Bob Barr: Libertarian?

L. Neil Smith writes:

Those within the Libertarian Party who support Bob Barr see him as the key to winning more publicity and more votes than they've ever managed to get before now, and they evade the questions, "Publicity for what?" and "Votes for what?" Certainly they will not be publicity and votes for libertarianism, or even — if we examine Barr's record — for more freedom.

They are always willing — eager — to tell us what the public thinks, what it wants to hear, although how they know is anybody's guess. (Beware the guy who's eager to tell you what other people think. Ask him if he took a poll — or if he's telepathic.) Mostly they are projecting their own timidity, an abject fear of being ridiculed if they ran for office on a platform of undiluted libertarianism. What they haven't understood, and refuse to understand even today, is that the real danger any third party faces is being ignored. And the only way to overcome that is to make your rhetoric as flamboyant as you can within the principles that drive and guide you.

Now a very simple (if somewhat depressing) truth is that we can't influence the outcome of the 2008 election, and neither can Barr and his hangers-on. One way or another, a right-wing or left-wing socialist scumbag will be chosen in November by a hundred million products of the public education system to rule them and suck them dry.

However we can use this time to render the Libertarian Party useless to Barr and anybody like him, now or in the future. We can reset the drifting definition of libertarianism and decrease Barr's electoral effectiveness — even if he's "successful" what will it mean, if it's at the expense of everything the Libertarian Party was created to stand for? — by forcing him to waste time and effort disavowing real Libertarians and distancing himself from what we stand for.

The key to getting rid of pests like Barr is simply outshouting them — you might call it the "Big Truth" — a relatively easy task, since the LP has such a low public profile and the media have no reason to raise it. Real libertarians can make more noise, and without breaking a sweat. We're used to it. We can use the megaphones we have developed over the years to tell the voting public what libertarians really believe, and then stand back and let Barr try to explain it away.

Of Course You Know, This Means War, by L. Neil Smith

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