In a few hours, the second “sitting” of the 2020 Libertarian National Convention will gavel to order, both in Orlando and online.

The party’s platform committee had its final meeting yesterday. It was a bit of a technical clusterfuck insofar as it was similarly “hybrid” (some participants in a room in Orlando, some online), and fortunately nothing got done.

I say “fortunately” because the last couple of meetings have been all about attempts to get the committee to undo its own previously passed proposals based on “OH MY GOD, NO, WE CAN”T BE QUITE THAT LIBERTARIAN, SOMEONE MIGHT GET THE VAPORS!” responses to the member survey on those proposals.

That undoing actually got accomplished with respect to a proposal on doing away with government law enforcement. As of yesterday, I’ve signed onto a minority report on that proposal, the entire content of which is:

Why? Because stupidity and cowardice should incur costs that erase their perceived benefits.
Neutering a well-written, carefully crafted, thoroughly debated original proposal on the subject, just because some people might find it upsetting for the party to openly debate prospectively getting too libertarian, was stupid and cowardly.
So now there’s a minority report to get announced from the stage, presumably upsetting the same people the proposal wreckers were trying to appease and therefore at least partially undoing the perceived benefit of the stupidity and cowardice.
Will future platform committees pay heed to that lesson and resist the temptation to become stupid and cowardly near the ends of their terms? I don’t know. But hopefully that will be the case.
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Imported from the original KN@PPSTER