SC) I'm *not* saying that the LP platform should be written such that an LP candidate defending a non-force-initiating role for government that falls under the categories of protecting life,liberty, or property would be guilty of violating the document. (SCI'm sorry, but I've discussed this stuff with you in detail for several years now and I still have literally no idea what distinguishes you from an anarchist. I dare you to tell us, in plain English, what is the one kind of authority you would grant to the state that an anarcholibertarian would most object to. Surely you must admit that if an anarchist doesn't disagree with any role of the state that you would consider legitimate, then you yourself are an anarchist.
I suspect that the differences between reduce to whether the state1) should have no more authority than a book club or neighborhood watch group, or 2) should have authority to do things that are not force-initiation per se but due to knowledge problems will occasionally result in it. I'm thinking of things like taxing prima facie polluters or hauling alleged murderers into court, because occasionally a jury will reduce/eliminate someone's pollution fine or acquit an alleged murderer. It would be silly to complain that, just because acquittals can happen, therefore a policy of apprehending alleged murderers before their conviction should be classified as force-initiating per se. I see it as equally silly to make that complaint about a system of court-contestable default fines for polluting, depleting, congesting, or monopolizing the commons.
As I've said for years, this all boils down to whether your priority is 1) having clean hands or 2) effectively opposing aggression. If you want a guarantee that no innocent person will ever be inconvenienced in your name, then you will get a guarantee that aggression will flourish for the sake of your clean hands. Yes, that's a bummer, but nobody promised you that all choices in political ethics would be easy ones.
P.S. I don't see how the sentence you quoted changes the meaning of anything I quoted from you. The bottom line is that you complained that the Platform assuming the government has a legitimate role is an attempt to purge anarchists. I simply turned this back on you, and asked why the Platform assuming the government has NO legitimate role was not an attempt to purge minarchists. If you don't like what anarchists have been reading between the lines of the platform for the last dozen months, then maybe you will FINALLY REALIZE what minarchists had to read between the lines of the previous platform for over two dozen years. If your complaint is valid (and I don't agree that it is), then this would be a case of "what goes around comes around".
For the 2004 platform, your LP platform superstore is always http://libertarianmajority.net/platform-portal.
P.S. "Suits" was Allen Rice's term, not Bruce Cohen's -- though Allen used some kind of quotes around it. Allen, I bet that your other two predictions about Visalia will be as off-base as the one which you've already retracted.
