Tom, thank you for your efforts toward the Boston Tea Party. I think you pioneered the idea of an online party, particularly the online convention. However, I would have had it over three weeks (a week and a half per convention phase) rather than two days, especially since it was in August when many are on vacation or traveling.
I joined simply to be able to respond to your description of "compromise" in a suitable venue and didn't vote on any BTP matters. I never got around to writing my response, though. I would have favored a NET reduction in government with any change, not an absolute reduction. I think this would have been more politically viable, if not ideologically pure.
Hopefully the original articles and comments will be archived somewhere. And there are plenty of other suitable venues now for responding, should you wish to bring up the issue of "compromise" again (after election day?).
I suppose it is fair to say the BTP has assumed room temperature, but only if you live in a meat freezer. As I recall, a lot of the national committee vanished about the time the first national committee meeting started.
Not being a very good political coroner, I refrained from conducting an autopsy. But, I can't help wondering what the cause of death was for the BTP.
It seems though that every political party I can think of is suffering from some sort of chronic disease. These parties may actually be dead and we are witnessing a political parade of the undead - zombie slaves united under the banner of voluntary servitude to the vampire masters.
Forget about voodoo economics - we've entered the realm of b-grade drive-in movies featuring pornographic torture flicks and snuff films.
Tom,
The national committee members hung out for long enough to do some business (logo contest motion, joining some Internet coalitions, recognizing a New York affiliate). They went dark over a matter of months, not days or weeks.
If I had to pick a cause for the organization's quick death, it would be that although the party had a clear platform, program, etc. most of the interest in it was reactionary to the 2006 LP platform controversy rather than based on a positive motivation. As anger over the controversy faded, so did interest in the new organization.
I consider the experience to have been personally worthwhile -- I got to know some new friends, conduct some informative experiments in online political organizing, etc.
I suspect that the total financial investment in the BTP was well under $100 (mostly mine for the domain name, hosting, etc.) ... and we got several hundred people interested enough to join, 100 or so interested enough to participate at some level, held the first real online national convention of which I am aware, etc. I've spent a lot more money for a lot less education before.
I think you hit the nail on the head with "most of the interest in it was reactionary to the 2006 LP platform."
I seriously contemplated BTP for precisely that reason but in the end declined because (1) if the LP doesn't work, there's no reason to believe any other third-party approach to libertarian principles would work either, and (2) the only chance to reinstate the platform and save the LP is to keep those radicals IN the LP.
Of course the bigger question is "Can a more-libertarian society be achieved through democratic-electorial means?" and that question I have been struggling with for 20 years. The answer I come up with most of the time is "probably not" but that other positives can be acheived through the effort.
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