I am in broad agreement with most of the platform. I am considering pressing the candidates I support to adopt the platform but there are a couple of things that I think negatively impact credibility.

A couple of suggestions:

1) I am by no means a professional web designer but I know what I like and certain formats create certain impressions. The impression I get with this site is it is a bit campy with a somewhat amateurish feel. I think it starts with the "papyrus" background. It makes the site hard to read for one. Second, it evokes an impression that we're obsessed with the "old/original" without regard to any reality that the world might have changed at all since 1776...and that's coming from a pretty strict constitutionalist.

2) I know the platform is closed but I think there are libertarian platforms that can be sold and those that make us look ridiculous. You've got to pick your battles. For example I can understand the ideology of a "no driver's license thing" but the reality is that people are hurtling a 3,000 lb object down the street at 80 mph just a few feet from my vehicle containing my family. I'm not going to argue the point in this thread except to say that proposing that the only control we will exert as a society as to competence in that activity is the reactive control arising from consequence is not a position for which we will get broad political support. We will more likely get labelled extreme libertarian ideologues.

Offered constructively of course.

The thing with the drivers licenses: it's the lynch pin. If you get that issue, you're a libertarian. If you don't harm someone else, you didn't do anything wrong, and when you harm someone, you are then liable. You can't legislate away risk, and even granting the government the power to attempt it gives them the room they need to do anything.

It only serves to subject you to the whims of the state, ceding a right and letting someone else make it a privilege, one that can be taken away for issues completely unrelated to driving.

OK, maybe I will debate the issue.

MrBill I get the issue and the reasoning. Politically I lean strongly libertarian but like any ideology, taken to its extremes it is often unworkable in practice.

I disagree that you can't legislate away SOME risk. We do it all the time and a driver's license is just one example. Its been said of course that a single cell prison is the safest place in the world so balance is important as is the preservation of "essential" liberty.

The strictest libertarians reject virtually any government intervention anywhere. The reality is that most people, myself included, wouldn't want to drive in a large city knowing there is no required training for the hundreds of people driving vehicles around my family. Reality is that some risks are in fact high enough as to require proactive management among people that have to live together. Groups of people will compromise their individual freedom to a degree required to deal with those risks if they are, or are perceived, to be high enough. You can't be free if you're dead. If you pick a ridiculous example to support an essential liberty you will simply get ignored.

Another example might be property rights. Strict libertarians chafe at the idea of government inspections, but then there is the downside risk of living next to a person dumping raw sewage out of his trailer home on the ground 1 acre away from your family and property. This is an actual property rights case in Indiana that went to our Supreme Court. The dude in the trailer lost.

Of course any of these "interventions" create a situation where an individual could be subject to political abuse. That is why we retain other freedoms to help resist that abuse and keep the system in balance.

This is also why large cities infringe individual freedom to a much higher degree than a rural community. The risk is higher. I am personally a very aggressive second amendment activist. I do understand however how people who live in a high rise apartment building might object to a neighbor fighting off a burglar with 30 rounds from an AR-15.

Trying to get people to sign up for an ideology that is incapable of responding to REAL quality of life risks (vs. small/perceived ie. TSA abuse) is a loser's game. Our positions must be able to adequately address those concerns in a manner that is workable.