The World's Smallest Political Platform:
"The Libertarian Party supports reducing the size, scope and power of government at all levels and on all issues, and opposes increasing the size, scope or power of government at any level or for any purpose."
With all the controversy surrounding the changes made to the Libertarian Party platform at the 2006 convention, and the current movements towards a new platform, I must ask: Why has the World's Smallest Political Platform (WSPP) gotten so little support? A petition for the Restore04 movement, which wants to bring back nearly all of the 2004 LP Platform, has approximately 230 signatures, while the online petition for the WSPP has exactly 17 signatures.
Of course, Restore04 has the advantage of being run by David Nolan, the founder of the Libertarian Party. But why is there so little support for the WSPP?
The WSPP gives us the best chance to be a big tent party. Instead of saying that you must have a certain policy outlook on specific issues to feel welcome in the LP, we give members a broad, overriding philosophical idea and allow them to form specific policy positions. The WSPP allows for minarchists, constitutionalists, anarchists and every group in between to feel comfortable with the platform, while many aspects of the 2004 Platform do not. After the Ruwart controversy and the impending Barr official announcement, unity is something the LP needs right now. Tensions will be riding high at the convention, and one of the factions will walk out of the convention upset. Adopting the WSPP may be one of the only ways to keep whichever faction becomes disgruntled from leaving the party.
Also, the WSPP breeds consistent libertarianism. From the front page of the WSPP website, Tom Knapp writes:
The WSPP does not require a patterned, formulaic, "evenly distributed" approach to reducing the size, scope and power of government. The program it drives can be opportunistic, utopian, or anything in between. What it does require of the organizations which adopt it is that those organizations' members keep their eye on the big picture: Always reducing the size, scope and power of government, never increasing the size scope or power of government.
What could be better than that. The WSPP breeds consistency, which is something the LP really badly needs right now.
So, for you Restore04 supporters, what is wrong with the WSPP? Why can't the WSPP get more support? If a right-leaning libertarian like myself can come together and support a left-leaning libertarian like Tom Knapp on a platform proposal, the unifying aspects of the idea must be valid.
Cross posted at http://www.lastfreevoice.com
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