As a lifelong libertarian and longtime Libertarian Party member I have stood above the mainstream fray between liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans. From gun rights to women’s reproductive rights my political bedfellows are always one-issue stands.

However, in recent years I’ve witnessed a very troubling trend peculiar to one of the old factions – a powerful disdain, if not outright contempt, for the democratic process.

Following a Supreme Court decision five years ago that left to individual states the authority to take into account (or not) the race and gender of its citizens in providing government services, a group formed proposing to constitutionally bar the practice here in Michigan.

Proponents believed that a half-century of affirmative action programs had not merely proved ineffective but actually harmful to everyone – including those they were intended to help. Opponents asserted that, since balance remained an unrealized goal, a complete ban on any consideration of citizens’ race/gender was naively premature.

We champions of individual rights are, of course, against the idea of categorizing people according to their physical characteristics. For any purpose. That allied us, in this instance, with conservatives. Certainly, the debate was legitimate, desperately needed, and long overdue.

Those on the other side, however, not only disagreed, they made every effort to characterize the discussion itself as racist, and sought to squelch the petition drive “By Any Means Necessary,” as one of the leading opposition groups advocated – and even called itself.

The pattern was established from the most preliminary step of the initiative process when the petition was submitted to the Board of State Canvassers in Lansing for approval as to form (the board has no authority with respect to content.)

One of the two Democratic Party members on the evenly divided board, Doyle O’Connor, objected to the meeting immediately after the opening gavel, asserting that proper notice had not been given, notwithstanding the fact that all interested parties were present. The law, he opined, specified that the public be given a minimum 24-hour notice of Board of Canvassers meeting agendas. Since the photocopy that was thumb-tacked to a bulletin board outside the Bureau of Elections offices was on the 4th floor of a building that is closed over night, the public had not gotten its full 24-hour opportunity for review. O’Connor demanded that the hearing be rescheduled. His fellow Democrat, the committee chair, concurred and sent everyone home.

Thus began an incredible circus of delays, obstructions, objections, lawsuits, violently disrupted Board of Canvassers meetings (by bored high school students bused in for the purpose), harassment of petitioners, more lawsuits, and other tactics too numerous and ugly to recount – ending in the self-same Doyle O’Connor actually defying a Court of Appeals order that he put aside his personal feelings on the issue and do his duty as a board member by certifying the proposal for the ballot.

Recent events surrounding the attempt to recall House Speaker, Andy Dillon would have the great sage, Yogi Berra, observing, “it’s déjà vu all over again.”

Democrats, from party chair, Mark Brewer, on down have been absolutely shameless in their attempts to frustrate the democratic process.

There have been lawsuits over petition language. More lawsuits over such technicalities as the home voting district of the person holding the clipboard – when it’s that of the one holding the pen that ought to be the only relevant point.

Petitioners have been harassed on the transparently absurd claim that burly union members and Dillon staffers are simply there to “educate” voters – often at ratios of 4-1 and 5-1. Indeed, it recently came out that one of these paid “voter educators” was a convict on parole with a criminal record that included eight, violent felonies. And, according to the Secretary of State’s office, no voting record at all.

Now that the signatures have been filed, batten down the hatches for another blizzard of challenges over every conceivable, procedural aspect of the petition drive and signatures collected. Anything, it seems, to avoid actually having a public debate on whether Speaker Dillon’s advocacy of a massive tax increase benefited Michigan, and then putting the question to his constituents.

Being a libertarian, I have worked on issues from across the traditional left/right political spectrum, including, for instance, several of the recent medical marijuana proposals – an issue widely opposed by conservative Republicans. But neither on this, nor any other, have I ever seen any them resort to relentless complaining about legal technicalities, or employing goon squads to bully the electorate.

If you want to see that kind of contempt for democracy, it seems, you need to talk to a liberal Democrat.

The above essay was published May 30, 2008 in the Detroit News

click here for a pdf version.

Below is a complete collection of all “op-eds” since SGA’s founding (though O’Brien has had numerous other columns published prior to the SGA launch which may be found at his own website (www.theothertimobrien.com).

These are the original versions as submitted to the newspapers. In those instances where they appeared in either the Detroit News or the Detroit Free Press there is also an “As published” link to the newspaper’s own website at the bottom of the column. We do not have links to – or even track – reprints in other newspapers.

There are generally two significant differences between the original columns and the way they actually appeared in Detroit’s major dailies. First, the newspapers generally trim them some for length. And second, these “mainstream” papers occasionally remove some of O’Brien’s more pointed barbs to protect the delicate sensibilities of their readers.