Mr. Nolan, correct me if I'm wrong, but I understand you support Rob Power's 31-plank platform proposal, which slashes at least 8,000 of the 18,000 words in the 62-plank 2004 platform that your petitioners supposedly want restored. If you agree with Rob that nearly half the 2004 platform was dead weight, it seems that you two are nearly as "malcontent" about the 2004 platform as the Portland delegates were. One difference is that no Portland delegate voted with the knowledge that their vote would remove a single word from the Platform rather than just change the retention margin. By contrast, Rob's draft deliberately takes a chainsaw to nearly half of the words that your petitioners said they wanted restored as a starting point. Remind me not have you guys "restore" any of my family heirlooms or old photos. :-)
Also, I notice that for most of the places where the 2006 platform rewrote parts of the 2004 platform, Rob's draft chooses the 2006 language adopted by the "malcontents" over the allegedly classic 2004 language. Rob's draft has entire sentences and paragraphs (and nearly one entire plank) consisting of novel language never vetted by any previous platform cycle. By contrast, only two clauses in the PlatCom's proposal are as novel as that. I estimate that only half of Rob's draft consists of language restored from deleted 2004 planks -- which ironically is roughly the same ratio for the PlatCom's proposal. Indeed, less than 1/5 of the PlatCom's Pure Principles proposal consists of language that wasn't in the 2004 Platform. That's right, the PlatCom proposal restores the full spectrum of Libertarian principles, using language that is 80% 2004 by volume. Elsewhere on TPW, radicals like Alex Peak and Tom Knapp are pointing out that signing the Restore04 petition shouldn't be assumed to imply support for Rob's synthetic platform.
Will the real Restore04 draft please stand up? :-)
P.S. David, are you sure you've actually read the PlatCom's draft? Before Vegas you made seven specific assertions about the contents of our draft, and as I document at http://libertarianintelligence.com/2008/02/platform-committee-meets-friday.html, six of those claims were flatly wrong.
The one thing you got right was saying that our draft doesn't mention Iraq. But guess what word was not among the 18,000 in the 2004 platform? "Iraq". And guess what word is not among the 10,000 in Rob's platform proposal? "Iraq". Doesn't that make you 0 for 7 in your specific criticisms of our draft?
Note that the PlatCom's Pure Principles platform does say: "The United States should both abandon its attempts to act as policeman for the world and avoid entangling alliances. American foreign policy should seek an America at peace with the world and its defense against attack from abroad. We would end the current U.S. government policy of foreign intervention, including military and economic aid."
The business of repairing our Platform is serious work. Let's do it based on facts, and not on false claims or bait-and-switch bandwagon tactics.
