Last year the Nevada GOP decided to remove opposition to gay marriage and abortion from its platform. It’s not clear whether this is about votes or reflects genuine sentiment. It’s certainly out of touch with other GOP platforms across the country. This is definitely a good thing though. It also doesn’t go far enough. It’s much more preferable that the Nevada GOP embrace legal stateless gay marriage or non-discrimination in the issuing of licenses as long as we have a government. This is also true of legalized abortion. The deletion of the issues from the platform could signal that they are indifferent rather than an active embrace of liberty.
Does this mean we left-libertarian market anarchists are better off embracing the Nevada GOP as a vehicle for libertarian reform? Not at all. The Nevada GOP is probably still, on balance, far from embracing radically limited government. We’re also anarchists and not interested in even very small government. I mention this, because an anarchist may still prefer an extremely tiny government to a larger one in relative terms. This would only hold true as long as government existed.
What about the option of infiltrating the Nevada GOP and striving to push it in a more radically libertarian direction? This is arguably a waste of resources that could be spent on building anarchy. We would have to hide our left-libertarian market anarchist identity. There would otherwise be a backlash against the “evil” anarchist entryists. It’s important to remember that statists at least sometimes deal with disagreement by initiating force via the government, so we left-libertarian market anarchists would be subject to said force by the Nevada GOP. As long as they continued to embrace the institution of government at least.
An interesting question is whether this will have an impact on the broader GOP. If the Nevada GOP is more successful at the polls, other state parties and even the national organization may decide to embrace its approach. This would be encouraging and have a positive impact on the politics of the U.S. It’s something to welcome, but it shouldn’t distract us from achieving anarchism. It would lighten the burden of statism on women and same-sex marriage, so there is merit in pursuing this kind of reform. As long as it doesn’t mean abandoning the goal of creating anarchy. That is our ultimate goal.
The final point to make is that this does represent progress, but it’s fairly limited. The next step is to actively embrace the pro-liberty position on both issues. Let’s encourage our GOP friends to go the distance and really embrace freedom. You can let them know that left-libertarian market anarchism is the true embodiment of the sometimes freedom friendly rhetoric of the GOP. It’s also a good idea to spread this message to your Democratic Party friends and anyone else who will listen. There is great disillusionment with the existing political system. The time is ripe for friends of freedom to convince others of the morality and practicality of our vision. It’s better to act before this despair disappears. We may never get a better time than now to act. Let’s work on creating a free society.
