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Enterprise, Number 10, July, 1996.
No D.C. For Me
By Cathy L. Z. Smith
[email protected]Exclusive to The Libertarian Enterprise
You won't be seeing me at the 1996 Libertarian Party National Convention. I won't be there to watch people I once respected just because they called themselves Libertarians (thinking that appellation actually meant something) parading around, blowing noise-makers, dropping balloons from the ceiling, and doing their absolute damnedest to water down whatever remains of a once-proud party platform so that it won't make anyone "uncomfortable" -- eeeiw!
I won't be there to celebrate the LP's "coming of age", when, just like the two major parties it desires to emulate, it can triumphantly offer us -- Libertarians -- a choice for President just as exciting as those offered by the Democrats and Republicans, and every bit as principled.
I won't be there to witness any more of their antics, or to hear any more of their lies, or to watch individuals who should (and really do) know better -- may they be eternally ashamed of themselves when their sanity returns -- falling for the disgusting roadshow.
I won't be there to see a once rational people mesmerized by snake oil sales pitches and sleight-of-brain, willingly blinding themselves to exactly what it is they're buying -- and buying into. I won't be there to witness the inevitable bleary-eyed, philosophically hung-over awakening from their self-induced trance.
But then neither will the con-artists who will have folded their tents (along with thousands of dollars that once belonged to the poor, gullible saps of the late, great Libertarian Party), and who will have disappeared -- again -- along with any hope the LP ever had of making a lasting impression by means of the only tool genuinely at its disposal, product differentiation.
But the main reason I won't be there is because I can't understand the kind of twisted logic that allows the "Party of Principle", so-called defenders of Liberty, self-designated heirs to Jefferson and Paine, to stoop to holding its convention -- and spending my money whether I like it or not, just like the government we supposedly oppose -- in the country's single most oppressive city; a city that not only ignores the Bill of Rights, but actively suppresses it; a city that stands, in all its putrescence, for everything we're supposed to be against.
Unless, of course, it's finally time for Libertarians to stand, shoulder to shoulder, with the Teddy Kennedys, the Newt Gingriches, the Bill Clintons, the Bill Bennetts, the Charles Schumers, the Jack Kemps, the David Boniors, and the Bob Doles in their city, helping them to maintain their status quo, because, in the end, the so-called Libertarian Party doesn't have the brains -- or the balls -- to nominate a Libertarian for president.
If it is, they can certainly do it without me.Cathy L. Z. Smith -- who describes herself frankly as "a government bureaucrat" -- is a new contributor to The Libertarian Enterprise.
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