Some thoughts on the Boston Tea Party

As the founder and 2008 national vice-presidential nominee of the Boston Tea Party, that party is naturally on my mind a lot, especially as it wraps up its second biennial national convention and nears its first presidential election. And, also naturally, I find myself saying various things about it to various people (including, as of a few minutes ago, a reporter for the Associated Press).

Some of the points I'm trying to make keep coming up, so they seem worth writing down in one place ... like maybe here.

When I founded the BTP, I held out hope that it would, sooner or later, merge back into the Libertarian Party as an internal caucus. That's obviously not going to happen. With the nomination of its own presidential slate and the placement of that slate on several state ballots, our split from the LP at the national organizational level is complete. The split also proceeds apace at the state level as we recognize new affiliates which are likely to seek their own ballot access in 2010 and beyond.

Where that split is concerned, I once viewed it with trepidation, but that view has now changed to one of hope. The LP had a 36-year virtual monopoly and head start on cornering the libertarian political niche in America -- yet the BTP appears to be doing better coming into that competitive niche for the first time than the LP did when the niche was effectively uncontested.

We have more members than the LP did as of its first presidential election. We're on the ballot in more states than the LP was as of its first presidential election. I expect that our presidential slate will outpoll the LP's first presidential slate.

The LP appears to be unable to expand the American libertarian political niche against its major party opposition, or to defend its monopoly on that niche versus newcomers.

Enter Darwin. Personally, I expect that the next major stage of the Boston Tea Party's growth will include several state Libertarian Parties disaffiliating from the Libertarian National Committee and re-affiliating under the BTP umbrella.

The obvious cause to point to for the current situation -- up-and-coming BTP, LP teetering on the edge of the dustbin of history -- is the descent of the LP as a national organization into cargo-cultism. The nomination of the 2008 Libertarian Party Barr-Root ticket represented a final triumph of image over substance, and now we're watching that image crumble to dust under the wind of apathy. Image can't survive or thrive on its own. Without substance, it is dead.

Beyond the obvious, however, the BTP has its own reasons for optimism. We are a "principled populist" party, not just in rhetoric but in action. Just as we oppose the rule of "power elites" (in libertarian class theory, the political class) in the world at large, we deny those elites the ability to run our own party.

We are an activist-powered party -- our national committee is constrained by our bylaws from becoming a money sink, and therefore from becoming a central planning board. If something gets done, it's because our members want it to be done and go out and do it. Ernie Hancock, your new party is calling -- your approach failed in the LP because the Politburo/Commissar structure had already taken firm root before you tried so valiantly to shatter it.

We are a genuine mass-participation party. If you want to be involved, you don't have to travel hundreds of miles, shell out hundreds or thousands of dollars, and miss a week of work every time there's a convention. You don't have to send a representative and hope that representative actually represents you. If you're a member of our party, you can take part in its business activities via any Internet connection.

Finally, we're a consistently "smaller-government" party. Our platform isn't going to be cut by 3/4th at one convention and completely re-built at the next like the LP's has. It's perpetual and unmodifiable:

"The Boston Tea Party supports reducing the size, scope and power of government at all levels and on all issues, and opposes increasing the size, scope and power of government at any level, for any purpose."

Until and unless the state is completely eliminated, we will always be the party agitating to make it smaller tomorrow than it is today. That's the standard the national LP is going to have to meet if it wants to recapture its place of primacy in the freedom movement ... and I no longer believe that it can, or will, or even wants to, meet that standard.

I realize that many fellow libertarians whom I know and respect will continue to cling to the LP for some time ... and that's okay. I continue to work in my state LP and plan to do so for at least awhile longer. Breaking up is hard to do. I urge those libertarians remaining in the LP to think of the BTP as an ally, not an enemy. Our existence is an incentive to the LP to become better at what it does, and to think harder about what it wants to do. If it responds negatively to that incentive (as I believe it will continue to do), at least it no longer holds the claim over your head that "you have no place else to go." Because now you do.

[Cross-posted at KN@PPSTER and Last Free Voice]

Submitted by admin on Mon, 10/27/2008 - 12:49
»

Comments

1

planetaryjim:

Good thinking, Tom. Well said, as usual.

What you say about LP affiliates is particularly poignant for me because several of these groups have already made known their wishes. I think that speaks volumes to what the LP has become, and what the people involved are able to make the BTP.

This cargo cult thing is a really powerful metaphor. It reflects the mythology of Pacific islanders (and others in some places) relating to the appearance of visitors bearing gifts of contemporary technology. These islands often had important leaders who left the islands seeking some relief for plague or famine or poverty, or just serving wanderlust.

On his or her departure, the leader might make a speech asserting a plan to return with help, or with wealth, or with information about what lay beyond the horizon. Years or decades later, someone shows up, or cargo washes ashore, or a plane crashes on the island, and all manner of amazing things are available. People eat well for a time.

Cargo cults apparently pre-date historical accounts of encounters with Melanesian cultures. However, they became widely known as a result of the events of World War Two. Allied forces would air drop supplies to islands. Many of these fell into native hands. The Japanese brought all kinds of equipment to many islands, and if they didn't brutalise and eliminate the natives, also left much stuff behind.

So, the cargo cult in its broad outline attempts to bring back these things through magical incantation. Burn a wicker outline of a plane. Sacrifice to the gods. Time things just right. Somehow, get the cargo to come.

As applied to the LP, the metaphor reminds me of some phone conversations I've had over the years, as well as some e-mail exchanges. If only the LP would run the nationally prominent man - be he author or investment adviser or politician - there would be a manifestly larger amount of campaign money, interest, media attention, volunteer support, sexy people showing up to LP events and parties, and lots of jobs for prominent LP people.

Well, it didn't happen for Harry Browne in 1996 nor in 2000. It hasn't brought in the $40 million for the Barr campaign that was bandied about in Denver. It hasn't caused Barr to poll in the low teens, nor to get invited to the presidential anti-debating commissions events. This approach didn't bring Browne to national prominence as a third party candidate by securing even one electoral vote, one state, or a double digit percentage in any state. We'll soon see how it does for Barr.

But, in a very limited way, for certain insiders, the cargo cult did bring jobs and money. So, for all its limitations, for those people who get employed by the campaign, especially if they are also drawing a paycheck from the national LP, it works.

Which explains some things, I think. Why would activists even propose to hold the national convention in Hawai'i or on a cruise ship? To separate out the people they despise - not the people with whom they have political or philosophical differences with, but the ones who have no money.

It explains why the sneer has become "povertarians," as if those without large sums to donate to the LP, or its candidate, are not worth meeting. As if the only thing the party of principle stood for was getting a cushy job. As if principled activism ought to be expected from people whose economic interests align with the established order. Liberty, but not too much of it, as long as the money keeps rolling in.

It is an excellent metaphor and goes far.

10/27/2008 - 13:49
2

admin:

Jim,

Exactly.

The particular "cargo cult" story that I read one time that inspired the metaphor for me with the LP was some tribal chief in the Marshall or Solomon Islands (I forget which) who built as exact as possible a replica of a freezer like those he had seen in US military facilities during WWII. The expectation was that if the replica could be make perfectly enough, one day the freezer would be opened and found to be full of frozen steaks, ice cream, etc.

With the LP, the presidential nomination race (among other things) has become a contest to build that magic freezer, on the assumption that when the replica of "the real thing" (i.e. the D or R equivalent) is perfected, the LP can open the freezer, open it, and voila! -- find millions of members, hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign funding and, ultimately, the Oval Office in there, just waiting for its candidate to walk into, sit down and start doing whatever presidents do.

Now, don't get me wrong. I have no problem with candidates who wear suits and ties and know how to speechify with charisma. I have no problem with seeking media attention. I have no problem with asking people for their votes.

But ... we don't defeat the duopoly by trying to pass ourselves off as part of it or as just like it. That is never going to work. If we're libertarians we aren't just like it in substance, and if we want to win we have to differentiate ourselves from it in image.

We're a lot more likely to succeed by butchering up the steaks ("where's the beef?") and making the ice cream, then asking the voters for a place to put them so that they can share them with us, than by asking the voters to trust us and our fake freezer with their real steaks and ice cream.

10/27/2008 - 14:09
3

planetaryjim:

Good points, as well.

The cargo cultist argument is that the parties that are successful are the ones to model. Since the DNC and GOP have their big events in the Summer before the presidential election, the LP must as well. And so forth.

The only reason to believe that a third party can succeed (other than the facts of various third parties through American history in fact succeeding) is the widespread disaffection of voting age adults from either registering to vote at all, or affiliating with either major party. There are more than enough people who qualify to vote to make up a majority.

And if, as you suggest, we were to do what the major parties do, and be as sleazy as they are, there is very little reason to suppose that those who feel disenfranchised by the current system would bother to get involved. If it is possible to have a popular libertarian movement, which I very much doubt, it is only going to come from being fundamentally different.

I would again express my view that openness, lack of incentive to corruption (or penny-less-ness) and rule of the members are the features of the BTP that set it apart.

Judging by our exponential growth in recent days, as illustrated on Darryl Perry's latest graph on the Facebook group, I think we might be on to something.

10/27/2008 - 14:26