is dead. It was a noble experiment that ultimately failed in its principal aim - to demonstrate that a written constitution can restrain governmental authority to a somewhat non-tyrannical level.

The FedGov has cast aside restrictions on its authority - restrictions written into the only document that gave it a claim, however tenuous, to legitimacy. To the FedGov, the Constitution that creates, structures and limits it is no longer valid.

So be it. There is, then, no legitimate government. We already live in a state of anarchy. We face only a crime problem.

True, the primary bandit gangs enjoy a certain level of popularity rooted in the confusion they create by calling themselves governments. To combat them, our first task is to speak the truth and call them what they really are. This will pave the way for eventual market development in the still embryonic private security, private law and private defense industries. First things first, though. Simply speak the truth and encourage others to do so. These so-called governments are bandits. A government is nothing more than the Mafia with flags.

# Kevin Tuma at Butterbach.net - A Nanny Is Better Than a Nazi: No Guts to Vote Libertarian? - Vote Democrat - published originally at EtherZone last September, but I missed it then. Why, if you vote, you should vote Libertarian in November, even if it means the Democrats win. [butterbach]

To all you conservatives and constitutionalists out there who are scratching your heads in befuddlement over the militaristic, bureaucratic nightmare of the Bush presidency, I have a challenge for you: Try voting Libertarian next time.

I will admit personally that I've put down party Libertarians in the past because of their stance on a handful of issues. Immigration policy, for example. I felt that such issue positions disqualified Libertarians from leadership.

I take it all back. The Libertarians may have it wrong on a few issues, but there are many more issues where they are the only ones out there on the radar screens who have it right. If nothing else, they are consistently benign. Their heads and hearts are in the right place. On their worst day, Libertarians treat abrogation of the Bill of Rights as a serious matter--which is more than could ever be said for their socialist two-party opposition. Most of all, Libertarians do not inhabit the Post-9-11 ethical wasteland of people who are, in the words of L. Neil Smith, "evil, stupid, or insane".

I have a plea for those who voted for Bush in 2000: Please don't stab the Founding Fathers in the back a second time.

...

We'd actually be safer if the liberals took back the White House and Congress in 2004. Because when a Democrat plays stupid, it often isn't an act. Many liberals are idiots who simply don't know any better. They are end products of our modern educational system. By contrast, Republican leaders will pretend to be stupid, and they will fervently hope their voting constituency is equally stupid.

I don't know about anyone else, but I'd rather be governed by a well-meaning idiot who thinks he's smart than by a tyrant who pretends to be an idiot. I'd rather be governed by an egotistical fruitcake who accidentally tramples the Constitution than by a lying schemer who pretends he has never read it, and works actively to destroy it under cover of darkness.

...

I remember for years how wild-eyed liberals used to shake their fists at Republicans and call them "Nazis". I used to laugh at them. That was before 9-11-01. I've stopped laughing.

# I managed to get NeuClear Personal Trader to work yesterday, by compiling most of it from source. Doing so gave me great respect for Apache's Maven, the tool used to build NeuClear's Java software. Still, if you're not a Java wizard with a masochistic bent, I advise waiting for the Java Web Start version to be fixed. I gifted myself some NeuClear Bux, and was able to make transactions. Very nicely done.

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