A Georgia Libertarian Talks About “The Old Days”

Robert Falk has been a member of the Libertarian Party of Georgia since 1979. He recently shared this reminiscence:

My wife and I retired last June and are planning to move to Washington State. Wrapping things up here in Georgia got me thinking about the progress our party has made since I joined in 1979. I am writing this with the hope that people who joined the party within the last few years and feel frustrated by its relatively small size and its paucity of press coverage will be inspired by how far we have come.

I was a liberal in the sixties, but was gradually enlightened to the values of liberty and free markets by Milton Friedman’s column in Newsweek. When I read about the existence of the Libertarian Party, I decided to join the local organization so that I could work with and learn from liberty-loving individuals. The problem was that I couldn’t find the Party. It was not in the phone book, and reference librarian couldn’t find any contact information. I ended up writing to Alaska’s Dick Randolph, the first Libertarian state legislator. He sent me a name and number belonging to a woman who was the Party president. Her unlisted phone number served as the Party’s phone number. She told me about a meeting soon to be held in the back room of a bar in Little Five Points.

My memory is a bit sketchy about who was there, but there were five to ten people including , I think, Jim Cox, Sharon (Smith) Harris, Jimmy Harris, and Bruce Earnhardt. I was impressed by the intelligence and warmth of the people, as well as their ability to communicate libertarian ideas in a positive way. The people in attendance constituted at least half the state Party membership at the time. Early conventions were held in living rooms or apartment complex clubhouses. A few members were brilliant debaters, theorists, and parliamentarians who came to play intellectual games more than to work for political change.

When the Ed Clark Presidential campaign kicked off, we set out to get about 80,000 signatures to get him on the Georgia ballot. We had help from paid, out-of-state petitioners who lived on mattresses in a bare apartment on Ponce de Leon across from Mary Mac’s Tea Room. We spent countless hours gathering the signatures (which merely indicated that Mr. Clark should have the right to run) and answering such objections as:

  • “Why should I help you. He’s gonna run against my guy.”
  • “I’ll be right back.” (Never happened.)
  • “Isn’t Ed Clark another name for Lindon Larouche?”
  • and my favorite:

  • “Free markets? Less government? Lower taxes? You sound like a bunch of Communists to me.”
  • The state law said that the signed petitions had to be bound in a single volume which was very problematic since the stack of paper was about eight feet high. The petitions were threaded onto a rod and placed in a specially made eight-foot long plywood box for delivery to the Secretary of State’s office. Present day members should be thankful that due to the work of Party pioneer candidates like Carole Anne Rand and the late Elizabeth Golden, we no longer have to spend thousands of hours and dollars to get on the Presidential ballot.

    In the early days we grasped at any sign of recognition. I was once elated all day that a man at a lumber yard told me that he’d heard of Ed Clark. I took it as a sign of progress when Neal Boortz used the word “libertarian” on the radio. Press coverage was non-existent or biased. A TV station sent to cover a state party convention devoted their entire coverage to how party officers were upset with the hotel because the satellite hook-up wouldn’t work. Most coverage in the AJC described us as “the party which wants to legalize drugs and prostitution.” A story with a positive slant on the party platform was buried among the obituaries.

    The Party was going nowhere until two business men, Jack Aiken and Dick James, showed up at a meeting one day and blew us all away with their ideas for building the party based on what they’d learned running successful businesses. They were also willing to support the Party financially to take it from intellectual debating society to well-run political organization. In short order we had an office, an address, a phone, literature to send out, and mushrooming membership. This was a turning point. When you think of where we’ve come in the past thirty years, take a long-term perspective and imagine where we can be in another thirty with your serious commitment to the cause.

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