Proposed 2006 Manifesto of the Libertarian Reform Caucus

by Kristan Overstreet

Posted May 09, 2006

We are the Libertarian Reform Caucus.

We are dedicated to expanding freedom and reducing government power through the political process. Toward this end, we believe that the Libertarian Party is the only national political party which in any way agrees with this fundamental principle. However, we are dismayed at the Libertarian Party's consistent and overwhelming failure at winning contested partisan elections. It is our view that the primary reason for this failure is the extremism practiced by the Party and its leading thinkers, who place party purity of principle above victory.

Some of us are Libertarian Party members and officers. Some of us are past party members, driven out by hostile and abusive purists who accuse us of being socialist because we believe in incremental change but not anarchy. Some of us are anarchists and former purists who have tired of repeating the same strategy year after year for no result. Some of us are people who are sympathetic to the party's overall stance but unwilling to support its most extreme and radical proposals. We are united in one belief; that the Libertarian Party must be reformed if it is to achieve its promise of more freedom and less government.

We hold these truths to be unavoidable: that the purpose of a political party is solely to elect its candidates to public office; that the strategies of exclusionary membership, uncompromising radical change, and education and enlightenment of the voting public have not worked, do not work, and will never work; that voters will not vote for those who advocate revolution, chaos and anarchy unless they have nothing to lose; and that slow, incremental change works where immediate, all-or-nothing changes fail.

We have, in the past, attempted to change the direction of this party on an individual basis. Our efforts have met abuse, personal attack, and even efforts to drive us from the party entirely. We have united in a last effort to make this party a viable political force rather than the philosophical society it currently resembles. Over the past year we have proposed and debated various changes within our membership. What follows represents those points on which the greatest majority of us agree, and which we shall support at state and national conventions with our votes and our active political activity.

To reform the Libertarian Party into an organization more suited to its goal of electing candidates committed to expanding liberty in the United States, we therefore present the following proposals:

• We call for the following changes in the rules and bylaws of the Libertarian Party and its state affiliates:
  • The Membership Pledge has been misused by party purists as a means of excluding those who might threaten the ideology of the party. It has failed of its original purpose, which was to reassure the public that the Libertarian Party does not seek violent revolution. By a majority of eighty-eight percent of our membership, we advocate the repeal of the Pledge with no replacement.
  • The platform of the national Libertarian Party contains many planks which work against our candidates. These are weapons in the hands of our enemies. Inertia, and the desire to create new planks before revising the old, keep such planks in the platform long after support for them has waned. We therefore call for the permanent platform clause of the bylaws of the national party, and all state affiliates, to be replaced with a platform sunset clause which purges all planks from the platform with each election cycle.
  • We support the policy of zero dues for membership in the Libertarian Party. We call for an end to all efforts to repeal zero-dues or to reverse the decision of the national executive committee at convention.
• By a majority of at least 60% of our voting members, with no other proposal gaining majority support, we call for the following planks to be repealed from the national party platform immediately, replaced with nothing:
  1. Section III, plank 16, "Secession" (86%);
  2. Section IV, subsection C, plank 3, "Unowned Resources" (86%);
  3. Section III, plank 5, "Population" (85%);
  4. Section I, plank 9, "Government and Mental Health" (81%);
  5. Section III, plank 14, "Civil Service" (81%);
  6. Section I, plank 21, "Families and Children" (79%);
  7. Section III, plank 13, "Postal Service" (75%);
  8. Section III, plank 6, "Transportation" (74%);
  9. Section III, plank 11, "Occupational Safety and Health" (73%);
  10. Section IV, subsection A, plank 2, "International Travel and Foreign Investments" (70%);
  11. Section IV, subsection A, plank 1, "Negotiations" (68%);
  12. Section II, plank 3, "Inflation and Depression" (67%);
  13. Section II, plank 6, "Monopolies" (61%);
  14. Section I, plank 14, "Government Secrecy" (60%);
  15. Section III, plank 9, "Resource Use" (60%).
• By a majority of at least 70%, we support the following proposals to rewrite or replace the following planks of the national party platform:
  1. Section III, plank 1, "Energy", the proposal of Kristan Overstreet (http://www.reformthelp.org/platformOld/energy/p1.php) (94%);
  2. Section I, plank 11, "Freedom of Religion", the proposal of James Morrison (http://www.reformthelp.org/platformCurrent/religion/p1.php) (93%);
  3. Section I, plank 2, "Crime", the proposal of Kristan Overstreet (http://www.reformthelp.org/platformOld/crime/p1.php) (89%);
  4. Section I, plank 12, "The Right to Property", the proposal of James Morrison (http://www.reformthelp.org/platformOld/property/p1.php) (89%);
  5. Section I, plank 1, "Freedom and Responsibility", the proposal of Bill Woolsey (http://www.reformthelp.org/platformCurrent/freedom/p1.php) (88%);
  6. Section I, plank 4, "The War on Drugs", the proposal of Bernard Carman (http://www.reformthelp.org/platformCurrent/drugs/p1.php) (88%);
  7. Section III, plank 3, "Consumer Protection", the proposal of Kristan Overstreet (http://www.reformthelp.org/platformOld/consumer/p1.php) (86%);
  8. Section III, plank 1, "Education", the proposal of Nick Wilson (http://www.reformthelp.org/platformOld/education/p1.php) (84%);
  9. Section I, plank 16, "The Right to Keep and Bear Arms", the proposal of Kristan Overstreet (http://www.reformthelp.org/platformCurrent/guns/p2.php) (83%);
  10. Section I, plank 20, "Women's Rights and Abortion", the proposal of Bernard Carman (http://www.reformthelp.org/platformOld/abortion/p1.php) (80%);
  11. Section II, plank 1, "The Economy", the proposal of Adam Weinberg (http://www.reformthelp.org/platformOld/economy/p2.php) (80%);
  12. Section III, plank 12, "Social Security / Retirement", the proposal of Carl Milsted http://www.reformthelp.org/platformOld/retirement/p1.php) (79%);
  13. Section II, plank 5, "Government Debt", the proposal of Stephen Bach (http://www.reformthelp.org/platformOld/debt/p1.php) (77%);
  14. Section III, plank 15, "Election Laws", the proposal of John Shuey (http://www.reformthelp.org/platformOld/election/p1.php) (76%);
  15. Section IV, subsection A, plank 4, "World Government", the proposal of Kristan Overstreet (http://www.reformthelp.org/platformOld/un/p3.php) (75%);
  16. Section II, plank 2, "Taxation", the proposal of the Buncombe Co., NC Libertarian Party (http://www.reformthelp.org/platformOld/taxes/p1.php) (72%);
  17. Section I, plank 18, "Immigration", the proposal of Stephen Bach (http://www.reformthelp.org/platformOld/immigration/p2.php) (70%);
• By a majority of at least 70%, we support the following proposals for new planks to the national party platform:
  • Section III, "Term Limits", the proposal of Stephen Bach (http://www.reformthelp.org/platformCurrent/domesticN/p1.php) (87%);
  • Section III, "Government Waste", the proposal of Stephen Bach (http://www.reformthelp.org/platformCurrent/domesticN/waste.php) (84%);
• For those issues on which we have no unified consensus, we call on the platform committees of the national Libertarian Party and its state affiliates to seek reform of the platform to remove its most radical proposals in favor of incremental improvements that the voting public will support. We particularly commend the issues of taxation, immigration, and the environment to their attention.
• We call on the members of the Libertarian Party to support candidates for office who advocate incremental change; to support party leaders dedicated to active and realistic participation in the political process; to end election strategies which focus on educating the voter on the issues; to support election strategies which focus on supporting electable candidates for office; and to reject, once and for all, all policies which value ideological purity over the growth of the party and the election of its candidates.

Toward this end we pledge our determination to become delegates to state and national conventions, to attend those conventions and vote on these and all other issues, and to recruit others to join the Libertarian Party and work for change from within.

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