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Articles Written In Reference To The Reformat Project.
LP Platform Special Committee works on 'reformatting' planks | |
| 22 July 2003 | |
 The LP Platform Special Committee has begun work on the most sweeping overhaul of the Libertarian Party's guiding philosophical document in the party's 31-year history.
The committee -- 20 LP members from around the USA who are collaborating via e-mail and a special website -- is working to "reformat" the Platform so each plank includes four elements: Issues, principles, solutions, and transitions.
"We hope that [the reformatted Platform] brings a consistently clear, strong message to the voting public," said committee member George Squyres.
Ideally, the project will end with an LP Platform that will "stop the attacks against our candidates," he said. In addition, the reformatted Platform should be "shorter and less verbose."
The project is part of the Libertarian Party's Strategic Plan, adopted by the Libertarian National Committee, Inc. in August 2001.
One of the 20 political strategies in the plan calls for the party to "Redevelop the LP Platform, presenting both direction and destination, with an eye toward electoral success (without compromising core beliefs)."
Initially, the reformatting project will not add new language to the Platform, said Squyres.
"Rather it will take the existing language and determine in which of the four logical categories -- Issue, Principle, Solution, or Transition -- does the language correctly belong," he said. "The individual sentences will be assigned to one of these four depending on the function that sentence most closely performs."
After that process is complete, committee members will "offer suggestions for replacement language where deficiencies have become obvious," he said. "The task is clear -- creating language will not be the rambling emotional operation of the past, but a concise, insightful solution to a clearly recognized set of requirements."
The committee will post the finalized, reformatted planks to a website for LP members to review, said Squyres. While not yet available, that website "should be up and running very soon," he said.
Of the Platform's 61 planks, "about a dozen" have been reformatted, said Squyres.
"We hope to have the initial reformatting completed by summer [2003], so that there is plenty of time for the general membership to review it, comment on the changes, and offer their input," he said.
After LP members provide input -- and after the committee reaches consensus on each of the reformatted planks -- final approval of all changes will be in the hands of delegates at the party's 2004 national convention, to be held in Atlanta, Georgia.
The Platform Special Committee is now working to parse every Platform issue into four elements, said Squyres:
* The Issue: "[For example], it is the lack of properly stating the drug issue that allows a Republican to stand up and scream at our candidates, 'You people want to legalize heroin!' " he said.
"Correctly framed, the issue is that Prohibition never stopped anyone from drinking alcohol, it only created Al Capone. Properly framing the issue allows Libertarians to control the debate."
* Principle: "If we are to be the party of principle, then we must not only be able to state that principle clearly, but we must also be able to show anyone, a tradesman or a CEO, exactly how that principle applies to a particular issue," he said.
"We have to be able to deliver [our] principle on any given issue, in a realistic way that ordinary people can relate to and believe in. And we must do this in a very few, but effective, words."
* Solutions: "By stating our solution to the issue, we present a detailed view of the Libertarian world we seek, and by presenting the transition to that world, we state the exact steps we would take to get there," he said. "[This satisfies] both the destination and the direction concerns."
* Transitions: "The transition section is where we stand up and show the first step towards the better world we see, the direction we want to go, and the steps we have already taken," he said.
In the current Platform, said Squyres, "we have already seen planks where there is no language that states the issue. We have seen planks where there is only a picture of a Libertarian world, yet no practical steps showing how we would get there.
"Much of the language we have is emotional ranting or complaining, rather than concisely doing the job it is supposed to do. It is such language that causes many of our members to bemoan a platform that is verbose [and] boring."
The reformatting project will also allow the Platform Special Committee to create a standard format that can be applied to new Platform planks in the future, said Squyres.
"In 10 years, issues will arise that will require a future Platform committee to write new planks to address those issues," he said. "What would we want that committee to be required to do in order to write a good plank?
"If their job is merely to come up with a page full of language that is more rant and emotion than substance and logic, they will not produce anything less vulnerable to the current criticisms and faults. If, instead, that committee has a rigorous format that they must follow in the writing of any plank, then and only then will they produce a Platform that does the job of presenting the Libertarian position, without controversy or vulnerability."
The Platform Special Committee consists of Mike Dixon (NC), Dean Ahmad (MD), Lorenzo Gaztanaga (MD), Michael Gilson de Lemos (FL), Henry Haller (PA), Sean Haugh (NC), Ed Hoch (AK), Erin Hollinden (IN), Robert Murphy (OK), George Squyres (AZ), Joe Hauptmann (IN), Mark Schreiber (IN), Wayne Nygren (CA), Dan Nafe (FL), Steve Hoffman (GA), Austin Hough (IL), Keith Edwards (MI), Bonnie Scott (NY), Norma Skoog (OH), Julian Heicklen (PA), Robert Restivo (TX), and Greg Clark (WA).
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