There is NO QUESTION that training MUST be done, it is an absolute. Without it you will not have sufficient knowledge to carry out any work toward any goal.

The question isn’t the training – it is when to you let people do things for themselves. For instance, when do you let the cook become the manager of a restaurant? When do you let a manager become an owner? Or in our case, when do you let someone run for office?

There is no doubt that people coming to the party need to learn what it is all about. That we need to have seminars etc set up to accommodate such things. And that such lectures need to be held on a regular basis for new people and refreshers for people already there.

The entire point of a political party is to get their people into office. Without that as the goal why even bother having a party? If someone is registered in the party, getting training, participates appropriately etc, when has that person had enough training to run for office?

To date, the only measuring stick put forth is the Zero Aggression Principle (ZAP). I dare say, if that is the ONLY measuring stick – no one will ever be elected because we will always find some fault with each candidate that wants to run. There will always be some inconsistency somewhere.

Some people do not want to run anyone who is not 100% ZAP. I find that very hard to accomplish and question such a goal. So it brings up the subject, what is the acceptable level in which we allow someone to run?

That is the real answer being sought here.

Would you expect any business you frequent not to have trained their employees before opening the business?

Wouldn’t make much sense, would it?

If not, why would you expect the LP to do less? Why would you want to handicap the party in such a way?

Please explain your willingness to open with untrained and handicapped people. Thanks.

Building the cadre makes sure that is not a problem anymore…and probably will not be again.

His success was more due to his medium of getting the message out there. A lesson we need to learn in the LP and should be following. If we can make ourselves more viral on the net we would create a following like no other party. So long as we keep up with technology we can win the info/propaganda wars.

We should also be doing the teaching etc via the same medium – so that the info is available for people to learn about us. We aught to be educating the general public on general libertarian info. We should be elaborating Libertarian priniciples at every corner we can.

You are correct – we do not have to get elected – however having people in office would make changing the rules and getting Libertarian ideals implemented a lot easier. Which is the path of least resistence?

You will of course get no arguement from me about the education side of this discussion. I happen to think it should be so prevelent thta we actually have courses on the subject at the local colleges. I am surprised that after several decades its not there yet.

Building the party should be paramount in any group, ours included. How we do that is a different story. There are many avenues we can use to accomplish this. Which ones we want to go with still needs to be decided. Maybe one group of people will want to use method A and another group might want to use method B.

I dont see that either are wrong so long as they achieve thier goals. Any method used but not achieving the goal is useless and needs to be modified. If it does achieve the goal it needs to be streamlined to be as effective as possible so that we maximize results with the least amount of effort.