I'm a small l libertarian currently and I have been a big L libertarian. I was one of the very few elected libertarians in the country (Soil and Water Commission for Burke County in North Carolina). I had a vision of helping the party. I would work my way slowly up the ladder winning small elections and encouraging other Libertarians to do the same. The problem came after I won that first election. The party ignored me. The fact is I should have been the key note speaker at the next State convention. I was the only libertarian to win office in the entire state. Who else do you get to speak...they picked some nobody that lost their election with almost no votes to be the speaker. So they propped up a loser to tell the party how to win? I complained to the head of the party and what did they do? They put me on a panel of five other people who ran that year. WTF? I declined the offer. By every standard of measurement the highest ranking political official in any organization is the person who is elected to the highest office. My meager office of soil and water commissioner was the highest elected position held by a libertarian in the state. I was the party. (To have full disclosure, yes we did have a Republican on a city council who changed his affiliation later that year. He still did not run a successful campaign as a Libertarian.) I'm not whining, really I am stating the facts about what happened. As far as I can tell and this is still the case, the party had no intention of developing a winning strategy. The party had no room for the voices of winners. This led me to a realization. Why was I working so hard for people who are essentially congenital losers. I had built a county party from nothing, I had run a successful campaign, I had developed a strategy that could have been used across the state to put libertarians in office and what was my reward? I was ignored. I needed a new strategy one that involved the advocation of self rather than of party.
What did that mean "the advocation of self" I contemplated what I was really after. Did I really care about the libertarian philosophy? Was I advocating for the philosophy or for my individual freedom. I realized individual freedom is at the heart of all libertarian ideology. I needed to drop my belief in the party being able to change the world and focus on changing the world for myself. Self actualization and self empowerment were the key elements to gaining individual liberty. I had believed that bringing liberty to the masses would liberate me. I was wrong only I can liberate myself. In the next blog I will discuss what I have been doing to achieve the liberation of self within a state dominated society.