Your bragging about your inability to distinguish a difference between the words "aggression" and "initiation" are only surpassed by your inability to distinguish a difference between an oath, a pledge and a statement of agreement. As one of those who on more than one occasion has taken a serious important long lasting oath with full understanding of its significance, your belittling it as nothing more than a pledge or worse, a statement of agreement, I find quite distasteful. There are those who attach a special meaning to an oaths that reach far beyond any petty domestic political differences. When you choose to try to dishonor the value of an oath, you only show off your own dishonorable character.
The fact that you considered your LP pledge to be an oath, say that you have never taken a serious oath, or if you did, you didn't take it seriously. In either case, I would never put any trust in you as an honorable person.
The way in which you exaggerate and misrepresent libertarian positions, show you to be a person who lacks honesty as a personal virtue. It also shows you to be a person who fears the truth battle. As for me, I'm glad you are out of the LP, it currently has far to many chickenhawks.
Have a nice life - good night.
I know rational debate is difficult for those with short-term memory problems, but try to keep up. I used the word "aggressive" in my paraphrasing of the LP of PA pledge. That word implies initiation of force. Next time, I'll quote the exact pledge for the hopelessly--and irrelevently--pedantic. Its meaning won't be different.
The Pennsylvania party's statement is a pledge, where as the national LP only requires a statement of agreement.
Uh, huh. Thanks for conceding my point, finally, that many LP's require a pledge of this kind.
As one of those who on more than one occasion has taken a serious important long lasting oath with full understanding of its significance, your belittling it as nothing more than a pledge or worse, a statement of agreement, I find quite distasteful.
[snip ... and a great deal more genuinely nasty personal invective and meaningless nonsense of this kind].
I have taken a "real", long-term, serious oath on several occasions, including one still binding on me to support, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic. I regard that oath as sacred, solemn, and binding to the fullest extent of my ability. You don't know anything about me, or the sacrifices made by me or my family, and although it's fashionable for pacifists to call anyone who supports the war on terror with global reach as a "chickenhawk, [sic]" your epithet doesn't apply. Furthermore, I take every pledge, oath, or statement of affirmation I make as true and correct and binding on me. Your ability to make a statement of agreement you really don't consider binding, indeed, says everything about you and nothing about me whatever.
The way in which you exaggerate and misrepresent libertarian positions, show you to be a person who lacks honesty as a personal virtue. It also shows you to be a person who fears the truth battle.
Nice try, but even your ad hominem doesn't cut it. You haven't substantively disputed any of my criticisms of the LP. Indeed, in several places you've reaffirmed them. For example, while you originally claimed the LP wasn't a pacifist party, you then took great pains to prove that pacifism is the direction in which the LP has always and consistently been moving. I see in this post you've decided to go strictly personal, and have dropped that argument. Good for you. At least you recognize the tactical importance of giving up an indefensible position. As for my original claim that the most LP's require a pacifist oath, pledge, statement of agreement, or whatever you wish to call it, I see you've dropped that position, too, preferring rather to lamely assert in effect that "it really isn't something you have to believe in, you just sign off on it. It's not like it's a real oath." OK. So why then is this pledge/oath/vow/silly sentence so important that it appears in the membership application of most LP's?
As for me, I'm glad you are out of the LP
On that, which is the most important part of this discussion, we heartily agree. Glad to see the LP is still building membership in the usual way.