A decision:
I think I will stay with the party for another year at least (unless the parliamentary party do something completely insane).
I know the party will never be in accordance with all my views, but the overall aims of the party are broadly what I believe in, and I think I do more good within than outside the party.
To those who think I should leave, or that I want a witch-hunt: Tough I’m not leaving and I don’t have the power to start a witch-hunt, and even if I did I wouldn’t start one, I’d just seek to pursuade you of the errors of your ways through reasoned debates (and expect you to pursuade me of the errors of mine). True, we may never convince each other, but we may convince spectators (of my view naturally :-p).
Personally I don’t view politics as an electoral game these days. I’m skeptical of the power of democracy to create much change, even in the more modest direction that most LibDems want, but the party is a powerful vehicle to spread the word of freedom and if some of that does come through the ballot box then even better.
(That said, I think we’d be worse off if it weren’t for the Liberal Party and then the Liberal Democrats, even during the worst years the party kept liberalism going and has had some influence on events, even those liberals who defected in either direction helped moderate the worst excesses of the other parties)
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September 1st, 2008 at 9:29 pm
Top decision. Glad you made it.
September 1st, 2008 at 9:38 pm
Good to have you with us.
As to democracy creating change- you clearly think it can create plenty of change for the worse! A little more optimism wouldn’t be misplaced, even if its not on the economic issues you view as central.
September 2nd, 2008 at 1:19 am
I don’t understand how it could be more “optimistic” to believe that humanity cannot do things for themselves, without some “authority” deciding things for them and ordering them about. Rather, it is surely a positive endorsement of humans’ capacity to make the right decisions for their own lives to suggest they ought to be allowed to try.
Anyway - good decision Tristan in my opinion. I hope we have an exciting year ahead rediscovering the ethos of 1909.
September 2nd, 2008 at 8:26 am
Woooooo!
September 2nd, 2008 at 8:36 am
Jock, I meant only optimism that democratic process can be used not to do harm, and meant to imply changes in areas such as ID cards where we can achieve just what you said through the democratic process.
Perhaps I was unclear, but you still had to assume I meant more regulating when I meant the opposite. Its that kind of hostile reflex response that has won libertarians so few friends in the party.
September 2nd, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Actually I was being a little facetious. I think I knew what you meant. And I didn’t take it that you meant more regulating actually. But, unless I’m reading the runes completely wrongly, I’m not sure that simply “defeating” ID cards, to use your example, on a political level, is enough. Playing the game, so to speak, may have short term gains, but I’m not at all sure it is capable of “embedding” freedoms. The only way to do that is to return those freedoms to people themselves such that it is, constitutionally if you will, not in the competence of the “state” to do something and have a justiciary prepared to defend those rights against encroachment by the state.
A bit like the US Constitution and Bill of Rights - everything not explicitly defined as being in the competence of the government is reserved to the individual.
Now sure, we may be able to achieve that through the current political system, but if you look, for example, at the recent parliamentary committee’s suggested “Bill of Rights”, it reads more like a Bill of Rights (even perhaps a manifesto) for politicians, than a Bill of Rights for us.
When you say “so few friends” in the party, I just don’t buy that at all. I’ve been a councillor, was described by the local group leader the other day as “our resident policy intellectual” to another councillor, am likely to be taking over as Chair of South Central regional Policy Committee and standing for FPC this year, and, for someone who hates London and doesn’t go to much other than Spring conference in the federal party at the moment am on speaking terms with a good number of our parliamentarians and came 14th in the Dale blog list for all that matters.
We are making our voices heard, and sure, people will not necessarily always like that, but if it were not for that voice pointing out where mutualism or individualism could work instead of government I suspect our compromises would be even further to the “statist” end of the spectrum.
September 2nd, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Yes, I did overstate the case of things. I should have said “in certain parts” before party, and I did not mean to include myself if that was unclear. I certainly wasn’t suggesting there should be some holding back by libertarians, just a slightly different tone.
I think, Jock, that your first paragraph shows you putting too much faith in the state! This is not an accusation I thought I would find myself making of you, but I think your model is wrong. From McCarthyism to the Patriot Act, the model of relying on legalistic protections is only of limited effectivness.
I’m not saying it can’t do good things- the European Court of Human Rights has done many over here. However, it has only a limited effect. Where there is a general will in a certain authortarian direction, such things tend to offer little defence. Thats not to say I wouldn’t support it, but I see it as no more permanent solution that democratic activism, and indeed would say both are probably needed.
Real change is of a longer term, cultural form. People will believe in things like mutual action and self organisation only when they are actually doing it. Thats neither party work nor within my wit to work out how to really bring about, however.
September 2nd, 2008 at 1:50 pm
Glad you’re still with us.
Are you at conference? There’s going to be beer, I’ve heard.
September 2nd, 2008 at 1:52 pm
I will readily admit that there is a pretty *fundamental* difference in the view that the state/democratic institutions can be used to do things that do not do harm, and may be beneficial, and the a priori position I would tend to take that the state is itself largely the root of harm, mostly unintentionally and even though it may be well-meaning.
I think J S Mill recognized that and so his formula for democratic accountability was meant to reign in that tendency, yet a hundred and fifty years later in many ways it is more powerful than it ever was and with a mandate of what, 22% at the last count. That’s not even the tyranny of the majority, though they pretend it is at least majoritarian!
Personally, I think young Mill would take one look at the institutions of today and want to revise On Liberty to create something new. Yet we seem to regard On Liberty as some kind of totem within whose framework we can work for good.
I do agree that mutualism and individualism are not “party work” as you put it. But the fruits of them can feed through into party policy. Take our housing policies. Though we have not pushed Community Land Trusts as much as I would have liked, they are in our policy because people such as myself and David Rodgers of CDS co-ops lobbied and persuaded the party to give them a go. But actually, when I founded Oxfordshire CLT it was, as much as anything else, expressly intended to prove that we could do for ourselves, and far better, things that state action was manifestly failing to deliver well.
I am sure Tristan agrees that only one part of our political “beings” is in the party. But most of the rest - whether it be Liberty, NO2ID, Amnesty, CLTs, Co-ops or whatever - help to demonstrate to the party that such things can work.
I think you’re misunderstanding me when you say I put too much confidence in the state institutions…I’d much rather such institutions were small and local and operate by local rules. I hate to invoke Godwin’s Law but it is apposite here to suggest, perhaps, that Hitler was only one of many tyrants who came to power by manipulating the institutions of the nation state. If they simply didn’t exist, if he had had to persuade every single Canton say to come over to his side (and I’d suggest that even some cantons are bigger that I’d like them to be) he would have been dead of old age before achieving power.
September 2nd, 2008 at 3:30 pm
Well, I’ve never taken on liberty as any kind of gospel myself, and I think I could take both of the viewpoints posited in your first paragraph! So I don’t really recognise any of that myself, though I object to any position being taken “a priori” with regard to such things.
Certainly I agree with you on the value of work outside of the party, and am involved to one degree or another in most of what you listed. Certainly I think and understanding that their exists alternative models is important in shaping party policy, and in winning the argument with those within it who think not-state means corporate.
Well, I won’t address your view that the state should be obliterated- these posts are lengthy enough already! I was just saying that I think your previous desire for constitutionally limited government is no more likely to, of itself, achieve things permanently than political activism.
Well, Godwins law exists for a reason, and really applies to making up alternate historys in general. In those circumstances, Hitler could have got a couple of cantons in the Munich Beer Hall era, and the freikorps would also probably be running some. Speculative historys rarely give real insight and are best left alone in favour of better arguments. States have caused the most harm, but without a state whats to stop someone making a state!
September 3rd, 2008 at 8:43 am
As long as you keep fighting you never lose!