An Open Letter to the Members of the Boston Tea Party

Boston Tea Partiers,

We have managed to make quite an impact this election, considering all we’ve had to face. We’ve managed to nominate and place a presidential candidate on the ballot in three states, 50% more states than the Libertarian Party did in its first presidential election and almost certainly got more votes than their first candidate did. We endorsed many liberty loving candidates and managed to win a few of those races. We’ve grown our party and made it the fastest growing libertarian party in this country. considering the challenges we’ve faced, I believe we’ve done a pretty good job.

If we wish to grow and make a much bigger impact in upcoming elections we must continue to build on our success.

We are America’s only true libertarian party, this can be proved by our one sentence platform, “The Boston Tea Party supports reducing the size, scope and power of government at all levels and on all issues, and opposes increasing the size, scope and power of government at any level, for any purpose.” But I don’t think I need to tell you this, because by joining the party you have already proved that you know this. Because of this I will try my best to limit the number of ideological rants that I am so prone to while speaking in this letter.

We need to create a strategy in order for us to create a real impact. By strategy I do not mean a centralized plan drafted by a few high ranking individuals, much like the Libertarian Party’s, but a grassroots activist plan. I propose an Educate, Grow, Win strategy.

Educating the public should be our first priority, this is why it’s the first step in my strategy. We must deliver a message to the public that is radical, diverse and one that addresses real life problems with real life solutions. We do not need to water down our message at all to deliver it to the public, like the “LP Reformers” wish to and are doing (not successful I might add), for how can we grow a truly libertarian party without spreading a truly libertarian message? A radical message does not need to be totally philosophical and hard to understand; it can and must address the real life problems faced by Americans.

Our message must also be diverse and deliver to a diverse audience. Unlike the Libertarian Party we must target more than just mostly disaffected white, middle class conservatives. We need to outreach to the poor and to ethnic minorities (along with women, LGBT peoples, the young and the old plus anyone else who needs to hear our message). We must try to let every single person receive and understand our message.

We must never forget the main propose of the Boston Tea Party is to educate. We must never get lost and compromise our principles to win elections, like many in the Libertarian Party have done (*Cough, Cough*… the people who nominated Bob Barr). And we must remember that we ARE NOT like the Republicans and Democrats, so we need not try to act like them. We are principled so we do not use the same political tricks and gimmicks they do, along with all the other dirty and unethical acts they carry out.

While counting to educate, we must try to grow our party. This is step 2, in the Educate, Grow, Win strategy.

In the future, we must turn our candidates’ educational campaigns after their elections and integrate that same effort into the party. This way the party continues to grow even after elections. We must build strong state parties. This is something, I think, the Boston Tea Party understands because of the strict limits put on the power of the national party so I will not elaborate further.

The last step is to win. Victory will only come to us after we have educated the public about what liberty really is and what the only way to get it is. This step will come differently at different levels of government. We might elect several local level offices in the next election, but state level offices might be a few years off and federal level even more than that.

I believe that this is the only way that the Boston Tea Party has any chance of winning this ideological war for freedom. We must always remember that ideology does matter and that we are fight against the statist ideology of the Republican-Democrat Party. Do not give up and never surrender.

Thank you for taking the time to read these scatterings of my thoughts, hopefully it might help advance the party in a small way. I end this letter with the unforgettable words of Ayn Rand, "Reason and morality are the only weapons that determine the course of history; the collectivists dropped them because they had no right to carry them. Pick them up; you have."

Raymond Lady
Vice President
Boston Tea Party of Indiana