Platform Pared

by Tom Stahl, LPWS Platform Chair

On January 18, 1997 the LPWS platform committee met at the Burien Public Library from 4:00 to 5:00 PM. In attendance were John Gearhart, Michael Hihn, Janet Anderson, Patricia Michl, Steve Cornell, Tom Stahl, Jim Campton, Kevin Bjornsen, Eric Morrison, and Robert Hill.

The committee heard a proposal from Tom Stahl to add language from the Declaration of Independence to the Statement of Principles. The object of this proposal is to encourage the national Libertarian Party to delete the strange ''cult of the omnipotent state'' language from the national party Statement of Principles and substitute the popular and familiar ''we hold these truths to be self-evident'' language. No action was taken on this proposal.

The committee recommended that the convention delete the entire Issues Section of the platform and replace it with something smaller. Michael Hihn, Janet Anderson, and Tom Stahl volunteered to draft smaller replacements for the present platform. The vote was 5 to 1 in favor of replacing the platform with something smaller. As an alternate position, in case the entire platform is not deleted by the convention, the committee made recommendations to delete individual planks as follows:

Delete the Children's Rights plank. The committee voted to follow the national convention's lead in deleting this plank by a vote of 5 to 3.

Delete the Open Immigration/Open Borders plank. The committee split 4 to 4 on this issue and the chair, Tom Stahl, broke the tie in favor of deleting the Immigration plank.

Delete that portion of the Land Ownership plank, section 4, which could be construed to mandate selling off the national parks to developers. The vote was 6 to 2.

Delete the Abortion plank. The committee members expressed the view that there are libertarian arguments on both sides of the abortion issue and that it would be better to let the individual candidates state their positions than for the patty to try to dictate an orthodoxy on this issue. The vote was 6 to 0.

Janet Anderson volunteered to draft a replacement Election Laws plank that expresses support for a proportional representation voting system.

The committee voted to delete several portions of the platform because the job of a Libertarian political party is very different from that of a Libertarian think tank. While a think tank can immerse itself in theory and engage in the luxury of writing an encyclopedia of libertarian ideas, a political party must perform the very difficult task of winning elections and restoring freedom in the real world of politics. To do this the party must forge a winning coalition of voters around the most popular libertarian issues and avoid being hamstrung by unpopular planks. Half a loaf is better than no loaf.

Libertarians are fond of repeating the aphorism that ''in the long run men hit only what they aim at.'' But we will never get to the long run if we don't start winning in the short run. And in the short run we should aim at what we can hit--and start hitting it.