Joe brings up two points that I had considered for inclusion, so I’ll expand on them.
What of Gun Owners of America, The Second Amendment Foundation, Citizens
Committee for the Right To Keep and Bear Arms, and JPFO? There I think the case is
less clear. One can be a member of not just one but any and all of the organizations.
By joining some lobbying organization, you’re not directly diminishing another. If there are several orgs that are generally aligned in the same direction, you may join all of them and allow yourself some influence with each of them. In that life is a game, buying four $25 tokens a year to play with may get you further than buying 1 $100 token. Writing to the NRA as a non-member, you may rest assured they ignore your input. They exist as a profit-making venture and they wish to continue to exist; a letter from someone that pays even the nominal amount has far more impact than someone outside the org.
The only reasonable argument I can make against his position is that the L-Party has articulated and presented a viewpoint that perhaps would have been even more muddled and lost than it is now.
I don’t know if the LP had to exist in order to cause a corpus of liberty to exist. Certainly, all of the founding documents predate the LP. Much like Feynman’s gift of recasting existing material into something more approachable, the LP has driven clarity on writing and thinking on liberty*. I don’t take the position that the LP has produced no value; just that it hasn’t directly produced good value. Indirectly, the LP has produced great negative value.
* Neither of which is exhibited herein
