Radicalism

by Michael McNeil

Posted April 03, 2007

I'm going to make this short and sweet. Why is Nancy Pelosi an elected official? She certainly does not represent the views of the majority of voters in her district. She is one of the most radical people within her party, yet she an elected leader.

Back in the 1990s, Newt Gingrich was Speaker of the House, and he was also pretty damn radical. He accomplished a great deal in his time on Capitol Hill in his Contract with America (especially compared to today's Republicans).

So what's wrong with our anarchist leadership? They don't know how to lie. Gingrich and Pelosi are masters at hiding their radicalism. I've never once heard Pelosi advocating a near-socialist redistribution of wealth, but that is one of her primary goals. Gingrich always made a point of very carefully wording how he attacked social welfare.

Our party leaders, on the other hand, seem to have no grasp of political acceptability. In fact, they seem adverse to it. They seem to want to throw forth an air of disdainful superiority. And why not? After all, the Libertarian Party is the only avenue that freedom-minded individuals have to protest the big-spending theocrats (the Republicans) and the big-spending subscribers to the church of secular humanism (the Democrats). Our leaders know that they will continue to hold power and enjoy all the benefits of leading a political party regardless of the outcome of elections—voters have no other option. For party leaders, there's simply no incentive for victory.

I propose that we advocate a system similar to the GOP and DNC, where it is a requirement that the party's leader be an elected official. Perhaps then the leader of our party will actually give a flip about the outcome of the elections. Of course, to do this, we need to get a canditate elected. One canditate.

We can have radical leaders. We just need them to actually want a victorious Libertarian Party.

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