"Small L" Libertarian

Periodically I get into verbal tussles with true believer Libertarians who will go to their grave in a socialist nation before they vote for a Republican again.  They've convinced themselves that both parties are identical and the only hope is voting for Ron Paul or somebody like him.  They refuse to accept reality that this is a two party nation and votes for third parties are effectively votes for their political opposites.  In other words, vote for a conservative third party and you effectively help elect Democrats.  Vote for a liberal third party and you aid the GOP.

Rob Port at Say Anything Blog and I are pretty much on the same wavelength.  We admire many of the libertarian principles but recognize the political realities of a two party system.  He points today to a comment by Blogger Beregond that says it pretty well:

A Big L Libertarian is a being of exceptional ideological purity who builds magnificent theoretical constructs from that ideology. He then not only moves into that theoretical construct, but insists that we all move in too.

A small L libertarian admires the exceptional purity of the ideology and the beauty of the theoretical construct, but insists on living in the real world.

It's the "real world" part that messes up many, many Libertarians.

The other day someone one Facebook gave a spirited defense of Ron Paul and said "How could anyone NOT vote for him in 2012?" I responded "because he'll be 78 on election day and hasn't a prayer of winning the nomination of a major party." Needless to say, I rained on his parade.

The responses from his fellow "Big L" types were varying degrees of outrage, calling me stupid, uninformed, a "sheeple", etc.  They don't get it.  Show me the Libertarian that has ever won anything more than a local election?  Maybe there's some guy out there in a state legislature somewhere, but it should say something that there are more Socialists in Congress than Libertarians.

The Republican Party is far from perfect.  There are way too many elected Republicans who are more concerned about playing nice with Dems than doing what's right for the country, but the answer is not fleeing to a third party but fixing the party we've got.  Find quality conservative primary opponents for the RINOs and get then out of there.  And once in Congress stick with conservative principles even if the Dems and their handmaidens in the press don't like it.

THAT'S how you fix the country and ensure that libertarian principles are incorporated in our government.