Four Days in May, Part 1  (LP Convention 2004:  Part 1  Part 2 )
an insider's look at the Party of Principle, from Atlanta
Logan Brandt

Libertarian.  A word bandied about favorably by many commentators and celebrities these days: Bill Maher, Arianna Huffington, Kurt Russell, Clint Eastwood, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Melanie (remember Melanie?) to name a few.  Usually to the approval or sympathy of their audiences.  What do they mean by the word?  How deep an understanding do they have?

Answers: "kinda sorta leave people alone," and "not yet very deep, I'm afraid," respectively.

But we are off to a good start with many signs of hope.  I say "we" referring to those of us who have been here from the beginning.  Libertarian is not so much an adjective for us but a noun.  The proper noun being the Libertarian Party (LP), the political confluence of three forces from the 50s and 60s: the rational individualism of Ayn Rand, the '64 Goldwater "happening," and Rothbardian—Murray Rothbard, magnum opus: Man, Economy, and State—classical anarcho-liberalism.

When we say libertarian, it means something.  Something Deep.  It is an ideologically complete and consistent worldview painstakingly assembled from a solitary principle represented variously: the inviolate supremacy of individual rights (Rand), freedom from collectivist government (Goldwater), or the nonaggression principle (Rothbard).  Though simple, it helps if you read a lot.

A libertarian society bans the initiation of force from human relationships.

Why is it such a simple, obvious truth cannot or will not be apprehended and embraced en masse?  Because people have been blinded by state power.  I see it as a case of The Emperor's New Clothes, the Hans Christian Andersen fable in which the king parades in public without clothing, having been advised by his court sycophants his garments are so fine only the most discerning eyes can see them.  Whence, a small child exclaims, "the emperor is naked!"

The True Libertarians, these are my people, are the small child in the crowd who see the obvious truth and are not intimidated by social conformity.  The emperor is naked.  (The state is evil.)  Your eyes do not deceive you.  Like Neo in The Matrix, my people realize something is fundamentally wrong with the system and it's time to free our minds and achieve the society appropriate to humankind.  At this we shall succeed… it simply may take a few more years than originally conceived.

The idea behind this preamble is to address a more general audience from the readership of Liberty—in case the article sees publication in, say, Playboy, Vanity Fair, or Mother Earth News.  The fact such media seldom cover or plumb the nature of the True Libertarian is pertinent to the events unfolding this Memorial Day weekend, 2004, in Atlanta.  The LP is nominating its presidential candidate, and I've decided to go there and make sure they pick the right guy—someone the media won't ignore.

Yesterday, I had breakfast with Mom, and she says, "Why do you advocate such extreme things—you know, legalizing drugs, eliminating taxes, ending the government schools (of course, she uses the euphemism public schools), creating a free market in transportation, opposing mandatory government service, etc.?  You scare people."

"Mom," I respond, "Do you think the institution of slavery could have ever been reformed?!  The only way to end an evil is to end it.  I advocate a free society.  Government coercion, like slavery, is morally wrong.  It needs to go away.  Simple as that."  I also suggest my days of "libertarian macho flash" are long gone, and everything I want now I call for publicly in mild tones.

She mutters something about Hillary Clinton and the virtues of national health care; Geez, I'm never going to get through to her.  Speaking of The Matrix, Mom is well past the point of being unplugged.  You probably know relatives and friends like her.  Wonderful people: loving, caring, hardworking, honest.  And she's my mother, for chrissake!  But… dammit, where's the brain that stands on its own two feet and keeps a judicious distance from the pod people?

Today, on to the convention, bearing in mind my people and I have been living for decades now as Mom sees me: radical, monolithic, obsessively cause-oriented oddballs, lovable but outside the warm center of life.  As my enthusiastic Audi A4—can't resist driving from Detroit to Atlanta rather than flying the frenzied skies—negotiates the opening channels of the 715-mile journey down Interstate 75, I'm thinking, "not outside by choice, Mama.  Never outside by choice."

Crank up Steve Winwood "Back in the High Life" on the Bose.

Ah, freedom of the open road… even with the construction and slow moving vehicles!  Where else in the universe can an ordinary man of ordinary means enter a magnificent vehicle and independently drive several hundred miles without having to answer any stupid questions.  No TSA guards, no tickets, no boarding passes, no screaming children, no drug-sniffing dogs, no Wayne County deputy dicks hassling little ol' ladies for double parking while packing Border Patrol .357 Magnums and issuing $150 tickets.

This is why I always felt comfortable riding with the ABATE (American Brotherhood Against Totalitarian Enactments) Harley crowd, once in Michigan running for secretary of state and extolling the assembled brethren from the capitol steps to burn their helmets and defy un-Constitutional laws in general.  They thought I was "the man!"  I sure got the 25 biker votes that year!  My point is the open road provides such a visceral essence of freedom.

… and hopefully close to the essence of all these fine people I'm gathering with this weekend.  I hand the reins to my iron steed over to the parking attendant at the Marriott Marquis, Atlanta.  We have arrived, me and my digital camera and digital audio recorder.  My comrade from the Libertarian Party of Michigan (LPM) founding days (late 1971) and two-wheeling journeys in the 80s, Bill Bradford of Liberty, has agreed that "… if I write it, he will publish it."

My views and motivation are not impartially journalistic, as Mr. Bradford's must be—ref. his story in this issue—because I have an axe to grind.  I am on a mission.

As an old-guard freedom-fighter with impeccable party credentials—LPM chairman three times, newsletter editor three times, petitioner (in the winter of 1983, I gathered 5,842 volunteer LPM ballot-access signatures!), candidate for Congress, etc., attender in good standing of all presidential nominating conventions since 1979—I know Aaron Russo must be chosen as our candidate.  Why?  "He has the technology."

This is Thursday arrival night, yet many of the delegates and attendees will not arrive until tomorrow or even Saturday.  National Chairman Geoffrey Neale's bright and beautiful wife, Nancy, stepped up to the plate to org the convention this year.  She and her volunteers have performed what will prove to be a brilliant job.  The only general agenda item tonight is the Welcome Reception, which I've missed along with early registration.

10:30 p.m.  Whacked out from the 14-hour grind through Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee, I get checked in and battened down in the room, then proceed to the hotel saloon.  Sports bar format, named Champions, and the only microbrew available is something in a bottle called Old Street Ale (or is it Old Shoe?), which at least is fresh.

Looking for longtime LP-of-Michigan friend Keith Edwards, it's been a tradition for the previous decade or so to meet in the hotel bar for a martini and to discuss plans.  As veterans who became particularly active during the Ed Clark campaign, we usually agree on platform and candidates.  Alas, no Keith.  But at my second Old Street, someone else from the old days walks up, Greg Clark.

Greg is so seasoned—actually, I think he's a year or two younger than I am—he was with our group of libertarian-Objectivist Wayne State University students when we attempted to radicalize the Michigan Young Republicans back in 1970.  Great times.  I'm charged up as if on uppers, feeling some of the same excitement I felt 25 years ago at the Peak Experience for any party regular: the 1979 Libertarian Party convention in Los Angeles.

What a magnificent, magical event that was!  Every LP function I've been to since pales in comparison (though I keep my hopes high).  Delegate count was 1,000 people, easily another 500 milling around constantly, several dozen literature and vendor booths, glitz, glamour, TV cameras, celebrities like Nathaniel Branden—don't think Star Child was yet born—and popular authors like Robert Ringer (Restoring the American Dream).

The Ed Clark campaign was a professionally managed (headed by current Cato Institute president, Ed Crane), highly funded, moderately TV-focused campaign.  Ed had to gain the nomination from Bill Hunscher, a tall Abraham Lincoln lookalike from New England.  Hunscher had no money or organization to speak of, and everyone knew Hunscher would be the typical safe, eccentric LP candidate the media blissfully squashes and ignores.

It ultimately became clear Ed Clark would lead the party against Reagan and Carter (and pseudoindependent John Anderson, the bastard)—we also had leftist Barry Commoner to deal with—in 1980.  I recall Branden, during his featured guest speech at the convention, observing that Libertarians are no different from others in the face of the need to grow.  It feels safe to stay where you are, a bigger fish in a smaller pond.

"A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are made for."

Awaking on Friday, and assembling my own personal media center, I encounter the proverbial pebble in the shoe, which proves to be a missing three-foot length figure-eight charging cord for my laptop PC.  Without it I don't write very long—and I'm working on a story for the Reason to Freedom website that's due Monday.  Fortunately, hotel help, encouraged by a $20, runs to a downtown computer store for the missing $9 link.

Registration and credentials proceed smoothly.  My pal Emily Salvette, LP super-volunteer extraordinaire, hall of famer for sure, is the head ramrod of this operation.  Jim Burns approaches me as a Prez candidate who needs to get 50 signatures to appear with the others; I sign his petition and read his spiel: "Work the middle, tailor your message to members of the party of the candidate you want to lose, and become the margin of defeat.  Then they'll pay attention."

Makes sense.  But why become a candidate yourself to prosecute that message?  Look at how proportional voting arrived in the LP by virtue of the determined obsession of Tom Jones (of Michigan).  If such a communications train-wreck as Jones could effect a reasonable change in party procedure, how much easier for Burns, seemingly a kindly, knowledgeable, articulate gentleman, to convince legitimate candidates to effect his strategem.

I'm especially fond of a line from Burn's brochure,

"Repeated failure is nature's way of telling you to quit."

So who are the legitimate candidates this year?

Badnarik has no campaign organization to speak of; Nolan's is the customary hardworking group of nonprofessional LP friends and volunteers; Russo's is funded mostly by himself personally at the moment, and best-organized for publicity and promotion—Russo does not intend to begin significant fundraising and organizing until receiving the nomination.  If I had to give them each a personality color: Nolan, green; Badnarik, brown; Russo, orange.

Getting ahead of myself, Friday is a business day in which the activity on the convention floor is bylaws and credentials.  The quintessence of boredom, so I'm not going in.  Instead I hang out in the convention literature and liberty-organization display booths—if you only go to an LP convention for the books and T-shirts, listen to the speakers, and rap with all the wonderful cause-oriented people, you'll be richly rewarded.  Truthfully, it's information overload.  Even for an experienced sponge like me.

After more than a decade, I ecstatically (well, very happily) run into longtime friends and activists Paul Jacob and his sister Kathleen (Hiserodt-Jacob-Richman).  Paul is president of Citizens in Charge, an organization that promotes using the Progressive era-derived citizen tools of initiative, referendum, and recall to affect state politics at a libertarian grassroots level.  Kathy's the director of Laissez Faire Books, having moved it to Little Rock to enhance its solvency situation.  Totally committed gonzo-smart, freedom-fighting Zen warriors, the best.

Bob Murphy of Oklahoma joined me for a smoke outside.  Like me, he has the Old Timer ribbon on his delegate badge.  I'm sure we've spoken before over the past quarter century at conventions, he looks familiar.  Good ol' boy—I went to high school in Oklahoma City—and we discussed why voting for Aaron Russo was the right thing to do.

Continued in Part 2

Read:  Part 1  Part 2