My response:
His premises are wrong and his conclusions nonsense. To wit:
1. He claims that "people like Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, and the Cato Institute" were libertarian and advanced libertarian ideals outside of the LP.
Rand certainly was not libertarian. Just ask her.
She said that "Libertarians are a monstrous, disgusting bunch of people: they plagiarize my ideas when that fits their purpose, and they denounce me in a more vicious manner than any communist publication, when that fits their purpose. They are lower than any pragmatists, and what they hold against Objectivism is morality. They’d like to have an amoral political program."
Rand agreed with his premise that Libertarians did more harm than good, but his assertion that she was a libertarian is false. When an article begins with blatantly false statements, its conclusions are in danger.
In addition, just because the Cato Institute and Friedman advance the libertarian cause, it does not follow that the Libertarian Party does not or can not do so effectively. It is a non sequitur.
2. "The mainstream media and academic world are not going to pay much attention to ideas emanating from a tiny third party that has no chance of winning any elections."
This argument makes no sense. The media is interested in ratings, not who is going to win elections. Academia is interested in getting published and getting tenure, not who is going to win elections.
In any event,
His statement that libertarian ideas "emanate[] from a tiny third party" is flattering, but incorrect. As he himself notes, libertarian ideas exist outside the party. Libertarianism does not and never has emanated from the organized political party.
Perhaps he is guilty of some hyperbole, but his contention that the LP “has no chance of winning any elections” is also wrong. The LP has won many local elections.
3. He is correct that a proportional system of representation would benefit the LP. But because there is a better system doesn’t mean the current one is hopeless, as he concludes.
4. He states that “a libertarian party might also make sense if one of the major political parties were on the brink of collapses and the libertarian party stood a chance of taking its place (as the Republican Party displaced the Whig Party in the 1850s).”
The Libertarian Party of Colorado has had its membership increase about 25% in the past year, largely in response to the continued failure of the Republican Party to advocate limited government and free markets. Most of that growth has occurred since the Republicans went along with the massive socialist bailout of failed private companies.
The Republicans may well be on the brink of collapse, and it will take a serious effort to prevent it.
Far from being bad for libertarianism, the Libertarian Party is poised to make tremendous strides as it picks up the pieces of the failed Republican Party.
I think depending on who you talk to you get different opinions of what constitutes libertarianism, so maybe the LP is bad for his version of libertarianism. I have been feeling like the LP is bad for libertarianism lately, but for a different reason and that is that I feel like the LP has strayed to far away from libertarian principles in a misguided effort to gain more votes and in the process are diminishing the libertarian label.
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