Essay Guidelines

by The Editors

One of the perks of Libertarian Reform Caucus membership is a chance to publish your ideas on what the libertarian movement needs to be doing in order to achieve victory – and have reasonable expectation that your ideas will be read. This site is being promoted through quite a few channels, and as soon as we have a 527 set up, it will be promoted by paid advertising. Furthermore, all members are to be notified of new essays through the newsletter, and members are encouraged to rate all the essays.

That said, people will still not read the material on this site if we allow poor writing! It does you no good to be published on a web site that people do not read. So, we won’t post everything that gets submitted. Quality is required: think magazine vs. message board or low-quality blog.

Therefore, the following will be sent back with suggestions for rewrite:

• Bad grammar/spelling.
• Soporific, stream-of-consciousness rambling.
• Boring bureaucratic prose.
• Undefined incomprehensible jargon.
• Selfus interruptus*.
• Obvious nonsense.
• Insulting language.

The last bullet is especially important. To get our way, we must persuade, not inflame. Some of you may be tempted to refer to the Rothbard strategy as i*****c or s****d; many moderates and incrementalists have done just this on other forums. Don’t do it! The extremist, no-compromise strategy was developed by extremely logical and intelligent people; it just happens that it was proven ineffective in the field. Trying it was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Many members of this caucus were devotees of this failed strategy. Your not-so-humble webmaster was an uncompromising anarcho-capitalist of the Rothbard variety for nearly a decade, before hard experience convinced him that this was not an easy path to liberty.

So, to ensure quality, your submission(s) will be assigned to two editors, in order to fix obvious problems and suggest ways your essay(s) can be improved. But please, try to clean up your writing as much as possible before you submit it. Sleep on it. Read it – out loud is best – and fix it. Then, send it in. The editors are not paid; volunteer time is a scarce resource.

Please have patience with the editorial process. We know it is hard on the ego to have your prose critiqued. Breathe deep, accept the changes which are good, and patiently defend your style when you think the editors are wrong.

Editors are only human. At times, disagreements with your thesis can get mixed in with critiques of your argument. Try to use this as an opportunity to sharpen your argument. Or, if that doesn’t work, you can request a different editor. Your essays are edited to ensure good quality writing, not bias the content of the site (beyond the quite broad bounds of the Statement of Purpose).

Suppose you have good ideas, but have a hard time getting them into publishable form, what do you do? A good start is to read “Decent Writing: A Practical Guide.” You will find many useful techniques gleaned from many authors. The emphasis here is on overall organization and achieving creative flow. For crafting quality sentences and other wordcrafting skills, we recommend The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E. B. White. This book is short, cheap, and classic.

Submitting your Essay

To submit an essay, log in. Then, go to the directory where you think your essay belongs. There should be a "New Essay" button at the bottom of the right sidebar. Click it and and you will be taken to a form for you to place your essay. Or, you can just click the New Essay button at the bottom of the right sidebar of this page and then manually enter the directory and subdirectory where you think your essay belongs.

You probably want to compose your essay in a word processor first, and then paste it into the form. That way, you get spell checking and the like. However, be sure to manually put in the paragraph breaks after pasting, because Word, at least, only gives you one carriage return per paragraph, and you need either a [p] tag or an empty line to tell the form of a paragraph break. (I haven't tried it, but it might help to have a small gap between paragraphs in your Word doc and then hit return twice for each paragraph, just like in a typewriter. This is bad form for word processing, but might work better for pasting into the form.)

Once you enter the text, you can hit the preview button to get an idea of how the essay will look. You can make edits and hit preview as many times as you wish. You can also go back and make edits after saving if you wish.

Once you are satisfied, hit "Submit." Within a few days (or a couple of weeks if things are busy) you will be notified by one or more editors of whether you need to make changes. Minor edits are done using the [x] and [n] tags which cross out old text and highlight new text respectively. This allows you to review changes made by editors to accept, reject, or make counter-suggestions. You should use these tags as well if you make changes after editing has begun so the editors can see what is new.

More major editorial suggestions go in the editorial comments box. Both editors and authors can use this box for comments.

Once both editors and author agree on things, the ball gets handed over to the webmaster for posting.

What to Write On

Look at our Statement of Purpose. It’s pretty broad. Look around the site and see all the categories. If what you have in mind doesn’t fit one of the categories, we can make another. Anything that has to do with building an effective libertarian party that hasn’t been covered to death elsewhere is fair game. (Exceptions: muckraking internal LP journalism, uncovering scandals within the movement, and similar subjects are not appropriate here.)

Here are just some of the possibilities:

Designing a platform. What are the marketing factors that go into a good platform? How do we make the party platform into an effective sales document? How do we reconcile libertarian natural rights theories with political reality? Are there any possible improvements in our natural rights theories?

Winning the platform debate. What does the caucus need to do to get the LP to change its platform? How do we best achieve consensus within the caucus? How do we promote the results to the rest of the party? To the convention delegates? What parliamentary maneuvers should we be aware of? Should we focus on changing the bylaws before changing the platform? What should we do if we fail to convince the LP to change? Should our platform changes fail to pass in 2006, what should the minimum criteria be for trying again in 2008?

Growing the caucus. What are the best ways to promote the caucus? Which handouts work at LP state conventions? Which publications should we advertise in? How do we find lapsed LP members? How do we find libertarians who never joined the party but might if the party adopted a more moderate stance?

Fixing the party. What bylaws should be changed? Should we keep the Pledge? Should we have a new Pledge? What should membership dues be, if any? Should we maintain an expensive office in DC? What is the purpose of the national HQ? Top down or bottom up organization?

Party strategy. Should we focus on winnable races? How do we deal with the “Lesser of Two Evils” dilemma? What are the best ways for a local affiliate to grow? Do we need 50 state ballot access?

The above list is not complete!

*Selfus interruptus—a writer's malady where the writer must interrupt his train of thought in order to answer objections, clarify subtleties, or list exceptions—all in the middle of getting out the thought at hand. Such writing is used by college professors to torture students in the name of mental exercise. cf. Hegel, Marx, Hussurl, "Great Book."

Back to top

Printer Friendly Version
Top of Page