Communion. Christian Libertarians / Eternal Vigilance bloggers Reed, Richard, and Twikiriwhi. Liberty Conference. Crowne Hotel. Auckland. 6-10-12.
It was great to meet you Reed, and to catch up again with you Richard.
HAHAHA! Check out our Halo’s!
“…And there appeared on their heads Cloven tounges… as of Fire…”
(Acts2vs3) 🙂
My Halo looks like it’s slippin down….
My halo looks bent like a banana …
Ok, so I’ve now read both Lindsay Perigo’s and Peter Cresswell’s speeches.
I am assuming these are indicative of the conference in general. If so, it is immediately obvious what is wrong: there is no discernible grasp of strategy at Libertarianz/whatever it is supposed to be called now.
These speeches are both primarily about the superior intelligence and rhetorical talents of their respective speakers. They are secondarily about identifying enemies and professing their ideological purity, along with suggestions that they will somehow dilute that purity to make it more acceptable whilst still retaining it. Finally, and somewhat meekly, some actual policy suggestions are put forward. Or they are in Peter Cresswell’s case; in Perigo’s, the only actionable recommendations consist of a) Can somebody please start another think tank? b) Can somebody come up with a new logo? and c) also, the internets! A more threadbare recipe for continued unsuccess I couldn’t imagine. In fact, it’s effectively an admission of total defeat.
In fact what is required for a credible political party are not merely clever speeches but a realistic strategy. As usual, instead of strategy we get a bunch of goals; a wishlist. In fact a good strategy consists of three key elements that don’t have much to do with arbitrary goals like “to be in Parliament within six years.”
1) A diagnosis of the problem.
2) Principles/policies to deal with it.
3) Coherent actions that follow from those policies.
It’s obvious that the people proposing this new political organisation have not arrived at a clear articulation of 1) yet (though with some effort it might be extracted from Peter Cresswell’s piece, which is by far the better and more self-aware of the two). Hence 2) and 3) are likely to struggle.
If I was to have a go at 1) it might be something like:
“Almost all our policies are unappealing to almost all the voting population”.
This is the basic point of Cresswell’s speech, hence the need for a “sugar pill” or two from Nanny Freedom to help the juvenile public drink their cod-liver oil – it’s for their own good, you know!
That at least is the starting point. Yet it is something I doubt the “freedom bloc” have not really arrived at, even after all these years.
(Whoops, there’s a stray “not” in that last sentence.)
Haha, I love the photo. Awesome. 🙂
Thanks for your thoughts Daniel, I agree there was a lot of Objectivist posturing in what PC and Lindsey said… as was to be expected, yet I can tell you they did say quite a bit more than that, for example they used the term ‘Brotherhood’ to describe the fraternity of freedom fighters… which is quite an interesting thing to hear when it comes from the mouths of Objectivists! I will write my take on the conference shortly… when I have some energy… I have been a bit knackered lately!
Hi Tim,
I would be interested in your thoughts. While I am critical of Libertarians, I also think they are a valuable and interesting part of our political discourse, and I think they could be doing a far better job than they currently are. Otherwise I wouldn’t waste my time criticising them. Even Objectivists can make some good points, strange as that may sound.