Unity

So many topics, so little time… But today, this one seems to be timely.

There’s a lot that one person can do. But many accomplishments require more than one person. Accomplishments on behalf of a group requires some degree unity among the group.

I bring this up because of several applications I’m presently involved in. The one which has most consumed my thoughts over the last few days is the contract negotiation our pilot group is involved with at work. It is a pretty ‘traditional’ example of the need for unity. If the group is unified, they can prevail. If they’re not, success is far less likely.

Unity doesn’t usually mean unified in *everything*. It simply means unified behind some common theme, goal, vision, idea, person, etc. Groups of people can be very unified on some narrow things and yet have little unity on others.

In the case of our contract negotiations, our pilot group is quite unified with respsect to wanting a satisfactory resolution as soon as possible. There is a fair amount of unity with respect to what would be acceptable or not. Get down to the details on one specific issue, though, and there is more and more division. And take that same group of people and ask them about other things and there won’t be nearly so much unity. What kind of music do they like? What is their vision for retirement? Which places would they rather fly? I guess it’s a good thing we don’t all want to fly to exactly the same place 😉

Anyhow, achieving the goal of a good contract does, indeed, require unity. Sometimes a display of unity is helpful in the negotiating process. Often, the mere appearance of unity is enough to accomplish a goal. And sometimes, the appearance of lack of unity measurably hurts the effort, even if there is, in fact, substantial unity.

This can be seen in a number of arenas. Another one that I frequently deal with is freedom. Among pro-freedom activists, there is a substantial amount of unity about most of the ‘agenda’. When we get to the finer details, though, we tend to have less and less unity.

The problem with libertarians, as a group, is that they habitually forsake the 80-90% unity we *do* have and focus on the 10% or less that we disagree about. In doing so, we create two substantial problems. First, we harm our ability to be effective by wasting our time and focus on disagreeing with each other. Second, we fail to present a unified and powerful message to the opposition.

Liberals (socialists, etc.) are pros at demonstrating unity. And the effect of that is quite impressive. When they merely appear to be unified, they exert great control over policy. They do that in many ways. Some go to work in the media and focus coverage on pro-liberal issues. Some hold marches. Some make TV shows. And so on and so forth. And they work together very effectively, especially in public.

Libertarians need to take a lesson from the liberals. Find the things we can rally behind, and *do* rally behind them. In the case of the Free State Project, that rallying is focused on a single state. If we can’t successfully affect policy with unity in NH, we will simply never be able to anywhere…

V-