I certainly apologize if anyone reading this believes I am going to talk about football. Baseball certainly, but never football. I was raised a Philadelphia boo-bird and I am proud of it. Even Santa Claus fears real boo-birds.
Before I go any farther, I need to post one small link. It has been more than a year since my last commentary on Third Party Watch, and some may want an explanation of where I’ve been. Reading is not required.
But back to Dallas vs Houston. Yes, that Dallas. The Dallas Accord.
There are relatively few people still around who were in the Libertarian Party during or prior to the 1974 Dallas Convention. But it is legend in their party, and is often quoted as the treaty made between the classical liberals and the anarchists to hold the party together.
With apologies to lpedia.org for the oversimplification:
The party was growing. The number of classical liberals (aka minarchists) outnumbered the much smaller anarchist wing of the party. In order to prevent a split and with a goal of expanding the party, concessions were made and the statement of principles was changed.
I wasn’t in the LP in 1974. In fact, I was still in high school. But if I had been in the party and at that convention, I would have advised against it. The cost, over the years, could be way too great. It allowed candidates some considered lunatics to run for office.
The anarchist wing of the party slowly grew until eventually they were mostly just waving dildos around and calling themselves the radicals. Obviously, by definition, the entire party is radical — at least as far as the media, the “major” parties, and most of the public are concerned. Look up the word.
The original party, far more oriented toward classical liberalism than anarchy, slowly disappeared.
This isn’t to say that anarchists are bad people. Some of my best allies when I was in the LP were anarchists. (Hmmm…where have we heard that before?)
The rubber bands holding the party together began to stretch. By the time I joined in 2005, the fractures were large enough to see, and large battles had begun to take place at conventions. The largest rift started in 2006, when the “Reform Caucus” tried to strip and cleanup the platform. All sides would agree that it was a badly botched job.
Eventually, infiltrators came in, calling themselves “Mises” and we all know what happened next. Yes, some of the Mises caucus members are actually classical liberals who have been fooled. And they fooled some of the anarchists and classical liberals already in the party as well — for a while.
So where am I going with this? Why should anyone care about the Dallas Accord’s failure?
A few days ago there was a discussion on Third Party watch about the actions of the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire and their violation of the ByLaws by endorsing the Republican candidate for President. These actions were preceeded by the equally suspect convention antics, where that same candidate, along with an “independent” candidate were both present and invited to speak. One was even nominated during the Presidential candidate election. I would mention their names, but I have no intention of risking an eventual violation of Godwin’s Law in this commentary.
In this discussion, I recommended a few methods of holding out and purging the infiltrators. I suggested that the definition of libertarian was too vague and that they needed to correct it. A reply to the effect that the composition would be changing to “actual libertarians” was submitted. I suggested that they needed to get everyone to agree on what an “actual libertarian” is.
The next reply was classic: “Oh that’s easy, that’s me.”
And here we have it. Those replies could have been from anarchists, minarchists, socialists, or even the fascist controlled Mises caucus. All sides believe they are “actual libertarians”, so unless you know the players, you can’t tell them apart by that answer.
Which takes us to Houston. Houston, Texas, in December of 2024. A convention of the recently formed Liberal Party USA. A party that understands that in order to keep your focus on the goal, you have to have a standard. Their’s is classical liberalism. Not communism, socialism, fascism or anarchy, but classical liberalism. Go search wikipedia. They have lots of great information on this.
This is why a number of classical liberals who used to be in the Libertarian Party have joined this new movement. They understand that while the anarchists are “fellow travellers” toward freedom, their definitions of freedom in regard to the role of government differ. They understand that the Libertarian Party failed in part to the desire to appease everyone. So they decided to cut their losses and let others try to save what is left — if they can.
This is your wakeup call. There is still time to get to Houston in December. I wanted to go, and even bought a ticket, but health prevents me from attending. So I’m challenging all classical liberals — you know who you are — to get off the couch or chair you are sitting in and join this new movement. We need to make sure that the Houston convention builds a party structure that won’t result in its own version of a Dallas Accord a few years from now.
