NationStates Jolt Archive

I know what the Democratic and Republican Parties say their political philosophies are, and I know how the elected officials in both parties act. I have a good idea what the "common people" in both parties think.

However, I know very little about the Libertarian Party. I think their philosophy is as little government as possible and maximum individual freedom.

I'd like to hear from some Libetarians and I'd like to know why they think I should vote for their candidates in elections.

Please keep it serious and civil.

Thanks,

Celt.

Found this online. I am not a Libertarian in the party sense of the word, but here you go:

Frequently asked questions about the Libertarian Party

What is a Libertarian?

Libertarians believe that you have the right to live your life as you wish, without the government interfering -- as long as you don’t violate the rights of others. Politically, this means Libertarians favor rolling back the size and cost of government, and eliminating laws that stifle the economy and control people’s personal choices.

Are Libertarians liberal or conservative?

Libertarians are neither. Unlike liberals or conservatives, Libertarians advocate a high degree of both personal and economic liberty. For example, Libertarians agree with conservatives about freedom in economic matters, so we're in favor of lowering taxes, slashing bureaucratic regulation of business, and charitable -- rather than government -- welfare. But Libertarians also agree with liberals on personal tolerance, so we're in favor of people’s right to choose their own personal habits and lifestyles.

In a sense, Libertarians “borrow” from both sides to come up with a logical and consistent whole -- but without the exceptions and broken promises of Republican and Democratic politicians. That's why we call ourselves the Party of Principle.

How large is the Libertarian Party?

By almost every objective measure, the Libertarian Party is the third-largest political party in America. We’re active in all 50 states and have more than 200,000 registered voters, which is more than all other third parties combined.

What kind of offices do Libertarians hold?

Around the USA there are Libertarian mayors, county executives, county council members and even a Libertarian sheriff! Libertarians also serve on school boards and in hundreds of local offices. In 2004 our candidates for U.S. earned over 1 million votes for the third time in a row, which is a feat no other third party has achieved.

These elected Libertarians are already hard at work saving you money and protecting your civil liberties. In fact, Libertarians saved Americans over $2.2 billion in 2004 alone.

What kind of people join the Libertarian Party?

People like you. People who used to be Republicans, Democrats, and independents – from all walks of life. They joined us because they realize that we’re the only political party working for their personal and economic liberty.

Another question we sometimes hear: Is political extremist Lyndon LaRouche in the Libertarian Party? No. LaRouche has never been associated in any way with us. He runs for office as a Democrat.

How can I join the party?

It is free to join the Libertarian Party. But if you donate $25, you receive a subscription to our monthly newspaper LP News and help finance our work to spread the word about the Libertarian Party. With your help, we can keep the media informed; run Internet, radio, and magazine advertisements; send information to more Americans; support Libertarian candidates in winnable races; promote pro-freedom legislation at the federal and state level; provide resources to our state organizations; and more.

Ask yourself: Is government too big or too small? Are taxes too high or too low? Does the government regulate my business too much or too little? Does the government control my personal life too much or not enough? If you agree, like most Americans, that government is too large, too expensive, and meddles too much, the Libertarian Party is for you!

Now it’s time to take action. Join the Libertarian Party today – and become part of the new choice in American politics!

The LP would be a viable third party, NOW. But they can't get over the idea that drug use should be a personal responsibility and not a governmental one. That's going to alienate a lot of potential voters. If they could just get past that idea and promote smaller government and financial responsibility by government, they could pick up a few tons of new voters.

Vote for Michael Badnarik! He's the man. He refuses to write his zip code on any of his mail because it's an illegal "federal zone", and hasn't paid taxes in years. You got to give him credit, he really believes what he says.

The LP would be a viable third party, NOW. But they can't get over the idea that drug use should be a personal responsibility and not a governmental one. That's going to alienate a lot of potential voters. If they could just get past that idea and promote smaller government and financial responsibility by government, they could pick up a few tons of new voters.

Yeah, I agree. Libertarians have some good ideas for government except for the lack of certain, more 'moderate' laws. What is their stance on power of the states or separation of church and state? Those are things you can't just say: "Bah. Do as we will." It could result in some angry dixiecrats and Christnuts.

As far as I knew from my friend who is a member of the party, the Libertarians don't endorse _any_ drug laws...

But it could be that's what she _wants_ the position to be ( btw, she doesn't use any herself, she just thinks Prohibition demonstrated resoundingly the pitfalls of outlawing _any_ recreational mind altering chemicals....or put another way, the costs of trying to limit "hard drug use" are far , far greater than all the damage of hard drug use combined, even if you assume illegalization holds the levels at 1/10th of their "natural" levels.)...

If Libertarians are inconsistent that way...and officially support criminalization...well, I'm disappointed, myself. Their guidelines is simple: unless someone is violating the rights of someone else, the government sits on its hands.

Now, you could have hard penalties for drug-influenced crime, if you wanted...I'm not sure that would be a good idea, but it would at least be ideologically consistent....but until someone robs or assaults someone on drugs, or breaches a contract or something like that....then nothing has happened to void their guarantees against having their personal freedoms impinged upon

"The freedom to swing your arms stops at my nose"

And the guy who originally wrote that principle out (with impressive logical support), Mill, made clear that for this principle to work you have to be very very conservative in what you consider "touching my nose". And that you CANNOT go with the idea "I can stop you from doing something for your own good" or any intrusion on anyone's liberties can be justified, because there's always room for improvement.

I think the greatest barrier for them is the fact that no one wants to "waste their vote", and that a lot of people +still+ vote on a hereditary or regional basis. It's not as bad as in the mid 19th century...but still pretty bad...

Another point is that no significant bloc of powerful patrons has been enticed by the Libertarian platform, and without at least a few such, they will never have enough money to mount a successful campaign for any high office. In the modern political process, money is the basis of gaining and holding recognition. Less so than before, but still critical.

I mean look at Perot, he tried to be a one man band, but that lack of patrons in the ogilarchy doomed him to obscurity, regardless of the merits (or lack of ) in his position.

My zwei pfennig.

I've spent some time checking out the Libertarian Party and comparing it to the republicrat party. In what they do versus what they say, there is no significant difference between the Republicans and Democrats. This is exacerbated by the longevity of gerrymandering lifetime politicians. So, the Libertaian Party does seem to offer a rational alternative. I doubt that everyone will be satisfied by every one of their policies, but then, the same can be said for the republicrats as well.

What it boils down to are the fundamentals and there they seem to have adopted quite rational positions.

The real answers are term limits and repeal of the income tax (especially the PAYE principle) but again, do you thing any currently sitting republicrat will do these? Until we have one person, one office, once we're going to continue to sink into a morass of debt and eventual revolution.

I've decided to vote for Libertarian candidates if they exist, and to vote anti-incumbent where they don't.

Coot
(from the TransPecos where none of the above is always a candidate!)

http://www.lp.org/issues/platform_all.shtml

(edit: A lot of it is good, a lot of it is simply insane. At any rate, I plan on voting Green in the next election; the Libertarian candidate for Governor in my state is using opposition to the welfare state as an anti-immigration stance, while advocating a general expansion of the police state and anti-federalist policy on the whole issue in general.)

I fail to see how any party that advocates privitized firefighting and/ore police services will ever become a viable third party.

The LP would be a great party, but it's lost its pragmatism as of late. Which is why I consider myself a little-l libertarian.

I'll tell you about my party: It's not Libertarian!

[QUOTE=Mandatory Altruism]Snip...I think the greatest barrier for them is the fact that no one wants to "waste their vote", ...SNIP[QUOTE]

If everyone in Oklahoma who wanted Richardson for Governor but said that had voted for Richardson, he would be governor now. Remember, Ventura was a third party candidate who was elected governor so it can be done. When the people get fed up enough...and I think they are close to that point now...

regarding "vote wasting"....

I wasn't saying that people _were_....but people _believe_ that.

As far as I can see, people are more concerned about not being associated with "the unpopular kid" than they are about the quality of their elected leaders.

In Canada's recent election, this was driven home rather sharply.

It was a boring December-January campaign. 2/3 or 3/4 of it the poll numbers stayed almost exactly like they had before the election was called.

Then the incumbent, Paul Martin, lost his cool and made three errors

(1) He didn't jump on the "get tough on crime" bandwagon quickly or enthusiastically enough, after a photogenic 14 year old girl got killed in a gang violence crossfire in the nation's capital, Toronto.

We'll ignore the fact that the crime in a given _city_ is a _municipal_ issue, and not any damn business of a provincial or federal politician. The whole of Canada or your province should not get to weigh in on every little mundane detail of how your city is administered.

(2) He made the mistake of being in charge of the party machinery which almost aired a REALLY dumb attack ad....Harper, the opposition leader, had made a promise to station a battalion (like, about 200-500 people) of armed forces (we have a unified defense force) troops in each major Canadian city as a way of evening out political patronage a bit (government job creation) and helping with disaster control (a somewhat useful idea given the severe weather events in Manitoba, Quebec and Ontario and the Maritimes in the last decade).

The ad implied this was just the first step in establishing a military dictatorship. It was so over the top, it was staggering. Still, the ad _never aired_. But it had been on the liberal campaign site (I'm hazy if it was put there to "test the waters" or if it was an accident or what....) and whoooo, people felt their intelligence had been insulted.

And it was pretty dumb, really. 500 troops, even with 1950's-60's tanks and apc's and artillery coudln't control a city of 1-3 million people. Plus, Canadians mostly see their armed forces as peacekeepers and civil engineering workers. We simply do not find it collectively credible that you could order 10-15 battalions to pull a putsch.

(3) once the fallout from (1) and (2) started to weigh in he got "strident and whiny". Historically, this approach ("Oh god, don't elect the Tories, they'll put Satan himself in charge of fiscal policy....") actually has worked really well in the past. But people were a bit tired of it, and the government didn't have any recent accomplishments (or recent Tory blunders) to make the formula credible.


Now, 1-3 are all issues of optics. No new scandals erupted during the last part of the campaign, nor did earlier ones gain prominence. (though arguably, one of them should have...) Even as the incumbent Liberal's poll numbers plumetted like a rock, everyone still agreed that Martin was a better Prime Minister than they thought Harper would make (according to sub-portions of the relevant polls)


Nothing had happened to make people believe that the platforms or the tactical plans to implement those platforms was _any_ different than in the first 2/3 of the election.

But because Martin suddenly looked "weak and whiny", he lost the election pretty badly. The only reason things haven't gone to hell is the Bloc Quebequois is fairly socialist and they vote with socialist NDP on a lot of issues. The liberals are desperate not to lose their "progressive" credentials, so they generally follow (and to be fair, they largely agree on many issues, particularly purely social ones, with the socialists).

(I will note that even if you think Canadian style socialism is ecnomically poor policy, there are a lot of percolating social issues that the Tories want to basically follow the USA playbook on...and most Canadians do NOT like this playbook. (according to what they tell pollsters) Moreover, perhaps we're a little (or even a lot) poorer for having "too big a government involvement in the economy"....but the Tories want to auction off public assets at fire sale prices to megacorps, regardless of the functioning of those agencies.

The status quo may have problems...but just going "all those things that government has taken on in the previous fifty years, it's all junk" and tossing it all up on the "Free market" is (a) not what the people want, according to other pools and (b) going to be a pretty corrupt process if similiar fire sales of provinical assets in Ontario and British Columbia in the last 10 years are any yardstick.

Preventing thes two major and negative changes which are undesired by the electorate is worth a few more years of "continuing falling behind" in living standards....there's like 20-40 years of public taxes invested in these assets, and some of the sales in Ontario and BC sold them for 5-10% of their value! or less, in a few cases. Now, what you paid isn't necessarily what an agency is worth, but many of these agencies are well regarded by people who deal with them. Govenrment is not a business, and sometimes to have a fair and just society, you have to pay money to get those results , rather than let it pile up in the ogilarchs' coffers....)

It seems from everything I heard that people weren't thinking "who'd make the better leader" or "which party is going to do what sort of things to the country" but "Eeew. Martin's a wuss. If I vote for a wuss, and he loses, like he probably will, I'll feel like a fool".

Perhaps there other explanations of what people are motivated by...it obviously isn't platform nor is it competence. Maybe it is not "high school popularity contest" dynamics....but I don't see another explanation, offhand...