Tales From the Rich Coast

New at Reason: Costa Rica, the Cadillac of Central American nations, has another thing to be proud of: A libertarian party that can actually win elections. Julian Sanchez talks with Otto Guevara, the first (of six) members of Costa Rica's congress elected from Movimiento Libertario.

Comments

[speedwell]

Ray... here's what happened to the idea about the state takeover:

http://www.freestateproject.org/

[digamma]

Julian, the link in the into to the BBC story on the blue Libertarian is broken.

[Madog]

You can fix the BBC link if you take off the / at the end.

[Madog]

Maybe someone should organize a US Movimiento Libertario party as a rival to the Libertarian Party. Keep the name in Spanish and you might even be able to pick up a lot of the spanish-speaking vote.

[Jean Bart]

Are they going to protect the nature parks are so essential to Costa Rica's prosperity?

[Anonymous]

Old news. Don't you guys read LP News?

[Madog]

Sure it's old news that Movimiento Libertario actually has some influence in Costa Rica. The point of the post in Hit & Run is to allow discussion of Mr. Sanchez's talk with Otto Guevara.

[Steve]

Yeah, it's nice for Reason to pick up on this story. I saw Otto speak at the Libertarian Party's convention last year, he was definitely a great guy.

[Ray]

So they didn't win with drug legalization as their signature platform piece. Interesting ...

[thoreau]

Ray-

They won because of the electoral system. The choice of issues helped, but no choice of issues will be enough to win a majority in a single gerrymandered district in the near future. However, a careful choice of issues might be enough to win a certain percentage of the vote in a large multi-member district.

Drug legalization might work in a place with a lot of students. Gun rights might work in a more rural area. Social Security privatization and technological issues might work in an area with affluent young high-tech workers who have already figured out that Social Security won't exist for them.

Drug legalization is not the problem per se. Might not be the solution either, but it isn't the problem.

[Anonymous]

It's important to commment that just as David Duke doesn't define the Republican Party and Lyndon LaRouche doesn't define the Democrat party, the blue gov. candidate doesn't represent the LP...

Costa Rica rules.

[Ray]

When I read in the article about proportional representation I honestly thought of you thoreau.

Whatever happened to the idea of basically taking over some vulnerable state? I thought Indiana would be good. My hometown (I'm not there anymore) is a place called Evansville. Factory town, already been burned by unions, conservative Democrats, ignored by the state capitol and so on. I've always thought that would be the perfect place to begin a state takeover.

[Ray]

And the legalization comment was merely sarcasm to illustrate how badly the LP has done in presenting itself to the general public.

Most people who know anything at all about the LP automatically think of legalization or that blue skinned freak whose name I forget.

[Dave]

I like the idea of having an hour of TV devoted to the ideas of liberty. Maybe a Sunday morning talk show or something. Someone should get on that.

[Franswa]

He is insane, like that French weirdo wench you libs were pushing last month.