Fascinating. Isn't it something how you can sit there on your side of the internet and determine what exactly other people are doing on behalf of the liberty movement just on the simple fact that they don't agree with spreading the message the same way you do?
Tho' I'm not, I'd rather be sitting at the bar blaming the driver of the ship than sitting at the bridge driving the damned thing into the iceberg.
Analogies are not perfect, but they do serve to illustrate a point, so allow me to expand on the previous post that you quoted.
The Socialists in this country have had a goal for 100+ years of implementing full scale Socialism. When the ship hits the iceberg, the ship sinks and we are likely at a point from which we cannot recover. That would be full blown USSR style socialism. Obama, Pelosi, Reed and others are the captains of the ship and they are driving us full steam ahead at that iceberg, because they truly want this ship to sink.
But throughout the last 100 years there have been men and women who have worked to slow down their progress, and at times veer the ship of course. Granted what is needed is for the ship to do a 180 and drive back to liberty, but we simply do not have the numbers to do so at this juncture. We (whether it be conservatives, libertarians, constitutionalists, an-caps, agorists or whatever camp one falls into) are losing the battle to the socialists in both the education front and the political front. Just look at the health care issue for one example. 40 years ago you would be hard pressed to find many Americans who believed that the federal government should be the sole provider of medical care - today however, you have a sizable percentage of the population that thinks that might not be a bad idea. Now there are people from all of the previously noted "anti-socialist" groups that have united in both the educational and political realms to put the brakes on the ship and steer it off course. If it had not been for these efforts, we would have hit that iceberg many years ago.
The third group I referenced (those who are sitting at the bar while all this is going on and blaming everyone else, including the iceberg), are that group of people who are so unwilling to make any sort of concessions on issues, strategy, policy, etc that they fall into a form of inaction. Sure they might be "holding to their principles", they might be "educating others in the cause of liberty"; but what have their efforts produced? They don't help to steer the ship to another course, they do not help to put the brakes on, because they dare not soil their hands by associating with someone who might differ with their orthodoxy. In truth, they spend so much time arguing how group 2 is the enemy that the true enemies of liberty carry on without much impediment.
The LP is a good example of a group 3 mentality. 40+ years of work and has the country improved at all under their watch or has government grown exponentially? We all know the answer, but yet the same type of people clamor on in their ineffectiveness patting themselves on the back for their "work" which in the long run does nothing to effect the overall situation. They are fiddling while Rome burns, fiddling and basking in the glory of their own self imposed orthodoxy.
Rand Paul will run in 2016. Rand Paul will be the most conservative/libertarian candidate that has a viable shot of winning the office. Rand, along with his allies in Congress, may be the man that can turn the ship around (or at the very least bring the ship to a complete halt and throw down the anchor) Instead of focusing on the 95% of issues where you agree with Rand, these people spend their life's work critiquing him on the 5% they disagree with. In that sense they give aid and comfort to the radical left, rather than assisting those with whom they claim allegiance. I have no place for them in my world, and I have zero respect for them.
