No 1st Force: A Pledge Against Political Force Initiation

Some Libertarian Party members claim that the LP Pledge requires advocating the immediate repeal and non-enforcement of all laws that initiate force. If they mean what they say, then they will take the following Pledge, and advocate that all LP officers and candidates be required to take it too.

I do not -- and will never -- advocate, practice or abet the initiation of force -- by any person, group, or institution, through any law, regulation, or practice -- for political or social goals.

If I am ever a candidate for political office:

• I will publicly advocate immediate repeal of all laws that in any way authorize or tolerate the initiation of force.
• I will never commit to any particular order of destatization, for that would be construed as endorsing the continuation of statism and the violation of rights.
  
• I will refuse to accept any salary financed by coercive taxation.
• I will refuse any funding of my campaign financed by coercive taxation.
• I will refuse any media access granted by coercive equal-time or fairness laws.
  
• I will publicly declare my mental reservation to any oath or affirmation to preserve, protect, or defend any Constitution insofar as it authorizes the initiation of force.
  

If I ever hold executive office:

• I will use whatever authority I can to grant full amnesty and pardons to anyone and everyone ever accused or convicted of tax evasion, any other victimless crime, or self-defense against an agent of the State or any other aggressor.
• I will use whatever authority I can to veto, nullify, or cancel any law that in any way authorizes or tolerates the initiation of force.
• I will refuse to authorize or commit any initiation of force for any reason.
• I will refuse to expend any funds derived in any significant part by coercive taxation, except to return them to taxation victims in the exact amounts of their victimization.
  

If I ever hold legislative office:

• I will never vote for any bill or amendment containing any provision or language that authorizes or tolerates the initiation of force.
• I will vote for bills falling short of outright repeal of force-initiating laws only if they straightforwardly amend such laws to strictly reduce their scope or effect without reiterating any language authorizing or tolerating the initiation of force.
• I will leave it to statist legislators to "reform" their force-initiating laws by trading off force initiations of different kinds or with different victims, and will never taint the cause of liberty by voting for any such "reform".
  
• I will never vote to confirm the nomination to political office of anyone who does not take this pledge.
• I will always vote for the impeachment and removal of any officeholder who does not follow this pledge.
  

If I ever hold judicial office:

• I will strike down any law I can that in any way authorizes or tolerates the initiation of force.
• I will dismiss any case brought before me against anyone and everyone charged with the pardonable "crimes" listed above.
  

As a citizen:

• I will never vote for, contribute to, sign a petition for, endorse, or support any candidate who does not take this pledge.
• I will never join, register for, or contribute to any political party which advocates any initiation of force.
  
• I will write in "No 1st Force" in any race in which there is no candidate who takes this pledge.
  
• I will never vote for a ballot measure that in any way authorizes or tolerates the initiation of force.
• I will vote for ballot measures falling short of outright repeal of force-initiating laws only if they straightforwardly amend such laws to strictly reduce their scope or effect without reiterating any language authorizing or tolerating the initiation of force.
• I will never vote on a grand jury to indict anyone of the pardonable "crimes" listed above.
• I will never vote on a jury to convict anyone of the pardonable "crimes" listed above.
• I will never accept any employment financed in any significant part by coercive taxation.
• I will never accept any payments financed in any significant part by coercive taxation, except insofar as they constitute repayment of funds previously taxed from me.
• I will never voluntarily participate in the enforcement of any law that in any way authorizes or tolerates the initiation of force.
  

As an LP member:

• I will never nominate, endorse, or vote for any candidate for LP office who does not take this pledge.
• I will never support or vote for any LP Platform that does not advocate immediate repeal of all laws that in any way authorize or tolerate the initiation of force.
• I will never support or vote for any LP Platform that does not advocate full amnesty and pardons to anyone and everyone ever accused or convicted of tax evasion, any other victimless crime, or self-defense against an agent of the State or any other aggressor.

---

This pledge was written by Brian Holtz, who opposes only fraud in the reproduction of expression and so does not believe in copyright. If you do believe in copyright, then this text is protected under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, and may be used in any way provided the use cites Brian Holtz as the original author and http://marketliberal.org/No1stForce.html as the latest version.

LPCA ExCom starting to face fiscal reality

If Starchild and I could agree that Sep 15 in Millbrae was the most encouraging LPCA ExCom meeting we've ever attended, then that's got to be a sign either that the LPCA is making progress -- or that the apocalypse is nigh.

Don Cowles reported that Angela's sudden departure has kept him from having completely current financial numbers for us, but he stressed again how bad our projected finances are and thus how badly we need to fundraise. Somebody pointed out in response that in recent years much of our funds came from UMP and Operation Breakthrough, but those programs have ended and will not be a revenue source in the future. I took this as underscoring my long-standing contention that we're not going to fundraise our way around the termination of those two huge programs, and that we need to look at expenses.

We read the status update of Audit Chair Jerry Dixon, who wasn't able to attend. He seems to think that he needs thousands of dollars to finance an outside audit that wouldn't even be done by the 2008 convention, and says that Mark Johnson has disengaged from the audit over his disagreement with that need. The ExCom sided overwhelmingly with Mark on this topic. I stressed again that what ExCom and the delegates need from an audit is not the re-checking of the Treasurer's math and the accuracy of his transcription of the numbers from invoices and checks and receipts into our budget. Instead, what we need most is a clearer picture of what the labels for the numbers mean, and another level of granularity for the bigger numbers. The primary mystery to be cleared up is: how does the roughly $45K/yr we spend on office staff and expenses break down, what do we get for it , and can we get by with less? I cited the information in Beau's report (below) as finally explaining what our non-salary office expenses are, and said that an audit just needs to 1) do the same thing for our staff expenses and 2) answer the 13 questions for the audit committee that I earlier emailed out (appended below) . Chuck Moulton was stressed the importance of an independent audit as a confidence-builder for our delegates and donors, but nobody could recall the LPCA ever spending thousands of dollars on one. Ted Brown said audits have been done on a volunteer basis. I asked for an example of prior art for Audit Committee reports, and was pointed to recent convention minutes. The 2005 minutes give a 3-sentence report saying the 2003 records were fine. The 2004 minutes include a one-page report about the 2002 records saying that they're basically fine, but that it would be nice to have more details about office expenses. I was very encouraged by the sentiment of the ExCom that the audit needs to clarify our finances and expenses (and thus identify potential savings) more than anything else.

Beau's report on his handling of office operations since Angela's departure was very encouraging. He has very quickly identified about half a dozen ways to save on recurring expenses, and is working on a proposal to close the office and make its operations more distributed and online. He is documenting the procedures and mechanics of the office's operations, and seems confident that they can be streamlined so as to not require a full-time Executive Director costing us roughly $40K/yr. Since a dollar saved is equivalent to a dollar fund-raised, it looks to me like Beau is poised to become by far our top-performing fundraiser.

California Freedom is costing us about $26K/yr to publish. Mark Johnson proposed a moratorium on its production until we are no longer sliding towards bankruptcy, but the idea had no backers due to the obligation we have to produce CF for members who pay the full dues that includes a CF subscription. I pointed out that we're spending $9K/yr in layout costs so that CF can have nice columns and stories that break across pages, whereas the layout costs of the similar email "eFlyer" we've started producing are zero. I suggested that $9K/yr in layout costs are a pretty extravagant way to spend members' money as we slide toward insolvency. There seemed to be wide sentiment for finding some cost savings here, but Cam McConnell said the meeting was almost over and that we should work offline on bringing our newsletter expenses into alignment with our membership model. Chuck Moulton suggested that dues should finance the newsletter, recurring donations should finance office/staff operations, and fund-raising should be for specific programs. I think that's almost right, except I would say that dues should finance both the newsletter and core office operations (renewals, database, etc.), and that all other programs and non-essential operations should be financed by program-specific fundraising and program-specific recurring donations. This would allow the funding behaviors of our members to act as a clear market signal telling us how much they value our various activities.

The committee adopted the proposal Chuck and I put on the agenda to post human-readable contact info on the LPCA web site for ExCom members who desire to do so.

Chuck and I also put the filling of LNC vacancies on the agenda, but this turned out to be the one dim spot of the meeting. Aaron Starr is now LPUS Treasurer and so his LNC seat as our rep (alongside M Carling) is now effectively vacant, with 2nd Alternate Scott Lieberman routinely filling in for him. Ted Brown moved to formally put Scott in Aaron's seat, but the motion was divided into vacating the seat and then promoting Scott. The first motion succeeded, but there was dissent on the second. Lawrence Samuels said that Scott was "one of these reformers" and was "pro-war". I quoted from a recent email from Scott saying "basic non-interventionism, combined with overwhelming retaliatory military force, is the best way to go." This satisfied Bruce Dovner and perhaps others, but the result was that Scott lost a narrow voice vote in which about half the committee abstained. The agenda item then ran out of time before we consider whether to make Scott 1st Alternate and to consider me for one of the open spots. (It now seems unlikely that I would have won one, as I had just cast the only vote against endorsing an anti-war rally sponsored by ANSWER, which is led by marxist-leninists from the Workers' World Party.)

In other news, the committee voted (over the nays of Ted, Chuck, and me) to make Starchild push his chair back from the table, and he complied. Various members of the committee successfully moved to allow Starchild to be heard as raised his hands at various points, and his comments were quite constructive. Afterward he agreed with me that this was the most encouraging ExCom meeting he'd ever attended.

From the gallery, Brian Miller spoke in favor of a resolution that the LPCA call on the Governor to endorse the gay marriage rights bill before him, and also announced an extremely generous $500 donation to the LPCA. During the public comments at the beginning of the meeting, Miller briefly and elliptically asked the ExCom to address the recent unpleasantness regarding Tim Campbell's remarks about Angela Keaton, but the committee took no official action.

-----Original Message-----
From: Brian Holtz [mailto:brian@holtz.org]
Sent: Tuesday, July 17, 2007 11:40 PM

I spent the evening studying the reports available to members and came up with a set of high-level questions that I as a member would want to see answered by the Audit Committee and the larger LPCA financial management team.

June Balance Sheet

• What are the details of the "current liabilities" ($10K - county distributions?) and "loans payable" ($3K) mentioned in the June report?
• What is "deferred revenue"? The convention minutes show it dropping from $20K to $5K over CY2006, and the June report shows it back at $20K.
• How much (if any) of the $51K in accounts receivable in the June report is not OB pledges? Was the growth from the $30K reported at the April convention purely the result of discovering new OB victories?

2006 Actuals

• The convention report says 2006 recurring gifts totaled $57K, but the June report reports $21K more revenue than the convention report, with recurring gifts only at $35K, and a new category of "performance-based gifts" at $43K. I take it this is revised accrued 2006 OB pledge revenue to be collected in 2007 as a result of OB victories discovered after the convention? If so, what is the nature of the $15K of additional performance-based gifts anticipated in the budget adopted in June?
• Why were county party distributions so low in 2006 (~$12K) compared to the previous four years ($33K - $44K)? Dues revenue was $54K in each of 2005 and 2006, but was $44K in 2005.
• Can we break down the 2006 $10K of "other revenue" to one more level of detail? The March minutes say that $5K is list rental and $800 is interest. Is the other $4K all CF advertising revenue?
• How does the $10K in 2006 direct mail solicitation and $3K in telephone solicitation roughly break down between the possible purposes e.g. membership prospecting, membership renewal, pledge solicitation, OB solicitation, and cruise attendance solicitation? We should try to break down expenses by purpose/program as well as by type (e.g. phone vs. mail).
• The March minutes report $4K in 2006 HQ travel and $3K in "outside services". Could we get about a sentence more of description for each of these?
• The March minutes report almost $3K in telephone expenses in 2006. How did we spend that much? AT&T says it offers businesses unlimited long-distance calls for $20/month ($11/mo the first year). I bet Richard Rider could hook us up with some kind of unlimited long-distance plan that would cost only a few hundred dollars a year.

2007 Budget

• What will be done with the $15K budgeted for campaigns and elections in 2007? If this is for finishing the discovery of 2006 OB victories, then why do we accrue new 2007 OB revenue discoveries against 2006, while accruing new 2007 OB expenses against 2007? Is there any way to avoid spending any of that $15K?
• Why are member communications budgeted at $24K for 2007, vs. $18K in 2006? There doesn't seem to be a strong relationship between issues published and expense. The figures I have are: 2002: 9 @ $12K, 2003: 11 @ $13K, 2004: 12 @ $20K, 2005: 12 @ $28K, 2006: 9 @ $18K.
• Why are we budgeting $20K for member recruitment in 2007 compared to $300 in 2006, while projecting a drop in dues revenue (from $54K to $50K)? What do we think 2007 dues revenue would be without spending that $20K? Don's spreadsheet shows nothing being spent on recruitment from 2002 - 2005.
• What are the "other fundraising costs" of $5K in the 2007 budget, and why are we budgeting $20K in direct mail fundraising? The analogous figures for these categories were: 2006: $15K, 2005: $12K, 2004: $6K, 2003: $7K, 2002: $15K. What do we think 2007 dues revenue would be without spending that $25K?

The Dallas Accord: RIP 1974 - 2006

Iraq tops many polls as the most important issue of the day. But in ten years, Iraq will likely be almost as irrelevant to American politics as Monica Lewinsky and impeachment are today. For the timescale on which the LP needs to strategically plan, the antiwar issue will have even weaker legs than it had in 2004, when a perfect antiwar storm for the LP yielded only a few raindrops. Our party's strategy needs to be built on issues chosen for their

• left/right balance,
• multi-decade legs,
• favorable longitudinal demographics (i.e. appeal to the young and/or parents),
• differentiation from other parties -- or at least opportunity to be seen as the trend-setter, and
• solubility by market- and freedom- oriented approaches endorsed by mainstream libertarian economists and think tanks.

These criteria point to issues like:

• healthcare
• retirement security (i.e. the S.S. pyramid scheme)
• education
• market-smart environmentalism
• victimless crime
• gay rights

The unified field theory that can promote freedom and progress in all these areas simultaneously is destatization through decentralization -- eliminating federal control of these issues so that the less-free states and localities have to eat the dust of (and respect the decisions of) the more-free states and localities. I'm only recently realizing how tragically important it is that the LP has what amounts to serious brain damage in this area. Radical federalism -- maximizing competition among polities according to what political principles they follow -- is the best hope for both libertarianism broadly and (paradoxically) anarchism in particular.

However, the LP has an anarchism-sized blind spot that makes it formally oblivious to the critical importance of the institutional design of government. The LP's anarchist minority has for over three decades ensured that the LP is utterly irrelevant to the great debate (can you say Public Choice Theory?) in America about the institutional design of government -- a debate in which the broader libertarian movement has played an influential role. Even though constitutionalism has been the central campaign theme of nearly every Libertarian presidential candidate, anarchist groupthink and inertia has ensured that the LP's official position has been that all the levels of government are indistinguishably evil.

This blind spot, this brain damage, this anarchism-shaped hole in the LP's cerebral cortex, has a name: the Dallas Accord. This was the LP's 1974 political-suicide pact in which the anarchists made the minarchists revoke the 1972 Platform's endorsement of the existence of the state, in exchange for the dubious concession that the Platform would not explicitly say that the state would be formally abolished once the LP had finished eliminating all the state's roles and tools. The Dallas Accord was unceremoniously repealed at the 2006 Portland convention, not so much through the infamous plank retention vote, but rather by someone slipping in this sentence: "Government exists to protect the rights of every individual including life, liberty and property." (I think the hero here was Mik Robertson, who was in charge of consolidating the old Crime and Victimless Crime planks. The sentence was never quoted on the 2006 PlatCom email list, and I have no record or memory of any of us on PlatCom or the Convention floor objecting.)

Tom Knapp in 2003 called for his fellow anarchists in the LP to trade in the 1974 Dallas Accord and, for the good of the party and the cause, make the LP "an open organization, not only representing, but welcoming, all people who want less government and more freedom." Let's finish that job in Denver.

6-yr-old Libertarian Challenges City Council

Six-year-old Zoe Holtz seems to have inherited the libertarian principles of her dad Brian (a Libertarian Party state leader) and the entrepreneurial instincts of her mom Melisse (a Stanford Business School grad). After beta-testing her commerce skills several times with pretend lemonade and cookie stands in her family living room, Zoe was shocked to hear that in her new hometown of Los Altos Hills, lemonade stands are forbidden. So she accompanied Brian to a City Council meeting in April, resolved to ask the city leaders why she can't sell lemonade. On the short minivan ride to City Hall she rehearsed her case, arguing "something shouldn't be against the rules just because it annoys some people, or else everything would be against the rules."

However, she lost her nerve at the podium looking up at the imposing rostrum of the town (pop. 8000), and her dad had to ask her question for her. The Council members didn't seem to know that lemonade stands weren't allowed, and the Mayor inadvertently hinted at the dangers of such regulations when he joked that her lemonade stand would be OK as long as he got free lemonade. When the town staff sheepishly pointed out that the town code prohibits vending, the Council members virtually tripped over each other in assuring Zoe that the authorities would look the other way if her stand were safely off the road and only during daylight hours. The Council minutes report the episode this way:

Zoe Holtz, resident, with the assistance of her father, asked the Council if it was "ok" for her to have a lemonade stand in her neighborhood. City Attorney Steve Mattas explained that with the exception of the sale of agricultural products produced on resident’s property; sale of merchandise/goods was prohibited by the Town’s Codes. Mattas offered that there were concerns about traffic and safety. He noted that historically, the Town did not enforce the code with respect to lemonade stands. Council consensus was to support her request with the stipulation that it be done in a safe manner.

However, the City Attorney is wrong about his town history. A 2004 article in the Los Altos Town Crier reported that a deputy sheriff shut down a child's lemonade stand in Los Altos Hills even though no complaints had been received.

The following Saturday, Zoe set about to exercise her newly-won freedom. She set up a lemonade stand on the quiet street in front of her house, and staffed it with the assistance of her sister Shannon and her best friend Cassie. (She's said before she wants "employees".) Most of their sales were to their parents and immediate neighbors, so it's clear that she has a bit to learn about location and pricing (as the photo shows).

But she has time -- and now, a little more freedom to use it.

CF's New Antiwar Obsession Still Won't Grow the LP

California Freedom editor Tom Sipos writing in the August issue critiques my article therein. The two main points of my article (original here) were 1) empirical data from the 2000 and 2004 elections suggests that antiwar won't grow the LP, and 2) libertarian antiwar dogmatism comes from denial of the public goods argument for the existence of the state. Sipos addresses neither point, and instead writes:

TS) in this issue Brian Holtz defends the war (TS

This is not quite accurate. In the article I defend "the U.S. overthrow of Saddam" and the attempt to achieve the objectives I described as "1) eliminating any WMD capability or international terrorist infrastructure, and 2) deposing Saddam in favor of a democratic framework designed to protect fundamental human rights." However, I describe those objectives as "achieved", and nowhere in the article do I suggest that the war is worth continuing. I instead say "Iraqis (and war critics in America) failed to predict that sectarian strife was to develop into a Sunni-Shia civil war and negate much of the value of achieving objective #2." In the blog posting that my article links to, I explicitly say: "Iraq's thirst for civil war has effectively exhausted the reconstruction and stabilization efforts we owed the Iraqis for having liberated them. It is now time to accept our partial victory and let the Iraqi people take responsibility for their own future."

BH) The crucial question is whether the duty of a liberty-loving polity to defend human liberty vanishes completely at lines drawn on maps by statists. (BH

TS) Holtz’s word choice is intriguing. He doesn’t say that borders are moral, albeit not moral absolutes. Rather, he characterizes borders as “lines drawn on maps by statists.” He surely knows that in libertarian circles to characterize anything as “statist” is to impugn its validity. Holtz thus appeals to libertarian purism to justify the Iraq War. (TS

No, I appeal to libertarian purism to show the self-contradiction involved in a libertarian "purist" letting statists decide for him where human liberty should be defended.

TS) But does he support, or even appreciate, his principle’s logical conclusion? If borders are illegitimate, then tens of millions more Mexicans have an absolute right of entry into the US. (TS

I of course appreciate that anti-statism implies open borders. But anti-statism is not my principle, and I do not support open borders.

TS) Most “pro-defense” libertarians support borders, so it’s curious to see Holtz base an argument on their invalidity. (TS

Libertarian "purists" assert that any moral duty of a liberty-loving polity/community/society to voluntarily defend human liberty vanishes completely at places in the world that correspond precisely to lines drawn on maps by people who are in fact statists. This framing of the issue indeed invokes the anti-statism of libertarian "purists" against them, but my own arguments do not assume that borders are meaningless for purposes of normative political theory.

TS) by imposing a collectivist “duty of a liberty-loving polity to defend human liberty,” Holtz simultaneously contradicts his purism. What is a polity, if not a statist creation? (See how the American Heritage Dictionary defines polity.) (TS

As noted above, I do not share the anti-statist view that borders are meaningless in political ethics. By "polity" here I mean a community or society that observes a common set of principles about political organization or lack thereof. The "Imposing a collectivist ..." phrasing above is clearly meant to invoke the specter of state coercion, but almost every anarcholibertarian would agree that individuals have some kind of moral duty to voluntarily cooperate to protect the liberty of their community against tyrants and invaders. The question then becomes: what are the boundaries of the community? If the anarcholibertarian replies that those boundaries are determined by lines drawn on maps by statists, that's a really embarrassing answer for an anarcholibertarian to give.

TS) he does broach some difficult philosophical areas, however unintentionally. (TS

Heh. There are more things in my philosophy, dear Thomas, than are dreamt of in your part of heaven and earth. :-)

TS) Nations are collectives, antithetical to a purist individualism. (TS

Yes, I'm excruciatingly aware of the anarcholibertarian deontological argument against the morality of the existence of that force-initiating institution known as the state. ("State" is preferred over "nation" in the relevant branch of political theory, as "nation" points more at the geographical region and the people who occupy it than it does at the institution that governs it.) For my counter-arguments, see e.g.

• The Anti-Aggression Principle: Better Than NAP/ZAP
• 17 Free Variables in Libertarian Theory
• Is Taxation Theft?

TS) Every nation’s border contains some people who feel oppressed within it. It’s unlibertarian to demand that people “love it or leave it.” (TS

I've never used those words in my life, and I don't understand why they're quoted in something purporting to criticize an essay of mine. I've never argued that the state is legitimized merely by the decisions of its inhabitants not to leave it.

TS) Yet by what right does one nation compel its citizens to “liberate” citizens of another nation (TS

Minarchists don't agree that every possible form of free-riding is a right, by which one may not be compelled by one's neighbors acting together under the auspices of a constitutional democratic republic. I explained this in my article: "The military defense of liberty is the canonical textbook example of what economists call a 'public good' — a good that markets will underproduce due to the Free Rider Problem and thus needs tax financing." The primary purpose of my article was to explain that libertarian antiwar dogmatism comes from denial of the public goods argument for the existence of the state, so for Sipos to ignore this point suggests that my article failed -- or that it succeeded all too well.

TS) —some of whom don’t want to be liberated, either because they like their collective, or because the price in lives and limbs is too high? (TS

Some Germans liked the Nazi regime too. This requirement of universal demand for liberation is nonsensical, since a society by definition doesn't need liberating if every member of it agrees it should be liberated. As for the price in Iraq, my article explicitly cited Iraqi polling data, but Sipos doesn't address that data.

TS) Yes, we have a volunteer force, but if someone enlisted to defend the nation, there was no contractual consent to be used for liberation. (TS

Sipos seems to think that the contract agreed to by members of our all-volunteer armed forces limits their service to defending American soil. He is mistaken, and needs to read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oath_of_enlistment .

TS) And by what right does a nation exclude immigrants in order to preserve some of its citizens’ economic advantage, or racial or religious majority? (TS

This is off-topic, but my answer has nothing to do with race or religion. I have no problem with property owners in America allowing unlimited immigration of people who never set foot on the land of any non-consenting owner if those sponsors can guarantee that the immigrants will cause no extra burden on public goods, natural monopolies, and natural resources. Otherwise, I'm prepared to allow immigration only when it can be expected to have as little detrimental effect on public goods, natural monopolies, and natural resources as does the average child of legal residents. For more information, see http://blog.360.yahoo.com/knowinghumans?p=465 .

TS) It’s easy for us to disregard the “collateral damage” wreaked by our liberations when we’re in no risk of being similarly liberated by foreigners. (TS

The question is: what constitutes "similarly liberated"? This reminds me of Ron Paul's inane question about how would we like it if China did to us what we did to Iraq. Of the 14 arguments against libervention that I catalog here, this Patriotic argument is the third weakest. If China had America's track record of attempting to promote and defend liberty and democratic sovereignty, and came here to snap the neck of a genocidal tyrannical George Bush who had used chemical weapons to exterminate entire towns of American dissidents, then I would welcome the Chinese Army with open arms, and might even tear down a statue of Bush to smack it with the sole of my shoe.

---

When I first approached Sipos about answering the Samuels piece that was the object of my essay that I defend above, Sipos replied "the LPC has been silent on the war for the last several years. Bruce ran the paper without mentioning the war." This is simply false. During Bruce Cohen's tenure, CF ran five pieces featuring opposition to intervention, and zero pieces in defense of intervention in general or the Iraq invasion in particular:

• The August 2005 issue published an antiwar LTE by Jay Eckl. The associated brief editor's note merely reported the objective facts that 1) opinions on the war issue were split at the 2005 LPC convention, and 2) the LP is officially anti-intervention. (Thus the editor's note could count as a sixth anti-intervention piece, but I'll be generous to Sipos and not count it separately.)
• The same issue contained an article by Mark Selzer that opposed U.S. efforts to build democracy in Iraq.
• The Sep 2005 issue featured a commentary opposing restrictions on media coverage of the war.
• The same issue contained an article on the LPCA ExCom resolution against the war. (That issue also featured dueling paid advertisements by antiwar libertarians and their opponents, but these were ads and thus not editorial content.)
• The Nov 2005 issue promoted the antiwar "Gold, Freedom, and War" conference.

The Oct 2005 issue contained an LTE that criticized ideological litmus-testing by antiwar libertarians, but it did not mention Iraq and did not contain a single sentence defending intervention in general or the Iraq invasion in particular.

Contrast Bruce's record to that of Mr. Sipos in his first three issues. His first issue had three anti-war articles taking up nearly two entire pages, including the page-one headline. There were two anti-war articles in the July 2007 issue. The current issue contains my critique of antiwar dogmatism, but it is accompanied by the full-length editorial rebuttal that this posting answers. It also contains a brief LTE criticizing CF's sudden antiwar focus, but that is rebutted by a rambling personal editorial note that is twice as long as the LTE itself. Finally, it contains an antiwar book review ("Neo-Conned Into War") that is longer than any of these other pieces (and has no direct connection to the LPCA).

In summary, Cohen ran five pieces over two years featuring opposition to intervention, and zero unpaid content defending intervention. Sipos in three months has run six anti-intervention pieces, and the two opposing pieces he has run have been accompanied by two instant rebuttals -- totaling 8 antiwar pieces in 3 issues.

This isn't balance. It's obsession.