Sometimes I despair for libertarians. It's bad enough that they have to contend with the ever-encroaching State into their personal lives; it is even worse that in order to bring about effective large-scale long term change, they need to band together to acomplish anything.

In the so-called "democratic" countries, the power to change the system, to repeal laws that violate liberty or to lower taxes and to generally get the hell outa my way, rests with the elected representatives. Conversely, these elected representatives also have the power to write new laws, add new taxes, and encroach upon liberty at every opportunity.

So what type of person runs for office? The people who have the desire to wield that power.

A libertarian on the other hand is concerned with his own liberty. He recognizes that forcing his will upon other people is not an option that is open to him. If he expects to live free, he cannot do it by making slaves of others. So, he does not desire to wield that kind of power over other people, and a libertarian never runs for office.

Sure, there is a Libertarian Party, with candidates and slogans and policies and so forth... but once they adopted socialist methods (ie by forming the party in the first place), they ceased to be libertarians. At that point, they became socialists, indistinguishable from the Republicans and Democrats and all the other members of the kleptocracy.

So I don't see the Libertarian party as any solution. Even if a miracle occurred and they managed to get their candidate elected as President, their candidate would necessarily be a socialist seeking the power of elected office, regardless of the name of the party to which he belonged.

Is there any hope for libertarians to change the system? Yes, but not from within the system. Don't bother trying to elect representatives - it is the difference between being bought by a master or electing the master, you still have a master and you are still a slave.

Instead, simply do not comply with the master's orders. Is a bad law encroaching on your liberty? defy it. It worked with alcohol prohibition, it is working with marijuana prohibition, it worked for Gandhi. It can work for us too.