Tell Erick that Jason Pye said, "hello."

So what is the next arch-liberal conference, to which we will send a blogger? Kos Conference? Seattle Hempfest?

I'm looking forward to some good inside info from Joe on this one, especially how well Barr does, and what he says if ever pressed on the War on Drugs question, or asked to defend his new LP affiliation.

By the way, is Barr's LP connection mentioned in his bio-info in conference materials?

Firstly, why do you call the Hempfest a "Liberal Convention"? These days there's more Conservatives and Republicans introducing Medical Marijuana legislation than Democrats. The tables have turned almost entirely on that issue. Of course, the Liberal media has totally ignored the story.

Secondly, there's an entirely good reason why the Libertarian Party is at C-PAC and why you are receiving a mostly warm welcome.

It's because Conservatives are our ideological cousins. Go back to some movement history books from the 1950s and 60s. You'll see Mises, Hayek, Rand, Leonard Reed, Frank Meyers, were all hangin' out on the Right with the Cons.

We have little if anything in common with Liberals or Democrats.

Is it any accident that fully 7 out of 8 of all Libertarian Party Presidential candidates have been Republicans?

Good luck in the next few days at the Conference. Sure, you'll have lots of interesting stuff to report.

Eric Dondero, CEO
www.mainstreamlibertarian.com

Go back and read some movement history that goes back before the 1950s and 60s.

Here's a good place to start,

http://mises.org/story/2099

There's a reason why liberal and libertarian sound alike, and I agree that we should be at the next liberal conference wholeheartedly.

As Roderick Long concludes the above article, quoting Brad Spangler,

"Genuine libertarianism is very much left wing. It's revolutionary. The long and tragic alliance of libertarians with the right against the spectre of state socialism is coming to a close, as it served no purpose after the fall of the Soviet Union and so-called "conservatives" have subsequently taken to letting their true big-government-on-steroids colors fly…. [I]n the period since the demise of the Soviet Union, both the radicals and moderates among the left have been subconsciously seeking a new radical creed to orient themselves upon to replace Marxism…. I believe that radical libertarians … will be most effective when they overcome any lingering right wing cultural contamination of their libertarian views and embrace their inherent radicalism — which is most at home on the left. For as the radicals go, so do the moderates grudgingly follow in small steps…. It's time for libertarians to stop fighting the left and take up the challenge of leading the left."

Read the whole article to place this into context.

As for medical marijuana, the record is very clear. The vast majority of Republicans in Congress voted against states rights for patients,
but most Democrats voted for it.

On civil liberties and peace issues, we have more in common with liberals than conservatives, as we do on military spending, corporate welfare, and many other issues.

See

http://www.lastfreevoice.com/2007/01/31/state-of-the-empire/

for a partial list.

Sure, it's true that 7 of 8 LP presidential candidates were former or future Republicans.

This is a symptom of what needs to change for the LP to become what it always should have been and can still be.

It's not so muc that conservatives are our ideological cousins as it is that the liberatarians and libertarian-leaving-conservatives still make the mistake of calling themselves conservatives when they are, in fact, not nearly dismissive enough of liberty from the state to actually be conservatives. These self-descibed conservatives should admit to themselves that they bear no relation to the modern conservative movement. I believe this is one of the main reasons we attend CPAC: to A) help these libertarians in conservative clothing to realise who they are, and to B) help encourage those who actually are conservatives yet who have grown up on the rhetoric of the Old Right to reconsider some of their more radical (or socially conservative) positions and recognise that there's nothing disgraceful in taking up a more moderate (or socially libertarian) position.

The same is true of many self-described liberals.

I was one when I was in my teens. I never liked bureaucracy or big government personally, but thought they were necessary to achieve liberal values such as environmental protection, civil rights, workers rights, etc.

I knew for sure that I was opposed to the Christian Right, the drug war and the military-industrial complex and imperialism.

In 1992, when the Democrats picked Bill Clinton as their nominee, I realized that the baby boom generation coming to power and the Democrats were never going to end the war on drugs or American interventionism overseas.

I investigated the LP more fully and found that we also oppose the Christian right agenda, corporate welfare, militarism, the police-prison-industrial complex and other issues I opposed among conservatives.

I also found that we do in fact have small government solutions for the causes that liberals want to use big government to solve, that those big government solutions don't work, only make the problems worse and create new ones, and that small government solutions work better.

Over the years since I have done outreach, a lot of it at colleges and rock concerts/festivals, natural food stores, farmers markets, etc., and have found many other people who feel the same way I do. Unfortuantely in recent years the conservative-sounding rhetoric and membership of the LP - not libertarianism itself, just the way it has all too often been sold - have turned a lot of them off, and they have joined the Democrats or Greens instead, or just not voted because there is no one worth voting for.

Yet most of these folks score libertarian on the World's Smallest Political Quiz and should have more in common with us than with the Democrats or Greens if we presented and marketed our ideas correctly.