Tuesday, June 7, 2022

Beat.

This wound is still fresh, so this will be a bit raw.  I'm not actually making any of these decisions right now without input from my friends and fellow Board members of the LPD.  These decisions will be made over the course of the next week or two.

We got beat.

I got beat.

I don't think it's right. I think the State Board of Elections was more concerned about the Libertarian Party of Maryland and the Libertarian Party of Delaware being associated with the same national Libertarian Party than actually looking at the rules of the organizations involved and the actions that had been taken to determine who is actually the "regularly constituted party authorities" as required by law, but I'm tired.

The Libertarian Party nationally has been taken over by an organization that is cozy with actual fascists and actual white supremacists. This organization has been described by HateWatch from the SPLC, The Nation, Reason, and soon no doubt others as an alt-right organization that will only appeal to extreme Republicans, and that's a brand that isn't worth continuing to fight to hold on to.

I'm sure I could have done better. There were any number of times over the course of the last year or more where I could have made a different choice and better protected the Libertarian Party of Delaware from becoming an appendage of these people and I failed.

For that, I'm truly sorry.

I came to the Libertarian Party as a teenager. It appealed to me as a party for the marginalized. A party that empowered people by taking that power back from the government. The Declaration of Independence says that governments are created to secure the rights of the people and that the people delegate their rights and their sovereignty to government, and the Libertarian Party wanted to help get some of those rights back and limit the authority of the government that grew beyond that ideal to its proper place.

It didn't hurt that I liked cannabis and they wanted to legalize it.

This new Libertarian Party, and the Delaware affiliate I used to be a part of, is not a party for the marginalized.  It is a party for the privileged to use "freedom" as a cudgel to justify their misanthropic rejection of community and cooperation.  Libertarians used to believe that community and cooperation should be voluntary, but that it should be prioritized even when bonds of "blood and soil" did not exist.  It was a fundamental act of love to wish for all humankind to be free.  It is now a selfish demand to be left alone by people who could not survive alone.  A claim of independence by the utterly dependent.  As described in popular media, "being born on third base and thinking you hit a triple."

With the Mises Caucus in control of the national party and several formerly successful affiliates, to continue to fight just to be associated with that is both counter productive and increasingly morally abhorrent.

I do not regret trying to keep the Libertarian Party of Delaware to the vision that attracted me in my youth.  I regret failing those who supported me, helped me, and encouraged me.  They want that vision too, trusted me to get it for them, and I let them down.  My immediate next step will be to meet with these freedom fighters and figure out what we're going to do next.  I am their servant and will do what I can to help them realize what they want for themselves.  It's the least I owe them.

For myself I remain committed to the causes I have always held dear.  My eternal love and devotion belongs to ZoĆ« Patchell and Adam Windett with the Delaware Cannabis Advocacy Network, and they will always have my support in their quest to end cannabis prohibition and put a stop to warrantless searches and seizures, discriminatory enforcement, and the largest existing gateway to the criminal justice system.  Mitch and Jenine Denham and the Delaware Gun Rights group are fighting hard to protect our right to protect ourselves and I will do all I can to help them.  As I have fought for marriage equality in the past I will support the rights of all gender and sexual minorities.  I will be welcoming to immigrants and friendly to people even if they aren't just like me.  I'll resent paying taxes and blame government interference for destroying the economy.  I'll call out ignorant mischaracterizations of benign legislation from the Delaware Family Policy Council and support a woman's right to choose.

To be entirely honest though the least effective activism I have done has been as a candidate of the Libertarian Party.  I will find ways of being useful without that option.

My position moving forward for now is that the State Board of Elections has the authority to determine which organization (and there are two) is entitled to nominate candidates, but they do not have the authority to determine ownership of assets, composition of an organization, or anything outside of that limited scope.  I believe we, the crushed LPD, are a distinct organization, continuous from the acknowledged party authorities of the past, and have a solid claim to ownership of the assets still under our control and even some of the ones that were stolen from us, and I have no inclination whatsoever to help the Mises Caucus spread its hate by just handing them over.  If they want them, they can take them from me.  I'm not hard to find.

If my allies can forgive me for failing and wish to continue fighting together to improve our state, then I have created political parties before and I can create them again.  I have gotten ballot access for candidates with the support of minor parties outside the Libertarian Party and against the opposition of major parties.  I have friends on the left and right side of the Delaware, National, and libertarian political spectrum.  Mises can expel me from the party I built but they cannot make me be silent.

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