Steven Nekhaila's plans
June Genis
Pat Wright
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Mimi Robson
I think he's also using the old analogy that a new person walks into a Libertarian meetup and they say, "I'm really excited to be here and start working with you on A and B!" Libertarians there say, "well, are you also with us on X, Y, and Z?" and they say, "well not really." So everyone yells at them calling them a statist and to get out of here!
So anyway, I like what he is trying to do. I think this is just trying to get us all to stop fighting and realize we have more in common than we think.
June Genis
Joe Dehn
I feel the same way about this as June -- and probably most of us. I have no problem being in a coalition, formal or informal, and even in the same party, as other people who are working to move society in a libertarian direction, even if we disagree about the ultimate "end point". But when they actually oppose some of the things I consider important, then I start getting uncomfortable. And with respect to the LP specifically, that becomes even more important, because the purpose of being a "party" is to establish and maintain an identity that people can understand and depend on. It's OK, in my opinion, to have "moderates" and "radicals" in the same party, as long as the "moderates" are still trying to move things in a significantly more libertarian direction, relative to the status quo, on all or at least most issues. And yes, there are a few problem issues on which there is actually disagreement among people who otherwise agree, and that's annoying and disappointing, but it's something about which I can hold my nose and tolerate as long as it's really only a few.
There are of course also issues of how to implement all this -- how big the "tent" the LP should be, how do we keep the moderates from pushing out the radicals and vice versa, what specific mechanisms -- bylaws, platform, committee structures, voting rules, and so on -- do we need to make it all work without too much fighting and without the whole thing collapsing into irrelevance. If the current national Chair is thinking about those things, that's good. But if he wasn't thinking about it before, that's bad. Because these issues have been with us forever, and discussed among LP activists forever. They are not new problems!
And that brings me to my biggest concern about his message. He headlines it as being about a "huge new goal", but I don't actually see anything new. Everything he says here, about what he would like the LP to become, are things that generations of LP activists have been talking about for decades. And he suggests that he has a "plan", but if he really has one he hasn't said enough (yet?) to make clear what it is, how it is going to work better than what we have tried to do in the past toward exactly the same goal.
All I see here is an aspirational vision, not much different than we have seen many times before in fundraising letters, campaigns for party office, and other internal communications.