Earlier today, I shared a post from the Libertarian Party's Facebook page –
Click the picture to see the original posting on Facebook.
One of the Libertarian Party's goals at this year's Students for Liberty conference was to help students tell the difference between real liberty groups and false fronts whose goal is to trick libertarians into voting for statist candidates.
It turned out that was completely unnecessary. They already knew as much as we did on the topic, if not more.
Some pointed out that when the National Rifle Association endorsed Mitt Romney, the NRA basically told every Republican governor in the country that they could pass "assault" weapons bans, and still count on an NRA endorsement if they ran for president.
Others pointed out that when the NRA called for more government, instead of ending "gun free school zones" which literally advertise a large group of disarmed victims, the NRA made itself irrelevant to the Liberty movement. Many had become supporters of the Gun Owners of America or another group out of disgust with NRA's support of statism.
As experts in marketing, the NRA had done the classic trade show trick of having attractive representatives hand out tote bags to every incoming person. The idea is, obviously, that then people put flyers, etc. in the bag, carry around the bag, and that tricks everyone at the conference into believing that the organization has a ton of support.
Unfortunately for the NRA, Libertarians, libertarians, minarchists, anarcho-capitalists, r3volutionaries, and voluntarists are not that easy to manipulate. In this picture, a student activist has stuffed his NRA tote bag into a Libertarian Party tote bag. Note that the LP didn't hand them out to every incoming person, only to people who requested them at our table.
Copyright © 2013 Libertarian Party of New Mexico and Mike Blessing. All rights reserved.
Produced by KCUF Media, a division of Extropy Enterprises.This blog entry created with Notepad++.
Produced by KCUF Media, a division of Extropy Enterprises.This blog entry created with Notepad++.
1 comment:
Yes . . . and no.
The president of the NRA did support getting rid of Gun Free Zones, and building on the work of John Lott, did a credible job of explaining why Gun Free Zones = Death Zones. That's the "no." Some Libertarians refuse to acknowledge when conservatives get it right.
The "yes"? It's that when Newtown happened and the NRA was pushed to the wall, some of its reps actually listened to Libertarians and libertarian-minded individuals. Some Libertarians have to be reminded that we stand on principle, so that we have an influence.
So, don't buy into the "wedge issues" and the false fronts, (like Occupy Wall Street adn teh NRA), and point out the errors. BUT acknowledge when individuals within those groups learn and take a principled stand.
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