A Vision of Victory
Scrubbing the LP Requirements
If ever there was a group heavy with people enthused with "letting the perfect
rule out the good" it is the Libertarian Party, nay the entire movement --
after all, the movement has purists who refuse to even soil their hands
by voting for a libertarian candidate.
A lesson in "good enough engineering is in order.
A Sofware Engineering Analogy
In the world of computer programming, it is very common for projects to
be way over budget and beyond deadline.
This often leads to projects being cancelled, or shoddy products being
released to the public.
One of the most powerful techniques for rescuing such a project is the
"requirements scrub". This is a detailed walk through the specifications of
what the program is to do while continuously asking the question:
"is this necessary?".
That which isn't goes.
This includes cool features that one would like to have, but when time and
money are running out, it is better to have something OK that works than
something outrageously cool that doesn't.
Often, the cool features that were scrubbed go into a later release.
It is important to remember that time/money to add the cool features comes
from the revenue of the released, more Spartan product.
The First Scrub
The first scrub is the idea that we need to start out winning at the
presidential level, or even the federal level.
Laws are still made by legislatures, including state legislatures.
Nor is it necessary to win a majority in any legislature to begin turning
this country around. Consider the diagram below.
Most of the Conservatives are Republicans. Most (not all) of the Liberals and
Authoritarians are Democrats. Centrists come from both parties.
From this diagram, we see it is not the Liberals or Conservatives who are
the problem, but the Authoritarians, who vote the wrong way on all issues.
All we has to do is outnumber the Authoritarians
and the country moves in our direction.
This is our first victory condition!
This is the "business plan" we can use to sell the side-liners on the
third-party approach to liberating our great nation.
Of course, for this vision to be realistic, we have to begin implementing
it. This leads to the next strategic insight.
To Be Continued...
Copyright 2000, Carl S. Milsted, Jr. All rights reserved.
