Misuse of Roberts Rules of Order Newly Revised - It is not Sacrosanct!

I sent the following today (Monday, May 4th) to members of the Libertarian Party Bylaws and Rules Committee, of which I'm a member.

"Thanks Chuck. I appreciate your efforts on this. You have correctly observed a huge problem with the LP, and libertarians in general, and thanks for your suggestion to help deal with it.

In my opinion there is an obsession to codify everything and detail everything to the exact degree within the LP and libertarians in general. Discretion, common sense and achieving the mission are secondary to abiding by overly-detailed and obsessive procedures and rules. Libertarians lose focus.

I understand libertarians desire to have rules - it is about fairness, due process, notice and other things important in decision-making. This is admirable. But IMO, libertarians far too often take this to such an extreme, as it destroys the mission, and perversely results in no fairness, no due process, failure, and even worse, results contrary to the mission.

The rules have become more important than the mission.

I've run far too many meetings to even want to try to count them. I've learned a few things. The smaller the meeting, the less vigorous the use of RONR. I personally find the need to enforce RONR increases when there are about 12 to 18 participants in a meeting, depending on the number of dominant personalities in the group. For matters as large as an LP convention, Roberts is great and actually very effective. The smaller the group, the more likely Roberts is a hindrance (which defeats its original mission to bring focus and order to a meeting, and to get things done wanted by the majority - but with an opportunity for the minority to change minds).

However, last night I found it sad and funny it took 20 minutes to adjourn a small group. Roberts reared its ugly head (and no offense meant to Joe - he runs good, focused and well-paced meetings).

I find similarities between the various libertarian organizations, especially within the Libertarian Party, and with how federal, state and local bureaucracies actually work. Arguing over rules, procedures and words is more important to the bureaucrats than the mission itself. Now granted, it makes me money attacking these bureaucrats on behalf of my clients. But wouldn't a better use of my client's money be used to enhance their business, rather than fight the artificial hindrances put up by the games of the bureaucrats.

Am I taking Libertarians to task? - you bet! I often think RONR in the "nth" degree has become more important than the mission to libertarians and to the Libertarian Party. I find that very sad. And wasteful. And disappointing.

The Libertarian Party has so much good to offer. Let's focus on that instead.

Mark W. Rutherford"