President's Corner

Events, the LP, and Concentrated Activism – Part 1 of 2

I promised after the Porc Fest that I'd resume the series I started in June. I will, but I'm going to interrupt to share some insights brought on by the LP Convention the first week in July.

It's been an exciting couple of weeks. Two weekends ago was the 3rd annual Porcupine Freedom Festival. Last Corner I linked to my welcome speech. This week, I'm announcing my Festival Review which can be found here. It's a bit of a long read. Hopefully it's a little less boring than my usual ranting.

In other events news, last weekend was the Libertarian Party (LP) National Convention in Portland, Oregon. Attendance there was roughly comparable to the Porc Fest the previous weekend.

Several questions came to mind when comparing the two conventions and the two groups. Both groups want more freedom. but they have two different strategies for achieving it. The LP is a libertarian political party seeking freedom through a national strategy of electing libertarians in the political arena. The FSP is a movement of libertarian activists seeking freedom through concentrated activism, both political (not tied to any single party) and non-political, in a small geographic area. After attending both events, here are some questions I thought might be of interest:

1. Can LP achieve greater electoral success while retaining some semblance of of idealogical purity?

2. Why does New Hampshire-based FSP have an exponentially higher percentage of activists than the national LP organization?

3. Does concentrated activism actually work in the LP or the FSP?

4. Does either the FSP or the LP have a strategy to solve the concentrated activism problem? Is it working?

This week, I'll cover the first two of those questions.  Here are the answers I came up with:

1: Can LP achieve greater electoral success while retaining some semblance of idealogical purity?

The LP is going through a transition. There is, before the party, a fork in the road. One group in the party believes it should stick to its libertarian principles at the expense of popularity (and, likely, electoral success). Another group in the party thinks it should soften and/or better craft its message in pursuit of electoral success.

The LP, complete with ideological purity, has not yet achieved significant electoral success. Though it has elected thousands of people to office, it has elected far fewer to partisan office, only a handful to State offices (none at the moment), and none to Federal office.

I submit that electoral success, regardless of ideology, happens only through concentrated activism. The problem for the LP, then, comes back to not enough LP activists and too many of the rest of the world. The LP is (errr, has been) ideologically libertarian and is a political party, but it's not the only party with libertarians in it. At a minimum, there are Democrats, Republicans, and Constitution Party people who subscribe to libertarian principles. Even added all together, libertarians are a minority today. Electoral success today is driven by concentrated activism by more-big-government people in more-big-government parties.

If the LP's goal is to elect LP Members (should it be?), there are only two ways I can think of for it to succeed. It could concentrate its resources on geographic areas (districts, states, etc.), or it could dilute its message to attract more activists. The former has been done to an extent (this year the Badnarik campaign is a good example) and has demonstrated measurable results (higher election returns). Though none have yet been elected to federal offices, it's plausible that, given enough concentrated resources, one could eventually. Diluting the message, on the other hand, may increase the chances of electoral success, but may simultaneously reduce the chances of electing ideologically libertarian people to office.

2: Why does New Hampshire-based FSP have an exponentially higher percentage of activists than the national LP organization?

An immediate observation is that the FSP is about 250 times more focused than the LP is on a national level. Both groups just had their largest annual gatherings with roughly comparable attendance. The LP's gathering of ~400 was focused on the entire U.S. with a population of about 300 Million. Representation wasn't exactly even, but it was close enough (New Hampshire's delegation was two people, I believe). The Porcupine Freedom Festival, with roughly comparable attendance, drew people from all over the world, but their focus is on New Hampshire with a population of about 1.2 Million. That being the case, the concentration of pro-freedom activism is unquestionably greater in New Hampshire than elsewhere in the U.S.

There are several reasons for the success of the Free State Project at generating pro-freedom activist concentration hundreds of times higher than elsewhere in the nation. First, the concentration of pro-freedom activists in New Hampshire prior to the FSP was likely among the highest in the nation. Second, the FSP is not a partisan project. Participants are free to participate in the political arena or choose other forms of activism (social, educational, economic, civil disobedience, etc.). Within the political arena, libertarians are choosing to use all of the different political parties for the purpose of getting elected without compromising their own ideology. Third, because it is small, the effect of activists moving from out of state has been more noticeable than it would be in a larger state. Fourth, because of the synergy of recently moved activists and already existing activists, pro-freedom natives who were not active before are seeing a hope they thought was lost and are joining the fight for freedom.

In many respects, the LP's strategy is the opposite of the FSP's. The LP is diluted nationally, while the FSP is concentrated in New Hampshire. The LP divides libertarians on a partisan basis while the FSP unites political activists based on ideology, not party. The LP singles out politics as its only strategy, while the FSP allows for people with multiple competing strategies to work together towards the same ultimate goals. The LP's strategy has led to too-few pro-freedom activists working in too few areas (politics), with too few allies, in a nation of 300 Million. The FSP's strategy has led to many pro-freedom activists working in many areas, with many allies in a state of 1.2 Million.

Next Corner, I'll cover questions 3 and 4. Stay tuned!

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If you have any suggestions or ideas for this feature, please feel free to send them my way.   Email me at president@freestateproject.org for the best quality response.