I don't know how many people are in their circle-jerk but all I receive are emails about why the next meeting can't be at this or that restaurant because of location-price-noise-smoking policy etc. and whether they should have a table at a gun show next month. The occasional letter to the editor, but not much else. It's a Yahoo! email address that I don't even look at every day, so even though it wasn't what I was hoping for, like some rational debate or comment, I didn't bother to unsubscribe.
I've now unsubscribed. The final straw was the unbelievable rudeness shown to the one outside-the-club individual to open his mouth.
Several emails had been sent over the weekend about a press release the party had been crafting for several weeks opposing a new bill to use some public land/funding to build the local minor league baseball team a new downtown stadium (they're going bankrupt in a little town just over the border in South Carolina and could probably make a go of it if they moved closer to town. The city is turning the land under debate into a giant public park anyway, so the team and its supporters have launched a final effort to do a stadium deal). The text of the press release was a little amateurish and contained a typo or two and some obviously fake quotes, attributed to quasi-fictional people. They were simply first name only versions of other people on the list who are active in the group. They fall under the heading of "fake, but accurate" and none of the people "quoted" objected, at least not strongly (although there was much serious discussion of whether this issue should be discussed at the next meeting - discuss amongst yourselves, indeed). Today a response comes from a guy who had "only been subscribing for a short time" who pointed out that maybe fake quotes weren't such a good idea and that frankly, their overall level of debate was "unimpressive." Wow, talk about throwing a sack of cats in the bathtub. Here is a represntative response.
Who is this Idiot and why is on our list? Is he a supporter of our principles or
not? And which qoutes does he claim are made up?Lastly, our goal of this list is
not to impress you.
I think it's time I backed away slowly.
For the record, I'm opposed to the baseball stadium deal, as I was to the two basketball arena deals, one of which passed.
1 comment:
The libertarians tend to attract a type (the way the Dems attract trustifarians and the GOP attracts Trent Lott) that might be called the dogmatics. They've memorized Roberts' Rules, they all disagree with Ayn Rand in the same 13 ways, and not a one of them is willing to think critically or question his own assumptions.
I've never trusted anyone who has no disagreements with his party. Republicans who buy the whole GOP schtick, Dems who think whatever comes out of Nancy Pelosi's mouth today is gospel and Bush is always always always wrong: these are silly, silly people who should be left alone, as Flyer notes.
The libertarian version of this nutcake is the type who hisses "Splitter!" at the guy who says that maybe a small gov't type could support the Iraq war, put up with the interstate highway system, or endorse even some minor regulation of any industry.
Finally, the catch is that the loser/moonbat types end up with the power in the party structure, whether it's the DNC (Howard Dean) or a local chapter of Libertarians R Us (the dork who sent the e-mail Flyer mentioned).
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