I Love The Smell of Whining In The Morning

http://www.independentpoliticalreport.com/2008/12/lnc-resolution-of-discipline-for-angela-keaton

Mmm, I love the smell of fact-free whining in the morning.

Thomas, you've cited zero facts to back up your petulant mischaracterizations of the platform survey. An accurate characterization is when you quote from the survey and say -- or better yet, actually argue -- that the quote is evidence of "bias".  A mischaracterization is when you make up a fictional survey question and baldly admit it is an "exaggeration" or "poetic device".  Readers can decide for themselves whether your admitted poetic exaggeration is an instance of mischaracterization, and whether the one of us who actually quotes the platform survey is the one being "dishonest".

George, the part about Angela "only doing her job" is a direct quote from the Facebook group's self-description, so that alone refutes your "nothing more" assertion about what subscription to the group means.  Yes, the subscribers obviously oppose Angela's removal.  (Does your "nothing more" really mean the subscribers cannot be assumed to oppose asking Angela to apologize for any of the things in Flood's list that she gets shown to have actually done?)  How is it a "distortion" to assume that the subscribers must have some grounds relating their opposition to the substance of the charges against Angela?  I guess I could have added a third possibility that the subscribers simply don't care about the sorts of charges Flood is making -- charges (as yet unproven) like knowingly publishing false claims against our nominee, materially supporting another party’s opposition to our nominees, deliberately misleading major LP donors, and sabotaging a worthy LNC lawsuit.  If I had added such a far-fetched possibility to the list, I'm confident you would have called it a "distortion".  Do you have any argument at all against the substance of my analysis, or is argument-by-assertion your new standard of debate?

Fantasize all you want that I'm persecuting you for your involvement in the BTP.  Your the one who mentioned that other thread here, not me.  The fact remains that in that thread you selectively criticized me for gently satirizing the short tenure of BTP chairs in a debate with a BTP ex-chair, while not criticizing him for in the same debate attacking the LP leadership as "corrupt vermin".  When I pointed out this asymmetry, you baldly denied it, said I was arguing in "bad faith", and now are stonewalling my requests for you to defend these attacks on my character.  So yes, I stand by my assertion that the character of the best debaters (like you) is measured less by the myriad times they are right than by the few times they are wrong.  You were demonstrably wrong in denying the asymmetry that I identified, but rather than admit it, you chose instead to attack my character.  And now you whine that I dare observe that this episode reflects on your own character.

OK, time for you to name-call the above civil reasoned argument as a "distortion" or "bad faith" or "twisting" or "dishonest" etc.

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Susan, the evidence leads me to predict that George will respond with something that can be fairly characterized as argument by name-calling assertion. I’ll happily admit my prediction was wrong if he in fact does not do so. Truth is always a valid defense when charged with violating the 11th Commandment. :-)

Marc, when I said "almost no criticism" I obviously wasn't saying "there isn't any".  Yes, there is still the background noise of fact-free whining that the platform has been "watered down" in recent years.  However, nobody on the Platform Committee's minority (except perhaps for the inimitable Dan Grow) has uttered a peep of platform criticism since Denver.  LPplatform-discuss has also been eerily quiet.  (I don't know what's said on the LPradicals list, because you guys kicked me off for trying to reveal e.g. that you radicals oppose part of the Bill of Rights.)  The Restore04 web site has gone offline, and no Restore04 leader has called for trying again in 2010.   Instead, Less Antman has publicly said radicals should "accept the less comprehensive platform on a permanent basis", and cites only two planks of 27 where the platform merely "implicitly strays from plumbline libertarianism".  Susan Hogarth implicitly accepts the new platform in her PlatCom application, with plank submissions that maintain the short format and don't try to restore any of the crypto-anarchism (e.g. personal secession, immediate non-enforcement of all tax laws) of the 2004 platform.   I monitor this blog "and others" pretty closely for platform criticism, and I have seen no evidence of "hundreds of individuals" specifically criticizing the 2008 platform.  Point me to it, and I'll give it my usual treatment. :-)

My old PlatCom wiki, including the list of platform criticisms, has been moved to http://libertarianmajority.net/platform-portal.  Those "anecdotes" consisted of most of the mentions of our platform content that Google has ever noticed in the mainstream media.  Not listed, obviously, are all the times that the media ignored the LP because they already knew we advocated personal secession and other codewords for abolition of the state.

Jim, I do defend the sincerity of self-identified freedom-lovers in the BTP, just as I defend the sincerity of those in the RLC.  Any difference in how I regard them is due purely to the fact that the RLC is trying to infiltrate an established party that already has access to power, whereas a not-explicitly-anarchist BTP is just the Department of Redundant Freedom Party Department. 
Thank you for painting a bullseye on your last comment at http://www.independentpoliticalreport.com/2008/11/brian-holtz-responds-to-jim-davidson-multiple-freedom-parties-is-dumb.  It's now a smoking cinder.  :-)  Feel free to identify any other substantive criticism of me by you  -- anywhere, any time -- that I've ever not rebutted.

The fact remains that I encourage self-identified libertarian candidates who want to infiltrate the incumbent parties in order to get into elective office, and I’ve never demanded that libertarian voters boycott incumbent-party candidates. I do still claim that it’s a waste of resources for libertarians to invest in multiple freedom parties (and of course multiple protest parties), but I explicitly admit that a libertarian could honestly and intelligently want to replace the LP if he considered it unsalvageable. I stand by my nine distinct arguments that “competition” among multiple freedom parties is wasteful, that internal caucuses are a far better way to salvage a party, and that it remains inane to insist that any such argument constitutes a demand for blind party loyalty.