Given that the Libertarian Party is a political party, what else can Libertarian ideas do outside of elections? There are no elections in 2005, except for a few school board and city elections.
Let's look at the wisdom of a Merriam-Webster dictionary:
1 : an advocate of the doctrine of free will
2 a : a person who upholds the principles of absolute and unrestricted liberty especially of thought and action b capitalized : a member of a political party advocating libertarian principles
Aha! So there is something we can do in 2005.
So free will and liberty DO exist before and after elections, right?
I am not saying a political party should ignore politics. But there is some wisdom in doing that!
Does a party exist just for campaigns, for winning or losing races? What about building? What about building, presenting and DOING the BIGGEST VISION that has ever been proposed in South Dakota? And DOING the VISION, regardless of whether the Libertarian Party loses every election, or wins
a few races?
Wow! Pretty radical, right?
Aren't there a lot of things DONE outside of elections?
Did Korczak have to vote to get his great Crazy Horse Memorial project started?
Did Ted Waitt count ballots when he set up the Gateway factory in North Sioux City, and make Gateway into a huge global computer company?
Did Ted and Dorothy Hustead wait until the votes were counted before they changed Wall Drug into the entertaining and lively place that it is now?
There is DOING things and there is doing politics.
Quite different.
If the Libertarian Party in our state was to lose 99% of the races in the next 100 years, what would be the legacy that we leave? That we got a few people into city and legislative seats, and the effect was small and salutary?
Or are we aiming for something better?
Last time I checked, I saw that South Dakota was still in the United States.
And anytime you are in the US, anything great is possible!
Alex Martin