Libertarian Party of Georgia Convention: Platform & Bylaw Changes

Libertarians in the State of Georgia will meet on March 8th to decide various changes to our platform and organizational structure, but many of these changes leave a lot to be desired.

Convention season approaches for Georgia Libertarians who have selected March 8th to be the date of their business meeting, but many of the items on the agenda leave a sour taste in the mouths of bleeding heart libertarians. Our platform is the foundation of the party that separates us from the other two rivals in Georgia, so it must be worded with precision and care to state the goals that we seek to push in a libertarian world. It’s also the guidelines that the organization works by, so making changes is always going to be a contentious move. The same applies to bylaws which work as the rules of our organization, and whoever makes the rules sets out the party’s abilities for the future.

Platform Changes

There are seventeen proposed changes to the platform. For brevity, I’m not going to address all of them, but just the ones where I feel the need to speak on.

Platform Change #1

The first proposed amendment recommends removing the statement that humans be allowed to travel unrestricted across national borders. The substitution would change the language to be watered down to calling for the abolition of government impediments on “the crossing of political boundaries for peaceful purposes.”

This has me uneasy, but it’s not something that I’m likely going to win at. I understand the security concerns of having an open border, but I do not understand why our concerns are only for the national borders and not for state borders? Is violence okay if it’s done by someone from Florida in Georgia, but not okay if it’s done by someone from Mexico in Georgia? Borders are, frankly, imaginary lines drawn by political bodies as a collectivist weapon to keep us fighting each other instead of those in the political caste. This distinction that we make is just serving that goal.

Again, not going to win much on my side and I doubt I’ll even vote against this when the time comes, but it’s still a concern I’m going to write about.

Platform Change #14

Plank 2.2 currently does a great job of describing the Libertarian ideology when it comes in terms of environmentalism. To outsiders, there is a bad-faith notion that most libertarians are climate change deniers unconcerned for the future of the environment. In some cases, this is correct. For others, it’s not. The current stance on environmentalism according to the platform states that we support a free market approach to the problems facing our ecosystems and so private groups seeking restitution through the courts are best equipped to handle these problems.

Platform Change #14 recommends watering down the entire stance to two sentences: “Environmental damages are property damages. Property owners may use the courts to enforce their property rights.”

This is not going to do it for someone whose main concern is environmentalism. How are we to convince them that Libertarians are not ignorant of environmental problems if our platform to address that problem is two sentences which does a massive injustice to the libertarian stance on the environment. Eroding the platform in this case is not helpful.

Bylaw Changes

There are seven amendments to the bylaws on the agenda, but only one of them has left a severe sour taste in my mouth.

Amendment II

Currently, there is no Judicial Committee for the Libertarian Party of Georgia. Actions by the Executive Committee are not reviewable by anyone and so the only recourse for alleged bylaw violations is through convention elections. This is not good and so a solution has to be found — but creating a judicial committee is not that solution.

We’ve seen what happens when states get judicial committees, and it’s not pretty no matter what side of the aisle you’re from. For the Mises Caucus, refer to California’s Judicial Committee which just caused the Executive Committee of LPCA to pay a $9,000 fine because they ordered the convention be cancelled and the venue they reserved assessed a cancellation fee on the party. For the non-Mises members, refer to the Michigan’s Judicial Committee which has worked tirelessly to cement the current dictatorship of Andrew Chadderdon. No matter which side of the aisle you fall in party politics, it is evident that judicial committees are institutions of power that are susceptible to tyranny because they involve defined members.

The best solution is an expansion of the current ad-hoc review committee that has limited jurisdiction. Here is how that would work:

In a hypothetical situation where the Executive Committee is being accused by a group of members of violating the bylaws and a properly filed petition is made, both parties submit a list of representatives that they believe will be fair and impartial on an ad-hoc review committee. The list is numbered and a die is rolled by an impartial third-party to select names off the list. Admittedly, this process is complicated and might draw away support because of that, but it works because it involves an undefined group that is composed of members from both sides. The alternative would involve a committee composed entirely of whatever caucus shows up the most at even-numbered convention years, which is just tyranny of the majority.

I refuse to support Amendment II.