We need to change course: Members
Posted in Stand Up For Liberty by R Lee Wrights on February 2nd, 2010 by George Phillies
Change is time-consuming. Change is demanding. Change is frightening.
Sometimes, change is necessary.
In a previous article I described LNC fund raising over the last decade and a half. From 2000 to date, LNC yearly fundraising has fallen by three quarters in real terms. This article turns to another challenge facing our national party: Membership.
The graph shows National Party membership for 1998-2009. (Click on image to enlarge.) The little gray diamonds are the actual number of members for dates on which I have numbers. Those numbers are counted monthly, so in some periods the diamonds overlaps.
Over the last decade, our National Party has lost more than half of its membership. We’re back to a membership count we last had in 1995.
We can extrapolate from those numbers to predict what our membership will be at some date in the future. That extrapolation won’t be perfectly accurate, because membership numbers jig and jag when viewed year after year. However, that extrapolation will show us where we will end up if we do not change course.
Where are we going? That’s the red line. I’ve extended the red line out into the future, so you can see where we will go if we keep on the way we’ve been going. Sometime around 2015 or 2016, National Party membership will nearly vanish.
We face an existential crisis!
If we do not change our course, by the middle of the decade the National Party will become inoperative. There will be life members left on the books, but that’s it.
If we don’t want to end up where we are going, we have to stop going there.
We need new policies, new leadership and new approaches, or there will be no libertarian future.
We need to choose the directions in which we want to move.
We need to choose the right people to help us move in those directions.
Real change is what our party needs. Real change is why fine Libertarians from around the country, people not now on the National Committee, are running for our National Committee this year. Real change is why a few brave current LNC members, people not part of its governing majority, are running for re-election.
George Phillies is a contributing editor for Liberty For All. You can contact Dr. Phillies at phillies@wpi.edu.
Julie Anne Burton said,
February 2, 2010 @ 5:36 pm
I’m registered Libertarian, and held county-level office many years in the past, but never joined the national party. Why not? Because the national office never seemed to have its shit together. There was a constant struggle between the pure idealists and those who recognized that we couldn’t overhaul the system into our idealistic paradise just by being elected to office. And, alas, I’ve seen no sign that has changed. Frankly, that’s just not worth my time and effort. I’ll bet I’m not the only one who sees no point in joining a party that can’t make up its mind what it believes in or how to proceed.
I came to our party from the GOP, where I was a paid strategist and analyst. Not a single Libertarian candidate has ever taken my (free!)offered help, thinking that the citizenry would rise up and support them without a significant PR and general campaign effort on their part. Our general philosophical nature makes us disinclined to take action.
I don’t have a solution for you. As long as there’s such a wide rift in worldviews within the party, you won’t be able to join together into a cohesive unit. And without that, you can’t grow a national party.
Famularo's Ghost said,
February 3, 2010 @ 6:49 am
It is not clear to me that there were 32,000 or more LP party members in 2000. Many of those were puffery created to generate bonus payments to staff. Others were evidently subscribers to the national newsletter and not devotees of the party.
To say that the LP is back to the member numbers of 1995 is not necessarily a bad thing. Back to where things stood before the corruption of two Browne campaigns. Back to where things stood before the introduction of neo-conservative GOP politics with Barr in 2006-2008. If the party is more focused on individual liberty and less focused on corruption and neo-con madness, then going back to the 1995 numbers is a price worth paying.
Sadly I don’t think the decline in member numbers represents what you think. The LP national continues to be irrelevant because for nearly 40 years the party has utterly failed to hold back the tide of bigger government. In 1971 the national budget was about $200 billion. Today it is $3.8 trillion. That is a 19 times increase. That continues to stand as an indictment of the party.
It isn’t like there has been dramatic success in any state. If Alaska, say, or Wyoming had a lot of LP politicians elected to office, we could point to it and say, “We can build on that success.” There has been no success in 40 years, more than two full generations.
If you really want a national party you really have to organize in every county you can reach. The county governments register the voters, hold the elections, count the votes, assess property, collect taxes, enforce the laws through the sheriff and have him evict tax protesters. The LP should have members in over a thousand counties, but it does not. It continues to focus on the big population cities and ignores the rural districts. At that, a thousand counties is less than a third of the county/parish/township political districts where all the power is. And rural voters tend to turn out about 75% for voter registration and about the same for voter turnout.
Nobody has laid the ground work. Nobody has contacted those arrested for non-violent crimes (except lawyers and bail bondsmen, who seem to have no trouble getting these lists). Nobody has done the publicity or marketing work.
Freedom is sexy. It ought to be easy to sell.
MamaLiberty said,
February 3, 2010 @ 1:20 pm
So, Julie, we must all walk in lock step and never express any unique worldview? Sorry, but that sounds like the USSR to me.
And George, as long as your primary goal is the growth and survival of the NLC, you have nothing to offer that is any different than any other political party.
The ONLY people who will ever be free are those who accept and LIVE individual sovereignty - personal ownership and responsibility. We are actually free NOW, and we don’t need to vote on it.
When that is the only message of the LNC, perhaps free people will be attracted. Or not… free people don’t need a political party, just voluntary cooperation among themselves.
I’m a FORMER “libertarian” and a (long) past county central committee chair. I tried it your way for a long time. My way is working much better, for me. I have no obligation to save the country or the world. And neither does anyone else.
Terry Hulsey said,
February 3, 2010 @ 2:09 pm
Well, I do have a solution for you. If you have a better one after reading the following, I’d like to know what it is.
http://www.chineseimperium.com/reason/LPwillToPower.htm
George Phillies: ‘We need to change course: Members’ | Independent Political Report said,
February 5, 2010 @ 12:48 pm
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