Libertarians, get off your principled asses!

Nothing makes this Libertarian angrier than the radical elements of the party who would rather lose without compromise than acheive a small victory. This phenomenon has caused more people to give up on the LP than probably any other single factor.

J. Daniel Cloud wrote a great editorial in LP News that gets right to the heart of this problem.

I want to see some Libertarians get off their principled asses and do something to enact those principles in America. And I’m ready to do something myself. That’s why I helped write — and proudly signed — the Exit Plan for Iraq. It ain’t perfect. But it shows Americans that the LP wants to see U.S. troops leave Iraq. It shows that we’re tired of the killing. It shows that we are willing to accept incremental change, so long as change occurs. It shows that we are capable of thinking in terms of “transition” instead of “revolution.”

The party spent more than 30 years trying to change American politics from the outside, with philosophical purity in place, and we failed. If you are one of those who think Libertarians shouldn’t be politicians, feel free to continue sending nasty e-mails complaining that the Libertarian Party is “compromising” too much, that we’re settling for incrementalism.

Hear, hear. Thanks to Tim West for drawing this to my attention.

Yours truly,
Mr. X

...stfu and do something...