Talk:Libertarian Party (United States)

I hope I have answered the critics by directing readers to specific elections and by citing more specific numbers. I have also added a external link to the Nolan Chart, nearly every Libertarian I know of has taken the quiz, and the party refers to it extensively in their campaign literature. I thought it would be more useful, rather than another explanation of its purpose.

Wait, if you can't add copyrighted material, and no one has taken the time to write information about a specific person in the Wikipedia, what is wrong with linking to information about that person off-site until information can be Wikified. Personally, I don't think everything can be added to the Wikipedia, will be added (information is almost infinite) and that some external linking until we can get a larger portion of everything Wikified might be better than no information at all. Ideas?LGPL Wikipedia is not a collection of links - But of course there's nothing wrong with adding both lists of links and lists of on-line references you used in writing an article -- Zoe

Dobbs 00:25 Sep 25, 2002 (UTC)

Added "Libertarians: left or right?" I fully admit that what I added may have a non-NPOV slant, and encourage people to edit it, although

I did try to make a strong case for the Libertarians' view.
I hope you'll keep most of the content, even if you edit/rephrase it. I think all the facts I added are valuable, and I tried to edit that letter down to the minimum necessary to convey the force of its partisan intent. NPOV doesn't mean that Wikipedia should not have pointed, forceful content, just that it should present the evidence and arguments of all (reasonable) sides clearly and with minimal distortion.

k.lee 07:00 Oct 25, 2002 (UTC)

Well, I am having some serious issues about this sort of material being posted on the Libertarian Party page per se. In a article about libertarian views, sure, but the party's page itself..... Hmmmm, I need to think this out, but it doesn't hit me right to begin with. All the other political parties pages have descriptions of what they are for, there relative standing and successes - this is vital content to be sure. However no other political party's page has anti-party stuff on it either.

Is this a good thing or bad? I'm not sure yet, but I think we should have each political parties page devoted to what they believe and how they perform. Then, under each political IDEA, we should have a debate as to the relative merits of each viewpoint, and how those viewpoints are placed into practice.....

I'm thinking of things like the agreed upon country information pages, etc. They list the political parties and ideology, but then link to the info. Is it consistent to have the political parties page discuss how the party views the world, then a seperate discussion of that belief itself (criticisms and support)?

Criticism of political ideologies are a very good thing, and should be kept on the page (or if the debate is really big and wide ranging, on a page devoted to those criticisms) to promote a whole understanding of the issue. See Anarchism as an example. But political parties are the application of political belief in a political system. Criticism of the belief on the applications page seems to muddle everything and possibly promote duplication of information and effort.

Ideas? Dobbs 02:03 Oct 30, 2002 (UTC)

Bob, I'm not sure if you're talking about the "Political Power of the Libertarian Party" section or the "Libertarians: Left or right?" section, but in the latter (which I wrote) I was trying to convey the sociological/historical context of the Libertarian Party, which does not necessarily have anything to do with libertarian philosophy. It is a relevant historical fact that the Libertarian Party allies itself more often with the Republican Party and other right-wing organizations, just as it is historically relevant that the Progressive Party allied itself closely with left-wing interests. Historical and social context for a specific party belongs on the party page, not the libertarian philosophy page. k.lee

Ok, I don't think it is very NPOV then. I'll take a crack at what I feel is a more NPOV edit, but I think I'm going to remove much information (take a look when I get to it) - and that's something no one wants to do. I think the information is good, just partisan, and belongs somewhere else.

And, while I think that the modern alliances with "right-wing" political movements does have merit, this is due to "left-wing" movements being excessively statist. When I was part of a case here in Colorado, the Secretary of State sued the LP over our choice for Governor, we were defended by the ACLU. (Not well, I was eviscerated by the Asst. Attorney General when I was on the stand - but I was only 19 and scared silly!) No one had a problem with that. The LP was started by anti-draft / anti-war activists (some of whom were <GASP> Republican - remember Nixon was an anti-war candidate - "Peace with Honor") who couldn't stand the price and wage controls instituted by Nixon, by philosophical Objectivists, by individualist Anarchists, and by what are now known as Anarcho-capitalists. Individualist Anarchists are "left-wing" (see: Anarchism ) and anarcho-capitalists are called "right-wing" in the same sense – but calling anarchists left or right has very little to do with the normal political spectrum anyway - look at the debate on the Anarchism page to see where that whole mess is going.....

My point is this - any left wing movement (legalization of drugs, American Indian Movement, various peace movements, and to some extent – even the ACLU, etc) that seek to lessen governmental involvement to improve freedom – is unabashedly embraced by the party. There aren’t many “left-wing” movements out there now that do not advocate government intervention – but this does not mean that the LP is “right-wing” by intention or default. Because OTHER “left-wing” political movements do not agree with the LP’s tactics to achieve their goals does not mean the LP is “right-wing” in any sense.

The LP calls itself the “Party of Principle” (which is why it doesn’t win many elections), because it does not change its beliefs to conform to a stronger groups polemic in order to gain an advantage (such as winning elections). More “right-wing” organizations fit this now. If those organizations wish to expand the drug war, surrender more liberties to Ashcroft (a good example), or start a draft, than the LP will be against them just as vehemently. So – the LP has allied itself with “right-wing” movements in recent history, but is not a “right-wing” organization – not due to the “Nolan Chart” or any other internal metric – but deep down inside. Dobbs 16:02 Nov 1, 2002 (UTC)

If you look at the wording of my edit carefully, I think you'll see that I tried to express something like what you say, though there may be places where the language comes across as NPOV. Moreover, I believe that a political party's objective, historical effect on the real world (which, in the LP's case, has been to strengthen the Republican Party) is at least as important in an encyclopedia article as its stated political positions.

Also, the observation that "left-wing movements are excessively statist" does not contradict the viewpoint that the LP is "more right than left". In fact, it supports that view. I believe we are running into a conflict of terms: I view the left not as an abstract collection of political principles, but as a historical body of political thought and practice. If the left is more "excessively statist" than the right, then that is not a deviation from some hypothetical, idealized leftism, but rather the very definition of "left-wing". Therefore, if you were to describe whether the LP were "more right" or "more left", you would have to conclude the former, because the right is less statist and the LP opposes statism.

Anyway, I think our disagreements about the actual article are somewhat smaller than you might think. Do your edit, and we'll see how things go. k.lee

k.lee:

You have twice added this passage:

however, to credit Libertarians with this outcome, one must assume that Libertarian voters would otherwise have slanted significantly towards the losing party in each of these elections.

(Observe, incidentally, that the conjunction of these two claims is not tenable:

1. Libertarian Party members transcend the left/right taxonomy.

2. The Libertarian Party is responsible for the outcome of the aforementioned Senate elections.

If the first proposition is true, then the Libertarian Party's presence did not conclusively alter the outcome of the elections. If the latter is true, then Libertarian Party members slant significantly either left or right.)

It doesn't logically follow the facts. If the LP vote received were slightly larger than the margin of victory, what you wrote would be true. However, when the LP vote is, say, 20 times the margin of victory, one need assume that LP voters slanted 52%/48% toward one of the other parties. To call that "significantly" is a heck of a stretch if not simply false. Also, let's suppose your claim #2 is correct. That would mean, if your logic holds, that the LP was "slanted significantly" to one side in 1992 and to the other in 1998, 2000, and 2002. I've never heard anyone make that claim.

Last year, you put in only the Georgia example (with many paragraphs of detail). I added the counterexamples to make it NPOV. Anyway, I'm rather skeptical that your claim #2 holds true in most of these examples. However, the article as I left it never asserted that your claim #2 was true -- only that both Libertarians and others had asserted it (which is true). It's the assertions themselves that LP campaigns have swung elections in both directions that are evidence in support of the idea that the LP transcends the left vs. right taxonomy. Whether these assertions are true or not is immaterial to the point.

If you don't want to drop the offending language, please rewrite it in such a way that it is logically and factually correct. You could write, for example:

Many are skeptical that the Libertarian Party is responsible for the outcome of the aforementioned Senate elections. M Carling (02 Feb 2003 02:05 UTC)

OK, I removed the language that you find annoying, although I think it's essentially correct. I also added some content about the LP race in SD (from an LP press release) and I restored the text of the Crickenberger letter, which 213.226.153.20 deleted a while back in the name of "removing bias". I find it hard to believe that verbatim quotations from LP fundraising letters are somehow "biased" against the LP. I would like to see someone edit the letter down while preserving the content, though it's hard to keep the full force of the letter's language. k.lee

I (Infrogmation) moved the following comment from the text to here:

this is misleading and needs to be somehow reworded -- the U.S. didn't always have 50 states, and it seems likely third parties have consecutively appeared on all ballots before the Libertarians -- think the Republicans, the Populists, the Prohibition Party, and the Socialists

k.lee: Why do you keep injected your POV that the Libertarians are Republican-leaning? The facts don't support it. And, BTW, the right/left taxonomy did originate with Augustine; have you read him -- specifically his book City of God? M Carling (24 Feb 2003 19:57 UTC)

I think that my edits contain nothing but facts. Could you point to a factually incorrect statement in my last edit? Do you deny that the Libertarians sent out that fundraising letter? Do you deny that Libertarian candidate Kurt Evans urged voters to support Jim Thune? How is it my anti-Libertarian POV when I'm quoting from Libertarian Party press releases and such?

Regarding left/right, the modern usage of this term originates with where people sat in the National Assembly during the French Revolution; did you read the link to Leftism? Here's the whole text of City of God. Downloading the zip archive and doing a textual search for 'left' reveals nothing except some vague figurative language about people going left or right in the Bible, or using their left hands or right hands. This doesn't prove anything. Prior to the French Revolution, it was common to associate left-hand things figuratively with wickedness; hence the etymology of "sinister". The modern sense of "left-wing" politics has nothing to do with that. k.lee