Alex, you ask Platform reformers "what should we moderate?" It's no mystery -- our draft is at http://libertarianmajority.net/pure-principles-platform. I would reverse the question:
- What in your opinion is the most important libertarian principle that a 2/3 majority of NatCon delegates would agree is missing from the Platform Committee's current draft?
- What in your opinion are the most important specific policy questions that a 2/3 majority of NatCon delegates would agree do not have any answer in the Platform Committee's current draft but should?
I keep asking these questions, and getting silence. ("Everything missing from 2004" does not count as an attempt to answer either question.)
The Dallas Accord was not really the minarchists compromising with the anarchists, but rather capitulating to them. :-) What role or power of the state did the DA-compliant platforms not call for eliminating? How is personal secession not the functional equivalence of anarchism? The DA-compliant platforms essentially said we would hollow out the state, and "compromised" by not saying whether we'd throw away the empty broken shell.
However, it's not like the PlatCom's proposal actually rules out anarchism. Below are the parts of the draft that are relevant to the Dallas Accord. Every sentence below was in a previous LP Platform.
- [G]overnments, when instituted, must not violate individual rights
- Government exists to protect the rights of every individual including life, liberty and property.
- The protection of individual rights is the only proper purpose of government.
- The only proper role of government in the economic realm is to protect property rights, adjudicate disputes, and provide a legal framework in which voluntary trade is protected.
- We seek to divest government of all functions that can be provided by non-governmental organizations or private individuals.
- We support the right of political entities to renounce their affiliation with any government
- Our silence about any other particular government law, regulation, ordinance, directive, edict, control, regulatory agency, activity, or machination should not be construed to imply approval.
I agree that copyright is an example of a free variable in libertarian theory. I list 24 others at
http://libertarianmajority.net/free-variables-in-libertarian-theory. Do you think any of them have a "purist" binding? I agree that enfranchisement according to sexuality definitely does not qualify for the list.
http://libertarianmajority.net/free-variables-in-libertarian-theory. Do you think any of them have a "purist" binding? I agree that enfranchisement according to sexuality definitely does not qualify for the list.
