simplulo

And that's why English has hyphens

The title The Libertarian Mind suggests that libertarians have personalities different from those of conservatives and progressives, which Jonathan Haidt (author of The Righteous Mind) indeed showed in his recent Cato lecture.

Libertarians are the smallest of the three ideological camps, so in a two-party system we’re the ones without a seat at the table. What do you see as the most promising strategies for us to achieve influence?

BTW, I’m a long-time Cato sponsor who once visited you in 2005 to promote the Free State Project. I’m real happy to see you among the speakers in the FSP’s New Hampshire Liberty Forum next month.

I would agree that we have to organize, and suggest two concrete methods: concentrate our numbers to achieve local influence (the FSP strategy) and change the rule that underpins the two-party system: our choose-one plurality voting system. The simplest solution is Approval Voting. The Libertarian Party would become viable, giving libertarians visibility, respect, and a seat at the table (e.g. a place in the debates and on the ballots).

I'm a lifetime LP member, but I will not give them another vote, penny, or second of my time, until they start actively supporting voting reform, specifically Approval Voting. Without a change to the voting system, the LP and all third parties will remain irrelevant. Ballot-access rules are a major obstacle, but not the root cause. Until then, effective libertarians will work within the major parties, the only feasible way, as libertarians in New Hampshire have shown.

According to Moral Foundations Theory, libertarians are psychologically more similar to progressives than to conservatives, but that is trumped by one attribute, their overall attitude towards government: -Libertarians consider government an unnecessary evil -Conservatives consider government a necessary evil -Progressives consider government a tool for good In a two-party system, it is clear who is going to ally with whom.

The 1700 libertarians who have moved so far to New Hampshire via the Free State Project have demonstrated pretty convincingly that the LP is irrelevant (under the current voting system), and that libertarians will work within the RP and DP in a 4:1 ratio.