CovOps
 Location : Ether-Sphere
Job/hobbies : Irrationality Exterminator
Humor : Über Serious
 |  Subject: Supposedly, SC Libertarians’ embrace of secession is a less-than-obvious wake-up call  Fri Dec 10, 2021 9:52 pm | |
| In recent years, some conservatives have looked to the Libertarian Party as a refuge from a Republican Party that has become obsessed with one man.
Now, as The Post and Courier’s Schuyler Kropf reports, the S.C. Libertarian Party has taken a step that should put it off limits to even the most libertarian-leaning conservative looking for an alternative home, by voting last month to add secession to its platform.
The language itself isn’t quite as straightforward as the news release the Charleston County party put out, or as the model language from the national branch of the Libertarian Party backing the change, which calls for “decentralization — subsidiarity, secession, nullification, and localism — of political units all the way down to the individual.” But the new plank leaves no room for interpretation, declaring the party’s support for “the right of dissociation by any individual, group, or entity from any other.” Which, not to put too fine a point on it, is crazy.
We in South Carolina know a little something about secession, most importantly that it didn’t work out so well when we tried it. Could we have had secession without war? Perhaps. Could we have had secession without devastating worldwide consequences brought on by the absence of the United States of America — starting but not ending with the outcome of World War II and the power of the Soviet Union? Likely not. Even setting aside questions of constitutionality, is there a practical way for states to secede from the United States today? Certainly not.
Embracing such a thoroughly discredited idea moves the Libertarian Party even farther to the fringes, identifying it as a debate club for extremist ideas rather than anything that has anything to do with attempting to govern our nation or state. It serves as a distressing reminder that alternative parties are every bit as susceptible as the Republican and Democratic parties to the temptation to move ever farther from their traditional principles in order to attract the most radical and disaffected voters. And it underscores how third parties are unlikely to accommodate the needs of the growing number of politically homeless Americans — and not just because they tend to start out even farther from the mainstream than the major parties.
Maybe someday we’ll have a pragmatic third party, a grown-up party, a compromise-is-actually-a-good-thing party. Until then, our best option is to work to make the two major parties less unreasonable. And we have to do that pretty fast, because our nation is in a vicious downward spiral, as that other extreme becomes so much more extreme that the extremists on our own “side” seem less dangerous — ironically, terrifyingly, even as they are in fact becoming more dangerous.
The good news is that there are ways to bring the major parties back to their senses — if we’re willing to get outside of our comfort zone.
The Legislature could make this easier by repealing the law that gives parties rather than candidates slots on our congressional, statewide, legislative and county election ballots. In essence, we would treat all those elections like we treat most municipal elections, where everybody votes from among all the candidates on a first ballot, and we have a runoff between the top two finishers if no one wins a majority. We would still end up with Republicans and Democrats holding office — and most likely Republicans still in the majority where they are now, and Democrats still in charge where they are now. But Republican and Democratic candidates would have the motivation that few have now to try to appeal to the sensible center rather than the extremes.
Of course, our Legislature isn’t likely to give us that option today, but we can still give Republican and Democratic candidates a reason to eschew radicalism by simply voting in their primaries.
In South Carolina, nearly all of our county, legislative and statewide races are decided in either the Republican or Democratic primary, but most voters skip the primaries. The problem with this is that the people who are most religious about voting in primaries tend to be the people who are the farthest from the center. And so the nominees become increasingly extreme. (One reason so many conservatives have been looking for an alternative home is that many people who vote Republican in the general election sat out South Carolina’s 2016 Republican presidential primary, setting the national party on the trajectory of becoming a party dominated by one man.)
This strategy probably wouldn’t pay off immediately — well, unless we all did it next year, as we should. But over time, as a few more centrist candidates started winning primaries and then going on to hold office, more would be willing to run for office, and get elected. And who knows? Maybe before too long we’d get to a point where the Legislature was willing to remove the parties’ special access to the ballot, and we’d be able to do away with the primaries entirely.
Long shot? Maybe. But it’s got a lot better chance of working than sitting on the sofa and complaining about how crazy the parties and the candidates have all become.
.https://www.postandcourier.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-sc-libertarians-embrace-of-secession-is-a-less-than-obvious-wake-up-call/article_bd59e304-578e-11ec-8e02-5bfcc6b2a0b0.html
  |
|
