That’s Mr. Secretary, to you
You can now say that you read the blog of the secretary of the Libertarian Party of King County.
Yeah.
Now, the story…
About a week ago, I got an email from the Libertarian Party of King County (LPKC) inviting me to a “Liberty Forum” at the Azteca resturant in Bellevue. Well, I like Mexican food, and I like liberty, so I thought, sounds like a good deal to me!.
I made it to the resturant (after driving maddeningly around in circles due to the circuitous nature of Bellevue’s roads in the vicinity of Azteca), and on the way to the back room, I ran into the Jimmas, but that is another story. After chatting with them, I went back into the room, where the experience truly began. In attendance was Ruth Bennett, recent gubernatorial candidate who won something on the order of 50 times the votes that divided the other two candidates, J Mills, a senatorial candidate, who later spoke at length about the contested governor’s election, King 5’s mistreatment of the Libertarian Party, and several other topics. But back to the story.
The first order of business was election of new officers. Two students from the University of Washington became chair and vice-chair of the LPKC, but then when the call went out for nominations for the Secretary, the room was silent. Well, I had actually played with the idea of running for an office before arriving, but there was a small problem – I was not a member of the Libertarian Party, officially. I informed the group of my willingness to fill the position, and of the caveat.
“Well, we can fix that,” burst out Ruth. So, with a move to nominate me, a second, and no objections, a vote was taken, and I was unanimously elected to the post of Secretary of the Libertarian Party of King County.
My duties consist of taking minutes at about four executive meetings over the next year and a few other miscellaneous tasks that I’ll have to get rebriefed on, because frankly, I forgot what they were. So as you can tell, I’m already doing a great job…
More seriously, however, could this be the start of my political career?
March 3rd, 2005 at 02:37:25 am
hahahahah, thats cool Mr. Secretary (heehee: unaminously)
even though i dont support libirtarians heehee
March 3rd, 2005 at 05:00:59 am
Nice.
I’ve toyed with the idea of running for some kind of public office, but I think my political career will be mostly outside of parties (unless one of them shapes up–we really don’t have a liberal party in this country).
March 3rd, 2005 at 03:44:57 pm
Yah agreed, we live in a conservetive society.
Pfft, damn the puritans
March 3rd, 2005 at 04:34:05 pm
Chris – what is your definition of “liberal” when you say that there are no liberal parties in this country? Certainly I can understand someone calling the democrats “not liberal” – but is you are looking for socialism, there are many parties; if you are looking for classical liberalism, there is a party… So what do you mean by Liberal?
And Alex – if you hate it so much, move to Canada, eh?
March 3rd, 2005 at 07:14:48 pm
I think by “liberal” he means in support of change, i.e. conservatives like the way things are, liberals would like to see changes. That is the historic, and many people would say “proper” use of the word.
March 3rd, 2005 at 07:29:47 pm
Congratulations on your new position. I look forward to hearing more about your duties, experiences, etc.
March 3rd, 2005 at 11:27:38 pm
Erik – I don’t think that’s the best definition. Almost everyone wants some things to change, and other things to stay the same. Your definition would, for example, make President Bush liberal, because he wants to change social security, and MoveOn.org conservative, because it would prefer that program to remain fundamentally the same. Most people would not buy that, in my opinion.
March 3rd, 2005 at 11:31:59 pm
Well Ryan, crongrats. I believe you’ll do a fine job in this position.
March 6th, 2005 at 08:58:14 pm
By liberal, I mean what you said, Ryan. And yes, I could join, say, the American Socialist party, but what difference would that really make?
I think liberalism is related to change, but more specifically, “forward” change. Conservative is for “reverse” change. That kind of sounds like a biased way to put it, but really, I think we need both. In my mind, liberalism serves as the engine of our politics, while conservatism serves as the steering wheel and brakes.