It's Mine and Mine Alone

My opinion regarding the proper approach to comrades who, under coercion, assist the state, that is.

This post is also mine and mine alone. I sought no permission or approval from anyone before writing or publishing it.

The reason I am writing and publishing it is to dispel any false impressions that might arise from reading comments like this:

I will never trust anything associated with [the Center for a Stateless Society] again after watching so many of you choose to retain such a liability in your midst.

For the record:

• Yes, the person in question has been associated with the Center for some time.
• Yes, the matter of the person's continued status with respect to the Center is under discussion and some kind of statement will almost certainly be published once that discussion has ended and any actions resulting from it have been taken. If commenters like the one above know the outcome already, they have bright futures as TV psychics.
• No, I am not going to divulge particulars of that discussion at this time, except to note that my particular positions on the subject seem to be very much in the minority (some particulars more than others, different particulars resonating or dissonating with different people). In other words, not only do my public writings on the subject not represent the Center's position, the Center's position when fully formed will likely not greatly resemble those public writings.
• No, that person's association with the Center never has been of such a character that it constituted or constitutes a "liability" of the kind the comment implies, if for no other reason than that none of the Center's activities are of a character that could be informed on (we fly our black flag in the open) and that even in the very limited sense in which the Center handles any confidential information (donor lists, for example), she has never had access to that information.

This is the place where I stop before I'm tempted to get mean, and ask those who are interested in the matter and the Center's response to it give us a little time to arrive at that response. Keep in mind that when this matter came to our attention and yours, the people who brought it to that attention had known about it, and had been considering their responses to it, for weeks or months. It's not unreasonable for us to take a few days on it ourselves.

Things That Make You Go "Hmmm ..."

Steve Newton over at Delaware Libertarian (welcome back to the blogosphere, Steve!) has posted a couple of items on the possible impact of Libertarian Party presidential nominee Gary Johnson on the presidential race.

In particular, Steve has theorized that Johnson might impact the race with respect to the issue of marriage apartheid. Here's one of Steve's pieces on that, which links to another.

I'm personally more skeptical than Steve as to whether or not Johnson will have any great effect at all on the outcome (aside from  possibly determining the disposition of New Mexico's five electoral votes -- he's that state's former two-term governor).

BUT! I think a lot of people are thinking about this in the wrong way. To steal one of Steve's quotes from a spokesperson for the American Anti-Family Association ... er, "National Organization for [sic] Marriage:

If Obama were to embrace same-sex marriage, he'd be on the wrong side of majorities in [several battleground] states.

And that's true, but it's nowhere near all the math.

First of all, it's a reasonable bet that most voters who are very much against same-sex marriage, and consider it an important issue, are already just not available to Obama under any circumstances. He loses nothing by further pissing them off.

Secondly, by getting fully and unambiguously on the right side of the issue (which, the news broke as I started this post, he just did), he energizes otherwise lukewarm supporters who care about the issue and didn't like seeing him remain on the fence.

Where does Johnson come in? Well, Johnson's been a supporter of marriage freedom for a long time, and has recently publicly reiterated his support for it from the bully pulpit of his presidential candidacy.

Had he not done so, Obama might have been able to remain on the fence. After all, it's not like Romney was an alternative for those "I support Obama but wish he'd come out for marriage freedom" voters.

But Johnson is right on that issue and Obama wasn't. And Johnson excels Obama by far on the ACLU's civil liberties canvass, too.

And the key here is that we're talking about battleground states, where a percentage point or two may be the difference between getting those electoral votes and not getting them.

A pro-marriage-freedom Democrat, especially one who also cares about other civil liberties issues just might be disappointed by Obama's record, and tempted by Johnson's.

And it just might only take a few of those voters to swing a close election.

So yeah, I think we can at least prospectively and partially credit Johnson with bringing Obama down off the fence, and on the right side of it, even.

And, well, it sucks to be Mitt right now. He's painted himself into an anti-family, pro-torture corner on marriage and civil liberties. He doesn't have any fences he can climb down from. His only hope with regard to pro-marriage-freedom and pro-civil-liberties Republicans is that he can satisfy them enough on other issues, or scare them badly enough about Obama on those other issues, to hold on to their votes. Too bad for him that Johnson's better than he is on foreign policy, immigration policy and economic policy, too.

When the Comrade Beside You Falls ...

... do you kick her in the kidneys, or do you help her up?

When the comrade beside you is captured by the enemy, do you curse her name and write her out of the movement, or do you rescue her if possible and aid her and keep solidarity with her if that's the best you can do?

If the enemy extracts information from the fallen or captured comrade, at what point do you determine that that comrade is a traitor rather than a victim? Do they have to waterboard her, pull out her fingernails, and show her a family member with a gun to his head? Or are there lesser coercion levels, including threats -- "we'll put you in a cage for 20 years;" "we'll abduct your children and put them in foster care;" "we'll seize your father's business" -- to which capitulation is an understandable, rather than treasonous, act?

Just asking.

In my view, we need to accept that the state is at war with us -- all of us, not just "movement people" -- and recognize that when we write off an actual or potential comrade because he or she was brutalized to the point of (quite possibly temporary) surrender, we are by definition adding one person to the state's ranks and removing one person from our own.

I'm not great at math, but that just doesn't seem like a very good idea to me.

Obviously there are information issues which may be less than completely transparent. Did the comrade capitulate under coercion, or actually change sides? Yeah, it's a universe of imperfect knowledge, isn't it? But let's work to realize our best aspirations instead of indulging our worst fears.

Libertarian Party, Born Again Hard?

Well, after the anti-climactic (the nomination of former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson for president and former California judge Jim Gray for vice-president) came the apocalyptic!

In the race for chair of the Libertarian National Committee on Saturday evening, first sitting chair Mark Hinkle, and then challenger Mark Rutherford were eliminated in favor of None of the Above.

After Rutherford's backers unloaded every dirty trick they could think of to nullify the result, it somehow magically became a tie instead of a NOTA win, and a new election was held this morning, resulting in the election of Geoff Neale of Texas (who has served as chair in the past as well).

Apparently the completely fraudulent nullification of NOTA's win was the signal for a full-scale delegate uprising that swept most of the the 2010-2012 "establishment" out of office.

R. Lee Wrights beat former chair and sitting at-large member Bill Redpath to once again become vice chair (a position that, if I am not mistaken, he once held when Neale was chair the last time).

Ruth Bennett (whom I've always liked, although I was disappointed with her recent stand in favor of forcing convention delegates who just wanted to be convention delegates and nothing else to subsidize the luxury hotel/circus sideshow preferences of more well-heeled party members) unseated sitting secretary Alicia Mattson.

Tim Hagan (with whom I served as an LNC regional alternate around the turn of the century) unseated Aaron Starr for the position of treasurer.

Establishment figures Redpath and Wayne Allyn Root did secure at-large positions ... but so did LNC newcomer Arvin Vohra, coming-back-after-long-break Michael Cloud, and ... holy bustier, Batman! ... Starchild!!!


I haven't seen Judicial Committee results yet, but at this point it looks like a different ballgame in terms of internal governance. The faction behind much of the 2008-2012 fuckery (and there's really no other word for it) seems to have been shorn of its key figures and working majority.

I still don't see the LP getting anywhere in terms of fulfilling its purposes, but it may at least have extended its own life for a few more years with these outcomes.

"New Gmail" Redux

Awhile back -- not worth finding to link to -- I opined that "New Gmail" looks like ass.

Not svelte, sexy ass, but "shouldn't be wearing stretchy fabrics in public, because it grosses people out" ass.

That was back in the day when it was still possible to revert to the previous user interface. It recently became non-optional. You get "New Gmail" whether you like it or not.

Thane Eichenauer just reminded me -- via "New Gmail" -- that I've been meaning to comment on how badly I hate "New Gmail."

It is to me as Bagginses are to Smeagols: We hatesssss it forever and ever!

Aside from looking like ass, it also seems to have at least one functionality problem.

One nice thing about Gmail is that you can start typing in an address in the "to" field and it will pop up with addresses from your contacts list.

Another nice thing about Gmail is that you can organize your contact list internally into other lists -- and those will pop up if you start typing their list names.

Lately -- just since "New Gmail" arrived -- I've found that about half the time if I start typing a list name into the field, it doesn't pop up. I have to log out and log back in to get that function to work. And it happens to be a function I use multiple times most days.

I know that I'm not the most adaptive individual on Earth -- when I like something and get used to that thing, I'm never really happy to see it changed from under me. But this goes beyond that default position. I have yet to notice so much a single, solitary way in which "New Gmail" is aesthetically or functionally superior to the previous version.