Roderick Long wrote to Rick Randall:
Prof. Long, you apparently didn't follow my link to http://libertarianintelligence.com/2008/05/restore74-with-denver-accord.html. The second paragraph explains how a facially "neutral" platform can actually lean anarchist.
You call moving from the current pro-minarchist language to language that's neutral between minarchism and anarchism "a favored position for anarchists"? Wow.
The sentence about "the only proper role of government" has been in every platform since the first one in 1972, and apparently was not considered "pro-minarchist" by the participants in the 1974 "Dallas Accord". For some background about how the belatedly-controversial "Government exists" language got into the Platform in 2006, see http://knowinghumans.net/2007/09/dallas-accord-rip-1974-2006.html.
I'm not sure LP anarchists are well-advised to take the position that the delegates at all 19 LP conventions have allowed explicitly "pro-minarchist" language to remain in the platform. If I were an LP anarchist, I'd instead say that these two sentences are about the only valid justification or role that a libertarian may propose for a "government", and point out that neither sentence explicitly calls for the state to have any authority to initiate force.
But if instead the LP's anarchists want to claim that the delegates at the last two (or all 19!) LP conventions have explicitly defined the LP as non-anarchist, then this big-tent Libertarian can accept such a claim only with reluctance.
P.S. to Susan: the doctor analogy isn't about ethics, it's about means and ends. LaBianca tries to claim that because I don't think his proposed means will achieve the ends that we all say we desire, I therefore don't count as favoring those ends. His claim is quite confused, and I note that you don't bother defending it. (I also note that you don't register any disagreement with his proclamation that I'm not a libertarian. By contrast, I disagreed with Randall's claim that anarchists can't be libertarians before any anarchist spoke up to do so. Sigh.)
