Eric Sundwall said his complaint was with "the timing and scope of the reformer assault just prior to the convention". Eric, what "assault"? I made a couple videos and a few satirical slides (that were never even endorsed by the Reform Caucus), but who paid attention besides a few radicals like you? When else should one advocate for Platform changes, if not "just prior to the convention"?
Sorry, but this doesn't answer my question, which I repeat: why is it "petty bickering" for me to ask that our Platform not contradict my small-government minarchist principles, but it's not "petty bickering" for radicals to insist that our Platform not contradict -- and instead "restore" -- your zero-government anarchist principles?
I don't know how I can make that point any clearer. I wasn't the one "obsessing about roads"; it was radicals on PlatCom who were obsessing about getting road privatization back into the Platform. The radical Restoration Caucus made a much larger pre-convention "assault", with a mailing to every delegate and a huge tabloid handout -- each of which dwarfed all Reform Caucus efforts in terms of delegate reach. Why didn't this "assault" earn your "petty bickering" label?
The answer is obvious: despite your studied protestations, you're the one here playing hardball, and you consider it fair game to take cheap shots at those you disagree with, calling them "emotional cripples" because they "spend their lives in cubicles" "being fussy for code's sake". (Newsflash: my coding in cubicles and elsewhere is not only easy but has made me a millionaire who works 30-hour weeks and spends tons of time with his wonderful children. You can lecture me about "emotional cripples" after you've had your infant son die in your arms as I have, and after you've helped counsel other parents grieving for their own neonatal losses as I have.)
I'll happily deal with your various red herrings, and feel free to point out any that you think I've missed:
1) Merely re-asserting that I was "picking on" Angela is not what I meant by "defending" your assertion. In each of the two postings you've cite, I clearly was reacting to specific criticisms that Angela had made against me or other moderates. If you think you have a case, feel free to try to make it. Angela and I are both grown-ups, and in fact are closer friends than you can possibly imagine. When I think Angela's actions deserve criticism, I'll offer it. Ditto when her actions deserve defending -- which I've done this week too.
2) Your "whole reformer notion" is a strawman in my case, and just demonstrates that your attempt to psychoanalyze me involved absolutely zero engagement with the substance of my own reform agenda. That agenda is not about "making voters happy" or "just want less taxes" or "political success" or "having folks change their ideology" or "wins" or "respectability". I _defy_ you to quote any of these items ever being an element of my reform agenda or rationale. As I wrote at http://libertarianintelligence.com/2008/05/restore74-with-denver-accord.html, my agenda was simply to seek a Platform that includes all and only the principles that unite the major schools of libertarianism. If you disagree with that agenda, then have the intellectual courage to say so.
3) Re: defending my liberventionism, see http://knowinghumans.net/search/label/Libervention. I invite you to try to critique my liberventionism by saying something I can't rebut just by quoting something from those postings. I'll start by answering your emotional charge of "unforgivable sin" with this paragraph: "But there is a fundamental ideological reason why opposition to war is considered by LP radicals to be the most important issue. The military defense of liberty is the textbook example of what in economics is called a 'public good' -- a good that markets will underproduce due to the Free Rider Problem and that thus needs tax financing. Anarcholibertarian dogma denies this textbook market failure, and so zero-coercion absolutists have a deep need to deny that any net good could ever be done by a tax-financed military."
4) To your simplistic enemy-of-my-enemy analysis of the Greens, I reply: http://knowinghumans.net/2006/07/fear-neophobia-not-police-state.html. However, I still seek to find common ground with misguided Greens (and with misguided anarchists) via http://ecolibertarian.org/manifesto.
5) If you thought your emotional "inner thug"/"puerile"/etc. comments would do anything other then set off my irony detector, you were mistaken. I care about the LP and its Platform, and I care about my friend Angela, and I'm happy to defend my discussions of them. However, I just have to chuckle when you say "trust me" about how much you think you could "illuminate" about my character if you stooped to engage me in an extended discussion. You keep on vouching; I'll let the record -- both past, present, and future -- speak for itself.
