I am philisophically libertarian. My philosophy is the philosophy that underpins the LP. The problem is that the LP has abandoned, or more precisely never embraced, its philosophy. They are not advancing a coherent political ideology, they are advancing a party platform, and they are doing so prematurely. And because of their focus on votes, they have focused on the issue that has won them the most converts...pot. The party of principle has been taken over by pot heads. They need to be advancing a political ideology AND the philosophical ideology that gave rise to it, not trying to get a few votes by pandering to druggies on a relatively minor issue.
For the record, I support legalized drugs. It is priority number 4,945,345,294 of things we need to fix in our gov't. We have a lot of far more important work to do first.
Libertarians have to win the ideological battle, at least sufficiently to get on the stage, before they try to swing elections. To try to 'cost Bush the election' is stupid and counterproductive. They should be focusing on convincing as many people as possible of the virtues of what they stand for, not making noises about perhaps maybe someday being a spoiler.
As a libertarian, I would say quite confidently, that the best way to advance our agenda, at least for now, is to work within the Republican party...similar to the way that the Christian right formed a block that could wield substantial influence within the party structure. For example, if there were a real libertarian presence in the R big tent, it might very well have nipped GWB's 'compassionate conservative' (meaning liberal big spender)in the bud and gotten a candidate closer to our pricinciples and avoided what will become known as the prescription drug fiasco. Our best hope at cutting back government in the near future is not an LP candidate, but a truly conservative conservative one. Think someone along the lines of a Ronald Reagan who didn't have to compromise on domestic spending to get his needed military expanion through.
I am philisophically libertarian. In those words, you summed up my conclusion on libertarianism. I view it as a philosophy, not as a viable political movement in its own name.
As a philosophy, it most certainly can have significant influence in the overall political framework. Stuck out on its own, it's helpless and hopeless.
This should not come as a surprise. You made an excellent point about the Christian Right's influence in the GOP. Backing up a bit, we realize that Socialists could not win anything in its own name. So what did they do? They took over the entire Democrat Party.
I'm neither conservative (what am I conserving?) nor libertarian, Republican or big-L libertarian, either. I'm an extremely hardcore anti-Leftist Independent. But I'd like to see what would happen if the Pubs and the libertarians actually worked together as opposed to the libertarians working against the Pubs. I say that because the libertarians can only spoil in a few instances, not ever win. I think that that would be something nice to see.
$710.96... The price of freedom.