It's true that a politician can't advance his agenda if he doesn't get elected so, on the one hand, it would seem like winning is more important than being right. On the other hand, if he has to abandon his agenda to get elected, then what good does it do him to get elected? I suppose there are people who just like being at the controls no matter where the ship of state is heading, but I'm not one of them. I care more about where the ship is heading than I do about who is at the helm. Nevertheless, somebody has to steer the ship or it will just wander aimlessly until it runs on the rocks or everybody aboard starves to death.
Last I heard, the anarchists were still around. I ran into one on the internet some years ago and I doubted his authenticity, so I looked up "anarchists" and discovered that they have their own website and everything. It seems that an anarchist believes in no government, while a libertarian believes in minimal government. So I asked this self proclaimed anarchist what he would replace government with if his people were ever successful in abolishing it, and he said "voluntary cooperation". "Sounds good." said I, "If you could get everybody to voluntarily cooperate with each other, we wouldn't need government. So how do you to proposed to persuade people to voluntarily cooperate with each other?" He said something about voluntary cooperation being a part of human nature, and that everybody would do it if they had the chance. "Then why do you suppose government was invented in the first place?" said I. My plan was to segue into the part of the Declaration of Independence that says governments were instituted among men to preserve their natural rights, which I interpret to mean to protect people from other people who want to deprive them of their rights, but the guy did not respond so I never got into it.
I don't know this for a fact, but I imagine that anarchists don't argue among themselves a lot. "No government" means "no government", plain and simple. Nothing much to argue about there. With the Libertarians it's a bit more complicated. "Minimal" is a pretty subjective word, it can mean different things to different people. I don't remember ever seeing any Libertarian literature that said they would kick me out of the party if I believed this or didn't believe that. Like other political parties, they have a platform that is re-written every four years. I don't remember ever voting on their platform, I suppose you have to be a delegate to their convention to do that. I do remember them soliciting input from the members about the platform in their newspaper, but I don't think those suggestions were binding on anybody. The point I am trying to make here is that all Libertarians do not necessarily agree with each other on every issue, any more than all Democrats or Republicans do.
When I left the Libertarian Party it was because I found myself disagreeing with them more and more. I think I've already told you about the second Iraq war, although it turned out they were right about that, but there were some other issues as well. I left the Methodist Church under similar circumstances. I didn't go away mad, I just went away. Call me "old fashioned", but I am not comfortable being a member of any organization with which I have substantial ideological differences. That doesn't mean I think they're bad people, they're just no longer my people. That doesn't mean I can't vote for them, it just means I am not giving them any more of my time and money.
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