This Memorial Day weekend, most people with an interest in space will be focusing their attention on the landing of NASA’s Mars Phoenix spacecraft on the Red Planet. (Many more people, of course, will be thinking about barbecues, ballgames, and the unofficial beginning of summer.) That weekend, though, is also the 2008 Libertarian National Convention in Denver, where Libertarian Party (LP) members will meet to nominate a presidential candidate (former Congressman Bob Barr is the likely nominee) and work on the party platform. Some attendees will also get a dose of space conspiracy theories.
The brochure for the convention featured a talk titled “Inside NASA” by a Dr. David Hoagland. It turns out that’s an error, according to the convention web site: it’s “Do We Still NEED NASA?” by Richard Hoagland. Yes, that Richard Hoagland. The title of the talk would seem to fit into an LP convention, where many people might be skeptical of the need for federal funding for a national space agency. The description of the talk starts off like a good fit:
Mr. Hoagland will address the urgency to redefine and refocus NASA on the critical 21st Century scientific, technological and economic problems facing the United States during the next presidential administration.
So far, so good.
He will also reveal –with official NASA imagery — startling scientific discoveries NASA, by law, has deliberately withheld from the American people for more than 40 years!
Okay, not so good.
In a column in today’s Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Billy Cox notes that Hoagland’s presence stands in contrast to efforts by Libertarians to tone down UFO talk within their ranks. Joe Buchman, running for Congress in Utah as a Libertarian, told Cox that state LP officials are “fuming” over Buchman’s push to declassify records that he believes would prove evidence of… well, something to do with alien life. “At least I won’t be the biggest nut case at the convention now,” Buchman said upon learning of Hoagland’s talk.
If there’s one saving grace, it’s that Hoagland’s talk (admission to which requires either a certain level of convention registration or the purchase of a separate ticket) conflicts with a planned outing to a Colorado Rockies game: one case of where having a ballgame win out over space might be a good thing.
[…] to our Libertarian cousins: this kind of thing isn’t going to win you followers (at least not many, and not of the quality that will help […]
This is why I dropped out of the Libertarian Party years ago; their utter refusal to take real space development/settlement seriously, preferring instead to promulgate more lies/myths/urban legends along with late 18th Century thinking on what governmet is/should be/do/etc, rather than a sober, rational approach to realpolotik coupled to real space achievements and possibliities, instead of the ongoing outright fraud Richard C. Hoagland is/has been for three decades now.
There is currently no party extant in the US that takes a true Progressive outlook on space policy and programs, much less learned from the many mistakes and wasted money and opportunities the space community has suffered from and either helped to cause during that half century, or failed to learn from to the present time.
I can only hope the current silliness the Libertarian Party has morphed/decayed into will wilt on the vine, instead of metastasizing into a dangerous fringe movement like Marxism/Leninism, or the Socialist Workers Party (Democratic Party) or the Fascist Party (Republican Party) have these latter days.
All the more reason for new thinking, new invention, new or refurbished political thinking will save western civilization and the US populace from the dangerous circling of the drain of political/economic ways and means we are witnessing in the year 2008. Vive La Nouveaux Politique/Economique!
Out with the old, in with the new I say!
“…Progressive outlook…”
I’m don’t think that word means what you think it means…
“…Fascist Party (Republican Party)…”
I think this formulation is a bit off, too.
I think this formulation is a bit off, too.,/em>
Yes, but unfortunately, not as much as it used to be. But also not for the reasons that the historically ignorant think it should be called that.
Well that didn’t take long, did it?
Five comments into Jeff’s posting and we’re already nearly lost in a self-referencing, private-language based Flame War over the definitions for terms. Gentlemen, if you’re going to engage in a taunting, look in the mirror and embrace the antithesis of pure science – embrace the essential ambiguity of politics and understand what a flake Hoagland is, a dangerous flake, at that. This isn’t about National Socialists or Federalism. The Libertarians have always been necessary to keep liberty as the default position whenever political philosophy rationalizes away from liberty toward the Collectivist Illusion.
Just when you thought it was safe… always just when you think that its safe.. to show tolerance for Libertarians, they apparently give space to this con artist to rationalize away from those policies, based on united action, that are necessary to being a nation; a nation of free people, yes, but still a nation among the nations of the world.
For Libertarians to give position to Hoagland shows they are apparently ready to sacrifice a needed place in our national politics, endeavoring to keep a free people free, to justify an essentially ridiculous personality, a man who is either a nut job or who makes his living catering to nut jobs. This is not a good thing, it represents a nadir in Libertarianism which does not bode well for Americans in general.
As to the taunting, consider Lyndon Johnson. Being a Republican, you might think there’s nothing to be learned from his example. Being a post-modern Democrat, you might like to play down his example as well. Love him or hate him, it is not likely you can downplay the fact he was the most successful of presidents at getting his legislation through Congress.
Yes, Johnson had his own Party controlling both Houses, but the Chicago convention of 1968 didn’t become chaos in a vacuum, and the landmark Civil Rights bills passed during his stewardship of the Vietnam War would not have become law without Republicans in Congress adding their votes to a divided Democrat caucus in both houses.
How did he do it? He did it, in his own words, “by believing those who held a different position than my own came by their beliefs honestly. You don’t build coalitions by accusing those on the other side of not knowing how to read and write.”
I submit to those who can take a discussion about Hoagland, a person we are likely to agree is more or less deservedly marginal, and then turn that into a Flame War, consider the possibility that long-term space policy can’t be served by pointless bickering about who has “the right to name the world.”
[…] way of Space Politics I learn that the upcoming 2008 Libertarian National Convention, at which the libertarian party will […]
Joel, I like your comments about how Johnson got his legislation passed. It’s a shame that more politicians don’t think like that. The rhetoric on the far left and far right is just useless bombast that doesn’t get us anywhere. …. I use to be a member of the Libertarian party but my views have changed. I know when i was in it, there were too many distractions on useless issues that not only can a minor party not change, but that leave it open to ridicule. (ufo’s, legalizing pot, etc.) It’s a shame that the Libertarians get sidetracked by those things instead of focusing on their core message of laissez-faire capitalism. (It’s almost like people on blog comment pages when they forget what they are commenting on and instead get caught up in insulting each other.) I wish the LP good luck anyway, if for no other reason than to remind the Demopublicans (Republicrats?) that We the People DO have other choices.