For the record, you still didn't actually answer the payload half of my central question, which was: why was it not "petty bickering" for radicals to insist that our Platform not contradict your zero-government anarchist principles?'
One can call any concerted advocacy effort "an assault", but that doesn't explain how my _defense_ against the Restore04 "assault" -- using a mailing and a tabloid to try to overturn the PlatCom's recommendations -- makes _me_ the one guilty of "emotionalism" and "petty bickering".
I accept your admission (via email) that your "reaction in 'Quacas' was certainly and ironically emotional". It takes a fine and rare mind to recognize and admit that kind of irony. It's true that you never signed onto Restore04 and mostly stayed out of the Platform debate, and you were always quite consistent in saying that platforms don't really matter. Your only inconsistency was that you directed all your criticism of platform advocacy at only one set of advocates. (For the record, I've never said that Platform reform is a magic bullet for LP success. Noting this truism was never an adequate answer to my point that the LP should occupy the undefended principled high ground on abortion.)
I've been on vacation from LP infighting since Denver and focusing on election/campaign activism, but in my renewed blogging over the last two weeks I came across this loose end and wanted to tie it off. I don't deny relishing the sporting aspect of both policy debate and of tactical political maneuvering, but it was perhaps projection to imagine I'm "emotional" in the sense of your hardball player. I don't lose my cool at either my teammates or my opponents, and I make a point of never trying to tell my fellow Libertarians what's the best use of their effort budget -- except to advise them that it's not good to invest effort in handcuffing fellow activists, e.g. through a narrow single-faction Platform. So I'm glad you now see the irony in invoking your teammate-berating hardball player in the same posting in which you angrily lectured me on how I should redirect my activism. :-)
At least you didn't question my motives, and thus avoided a diagnosis of what I call Libertarian Disease. LD is a malady that attacks the central nervous system of LP members, and induces the speech center of the brain to emit statements saying that any political effort not aligned with what the sufferer thinks is our optimal strategy is evidence of willful sabotage of our cause. Each year science makes great strides in understanding LD, and my dream is that it can be cured in our lifetime. :-)
Re: 2-4 above, there are some interesting and important ideas here, and I agree with you that our real political power is in the ability of our ideas to drive issues. If you ever want to defend e.g. the idea that a libertarian state should never liberate anyone, I'm game.
Oh, and what is "quacas"?
