 I will give the ground rules for the panel discussion. We'll have approximately a 10 minute introduction or introductory statement by each of the four panelists, followed by a three minute response to the comments of the other panelists by each. And then the floor will be open for questions and answers. There's been quite a bit of information circulated in the publications from the convention committee about these four gentlemen. So I won't go into any lengthy introductions. Each one of them is a person about which it can truly be said he needs no introduction. Let's see, on the far left, a strange place for him is Bob Poole, who is the president of the Reason Foundation editor of Reason Magazine, a position that he's held since 1971. The author of a book called Cutting Back City Hall and the editor of a book called Instead of Regulation, which will be out this October. Sitting next to Bob is Roy Childs, who is the editor of Libertarian Review and has been connected with that magazine for 10 years. Next to him is Don Ernsberger, one of the co-founders of the Society for Individual Liberty, which has been in existence since 1969. And finally, on the far right, is Mr. David Nolan, one of the five persons who originally founded the Libertarian Party and who is presently the chairman of the Libertarian Party Advertising and Communications Committee. Gentlemen, we don't need to flip a coin. Shall we just start at one end or the other? David, why don't you go ahead and proceed? Do we have a live mic? Yes. Testing, testing, yes. We're all alive this morning, at least I hope we are. Incidentally, I would like to thank you very much, Mr. Berglund, for a very well thought out and well-delivered speech. You stole many of the points I was playing to cover. And I'm sure that some of my fellow panelists were particularly the need to constantly maintain the vision of our principles, because after all, without our principles, we are truly lost. We might as well go back to the underworld. If we're not going to stand firm for freedom in our time, if we're not willing to stand up and clearly enunciate what it is all about and the kind of world that we really seek, there's no real reason to be involved in this drill in the first place. There are a lot easier ways to spend one's time, what pleasanter ways than handing out petitions and stuffing envelopes and soliciting funds. We're not doing these things because they're an end in and of themselves. When a group of us met here in Colorado 10 years ago and decided to try to form a new party, we didn't do it because we thought the idea of politics in and of itself was so much fun that we couldn't resist it. Quite the contrary, in fact, most of us were rather disillusioned with and disgusted by the political process as much things go from bad to worse under succeeding presidents, both Republican and Democratic. The idea behind the Libertarian Party was to create a new instrument for social change. I hope as the discussion goes on this morning, you'll bear that phrase in mind, an instrument for social change. The Libertarian Party is not an end in itself, it is the means to an end, and the end, of course, is liberty, freedom in our time. Now, of course, there's many different kinds of instruments for social change. Some of them we would approve of and some of them we wouldn't. A book, such as Atlas Shrugged, or for that matter, Uncle Tom's Cabin or Das Kapital can be an instrument for social change. A political party can be an instrument for social change. A 357 Magnum can be an instrument for social change. I'm not advocating that that's the appropriate one for the kind of change that we seek, but I think we always have to bear in mind the difference between goals and instruments. The Libertarian Party has come a long, long way in those 10 years, thanks to the efforts. Heroic, in some cases, and just the willingness to do the dogged work, the grinding day-to-day work that isn't very glamorous, isn't very much fun, and never gets you a hero badge, but has to be done. It's the result of efforts by thousands and thousands of people, including, I'm sure, everyone or damn near everyone who is in this room. So after 10 years, we've come, I believe, to somewhat of a crossroads point, as Mary Louise Hansen said earlier, perhaps it is time to begin again. In a very real sense, we are here to reinvent the Libertarian Party. In our first 10 years, we've grown, we've developed our skills, we've developed our organization, we have learned how to apply our ideas to the real world in terms of articulating our stands on issues and relating them to the fundamental principles, but we've reached kind of a crossroads where we're at a point where we have to decide what kind of a party we want to be. Just as there are different kinds of instruments for social change, even within the framework called political parties, there are different types. And as some of you have may have read in the article that I had in Frontline's magazine about three weeks ago, the identity crisis we face as I see it is one of whether we are radical party, which is to say a party that in its strategies and in its policies and in its pronouncements strikes to the root of the fundamental issues confronting our society, or are we a reform party which accepts the given framework in this country as essentially legitimate and says, let's fix it up and make it better, but we don't question the fundamental legitimacy of the whole power structure that we now have. Those are two fundamentally different kinds of parties and you can't be both at once. And in making the decision as to what kind of a party we want to be, we of necessity must choose our issues, our strategies, our resource allocations. Let's speak just for a moment about issues. The kinds of issues you address and the manner in which you address them is very strongly influenced by the type of party you want this party to be. And I think very few libertarians would disagree that particularly at this time when we have a newly resurgent militarism in this country and an unstable world situation, as Murray Rothbard spoke last night where the Soviet empire is collapsing from within, in a very unstable time and the overriding issue of this era is the issue of war versus peace. And we are the only peace party. The question becomes how do we most effectively take that stance? How do we do it in a way that can't be co-opted? How do we do it in a way that does not lead us into the cul-de-sac of being dismissed as sectarian left wing or right wing cranks? I will submit, just as an example, that issue as an example illustrates that we can either deal with the underlying causes or we can simply propose changes, tinkering in what exists or we can address the underlying causes. And I would suggest, incidentally, that all of you, if you possibly can spare the time and can get away from the floor, Saturday, go to the panel on gold, paper, and war. The relationship between the monetary system and foreign policy is a critical linkage that is not being made in the public arena and we are in a unique position to make it. We are the hard money party, we are the peace party. Those two issues go hand in hand and if we link them, neither the liberals nor the conservatives can co-opt the position. The left can't take away the anti-war position if we clearly identify it with sound currency. Wars are almost always financed through inflation, through issue of fiat money. This is the kind of issue we have to address and the level on which we have to address it, in my opinion, if we're going to be a truly effective party at achieving radical awareness in the proper sense of the word radical, as I used it earlier. The other great issue that we have to deal with in the context of deciding what type of a party we wish to be is the broad question of strategy. How do we allocate our resources? What tactics do we follow? Do we concentrate on races where we can have a good chance of winning or at least having a significant impact on the election? Or do we run 2,000 candidates who are essentially missionaries? They aren't really going to win or necessarily even sway the election, but they're gonna interject ideas. Those are both valid strategies, but we have to decide which we're going to do because with our resources, we can't run lots and lots and lots of candidates and at the same time have enough resources to win a significant number of races. Another point under strategy is, as our esteemed chairman has so accurately pointed out, we have to rid ourselves for once and for all of the delusion that by aping the rituals of the major parties, we can become treated as a major party. There are people who believe, I'm sure quite sincerely, that the things which will determine how much continuing national press coverage we get depends on things like which city we hold our convention in and where, what time of year we hold it. That is rubbish. We are going to be treated as a major party or an incipient major party when we have shown that that is in fact the case. There are 7,500 state legislators in this country. When 75 of them are libertarians, maybe, maybe somebody will take seriously our claim that we are about to become a major party. When 20 or 30 or 40 congressmen and mayors and governors out of all those 435 congressmen and the mayors and the governors, when five or 10% of them are libertarians elected in partisan races as a capital L libertarian, then we will begin to be treated as a major party. We have to do it from the ground up. We have to show the world that freedom works. We have to get elected. We have to start with things like mayors of medium-sized cities. And then we have to get re-elected by overwhelming margins because the people there after two years or four years of a libertarian administration of being set free say, hot damn, that is the kind of world I want to live in. And our mayor gets re-elected by a 75% margin. Then we're on the road to being taken seriously. I think most of us when we were small children in school used to go through that little drill in the first or second grade called show and tell. And you'd bring in a Robin's egg or whatever it is you brought in and you would show it and you would tell it. Libertarians are real good at telling. Real good at telling. So far, we haven't been nearly as good at showing. Partly because we haven't been in a position in terms of public office to be able to do so. But we haven't necessarily even done a real good job of showing the world that freedom works in terms of our own internal dynamics. If we want to be accepted as the wave of the future as the model by which society should restructure itself we have to show the world that it would be better off with that kind of society. If freedom is to spread throughout the world we have to free America first. The rest of the world will then follow our example. That concludes my opening remarks, thank you. I would like to spend some time this morning in my first 10 minutes dealing with what I think is a very serious need for thought concerning long run strategy regarding political process. I want to start by emphasizing that much of the literature that we see dealing with questions of strategy and tactics fails to really talk about ultimate long range strategy and what it is that we are really all about as a political party. For example, I want to emphasize later that there's a very important principle in the relationship between tactics and strategy and that is that once you determine strategic questions then the tactics fall into place in terms of what particular tactical choices ought to follow, strategic choices. And I think an awful lot of the time the debate that goes on within this party over tactical questions is unresolved because people fail to see that strategic long range issues automatically lead one to choose tactical answers. Now what I thought I would do is talk about the two long range strategic views that I think are before us in terms of what the long run strategy of the libertarian party is. I want to give for your consideration essentially two long range political options, strategic options. The first option is what I think is the most popular option and my own view is that it's probably the one shared by most people here. And that is what's essentially known as a political takeover strategy. I think it's fair to say that most people in this room look as far as a long range scenario at a situation that's essentially this. Eventually libertarian parties going to start electing a few members of the Congress, a few members of state legislatures. That number will grow. Eventually most people here I would think look forward to seeing a sizable segment of the US Congress libertarian, a sizable segment of state legislatures libertarian. And then most people here probably see the day down the long road that eventually we have a libertarian Congress, a Congress made up of members of the libertarian party. And then even further down the road, many of the people, I think most people here see a libertarian president taking office on the White House. Now that takeover strategy is one that I think is the popular view at present. And I want to suggest that there's an alternative strategy, which I'm calling for the one of a better word, a co-optation strategy that I'll deal with a little bit later, which avoids some of the real severe pitfalls of an attempt to in fact take political power. Because the takeover strategy is in fact an attempt to take over the Congress, take over the White House, and then to repeal the laws of the presses. Now let's look a little bit at the political takeover strategy because it really has several levels of activity. Only one really which the libertarian party has at this point seriously been involved. The first level of the takeover strategy is the campaign level. And this level comes quite easy to libertarians because libertarians by and large like to talk to people. They like to speak about their ideas. They like to talk about where they stand on every issue that comes down the road. This is the level of literature distribution, of giving speeches, of debating, of taking on the local politician, and talking about our ideas. Very few problems exist at this level. The second level however is the level which you enter in the takeover strategy which deals with actually putting people into elected office. The difference between having a good time debating and handing out literature and talking about your ideas and seriously shooting for enough votes to put the person in office. And here we start running into some innate problems between the libertarian way of life, the libertarian political view, and what government is all about in America. Because as soon as you have enough chance of winning, as soon as you think that every single tactical choice that you make could be the difference between election and defeat. Here is where the temptations come in that have created the controversies in the tactical area that we have here. For example, as soon as you feel that perhaps a little bit less hardcore advertisement might give you that margin to take office, the temptation then comes along to water down the ad, or to water down your presentation of principles. Now a little further down the road is even a tougher problem with the takeover strategy and that is the problem of in fact actually working within the government. Let's suppose, for example, we have 10% of the US Congress, our libertarian party members and dedicated libertarians. The realities of politics are such that in order for any move to be made in the direction of freedom, these elected officials are going to have to make choices on a day-to-day basis of voting for slight trims here, of being approached to make deals such as I'll vote for your libertarian bill if you'll vote against something that's a little bit too radical for the consensus of the Congress. And elected officials have to then deal with the question of, am I going to be an effective legislator? Am I going to move toward a free society? Or am I going to stick to my guns and stick to my principles? Now I would hold that these three levels of the takeover strategy are, the first level I don't think is a serious problem because we all enjoy that level of activity. The second and third levels, the level of actually trying to get elected and the level of actually working in the government are the very serious moral problems that are coming down the road if we take a takeover strategy. Now, the other strategy that I want to suggest as an option is the co-optation strategy. The strategy that the function of the libertarian party in the political world is to develop a constituency which we want to be stolen from us. That is to say that the strategy says that what we want it to do is to develop a constituency in America that becomes large enough that the other political parties see that for them to survive, they must appeal to those constituents and steal those voters from us. Now, the first impression some of you may have is, well, that's sort of defeatist. Why do you want to build up this constituency and then hope that the Republicans and Democrats come and steal them from you? Well, I would argue that by doing that, you avoid the very pitfalls of tactics which so vigorously are debated in every convention and will in the future within the party. Now, let me talk about specific reasons why tactics that follow from the co-optation strategy avoid some serious problems. For example, one problem of the takeover view is that the psychological type that tends to be attracted to a political movement which is seriously trying to take offices and seriously trying to work within the day-to-day dealing in government. Quite frankly, is the psychological type that really likes politics. They get a kick out of running up to people and saying, look, I've got a deal. You vote for this and I'll vote for that. And I would argue that if we adopt a takeover strategy, we're going to attract to our party the kind of psychological person who enjoys politics, truly enjoys the dealing, enjoys the glamour, the balloons and all the rest of politics. Now, quite frankly, I'm concerned even at this point about this psychological type problem because I've been extremely bothered in the last year by the growing amount of space in libertarian publications, the growing amount of time in libertarian discussion groups and the conventions that's spent on the quote, intrigue and enjoyable aspects of the political game. It truly bothers me that so much space is spent in leading libertarian publications on such things as the personal attacks going back and forth between personalities, the intrigue talking about who just lost this position and why that happened and who called who what and all the fancy names that are popping up for a lot of individuals leading and involved in the party. Quite frankly, I've got to the point myself where as publications come in, I almost consciously try to take the publications and tear them in half and read the good quality articles that are there about foreign policy issues, domestic issues and throw the rest away. Because quite frankly, I see too much of our time spent on that type of thing. I'll give you a quick example and move along. It really bothers me when I see two libertarians meet each other that haven't seen each other for a year in a convention. And the first thing they say is, did you see that great attack that someone had on somebody else in the latest issue of such and such a publication? Instead of talking about, let me tell you about what we've been doing to promote liberty in our area. And there's too much time spent on that. Let me stop with that, on that. For any time, let me talk about how tactics fit into strategy choices. Because I think that the thing that attracts me personally to the co-optation approach is that it tends to result in tactical choices that avoid the big problems. Now let me just deal with a couple of these choices. There's always been the debate between should we approach the electorate on based upon pure principle, spelling out moral arguments, spelling out principled arguments, or should we devise programmatic approaches where we talk about, well, this year we'll do this and then five years later we'll do something else and we'll kind of weed things out and trim things down. Now, if we adopt a takeover strategy, I would argue that the natural tendency of the party will be to start with principled view and to move toward the programmatic. Because as we see greater chances of takeover, we want to convince greater numbers of voters that we need that 5% or that 8% or that margin to take office. Now on the other hand, on the co-optation strategy, the tendency tends to be just the opposite. The party consciously makes a point of staying out in front of political consensus in America. That is to say that the tendency would be first to talk about practical implementation and programmatic approaches, but as soon as those approaches are stolen by the other parties, we then have a natural tendency to move out in front of those parties with the pure principle. So I would argue that the two choices in strategy, co-optation and takeover, lead us to exact opposite relationships in the terms of the tendency to go from pure principle to application. I would also argue that the same thing exists with regard to the question of our radicalism in general, not just in terms of programmatic. We tend to become more radical as we see society moving our way because you always want to keep out in front of the movement of society. This is the method that the Socialist Party used in the 1880s on. The Socialist Party, it's quite clear, I never adopted a takeover view in this country. They adopted a co-optation view which has resulted in the translation of most of their party platforms into the mainstream of both Republican and Democratic thought in our country today. Moving toward the radical is the natural tendency of a co-optation approach. Let me deal with another tactical area and then stop. There's a question about co-endorsements that was settled by this party quite a while ago but I would like to argue that in fact, the question of co-endorsements is another tactical issue which should be decided by picking a strategic approach first. For example, if we truly believe in the takeover approach, it is then quite foolish to go around and co-endorse Republicans and Democrats for office. And I asked a couple, two days ago, some people from Texas, what happens in Texas when Ron Paul runs for office? Are there active libertarian party candidates opposing him? Is there co-endorsement? Or is there kind of nothing said? And because this strikes to me as an issue that's coming down the road, if we take a takeover strategy, then clearly co-endorsement is foolish. On the other hand, if we take a co-optation strategy, it follows I would argue that from time to time there is a sound reason to co-endorse candidates as we see them stealing our constituents. And if they steal them legitimately in our view, then there's nothing wrong with co-endorsing a member of one of the other two political parties because that's a symbol that the co-optation is taking place and that's what we want to encourage. So let me quickly summarize my view. I would argue that many of the tactical issues that we're arguing about in this convention ought to first be decided by looking at long run strategic choices. And then after we choose some of those strategies, some of the tactical questions will fall in line. Personally, I'd throw out before you the option of co-optation as our long run view that it avoids the pitfall psychologically, tactically, and morally and principally. And I would argue that you consider it at least as another option to our long range view of building a free America. Thank you. I'm Roy Childs. I think that I could use up my 10 minutes entirely with a rebuttal to what has just gone on. Hopefully we'll get into that a little bit later on. I would like to say that throughout the course of the week, there are likely to be a number of conflicts, arguments, discussions, and fights. This is natural. This is part of human life. It's part of a political party or any other group that wants to institute change. However, I think it behooves us to remind each other why we are here and what we are all about and what it is that unifies us and what common enemy it is that unifies it. And that is the state, the government of the United States and the other governments on this planet, which has carved up the earth and made the earth into a slaughterhouse. They're slaughtering people all over the world in left-wing countries and right-wing countries. In this country, government grows day by day. Militarism is growing. The social agenda of the moral majority is going to be coming out of the closet. We have to fight for liberty by means of fighting the government programs which are going to be shoved down our throats by anyone left or right, liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat, and the foreseeable future. If you ask me what kind of political party I want to see us become, it is the first strategy, one which aims to achieve positions of political power in this country and dismantle the system of government domination of our lives as quickly as possible. In short, I want a political party to achieve liberty. And if you want a model as to how we can begin that process, I know of no state that we can look at better than Alaska, where the work where Dick Randolph and Ken Fanning and so many others have been doing there have made gigantic progress in bringing not only our ideals but our policies and our programs to the views of the people of Alaska. In fact, if we're going to become a political party to achieve liberty, every stage in the political and intellectual process is necessary. From the most abstract intellectual work of the sort done by Nozick and by Rothbard and by so many others, to petition drives, to campaigns, to writing and editing magazines of the sort that at least two of us up here do, every step in the political process and the intellectual battle for liberty is necessary. And there is no one in this room who cannot find a role to play in promoting liberty in this country today. I would like to point out the problems with coalitions and with the Norman Thomas Socialist Party approach to politics, the co-optation strategy. I'd plan on doing that anyway, but I might as well. It is true that many of the things in the Socialist Party platform have been adopted over the years by the Democrats and by the Republicans. However, I submitted to you that if Norman Thomas were alive today and saw the kind of society that the Democrats and Republicans had built by stealing a few of his programs and bastardizing them and implementing them to buy off parts of their potential constituency, he would turn over in his grave. And if we approach a co-optation strategy, the same thing will happen with us and Ludwig von Mises and Ayn Rand whenever she dies or Murray Rothbard or me or anyone in this room, we will all turn over in our graves because we will have given up. We will have given up the process of fighting for what we want to see in this country. And that's liberty. Libertarianism is unique. It's not just a program that goes farther in the direction of budget cuts in the domestic arena than Ronald Reagan or has a less interventionist foreign policy than George McGovern. It's a unique program which we cannot see in our respect for civil liberties, our focus on the issue of peace and non-intervention, our focus on the issue of laissez-faire of getting the government out of the whole process of structuring this economic system. It is a process and an approach to politics which is so unique that we cannot become tail gunners for lukewarm Reaganites or work with left-wing Democrats who happen to be peaceniks because if we work for Reaganites, we are going to get the more majority social legislation shoved down our throats and we are going to have militarization upon militarization until this economy becomes so heavily burdened with arms that there'll be nothing left to do except shoot them off or sink. As for those leftists and liberals, however many exist today who want to cut back on the military, we can go along with that and they talk about funding human needs. Well, I've got news for them. The real human need here is liberty for people to live their own lives as they see fit in America and elsewhere around the world. No doubt in becoming a political party which achieves liberty, which runs candidates and does the actual peeling of those laws, of those regulations and the changing of those judicial decisions which have structured our society as it is so structured today, we will face pitfalls and problems. So what? Who cares? Problem solving is necessary to all of human life and there is no chicken little approach which is going to allow us to duck this, not a co-optation strategy nor anything else. It is true that we face a problem now and many of the arguments and discussions over the last few months have raged over the problem that we are having and having a transition from purely talking about abstract theoretical principles like the non-aggression axiom or the laissez-faire capitalism or voluntary society to proposing actual programs and policies to move toward that. Let's take up the issues in very brief. Social security, education tax credits, the gold standard, balanced budget, the whole issue of adequate versus strong defense and the subcontracting of government services. There are problems with each one of these and none of them are purely libertarian in the sense that we would like to make it. I thought the Clark proposal for Social Security was masterful and the work that Peter Ferrara has done for the Cato Institute is masterful. It takes too damn much time for one thing, to get rid of the social security system and move into a private retirement system. It is a good program to propose as a means of getting people to think about the destructiveness that Social Security is going to have not only as the baby boom starts to retire and the money runs out but the effect it is now having on capital investment in this country. Education tax credits are not purely libertarian either because what about those people who are single, who don't have any children, who don't particularly like schools or want to give a tax credit for someone else to go to a school, they are not allowed into this program to get money simply back that they're forced to pay for other people's education. Nonetheless, the education tax credit approach is, I think, a significant move toward doing something we have to do, which is junking the public school system and moving to a system of private, competing education systems in this country that take full advantage of not only the diversity and social and moral views that different groups have but in the technologies we have to educate children. It is a way of dismantling the public school system which is wrecking minds today and that's a very important thing to remember. The same thing could be said about any one of a number of things over which we've been quarreling. The gold standard, for example, is not a libertarian issue. Our approach ought to be that of Hayek, the denationalization of money, getting money supply out of the hands of the government. Nevertheless, I will concede that moving to a full, real gold standard would be a significant step in the direction of limiting the monetary manipulation and exploitation of the American people by the American government. It would be a significant step to take on the issue of balanced budgets some people who have griped about the Clark approach to social security or education tax credits have endorsed other things such as balanced budgets, gold standards, things like this. Now, we should endorse a balanced budget but we should want to balance it as low as we possibly can aiming for the optimum of the zero government budget. That's what we want. I won't say much about the conflict between those who want an adequate versus a strong defense because I don't even know what is being talked about here. I mean, there are so many differences among even educated, very well-read people in the issue of strategy, arms, and this sort of thing that the whole issue of national defense is a can of worms. Nonetheless, these are important things for us to discuss in terms of how we ought to move in addition to adopting a non-interventionist foreign policy, how we ought to move in the direction of our defense policy. What ought we to do? Should we junk the MX, the B-1, so on and so forth? These are important, these are important principle issues but they're done as part of a policy. Part of a policy to limit, restrain, and restrict government power whenever, however we can. I'll take a quick crack at Bob Pool and the whole issue of subcontracting government services to private enterprise. This is not a purely libertarian program either. It's a variant of feudalism. It's how long as you retain government monopolies over certain essential public services. So I'm saying that there are pitfalls in trying to make the transition from principles to policy and it's not one person on this panel or in this room who hasn't proposed something that somebody from a purest libertarian perspective couldn't pick holes in if they wanted to. Nonetheless, these are important decisions that we made and we can't be afraid of them. I'm going to make just a few more comments and hand over the microphone to Bob. We've seen an awful lot of fighting, awful lot of arguing and infighting and it's been particularly painful to me and I haven't liked to see it and I imagine many of you haven't either. I'm 32, I've been a libertarian since 1964 and I've been involved in libertarian movement since 67 when I worked with Bob LeFave. It's a long time, I feel like an old man. I've always seen these sorts of fights and they will continue. Partly this is because of what we might call the phenomenon of the new class in the libertarian party, a new class of intellectuals who will debate and argue endlessly and I am one of them. I am one of them. But I want to point out that because there are problems in making the transition from the principles to the policies we want to advocate and vote on, there is never going to be agreement on specific programs by intellectuals or people who study much in specific issues. There was a point at which I agree with Murray Rothbard on about 95% of his views. Apparently the gulf has widened somewhat over the last couple of years. I sometimes hope that someday I'll see a disagreement between Murray and Bill Evers. But for very large numbers of intellectuals coming from as diverse roots as we have, you're not going to get specific agreement on specific programs and making the transition from principles to policies and programs. So the important thing to keep in mind if we're going to be a political party that wants to achieve liberty is we've got to avoid something. We've got to avoid the rule or ruin approach by anyone to specific policies. And all you have to do in history if you want to look at how damaging and destructive this can be is look to the fragmentation of the left where there are 9,000 little socialist workers and labor parties and other things under the sun all over the place, each who's split off over some minor little thing and then never kept the overall picture in mind. I think that we have to accept the fact that different candidates running for different offices are going to propose different specific programs and policies that they see using their own best judgment as being the best way to illustrate and implement the principles that we all uphold together. We all uphold together and we've got to accept that diversity, those competing strategies and there's no way around that. Let me say in conclusion that I think the short term future is very bright indeed. And that's different from saying the long run future. I think that is too. I say this speaking incidentally as the editor of a magazine which is shortly to go out from under my feet. So my optimism I think is far less personal than it is political and strategic. We have in political power now the leading man of the conservative movement, Ronald Reagan, was attempting to implement his policies of minuscule budget cuts in the domestic arena, shuffling the budget around so these dumping trillions of dollars into so-called defense which means arms and spending more of the same on what Carter proposed and wants to wreck certain elements of civil liberties as much as he can because he can't get out of his generation gap with the rest of the American people. That and his necessary alliance with the moral majority. I think that if Ronald Reagan's foreign policy continues in the direction that it has been set upon and he spends his 1.4 or 1.6 or however many trillion dollars on defense, quote unquote defense over the next four years, you are going to see the wreckage of the Reagan economic program. I think with the baby boom with the younger generation being as pluralistic and diverse and having as different attitudes in the world as you can imagine on lifestyles that any attempt to reimpose some puritanical, Calvinistic, moralistic social attitude, the very idea that Jesse Helms is gonna wave a wand and encourage teenage chastity. I mean, ladies and gentlemen, I can't wait to watch that one. So his foreign policy and his civil liberties programs are going to wreck his minor, minor minuscule improvements in economics. We have to be there to present a coherent package deal of non-interventionist foreign policy, a full respect for civil liberties and abolition of victimized crime laws and we have to be there advocating not some neo-conservative, conservative social welfare state that is more efficiently run than it was under Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon. We have to be there with a real alternative and a real political party to achieve liberty in our time. Thank you. Being as I'm not running for anything, what I'm going to do is to give you some, what I call notes on strategy that I think are important points to keep in mind in coming to look at the very real task that's before us and that's to figure out what is to be the future of this party that we all have worked on building and that we all love. Just a preparatory remark and that is the following. You should be very, very cautious about anyone who tells you that he knows what sort of strategy will achieve a free society. The reason for that is very simple. It has never been done before and there's no blueprint. Nobody knows what will work very simply. So that all that I claim to be offering today are a few hypotheses and very tentative ones at that. I'd like to focus in for the most of my remarks on who I think our constituency should be as a political party. And let me start by saying I think we as libertarians specifically as the libertarian party have missed the boat on the biggest social change since the New Deal in this country and that is the revolt of the middle class leading to the support of Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party. Now, while libertarians have been to a considerable extent going after the anti-nuclear folks and the counterculture and or appealing to McGovern liberals, the real action has in fact been in the middle class in young professionals, people of the baby boom generation who are lawyers and stockbrokers, computer programmers and engineers, most of you yourselves here who voted in large numbers for Ronald Reagan and who are joining the Republican Party in record numbers. Let me give you a few points of evidence that indicates what this is all about and that it's not simply a support for the traditional Republican Party. First, business we commissioned a Harris poll in May on basically of the middle class. They asked the question, what poses the biggest threat to the country's well-being? Big business, big labor or big government? 53% said big government. This was up from 32% in 1969, a major deep change. They asked the question, do you think you get good value for the taxes you pay? We know, of course, but 75% of the people with regard to federal taxes said no, 75% of the people. Harris concluded, and also remarked, for the first time when the word revolt was used in the question about taxes, the middle class did not shy away from it. That proves they are really angry, end quote. What business we concluded, what the smart money misjudged is the strength with which the middle class has rallied around the president's program and they tied into this disaffection with government, with big government and with taxes. Now, time did a poll, a Yankelevich poll in May. They found that 62% of a nationwide sample agreed that government should stop regulating business and protecting the consumer. Put it in exactly those terms. That's pretty amazing, 62%. And 70% agreed that government has become far too involved in areas of their lives. 70% of the population, now these are our issues, folks. 64% agreed that there is more concern today being shown to welfare recipients who don't want to work than to the average hard-working person who's struggling to make a living. But, and then time pointed out, though, however, this is not conventional conservatism. Time said, quote, what seems to best characterize this, what they called new conservatism, of the public at large is a general distaste for governmental interferences rather than any conformity to the causes of the new right. Unquote. And they gave as examples, 68% in the same sample so that it should be up to the woman to decide about abortion. 70% are in favor of sex education in schools and of course we may differ on whether the government should be providing that. But the point is the social attitudes, as Roy just said, there's no way in hell that Jesse Helms' view is gonna get any sort of majority support in this country today. That's gone and dead. Now, other people too have awakened to the new political realities. Wall Street Journal reported on June 18th about the National Conference of Mayors, the US Conference of Mayors, said the US Conference of Mayors dominated by Democrats, rejected proposed policy language calling for restoration of administration cuts in aid to the cities and even approved a resolution that said, budget cuts are a, quote, necessary prerequisite to a healthy economy, unquote. And this is the Democratic mayors of big cities who are living off of the federal tip. New Republic senior editor Michael Kinsley has been lamenting up and down the land that the Democratic alternative in Congress to the Reagan budget and tax cuts has abandoned the traditional Democratic principles of egalitarianism and redistribution of income. So despite the fact that Murray Rothbard and Sheldon Richmond and Roy Childs and many other people talk about the Reagan budget fraud and how there's really nothing to this, to most of the people in this country and to most of the people who are, I think, are our natural constituency, the fact that spending on federal domestic programs will be $145 billion less over the next three years than it otherwise would have been is a significant thing. It's not trivial and it's very much consistent with their own views and desires. So I think it's a serious mistake for us to denounce the Reagan efforts as a fraud, particularly because of the extent to which the rhetoric of the Reagan campaign really represented the stealing of the ideas of the Clark campaign. Reagan said he was in favor of big cuts in taxes, so did Clark, they just differed on the size. Reagan said he was in favor of big cuts in government spending, so did Clark, they differed on the size. Both are in favor of education tax credits. Both said they wanted to abolish useless agencies and programs. Both want to deregulate. Both said get government off our backs. Now of course we know there are big differences on defense and on abortion, but to the issues that mattered, to many of the issues that mattered to a large number of people, especially to the middle class, they were saying what appeared to people to be the same sort of thing and just differing in degree. They even stole the Clark campaign slogan a new beginning for God's sake. I wasn't feeling it. Now like it or not, the Reagan aughts are succeeding at reaching our constituency. The middle class people under age 35. The Republicans' pollster, Richard Worthland, finds that the major gains in membership and party affiliation that the Republican party is getting are people with incomes between 15 and 40,000, people under 35, and people who are high school and college graduates. And an ABC, an NBC Associated Press poll in May found that for the first time in 30 years, more people say they're gonna vote for Republican congressional candidates than are gonna vote for Democrats or independents. And this is an ominous development, my friends. Now it gives us an interesting perspective to remember that just five years ago, Roger McBride wrote an article in Reason projecting that the natural course for the Libertarian Party to follow was to replace the Republican party as the second major party in this country. Now you look at the Reagan revolution as it's called and realize how far off the mark we were as little as five years ago about what was going on in this country. Now by 1980, the theme had turned around to be, okay, let's create a three-party system. Now I get to wonder whether maybe we should go back to the McBride idea except talk about displacing the Democratic Party. But you may ask, why do I think that the middle class is really our natural constituent? Why should we go after the middle class when the Reagan people seem to have them sewed up? Well, in fact, I think, ultimately, the GOP cannot deliver in a really meaningful long-term way on the kind of promises, the kind of rhetoric that Ronald Reagan is succeeding with. For the one thing, they have the basic contradiction of their big bucks foreign policy and defense policy that just cannot be reconciled with cutting back government and reducing taxes. They have too many commitments, too many institutional commitments to the corporate state. We've seen that already in the fact that the Export-Import Bank was expanded rather than abolished as David Stockman proposed. Foreign aid was increased rather than decreased. Tobacco subsidies and sugar subsidies are being increased or at least held constant instead of being cut and so forth. The Republican Party as a party has way too many ties to the corporate state to be able to deliver over the long term in a really significant way. Therefore, I think we need to be very much prepared to cash in on the disillusionment that's bound to set in of the middle class people who are now supporting Reagan. But I think if we've attacked the Reagan program, if we've given the appearance of attacking it per se, which I think is the impression that's come across from a lot of libertarian rhetoric recently, we will have disaffected ourselves from the middle class people who are going to be discouraged and disillusioned and ready for us if they see us as their friends. Now, we've already heard from both Don and Roy different views about what role the party should play. And as I see it, there really are three alternative possibilities. One is that we could attempt to become the second major party displacing one of the big ones. That is the most difficult of all, but it's a possibility. The second one is to try to become the major third party and to get people elected to office. But with the realization that destroying the two-party system is very difficult, we should be a third party that sort of holds a balance of power electorally and has our people in there making proposals that sometimes get support from one side, sometimes from the other side. The third alternative is to be the Norman Thomas type perennial third party and have our ideas co-opted as Don Ernsberger pointed out. And as he said too, which of these choices we make has very different implications for what type of a party to be and what kind of tactics to adopt. And we can't really adopt one or the other in a coherent way without making that sort of choice. One final point to keep in mind in deciding on that choice is the following. It's crucial that we remember that the libertarian party is not the same thing as the libertarian movement. The libertarian movement consists of a whole diversity of people, of think tanks, of activist organizations like SIL and SLL and SLS and others, of libertarian academics and universities, of people writing in journals, of people working in activist organizations like the Council for Perpetitive Economy and the National Taxpayers Union. Each of these can play different and valuable roles and the libertarian party doesn't have to do everything. It's one part of the fight for liberty and it should be coordinated with the other parts of the movement but it doesn't have to do the whole job itself nor should we expect it to, it just doesn't make sense. They all have vital roles to play and they can all work together whichever identity the libertarian party decides to adopt. I really don't have a recommendation on which we should adopt. I think we should just decide on one or another of these identities and then work out tactics and strategy that makes sense with that and with that I'll close and turn back to Mike. Thank you. It's the easiest job of moderating I've ever done. We had talked about a three minute shot for each to deal with the matters brought up by the others so why don't you just go ahead, David. I don't know, let's see, we have the Clark Lunch at 12, right? That should give us just about time for us to get down the row once and then that'll be about it. Go ahead. Thank you. If nothing else I will always remember this panel for the fact that Roy Childs revealed here for the first time that if Norman Thomas were alive today he'd be turning over in his grave. Roy has a real way with words. I just have a couple of quick notes here obviously in the time allotted we can't cover everything comprehensively we could keep it up forever. Regarding the subject of defense and foreign policy I will submit that there are observations which can be made, judgments which can be made we can't simply throw up our hands and say it's far too complex a subject for us to even begin to be able to formulate. I would urge you all to attend the dialogue tomorrow but Saturday between Ron Paul and Earl Ravanol moderated by that great moderate, Jeff Hummel. I seriously think it's going to be a very, very interesting exposition on what is perhaps the crucial issue of our time. All the things that have been said have validity from various perspectives and the only real comment I can make as a wrap up at this point I think comes back to an observation by Leonard Reed a number of years ago and he said that no politician can do better in office than he promises on the campaign trail almost without exception and I challenge anybody to think of any significant number of exceptions almost without exception they deliver less than they promise. Now we can say well libertarians aren't like that but nonetheless I think if we start to compromise what we're proposing before we're getting anywhere near the levers of power and there's certainly considerable strategic and moral question as to whether seizing the levers of power is really what we're all about but if we start backing off from our actual goals on the campaign trail by the time we actually get into office I will submit the end result will be very little different from what we have today. I see the situation that we are currently in and that any movement such as ours would be in as one of altitude versus latitude it's like a plane taking off down a runway. Our goal is to reach 100% freedom and in order to get the wherewithal to put those policies into effect especially if we're going to take the what Don has described as the takeover route we have to get to a plurality perhaps 40% of the vote. Well in 1980 we traded off an awful lot of a lot of latitude for not very much altitude we got 1% of the vote and I will submit that we sold off or hid at least 25 perhaps 35% of what we're really all about. I don't want to see us ever again put out a 60 page paper explaining how we would reduce the degree of graduation in the income tax. I never want to see that again. We are for abolition of taxes. The kinds of things that libertarians have been saying in the last year and I'm not faulting them personally are the kinds of things I would be delighted to hear a Jerry Brown proposing in Democratic primaries or a Phil Crane talking about in Republican primaries because that would be strong evidence that that process of radicalization of the electorate had occurred because when somebody who's out there trying to win a major party nomination says things like that it means that those are things that are now being seriously considered. We have to take the hardcore stand. I think Bob is entirely right that for most people on a lot of issues there was no perceived difference between Reagan and Clark. There was of course if you looked carefully and read all those proposals in depth there was a substantive difference but the perceived difference wasn't there and the fault for that perception lies with us. It was not Ronald Reagan's job to differentiate himself from Ed Clark. It was the libertarian party's job to differentiate itself from Ronald Reagan. Let's not be afraid to say what we really believe in. The argument if we can't tell them the truth or they won't vote for us, well we didn't tell them anywhere near the whole truth and 99% of them still didn't vote for us. Let's tell it like it is. Let's say that we don't want ever again to see Americans drafted and sent overseas to die. Let's never again say repeal of the 16th Amendment is too radical a proposal for us to consider at this time. Let's never again say we want to decriminalize soft drugs and say we are libertarians, we believe in liberty, we want the government off our backs and out of our pockets. Taxation is theft, conscription is slavery and war is the health of the state. I'll make a few reactions to comments made. To begin with I think Roy is quite accurate in pointing out that there are two levels of issues. There are pure libertarian issues and there are a whole variety of quasi-libertarian issues, the kind that he went through, social security reform and golden education. But I think that the important thing to understand about this is that over the long run when we look at a political party, it's an organic thing. It's something that changes, it's something that the mixture of principle and policy combination changes over time. I would argue that at this point in time we ought to be very concerned with appealing to these quasi-libertarian types of audiences. But as time goes on, our natural tendency ought to be to move to the radical, not to move to the programmatic. Our tendency should be to move more and more radical year and year as years go by. And the reason is that only by doing the temptations that I outlined earlier, as an organic process, I want to see the libertarian party not become like them, but rather have the other parties become like us. I've mentioned the various polls that have been taken that talk about the middle class and how they are potential libertarian constituents. I think that this is evidence of the fact that the libertarian party really is not yet visible to those constituents. And that rather than saying let's not attack a Reagan, I would argue that we have to attack and attack and attack Reagan, but use the rhetoric in our attacks of the very constituency that Bob talked about. I think we all agree up here that none of us have the answer to the strategy. My main point in bringing up the co-optation view is I think we ought to all consider that perhaps our real dream should not be everyone here sitting in the US Congress voting down legislation, but rather, as Dave started by saying, that really the libertarian party is an instrument for social change. That doesn't automatically mean that we sit in the seats in the state. Thank you. I have a couple of quick comments to make on what Bob Poole said, and I want to attack Dave Nolan. That's except, you know, this is a part of life, it's okay. There's nothing wrong with it. As for Bob's point about which of the three kinds of political parties that we should become, I think that it's clear that we have to aim for the top. If we don't make it, that we decided by other forces. You see, if we become a strong third party like the Italian Communist Party or something, that's not entirely within our control, but we should aim maybe not toward displacing them, but perhaps becoming one of three major parties which holds perhaps a third of the seats in House and Senate and so on and so forth. I don't think we should aim at becoming a Norman Thomas sort of party. That seems to me rather futile and rather nonsensical. I would say a couple of other things just to add to some of his excellent statistics and remarks, not only has Reagan out of touch with the social attitudes of the people, particularly younger people in this country, we've got to remember that in foreign policy, which is really our strong suit now, and he got into his first real trouble over his foreign policy and his defense budget, and it was over El Salvador, it was over the attempted increases in the defense budget and over the new weapons systems. This is where Reagan is gonna take it in the teeth and we should be there to kick. During the manufactured crisis in El Salvador, the White House mail, according to Inside Sources, was running 10 to one against the Reagan policies, the polls never got more supportive than Reagan than six to one against him, so much for that. Now, Dave Nolan, since you've taken a few side swipes of the car campaign, I will take a few side defenses of a car campaign. The taxes and spending white paper proposed specifically $200 billion cut in the first year and said it wanted to go on from there. As a transition to man, it doesn't seem to be anything wrong with it, it was itemized. Now, if we wanna talk about pure libertarian principle, let's can the crap about the gold standard, Dave, and talk about denationalization of money. I'm for denationalization. All right, then stop talking about a gold standard. What? And this is an area where I tend to get upset with Dave. Dave and I, on occasion, can get along. Yeah, we're on the same movement, we're working for the same things, we can fight and argue and disagree. One of the things that I remember most clearly in the early days of the car campaign, since we're talking about our job, differentiating ourselves from Ronald Reagan, was a certain voice of a certain founder of a party arguing that Ed Clark wasn't putting enough stress on a strong defense. Now, that seems to me, if you wanna differentiate yourself from Reagan, one of the things we should have harped on least during the car campaign, but was done so by David. Car campaign made mistakes. It was a trial and error process. We never tried anything like it before. Now, lots of people with swell heads, including me and Dave, including me, who thought some things could have been done better, who thought some of the TV ads could have been better, who thought this or that way of putting things could have been better. But let's take Ed Clark's campaign for what it was, a great success, he misspoke himself, but just look around the room and ask yourself a question. How many of you could be followed around with a goddamn microphone for eight to 12 to 16 hours a day and not occasionally say something out of exhaustion or confusion or just bewilderment that sounds silly or confused? I will simply conclude by saying that we can shout taxes or theft and wars, mass murder and all these other things, and I'm all in favor of it, and I can shout as well as anyone. But when we're getting into the hard decisions of really making some progress and proposing how to dismantle it, difficult decisions have to be made, different decisions have been made. Call for a balanced budget, a gold standard, this or that, which we may or may not agree with, but there's no reason to stab each other over the backs over it. And as far as the Clark campaign is concerned, I think there were mistakes, and I think it was a great, great, marvelous success, and we owe Ed an awful debt. Just a couple of quick observations. Sitting up here and hearing the different ideas being proposed, it is a little bit frustrating to know that I don't think we have any mechanism within the party at this point, really, for deciding on a strategy and then drawing the logical conclusions from it. We do our platform pretty much on an ad hoc basis. We run our campaigns pretty much on an ad hoc basis, and it seems to me we should really, between now and the nominating convention for the next presidential election, we should really give a lot of thought to how to develop an overall strategic framework and actually try to do it, and that means giving a focus to the 1984 campaign that is consistent with that and to state and local campaigns, and of having our platform for the next time around be consistent with that overall strategic view as well in terms of principles and specifics. Secondly, since I was attacked just briefly on the issue of private contract, let me just say a word or two about that. When I advocate contracting out various local services to private firms, I do that specifically as an interim transition step, just as many things are proposed as transition steps on the national level. I think it's very important that people learn by seeing private firms doing things that they've been told all their lives only government can do, that it's extremely educational and much more effective to see the yellow fire trucks out there with the incorporated after their name than to hear speeches by flaky libertarians saying, hey, you should do this, but not ever to see it in reality. And I'm the last, I am not one ever to defend grants of private franchise monopolies. Once we have made the step from government provision of a service to private contractor provision of a service, then you will notice me saying things like in the case of garbage collection where that's often been done, now the next step is to get out there. Why can't people have a choice? Why don't we have open competition in this field? Once people have learned that it's okay for private firms to be involved, then we go to full, I just think that's a more effective and efficient way to go based on my experience of seeing how the world works. I don't say it's the only way you can advocate, but I found it seems to come across better. Finally, one point about our image as libertarians, if in fact we are going to appeal to, as a dominant thing, not as our only constituency, but to a middle class educated constituency, I think it's important that our candidates come across in a certain way. And that is based partly on what I know about libertarians. We did a reason reader survey last year. We found that over 20% of our readers have home computers as of a year ago. 44% of them work with computers in one way or another in their jobs. We have a remarkable pool of talent and people. I think we underestimate ourselves a lot of the times. And what we, if we take advantage of this, take advantage of the intelligence and talent and capability, and focus on the idea of having our candidates be the super competent people, the people who have all the answers up, who have the analyses, the data, the facts and figures with their fingertips, we can have a part, we can have, we can be running thousands of David Stockman's all across the country who make other people look sick because they don't have the answers than we do. We have the talent and the means to do that even though we don't have the money. And I think that's one of our real comparative advantages that we should take advantage of. Thanks. Just a couple of wrap up comments and then I have a couple of announcements. Was almost a year or so ago, I believe at a national committee meeting when I raised the idea that we were sadly lacking as Bob Poole just commented, in some sort of institutionalized method of developing and defining a strategy for this organization. We have the Libertarian Party as the national organization, and you're here at its convention, but of course you have all of your state organizations and within some of the state's local organizations. At each level, we have to decide what's the best thing for us to do to try to achieve our common goal. I think partly as a result of me raising that issue at that time and encouraging everybody to start discussions and seeing a number of articles in different magazines and ultimately, with the convention organizers here setting up this panel, we may, at long last, be really getting down to the point of chewing on some very, very tough issues. And perhaps Roy put it best, we've got this ideologic, we've got this ideological party, we've got some great principles, but we're right now at a point where we realistically can start doing things and it's very tough to figure out exactly what kinds of things to do with the limited resources that we have because we could blow it or we could make glorious steps forward. I wanna thank these four gentlemen for the contribution that they have made to this strategy discussion. I hope you keep in mind what they have said and continue to discuss this because in all of the issues that are gonna come before the floor during the course of this convention, both in the Constitution, bylaws and rules report and the platform committee report, you should be thinking about what effect the changes that are being proposed will have on the ultimate strategy and success of our organization. I thank you very much for your attention and let me make these announcements before you give these gentlemen a hand. The Clark Awards Luncheon is immediately after this and a Region 9 caucus which is the states of Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri and Arkansas will be occurring at room 815 at 2 p.m. today and at 2 p.m. you're also due back here for the start of the business session so I don't know how you're gonna do that. In any event that concludes the announcements and one more. This is a repeat of the announcement I made this morning. The Credentials Committee will be meeting in one more session right up here directly after this session is dismissed. Anyone who has credentials problems, please come up here along with your state chair if possible or whoever else will help us solve the problem. Thank you. I wanna thank these four gentlemen, not only for the tremendous contribution they have made to this very convention but if you stop and think about it, these four people constitute close to 50 years of damned powerful libertarian activism. Thank you.