Can Liberty Win Against Obsession? 

There's a great scene in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series where Ford Prefect dismisses the idea of saving the galaxy from destruction by the Krikkit race. "We don't stand a whelk's chance in a supernova," he tells Slartibartfast.  His reason? The Krikkits are quite clearly obsessed.

"We're not obsessed by anything, you see," insisted Ford... "And that's the deciding factor. We can't win against obsession. They care, we don't. They win."

This is one fundamental reason which explains why radical authoritarian crusaders (imperialists, prohibitionists, etc.) so often win their political battles and defenders of liberty so often lose.  People who want to tell others how they must live are frequently obsessed, and the silent majority of people who would prefer a "live and let live" approach to governance are usually too busy living to develop any serious political sophistication. Typically, the pro-liberty position gets outworked, outspent, and outfoxed in any policy dispute; sometimes it takes the authoritarians decades to get what they want, but eventually they succeed and people and politicians are convinced to support a senselessly utopian social policy experiment like Alcohol Prohibition, or maybe a wealth-destroying, privacy-stealing income tax. Over time, all these small and large authoritarian obsessions add up to one giant transfer of authority from self-governing individuals to centralized government. Then, at some point, citizens gradually begin to notice that they feel poorer and less free.

That "some point" is where we are today. Most individuals and most families are in debt, and our own governments are in debt at every level. The federal government, which effectively serves as "lender of last resort" for the entire U.S. economy, is itself so far in debt that the numbers don't even seem to mean anything anymore. Fortunately, voters have at least a vague sense that money coming in should sort of equal money going out, and now they're trying to figure out what the heck has happened to their country. After all, politicians run as Republicans and Democrats, not as Obsessed Authoritarians! So who are these unfit-to-govern individuals, and how can you pick one out of a candidate line-up?

Positive authoritarian identification can be a serious problem, especially for casual voters. Obsessive authoritarianism comes in so many forms that it can be difficult to recognize when blended with other characteristics. We all know what obsession is, but how do we find a good definition of authoritarianism? One startlingly reliable method I learned as a college writing instructor is to ask recent high school graduates to compose a definition of the opposite concept, freedom.  Here's one answer, verbatim, that I was never able to forget:

"What is Freedom?  Freedom is trusting in your government, or superiors, and believing that they will guide you on a path of good will."

Yes, this is what many kids emerge from twelve years of school believing -- that freedom means being free to trust the government and do what its enforcers say (or else). Quite simply, many kids emerge from school believing exactly what you want your minions to believe if you are interested in becoming a successful tyrant; they think government is (a) omnipotent and (b) unquestionably legitimate in all its actions as long as citizens occasionally get to vote in a new Big Brother.

Where could young people possibly get these authoritarian ideas, notions which contradict every principle articulated in our country's founding documents?  Well, they're obviously very popular in schools, popular in the media, and ultra-popular with politicians like Rudy Giuliani, who in a 1994 speech blasphemed as follows:

"Freedom is about authority.  Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do."

Wow, that one makes me cringe every time. Fortunately, not all college students are graduates of the Rudy Giuliani school of political theory. I very occasionally got to read an answer that would go something like this:

"What is Freedom?  Freedom is the ability to pursue your own happiness and make your own choices as long as you don't hurt anybody else."

It was nice, for a change, to read that left is not right and up is not down.  However, I have to point out that the young adults who wrote accurate definitions of freedom tended to have one thing in common: they were not products of government-operated schools. Somewhere along the way, they had been encouraged to develop minds of their own.

Unfortunately, because the Rudy Giuliani's of the universe are so violently obsessed, they tend to develop sophisticated networks of political machinery and begin acquiring, consolidating, and wielding power over others. Meanwhile, the Ford Prefects of the universe rush to accept the fact that the galaxy is doomed.  "That's why I want to have as many drinks and dance with as many girls as possible while there are still any left," he concludes.

Prefect's assessment turns out to be quite wrong in the book, and today's pro-liberty give-up artists are also wrong.  The path forward is clear; between drinks and dances, we need to cultivate our healthy obsessions with human liberty and start scoring some victories at the state and local levels.  The seeds have been sown!

For Immediate Release

Will all this public support translate into legislative success for medical marijuana in 2009?  One top Republican legislator and candidate for U.S. Congress says he thinks so.  In a June 8 appearance on the cable show "Capitol Access," State Senator Bob Clegg (R-Hudson) was asked about HB 1623, a bill reducing penalties for minor marijuana possession which passed the House this year but was swept under a rug by the Senate.  Clegg explained that he had tried to work out a compromise on the bill (which enjoyed support by a less overwhelming majority of voters, 53% to 34%, than medical marijuana reform), but that Senate Democrats had decided it was more important to protect the governor than address the issue.  "I would say that next year... that would have a good opportunity, at least for medical marijuana," he added. 

The short clip can be viewed here.

The last time a Republican or Democratic Presidential Nominating Convention began with serious uncertainty was 1964, when Arizona's Barry Goldwater emerged with the Republican nod, famously proclaiming that "extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice" and that "moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue." The excitement of a hotly contested nominating convention has since been the sole province of political parties which oppose the two-party system.

If the 652 delegates at the 2008 Libertarian Party National Convention were looking for this type of excitement Sunday in Denver, they certainly got their money's worth. After six contentious rounds of balloting, two of which resulted in ties for first place, a majority of delegates finally handed the party's presidential nomination to former Republican Congressman Bob Barr of Georgia.

By a margin of 324-276, Barr bested Dr. Mary Ruwart, a longtime party activist and author of the libertarian bestseller Healing Our World. Speaking to delegates prior to the Saturday night debate, which featured seven candidates and was broadcast live on C-SPAN, Ruwart described the nomination contest as "truly a fight for the heart and soul of the party." She said she welcomed newcomers such as Barr and former Democratic Senator Mike Gravel to the party, but criticized aspects of their platforms as insufficiently libertarian. She argued that as a friend of Congressman Ron Paul, she would be more able than Barr to capitalize on the energy and enthusiasm of the "Ron Paul Revolution."

Barr is the first to admit that his path to the Libertarian Party, which he joined in 2006, did not exactly follow a straight line. In fact, the party had targeted him for electoral defeat in 2002 as part of a strategy to attack the "worst drug warriors in Congress." A hard-hitting television advertisement criticizing his opposition to medical marijuana helped sink Barr in a Republican primary against Rep. John Linder, which pitted two incumbents whose districts had been merged.

The party's ire had been partly inspired by a piece of legislation called the Barr Amendment. This 1998 Amendment was written and passed to keep votes from being counted on a medical marijuana ballot initiative in the District of Columbia. When a counting of the ballots was ordered by a judge, it was found that the measure had succeeded by a 69% to 31% margin, but the Barr Amendment continues to prohibit the reform's implementation.

Rob Kampia, delegate from what he half-jokingly referred to as "the 'taxation without representation' non-state of DC" and executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project, assured skeptics of Barr's sincere conversion in a nominating speech. Kampia explained that Barr had for two years been lobbying Congress to end federal raids in states where medical marijuana patients are protected under state law. Kampia also said Barr has lobbied Congress to repeal the Barr amendment, which truly demonstrates the sincerity of his conversion and "shows humility."

The top candidates were tied 186-186 after the third ballot and 202-202 after the fourth ballot, which eliminated Gravel. Third place Wayne Allan Root of Las Vegas then threw his support behind Barr and announced that he would be happy to fill the vice-presidential slot on a Barr ticket. The fifth ballot eliminated Root, and the sixth ballot delivered Barr the majority he needed to carry the nomination.

The delegates then chose Root for the what Barr promised would be "the strongest ticket in the history of the Libertarian Party."

When I spoke with Barr on Saturday, he praised delegates at the convention for their focus on fundamental problems and solutions. "The one striking difference between Republican conventions and this Libertarian Party convention is that every single person here that I talk with wants to talk about substance," he told me. They're not interested in the superficial aspects of politics."

In the debate, Barr apologized to delegates for his mistakes on the road to libertarianism, which included authorship of the Defense of Marriage Act (Barr promised he would work to repeal it) and his vote for the 2001 PATRIOT Act, which Barr has vigorously opposed since 2002.

Some longtime libertarians were skeptical of Barr's conversions. The conflict underlying this split between top candidates revealed a deeper schism between party members who disagree over the party's direction. Libertarians who support the party's traditional platform despite its explicit philosophical radicalism arrived at this convention hoping to undo changes to the party platform which had been adopted by reformers in 2006. For this wing of the party, it is considered more important for a candidate to clearly and consistently articulate libertarian philosophy than to earn the maximum possible number of votes or gain the maximum possible amount of exposure.

Morey Straus, a New Hampshire delegate, was among the disappointed Ruwart supporters. Straus argued that by nominating Barr and Root, "Libertarians risk furthering the misconception that we are just another wing of conservatism." This, he said, was more important than votes because "Libertarianism is not right or left."

On the other hand, many delegates observed that Barr's candidacy is well-poised to attract conservative voters away from John McCain, and many believed the media spotlight on Barr's marijuana policy conversion could have a considerable impact on conservative Republican audiences across the United States.

Regardless of the ideas at stake, the suspense of this convention was exhilarating for the candidates and delegates. It's hard to imagine, but if the Republicans and Democrats still had nominating conventions like this one, how much better would they do in the ratings?