How Not to Bring About a Free Society

Political action. That's how not to do it, and there are plenty of soundly reasoned articles here in the STRchive to prove the point. But this week the Governor's race in Virginia added a nice practical iullustration to help.
 
There were a Dem, and a Rep, and a Libertarian (Richard Sarvis) running. The Rep was Ken Cuccinelli, a Tea-Party social conservative. Ron Paul has been criticized for endorsing the latter over Sarvis, and perhaps he should have just kept quiet; but the real reason may be that the Rep was more Lib than the Lib.
 
Today the LP is celebrating Sarvis' quite healthy 6.5% showing, but fails to mention that he has been credibly criticised as a LINO - a Libertarian In Name Only. Consider Charles Cooke's comments here; Sarvis is on record as saying he's not an Austrian, preferring “more mainstream economics” and that he favors "putting chips in people’s cars so that they can be taxed for their mileage."
 
And this is the best the Libertarian Party can do? After forty years? This is even worse than the tax-hike proposal by a NH Libertarian that caused me to quit that affiliate in 1998.
 
What Sarvis did achieve was to split the anti-Dem vote so that the Democrat won. In one sense that's a welcome comeuppance for the Republicans after they so viciously excluded Ron Paul from their last Convention, but the net effect is to weaken the relatively pro-freedom activity of the Tea Party faction.
 
Politics won't cut it. Systematic, universal re-education will.