From: tallpaul@pipeline.com (tallpaul)
Date: Sat, 17 Feb 1996 14:09:49 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Libertarians and crypto and such
Message-ID: <199602170543.AAA21054@pipe11.nyc.pipeline.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


On Feb 16, 1996 12:34:42, 'Thomas Grant Edwards <tedwards@Glue.umd.edu>'
wrote on libertarians and the Libertarian Party. 
 
I am able to draw a distinction between people whose primary political
identification is with the Libertarian Party (LP) and "small el"
libertarians just as I am able to draw similar distinctions between people
in the Communist Party U.S.A. and "small c" communists or members of the
Socialist Party U.S.A. and "small s" socialists. 
 
While I have an enormous number of disagreements with the LP I have never
presented any critique on the list of the LP. I've spent many evenings with
LP members in bars or coffee shops arguing over politics. On more than one
occasion I've been at the same demos with LPers, generally over issues like
"reform" (i.e. total elimination) of the drug laws. 
 
On the basis of my personal observations in the 1980s and 90s I consider
LPers to be far more honest and well-informed than libertarians, just as I
consider old-style Randian Objectivists far more principled that today's
libertarian "Subjectivists." 
 
You are far more able than I to state with certaintude what the general
policies of the LP are. 
 
But the LP is not the total class of libertarians nor all of the individual
libertarians. 
 
While the LP or its majority may not call for the things I've critiqued,
certainly libertarians have. Nor, as far as I can recall, have LPers
repeatedly posted to the cypherpunk list material that is on-the-surface at
least significantly off-topic; libertarians have. And I responded. 
 
--tallpaul