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[Stumpy]

An almost libertarian one of course!  The FSP takes Republicans, right?  I thought this wasn't a "lockstep movement." I'll be 18 in November.

Sure the FSP takes Republicans, so long as they can agree to the terms of the Statement of Intent.

I hereby state my solemn intent to move to the state of New Hampshire. Once there, I will exert the fullest practical effort toward the creation of a society in which the maximum role of civil government is the protection of life, liberty, and property.

[SBottari]

http://cogen.mit.edu/crusso/intj.htm

I'm one of these too, but I don't hate people that much anymore; I'm sort of a borderline ENTJ.  Dr. David Keirsey expanded and made a new type of Myers-Briggs test.  His revision of his book, Please Understand Me (2) can help a lot of people understand their own personalities and others.

Why do you think we like Jefferson so much - he thought like we do.

[SteveA]

And in saying we shouldn't go after the 90% people, that its gotta be all or nothing, would I no longer be welcome? I despise today's government. Not as empty hatred, but in understanding what is right, and why, and what makes it so.

However, I refuse to seriously support public fat orgies. I do not yet see that being a necessary gain for the realization of liberty to be possible. And I think anyone would be hard pressed to prove that not being able to have a fat orgy on the streets or masturbate outside a school at recess is oppressive.

I likely sound like a broken record but I agree that most people have a different idea of what freedom means to them and why they desire to have fewer restrictions on placed on them.

Again, the mistake some people could be making is to assume that libertarians don't want any rules placed on society.  I think the key component is just not using force or fraud to impose their desires on someone else.  This doesn't mean that people can't agree on rules of social conduct or even back them by force on the participants, it just means that you can't unwillingly expect someone else to agree to the same standards.

I'm sure there are people who believe clothing should be optional and I guess in the extreme public orgies (that'll be a tough sell LOL).  I know opinions vary but some steps that would seem appropriate without resorting to forceful intervention are:

1)  Inform the offending individuals that their actions are causing grief and try to find an acceptable agreement.
2)  Social influence on a larger scale may be needed to discourage the actions if a compromise isn't reached.
3)  Communities can be voluntarily formed and restrict access to them based upon various criteria.
4)  Courts and legal action can be used when all else fails (the situation may be resolved by force at this point if police action is required)
5)  Repeat steps 1-4 until you either find justice, learn to live with the offending actions or find some other way to deal with it.

That's the short view of how I picture things working but, as always, I'm open to better ideas.

[FSDan]

I have to agree with my fellow Mass-Hole; the penguin.

Kater: I’ve read your arguments.  You have a great point in your stance that certain types of knowledge can be used as a weapon.  However:  You feel it necessary to add comments like “Christ” and “for god's sake” into your arguments.  This is nothing but loaded rhetoric and introduces emotion into a debate that doesn’t need it.  You take shots at your own teammates, (Get your three members, and let other people get theirs.) belittling them and talking down to them.  Your whole post is attacking at position that you ASSUME he is taking.  (Which he isn’t as he later explained.  He is not trying to bash philosophers.  He is just saying to not get so wound up in the debate that you loose sight of what you are debating)  You are doing exactly what he asked us not to do in his original post; regardless of where the thread has degenerated since.  He may not have the fancy education that you (and I, for that matter) have but he is presenting his arguments in a much more ethical manor.  Talking down to prospective members won’t get us anywhere.  Also, seeing us bicker amongst ourselves like this won’t win them over either.

Justin:  I found myself agreeing with some of your points but you completely lost me with this line: “What are you blathering on about?”  That kind of blatant disrespect as well as the uselessness of that type of rhetorical question is just not a tactic that mature, adult debaters use to win arguments.  Furthermore, if you don’t want to waste your time with the 90%ers then don’t.  You are free to not do so which is what we’re all here for; freedoms.  But don’t stop us from seeing the merit in taking a little extra time to explain things to someone who may be 89% and rising.  You don’t have to be positive but Penguin is asking us to not be negative.  Is that so bad?

As others have admitted, I also do not agree with every thing that all of you push for.  For example, I think to only give a child home schooling may produce a very book smart person but will rob the child of vast amounts of cultural knowledge necessary to get along in this world.  (The few people I know who were home schooled could impress me with all kinds of technical knowledge but nobody liked them and nobody listened to them.  Kinda like the extreme liberals we have debated here).  However my disagreement with this is not the point.  The point here is freedom; freedom to do what we want and pay the consequences ourselves.  I don’t believe in smoking pot.  But I don’t think the government needs to get involved in it either.  If people smoke it so much that it affects their ability to work then they’ll get fired and that will be more job openings for me… GREAT!!  If some kid who was home schooled and therefore doesn’t “work well with others” gets fired then that’s one more job for me…GREAT!!

So you see, I may not agree with you all, but I will fight tooth and nail for the very same things you want….. if only for my own reasons.  Why should we be turning away those who don’t agree with us if they are willing to fight for us?

[penguinsscareme]

Thanks, Dan, but in defense of kater, I have corresponded with her and can tell you her intent was to be positive and return the focus back to building membership.
That said, I like your attitude.  If you still reside in MA, check out my local group.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MA-RI-FSP/
We can use you.

[Terry 1956]

Gradualism has worked pretty nicely for the socialists.

What are covenants?  This is a new idea to me.  If it works then I like it.

Covenants are agreements, one would be co-op apartments, neighborhood associations with true consent not just a  percentage of neighbors with an agenda. Many subdivision developments have restrictive covenants , you agree to them before buying the home. A lease agreement can work in a similar way.                                                                          
      Where the socialist gainned was through the Fabian  way by connecting to the intellectuals, the opinion molders such as, Clergy, Professors, teachers, media and other members of the community that people respect and will listen to. They  have lost ground because  central planning, a command economy is a failure even non economic centrally planned and command operations like the Pentagon are a failure, for example Rumsfield speaking in 2001 before 9/11 of the Pentagon not being able to account for possibly more than 2 Trillion dollars in spending over the years.

[Terry 1956]

People do not have to believe in ZAP but when they Commit Agression against you thats important.                  
   People generally come to libertarian ideas from two prespectives political ethics or economics. The gradualist  approrach fails on both, its bad ethics, its bad for the economy and its also bad politically in keeping poltical sucess, its counter productive politically.                                                                              
        If people don't want donkey shows( and I don't) restrict them by private property and covenants not state law. You see most people I've talked to can understand that when it is explained to them, don't sell people short so much.

Not true, many people who are libertarian (but who are shown the door by the national LP) are simply socially liberal and fiscally conservative.  These are the people who can arrange for major party status for the LP.  Remember, we shouldn't concentrate on an endgame.  Everybody's endgame is radical.  but the people who win show the crowd their practical first steps.  And that is exactly why they win.  It is the strategy that we need to adopt, because you can't just go from current society to libertarianism in one fell swoop.

                                                                             
  We can work with with those to a degree but don't buy into their policies. We can work with the ACLU and The ACU to a degree but their is not a need to join either. I'm certainly am not going to turn down a tax cut, especially a big one but they have their limits and if not done enough or the ink runs red they can be counterproductive over the long run.                                  
  Convince people, educate them or convince and educate those they will listen to, don't pander to big government ideas that fail, you are just shooting yourself in the foot.

[penguinsscareme]

Wow, Terry, you just totally lost me.
The covenant thing seems straightforward enough, but why is that any different from a government restriction?  A friend of mine lives in a condo complex where they don't allow anyone to have dogs.  So how is that different from a government ordnance against dogs?  Sure, you could choose to live in a neighborhood that does allow dogs, but still, how is that any different from moving to a town without anti-dog ordnances?
I mean if you can't do it then you can't do it.  What difference does it make whether it was a law voted on at a town meeting or a rule imposed by a condo developer?

[Terry 1956]

An almost libertarian one of course!  The FSP takes Republicans, right?  I thought this wasn't a "lockstep movement." I'll be 18 in November.

Now  running as a Republican or in some areas as a Democrat may be the best way to go in most cases. There is not a real need to get cozy with the GOP or DNC leadership just don't deceive people in to thinking your are something your not.

[rdeacon]

Convince people, educate them or convince and educate those they will listen to, don't pander to big government ideas that fail, you are just shooting yourself in the foot.

The problem that libertarians face is that government doesn't fail.   People get their social security checks and food stamps.  Government does provide services.  What we need to argue is that government provides them in a less efficient manner than the alternatives.

Remember, not every libertarian is a minarchist, some people desire government, just one with less power than the fedgov has now.  These people are our target demographic, but we continue to alienate them by saying that they need some revolutionary change of heart.  It's insulting because THAT is what shoots us in the foot.  If we want the crowd to walk to liberty, we first need to walk to the crowd, and that means compromise.

[penguinsscareme]

I don't think of it as compromise.  I mean, we declaw the government, put it back in its cage, what have we compromised?  We had to work with some people who don't agree with us on everything?  So what?  Hey, we don't agree with each other on everything, as if that's a news flash.
Yeah, we've just been spending way too much energy sweating the small stuff that we differ on and ignoring all the big stuff that we agree on.

There are throngs of people who love liberty, who hate what the government has become, but don't know how to fight it.  They feel like they are part of the system because they are trapped in it.  They are ready to do something about it, buy they don't know what.  They look around and don't see a cause to rally behind, they're hesitant to believe in something good because the world they live in has taught them to be cynical.  My friends, there are a lot more than 20,000 people who are ready for something like the fsp.  All we have to do is light the lamp!
The people to whom I refer are not the philosophical elite.  They are the salt of the earth, they are the regular folks who live and work and pay their mortgage and their taxes and they see their pay stub every week and shake their head, and maybe they've tried their hand in small business and found out how high the deck is stacked against them.
They haven't read In Defense of Elitism, or The Libertarian Reader.  They aren't fluent in politicalspeak.  But dammit, they're not stupid, either.  They know what's what and they know how to get stuff done in the real world.
We don't have to compromise with these people.  We just have to show them what's possible.  They just need us to give them what they go to bed every night thinking about -- something to believe in.  Well, we've already got that.  We just need to present it in the right way.
I admit, when I first came to the fsp website, I was a little overwhelmed.  There is such an incredible depth of information, and it was on a subject I'd never really studied before.  Thank God I found the summary description and the SOI and the faq.
We don't have to compromise.  We just have to realize that we're reaching out to largely unindoctrinated minds.

Take it from me, sometimes the undereducated can be really good activists.

[Morpheus]

Wow, Terry, you just totally lost me.
The covenant thing seems straightforward enough, but why is that any different from a government restriction?  A friend of mine lives in a condo complex where they don't allow anyone to have dogs.  So how is that different from a government ordnance against dogs?  Sure, you could choose to live in a neighborhood that does allow dogs, but still, how is that any different from moving to a town without anti-dog ordnances?
I mean if you can't do it then you can't do it.  What difference does it make whether it was a law voted on at a town meeting or a rule imposed by a condo developer?

Covenants involve unanimity. Governmental Law, within the context of which we are familiar, does not.

My property, my rules. If people agree with them, then good. If not.. too bad.

[penguinsscareme]

So how does this help me have a dog?

[Morpheus]

It doesn't. If that property forbids canines, then it forbids canines. Go elsewhere.

As it is, I rather doubt that New Hampshire will be overtaken by anti-dog ordinances.

[penguinsscareme]

Meanie.