I’ve created a monster!
A monster of a name, anyway: Ruwarchy! It’s inspired Less Antman to give his unofficial Ruwart site that name.
While obviously prompted by Mary Ruwart’s announcement of her presidential bid, Ruwarchy.com isn’t specifically a Ruwart campaign site; it’s more of an all-things-Ruwart site, and indeed seems deliberately designed to be welcoming to libertarians who reject electoral politics. The site proclaims itself a forum for “those who want to advance the pure libertarian ideas Dr. Ruwart champions in whatever way they choose,” and there’s even a section of the website devoted to “non-party activism.” Moreover, Antman has argued elsewhere that even anti-electoral libertarians have reason to welcome her campaign, on the grounds that “it should improve sales of her books,” and “since neither book actively promotes voting or politics, this will aid the entire movement, including those who reject political campaigning as a persuasion technique.”
But there’s plenty of stuff for partyarchs too, including a section devoted to overturning the 2006 gutting of the LP platform.
In the meantime, the official Ruwart campaign site is being run by the hardline anti-electoral Brad Spangler. Go figure.
I suspect anti-electorals will have especially mixed feelings about Ruwart’s candidacy. On the one hand, she’s promoting a much more radical form of libertarianism than Ron Paul is; on the other, for that very reason she’s more likely than Paul to lure potential anti-electorals into electoral politics.
Ruwart’s campaign will also be an interesting test of how much radicalism is left in the LP. If someone like Barr or Gravel beats Ruwart to the nomination that would probably be a sign that it’s lost its soul irretrievably.
Blast! Now that your neologism has been embraced, I’ll have to redouble my efforts to get “Markleyocracy” into the public consciousness in time for the election. Though my efforts to do that thus far consist entirely of this comment, so redoubling them shouldn’t be too hard.
Ruwart was one of my guides when I first started looking into the idea of libertarianism back in the 90s. It would be great to see her gain more prominence.
Why not Markleyarchy?
There was a presenter at the most recent ASC who was arguing on behalf of “bonarchy” (the opposite of “malarchy,” identified with “malarkey”) as the New Good Word for anarchy. I don’t think he won any converts, though.
I’m an Andyarchist.
Just so long as you’re not an Aynarchist ….
Wild, Randian militias roaming the streets preaching “Existence before Consciousness” and enforcing the virtues of selfishness would probably suck.
Sadly, antarchy.com was already taken, but my project to create a land area entirely free of government, which I called Antarctica, has been a great success, and my only problem has been getting more people to move there.
You’re correct that I want to support non-political activism, which really has received far more of Ruwart’s time than her LP work, and I personally think her Ask Dr Ruwart column at http://www.askdrruwart.com is a great tool for anyone looking for short answers to the questions friends and associates are always asking about libertarianism. As time goes on, I hope to expand the site to include a wiki with more material to help libertarian persuaders, and to add links all over the place. We’ll see: all of us have dreams bigger than our watches and wallets.
As for the LP itself, 2008 is going to be a watershed year: if a comprehensive platform is restored and Ruwart nominated, I think it will prove a useful part of the movement straight through to 2021 when government is abolished. If Bob Barr heads the ticket with anything resembling the execrable 2006 platform, I’ll be ready to devote all my personal time and resources elsewhere.