Libertarians tend to be regarded in the popular media as a sort ofconservative movement. In fact, they espouse a mix of "conservative"and "liberal" ideas. Many of their ideas appeal to liberals:
Other libertarian ideas sound more conservative:
Overall, their stance on personal freedoms is "liberal," theirstance on government spending and regulation is "conservative." Inshort, they combine the personal irresponsibility of liberals with the social,economic and environmental irresponsibility of conservatives. In fact they are rather reminiscent of old-time anarchists.
The following quotes are taken directly from the libertarian party platform.
We oppose the involuntary commitment of any person to or involuntarytreatment in a mental institution. We strongly condemn Involuntary OutpatientCommitment (IOC), where the patient is ordered to accept treatment, or else becommitted to a mental institution and forcibly treated. We also oppose forcedtreatment for the elderly, the head-injured, or those with diminished capacity.
If there is any area where the libertarian platform has been achieved, hereit is. Beginning in the 1970's a coalition of liberals and conservativesvirtually eliminated involuntary mental treatment. Liberals felt thatinvoluntary treatment was a violation of the patients' civil rights, thatpatients were being warehoused in institutions, and that society needed to be"confronted" with mental illness by having the mentally ill in the midst ofsociety. Conservatives had much purer motives: they simply wanted to save money.Most of the homeless persons we see sleeping in doorways, and every mentally illperson we see ranting on a street corner, is a product ofde-institutionalization.
You have to wonder why libertarians aren't touting their greatest successmore.
We favor the abolition of the Federal Communications Commission as we wouldprovide for free market ownership of airwave frequencies, deserving of fullFirst Amendment protection.
Okay, now how are we going to keep track of who owns what frequency?Especially since radio waves reach across state lines?
Suppose a large broadcaster simply starts blasting a smaller one off the air?And suppose the big guy has much greater resources for fighting a court battlethan the little guy? Or is this maybe what libertarians want?
If a private employer screens prospective or current employees via questionnaires, polygraph tests, urine tests for drugs, blood tests for AIDS, or other means, this is a condition of that employer's labor contracts. Such screening does not violate the rights of employees, who have the right to boycott such employers if they choose.
And if a large number of employers all adopt the same practices, you canboycott food and shelter, too.
We hold that human rights should not be denied or abridged on the basis ofnationality. We condemn massive roundups of Hispanic Americans and others by thefederal government in its hunt for individuals not possessing requiredgovernment documents. We strongly oppose all measures that punish employers whohire undocumented workers. Such measures repress free enterprise, harassworkers, and systematically discourage employers from hiring Hispanics.
Aww, isn't that nice? Why do you suppose the Libertarian platformspecifically mentions Hispanics but not Haitians? Is the concern here for humanrights? Or is it, just maybe, a plan for creating a huge pool of low-paidworkers?
Individual rights should not be denied, abridged, or enhanced at the expense of other people's rights by laws at any level of government based on sex, wealth, race, color, creed, age, national origin, personal habits, political preference, or sexual orientation. We support repealing any such laws rather than extending them to all individuals. Discrimination imposed by government has caused a multitude of problems. Anti-discrimination laws create the same problems. While we do not advocate private discrimination, we do not support any laws which attempt to limit or ban it. The right to trade includes the right not to trade -- for any reasons whatsoever; the right of association includes the right not to associate, for exercise of this right depends upon mutual consent.
Okay, just ask any black who couldn't find a decent place to stay, or adecent job back in pre-Civil Rights days, just how well "mutualconsent" worked. Mutual consent means consent of both sides.
I don't like anti-discrimination laws. They are invasive, burdensome toenforce and a fertile breeding ground for meddlesome busybodies. We have them for onesimple reason: when we didn't, American society arbitrarily denied equaltreatment to entire classes of people. There was a national brouhaha duringthe Korean War when the Red Cross decided to stop segregating blood by race.When blacks outscored whites on aptitude tests for the Philadelphia FireDepartment before World War I, the department said "We don't care what thetests show. We're not hiring blacks - period."
So where are black travelers going to stay if white-owned motels decide notto take them in? Why should we expect the free market to solve this problem? Itdidn't prior to passage of the Civil Rights Act. Things have changed, andprobably if we did away with civil rights laws we would find most people stillbeing less biased than they once were. But can we really be so sure? And what'sthe libertarian plan if widespread discrimination, so extensive that it shutssome groups out nearly everywhere, returns?
Recognizing that abortion is a very sensitive issue and that people, including libertarians, can hold good-faith views on both sides, we believe the government should be kept out of the question.
It's nice to see the Libertarians have mastered one tactic of the majorparties - the fine art of weasel words. If all government is kept out of the question, that's tantamount tosupporting abortion on demand. Or, if by government, they mean Federalgovernment, it's tantamount to permitting local control, which amounts torepealing Roe vs. Wade. So which of the two is their position? And whydon't these people who claim to be gutsy enough to take on both major partieshave the guts to spell out exactly what they mean?
A child is a human being and, as such, deserves to be treated justly. We oppose laws infringing on children's rights to work or learn, such as child labor laws and compulsory education laws.
Just imagine how many kids would quit school and flock to 16-hour a day jobspaying $2 an hour in sweatshops if we did this. American kids could have all the rights of kids inHonduras or Bangladesh. Gee, another plan to create a huge pool of unskilledlabor.
All restrictions upon the private minting of coins should be abolished so that minting will be open to the competition of the free market.
Private coins and bills were common in the 19th century when travel was rareand official currency was often in short supply. A token or bill issued by awell-known local bank would be accepted as trustworthy. Just imagine going toSeattle and trying to spend money minted by Bernie's Mint of Tampa.
Presumably the coins would be precious metal, because any other privatelyminted coins would be worthless, but you can see how easy it would be toadulterate the metal with innumerable private coins floating around.
Actually, it is perfectly legal to mint private coins. There are dozens of private mints doing it every day. And it's perfectly legal to trade them for other things of value, if you can convince somebody to take them. And they can even serve as money - just go to Chuck E. Cheese or take a ride on the New York subway.
The fixation that some extreme right-wingers have with precious metal isinteresting. The stock of precious metal hasn't expanded nearly as fast as thetotal GNP in recent decades. So basically these people want to hold onto inertmetal they themselves did not mine, and see its value skyrocket as other peoplework to advance technology and build infrastructure. All the while, presumably,complaining righteously about freeloaders who want money without working.
We call for the abolition of all regulation of financial and capital markets -- specifically, the abolition of the Securities and Exchange Commission, We call for repeal of all laws based on the muddled concept of insider trading.
We condemn all coercive monopolies. "Anti-trust" laws do not prevent monopoly, but foster it by limiting competition. We therefore call for the repeal of all "anti-trust" laws, including the Robinson-Patman Act which restricts price discounts, the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, and the Clayton Anti-Trust Act. We further call for the abolition of the Federal Trade Commission and the anti-trust division of the Department of Justice.
Given the current state of the stock market, it really takes guts to gopublic with these proposals. Not even Enron in all its glory had the nerve topropose legalizing insider trading.
Now what exactly is a "coercive" monopoly? No monopolist was everforced at gunpoint to shut out competition. The Postal Service is coercive: bylaw, nobody else can deliver first class mail. But for a large company to useits economic muscle to drive competitors out of business and then set whateverprices it likes? That's not coercive - those people are acting of their own freewill. Their competitors are perfectly free to compete by operating at a loss.
Governments facing fiscal crises should always default in preference to raising taxes.
The Libertarian Party is opposed to all taxation, feeling that the governmenthas no right to take money away from people. Instead, the government has theright to borrow money and not pay it back.
We support the right of free persons to voluntarily establish, associate in, or not associate in, labor unions. An employer should have the right to recognize, or refuse or refuse to recognize, a union as the collective bargaining agent of some, or all, of its employees. We oppose government interference in bargaining, such as compulsory arbitration or the imposition of an obligation to bargain. Therefore, we urge repeal of the National Labor Relations Act, and all state Right-to-Work Laws which prohibit employers from making voluntary contracts with unions.
We haven't had a good bloody clash between strikers and strike breakers in a long time.
We oppose all government conservation schemes through the use of taxes, subsidies, and regulation.
Actually, if there's one arena where the free market might play a constructive role, it's in energy. Let the price of gas go up until SUV's become worthless. Let areas with energy shortages pass laws to shut down the NIMBY's (Not in My Back Yard) and build power plants close by. If airports are crowded, let fares go up until people start using less crowded airports. (Fly out of Minneapolis versus O'Hare? No contest.)
Strict liability, not government agencies and arbitrary government standards, should regulate pollution. We therefore demand the abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Okay, so you have $10,000 in the bank, and you take a company to court whose annual legal budget is $10 million. Care to guess how well this system will work? And if we dismantle most government and eliminate most taxes, where exactly will the money and people to enforce "strict liability" come from? Details, details.
Many conservatives argue for a "loser pays" system of liability, a step in the right direction. But we can go further. How about a "lowest bidder" system? Both parties in a legal action submit bids of how much they are willing to pay in legal expenses. The lower of the two bids is the ceiling. Neither side can spend more.
We support strong and effective laws against fraud and misrepresentation. However, we oppose paternalistic regulations which dictate to consumers, impose prices, define standards for products, or otherwise restrict risk-taking and free choice. We oppose all so-called "consumer protection" legislation which infringes upon voluntary trade, and call for the abolition of the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Just the other day I was wondering where I could buy adulterated food and some appliances with dangerous wiring.
We advocate the abolition of the Federal Aviation Administration, which has jeopardized safety by arrogating to itself a monopoly of safety regulation and enforcement. We call for privatizing the air traffic control system and transferring the FAA's other functions to private agencies.
Customers will surely boycott airlines with lots of crashes. If the air traffic control system in Chicago creates a hazard, you can just fly to Minneapolis or Cleveland instead. And if you're the owner of a private plane, what's to guarantee a private air traffic control system will let you use a certain airport? If your home town is served by airline X, and your destination is served by Y, and the two airlines refuse to cooperate, what guarantee do you have that you can get there at all?
We advocate the abolition of the Food and Drug Administration and particularly its policies of mandating specific nutritional requirements and denying the right of manufacturers to make non-fraudulent claims concerning their products.
That word "non-fraudulent" conceals a multitude of sins. Wecan presume consumers would avoid products that listed "cockroachparts" or "rat excrement" among its ingredients. (Having workedin some food processing plants, I can assure you that even the mostconscientious manufacturer cannot keep an entire factory surgically clean. If you think that's appalling, invite the local health inspector in to check your kitchen, and see if you pass.) The Food and Drug Administration exists specifically because, in its absence,food and drug processors lied blatantly about the contents and efficacy of theirproducts. I mean outright, in-your-face deception, like adding grass seeds tojam to make it appear natural. Read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle if youhave any lingering doubts. So who's going to detect consumer fraud in theabsence of the FDA?
If you think tainted meat is a problem now, just wait. Do you doubt that there are food processors who'd toss dogs, cats and rats into the grinder, bones, fur and all, if they thought they could get away with it? If the free market didn't provide clean food before the FDA, what assurance do we have that we'll get it after we abolish the FDA?
We demand the return of America's railroad system to private ownership.
Say what? First of all, much of it is private already. Second, Government runrailroads like Amtrak and Conrail exist specifically because privately runrailroads wanted to unload those lines.
We call for the privatization of airports, air traffic control systems, public roads, and the national highway system.
Public roads and the national highway system? Read up on the history ofAmerican roads to see how well the free market did in providing them well intothe 20th century. And even if someone could build his own Interstate highway,how would he acquire right of way if everyone on the route knew they could holdout for an exorbitant price? And what if the owner of one highway refused toallow the owner of another to join or cross his?
We oppose all government welfare, relief projects, and "aid to the poor" programs. All these government programs are invasive of privacy, paternalistic, demeaning, and inefficient. The proper source of help for such persons is the voluntary efforts of private groups and individuals.
And if the need exceeds the resources of private groups, then what?
We call for the homesteading or other just transfer to private ownership of federally held lands. We oppose any use of executive orders invoking the Antiquities Act to set aside public lands. We call for the abolition of the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service. We oppose creation of new government parks or wilderness and recreation areas. Such parks and areas that already exist should be transferred to non-government ownership. Pending such just transfer, their operating costs should be borne by their users rather than by taxpayers.
Do you think you'll get shoreline property in the Apostle Islands or a chunk of Grand Teton National Park under this plan? Call me a cynic, but why do I have the feeling that "just transfer" means "sale to the highest bidder?" and "homesteading" means "being snapped up by the nearest landowner?" Just look at how well the free market has preserved shoreline access in most areas. Where can an average citizen get to any shoreline, anywhere, except on public lands? Then ask yourself what assurance you have that whoever buys some national park won't turn it into an exclusive resort for the wealthy. If you enjoy outdoor recreation, you can kiss it goodbye if Libertarians have their way.
The smartest thing the U.S. Government ever did was to retain ownership of land in the West. Just travel through the West and observe the mean-spirited, petty attitude of Western landowners who bar access to totally unused land merely because they have the legal right to, then picture all open land in the hands of these people.
We call for the repeal of the Occupational Safety and Health Act. This lawdenies the right to liberty and property to both employer and employee, and itinterferes in their private contractual relations.
Just the other day I heard workers complaining about the Federal governmentinterfering with their right to lose body parts in machinery.
We recognize that the Civil Service is inherently a system of concealed patronage. We therefore recommend return to the Jeffersonian principle of rotation in office.
This would replace concealed patronage with up front, wide open patronage.
The Australian ballot system, introduced into the United States in the latenineteenth century, is an abridgement of freedom of expression and of votingrights. Under it, the names of all the officially approved candidates areprinted in a single government sponsored format and the voter indicates his orher choice by marking it or by writing in an approved but unlisted candidate'sname. We should return to the previous electoral system where there was noofficial ballot or candidate approval at all, and therefore no state or federalrestriction of access to a "single ballot." Instead, voters submittedtheir own choices and had the option of using "tickets" or cardsprinted by candidates or political parties.
This one, at first glance, is just plain weird. How does the present systeminfringe on anyone's rights? You can write in any candidate you like. True, ifyou write in Mickey Mouse, you probably won't show up on the official tally, butyou can do it.
In many cases, the Libertarian Party seems blissfully unaware that there wasever a problem with some of their proposed reforms. Wholly apart from the chaosthis could entail in counting votes, there's a good reason we abandoned thissystem. With privately printed ballots, anyone could tell from across the roomhow anyone else voted. An employer who wanted to intimidate workers into votinghis way needed only to station an observer in the polling place. Also, withprivately-printed ballots, what was to stop someone from bringing in a pocketfulof ballots and stuffing the ballot box? Do Libertarians really want free andhonest elections? This plank sounds more like a plan for voter coercion andelection rigging.
Not in the Libertarian platform at the time I wrote this page, but emerging in some conservative and libertarian circles, is the idea of repealing the 17th Amendment, which called for direct election of senators. Prior to that time, Senators were chosen by State legislatures. Some people think that system better preserved the rights of the States, that Senators spoke for their States rather than voters.
Wow. If you want a recipe for rule by lobbyists, this is the one. Which costs more: bankrolling a Senate election or cozying up to a few State legislators? One of the reasons the 17th Amendment was passed in the first place (and 3/4 of the States agreed on it, for all you States Rights advocates) was the abuses of the Robber Baron era and the ease of buying Senators under the old system. Also, occasionally legislatures deadlocked, in which case nobody represented the state.
The Libertarian Party seems to be completely unaware that the robber baronera ever happened at all in American history. Although libertarians profess towant individual liberty, their platform is a blueprint for unrestrained rule bythe rich and powerful. It's so gleefully over the top in its advocacy ofunrestrained greed it's almost like the platform a committee made up of EbenezerScrooge, Mr. Potter from It's a Wonderful Life, Uncle Duke from Doonesburyand Monty Burns from The Simpsons would write.
I find myself wondering who dreamed this document up. Despite its recipe forunbridled corporate greed, I can't picture anyone at any level of responsibilityin corporate America being so detached from political reality as to think thisplatform has any chance of becoming policy or working if it did.
So who buys into this plan? The typical libertarian, I suspect, is someonelike Ed Thompson, who ran for governor of Wisconsin in 2002 on the Libertarianticket. His sole qualification was that he was the brother of former Republicangovernor Tommy Thompson. His only achievement was to divert enough votes fromthe Republican candidate to elect a Democrat (Hint: if you're the RepublicanParty, bankroll the Greens. If you're the Democratic Party, bankroll thelibertarians.) I picture people who fantasize they could rise to greatness ifonly they weren't being taxed to death or tied down by endless regulations. Thefact that other people, paying the same taxes and under the same regulations, doachieve greatness doesn't enter their thinking. Still less does it occur to themthat they will end up suffering worse extortion and limitations on their freedomif all government functions and resources are in private, unregulated hands.
The free market is absolutely superb at creating abundance throughtechnology. To the extent that technology can also improve quality at the sametime, it provides quality. The tremendous growth in computers is a primeexample.
When quantity or price collide with quality, it's no contest. In a clashbetween adequate quality and low price versus high quality and higher price,quality loses every time. If you want a car that will last forever, buy a RollsRoyce. If you want one good for ten years or so, any car dealer can help you.Could you build a car that lasts fifty years at current prices? Maybe, but onceyou saturate the market, then what? Your continuing sales will be a fraction ofcurrent car sales. You'll have to lay off workers and shut down idle plants. So why bother? You can earn a profit selling pretty good carsthat last ten years. Just try to buy, say, a CD player with durable all-metalparts, or a VCR with every single function having its own, clearly labeledbutton. Even if you'd be willing to pay extra, you can't find them. The consumerdemand for cheap products has driven many higher quality products out of themarket. Sometimes it's merely a matter of taste, other times it really is an objective loss of quality. Many tech writers are convinced that the Betamax video tape format was technically superior to VHS, but VHS won and Betamax lost.
The free market provides abundance, but does a lousy job of upholding highstandards. At every opportunity, voters elect politicians who water downstandards. Any school that really imposed high standards would find its schoolboard voted out of office. (Just check out Piper, Kansas, where a teacher whoflunked students for plagiarism was overruled by the school board. Who is solacking in a life that they would be afraid of being voted off a schoolboard?) Any state that imposed an achievement test that required enough study time to seriously cut into students' leisure time, jobs, athletics, orfamily vacations would come under insuperable pressure to water down the tests.So we can assume that if we privatize all education and eliminate compulsoryattendance laws, we will see a huge proliferation of schools that turn outmediocre, semi-literate students. We do that now, you say? Just wait to see how muchworse it can get.
Why don't politicians tell the truth? Because the ones who do, lose. Fantasydrives reality out of the marketplace every election day.
Another thing the free market fails at is providing services that don't yielda profit or cannot be sold. If you clean up your factory emissions, peopledownwind will get cleaner air whether they pay for it or not. Nobody hasever come up with a way to make money cleaning up slums. This isn't a criticismof industry. Industry exists to make a profit. But it is an indication that weneed something besides market forces to patch the holes. Since society as awhole benefits, we bill society as a whole. That's called a tax.
Missing conspicuously from the platform of the Libertarian Party is anyspecific discussion of Plan B: what will happen if things don't go as planned,how we will avoid problems that historically occurred in the absence ofregulation, and how we will deal with people who don't behave like rationallibertarians. I'm sure a lot of libertarians will dismiss many of the scenariosI have sketched above by saying they won't happen. But they did happen,and libertarians don't seem to show the slightest awareness of it. Howspecifically will we deal with a return of widespread discrimination, forexample?
The Libertarian plan calls for "strict liability" and "strongand effective laws against fraud and misrepresentation," but there is aconspicuous absence of any specific plans for making this system work. Howspecifically, do they plan to prevent the wealthy from using their resources tocrush any legal challenge?
And what's the big deal about fraud? If we're going to assert that peopleshould be responsible for their own health care and retirement funds and sufferthe consequences if they don't have enough money, why not say that people shouldbe responsible for detecting and avoiding fraud? Caveat emptor.
This is actually very reminiscent of the mind-set of radicals in the Sixties:let's totally break up the existing system, then worry about the details later.You'll love it. Trust us.
This is the place to start, because this is where people will end up if theycannot or will not assume full responsibility for their own well-being.
We oppose all government welfare, relief projects, and "aid to the poor" programs. All these government programs are invasive of privacy, paternalistic, demeaning, and inefficient. The proper source of help for such persons is the voluntary efforts of private groups and individuals (Emphasis mine).
If libertarians succeed in reducing taxationdramatically, it's hard to see why people would continue to give to charity at high levels.If Libertarians also succeed in doing away with government subsidized healthcare and Social Security, what assurance do we have that there will be anythingleft over to give to charity after people safeguard their own health care andretirement?
But the bottom line is this: people who get in trouble should look to privatecharities for help. So let's see what might happen.
Most of the comments I get on this page are from people who challenge this section. I suspect some people style themselves libertarians mostly as a pretext for advocating legalization of drugs. I wonder if they have any intention of supporting more "conservative" planks of the Libertarian platform?
Let's assume that we legalize drugs as called for by the libertarian platform(I.4), that most users manage to use their drugof choice responsibly, and that we don't see any dramatic increase in the numberof users. This is, in itself, a not very realistic scenario. We can hardlyexpect to see the same results in a world of PCP, Ecstasy, heroin and crack thatwe saw a century ago when the most potent things around were opium and crudecocaine, especially if we also create a world of low paying jobs and a huge poolof unskilled workers. But let's assume the best here.
We can assume there will be a lot of people who drug themselves toincapacity, just as they do now. What are we going to do with them? Presumablyprivate rehabilitation centers will spring up to help those who want to behelped. Why? What's the market incentive? But what about those who don't want to get off drugs, or whose brainsare so scrambled they can't make an informed decision? Do we expect privateshelters to spring up to house them? Suppose that doesn't happen - do we simplylet them live in refrigerator cartons, camp out in parks or freeze in doorways?Where are the shelters going to be located? I can just see homeowners welcominga drug shelter into the neighborhood. If the shelter is someplace safely removedfrom anyone who might object, how are the drug users going to get there? What ifthere aren't enough rehab centers and shelters to meet the needs because peopleare giving to other charities they consider more deserving, or simply not givingat all because they have to finance their own retirements and health care?
And how will they buy drugs? In the libertarian scenario, if they don't havethe money, they have to go cold turkey for a while. But drug users don't do thatnow. Many resort to prostitution or drug dealing themselves, but a lot of themturn to crime. The libertarian platform (I.6) states: "We support restitution for the victim to the fullest degree possible at the expense of the criminal or wrongdoer."How is this going to happen? These people are unemployable already. Will we setup work centers where criminals will work off their debts? How will these differfrom slave labor camps? Given the costs of feeding, sheltering and guardingcriminals, could they ever work off the costs of their crimes?
Then there are the kids. What do we do with the children of drugabusers?
Let's talk about the "responsible" drug users in this scenario (something I maintainis a contradiction in terms.) Surgeons and airline pilots are only a littlestoned when they report to work. We can assume a lot of professions will excludedrug users. That means the "responsible" users will try to concealtheir drug use, like many do now in the military, which has routine drugscreening. We can, of course, invoke "strict liability," but thatwon't help you if your air traffic controller fails to avert a collision or youranesthesiologist miscalculates your dose.
By the way, if you're not a libertarian, but support legalization of drugs,tell me how you plan to deal with these problems. Don't tell me they won'thappen. Tell me what you plan to do if they do happen. I won't even waste bandwidth replying to you if you don't.
Finally, while there is debate over whether drugs should be decriminalized or even legalized, there's another issue that's much simpler and established in law. Do you have the right to decide, unilaterally, that laws against drugs don't apply to you? The answer to that is absolutely settled. Until proponents of decriminalization elect legislators who see things their way, drugs remain illegal, and the issue of whether individuals have the right to violate those laws is non-negotiable. I happen to think most speed limits are set by a joint committee of the timid and the stupid, but until speed limits change, I have no right to complain if I speed and get a ticket.
Bruce Bartlett, in the Washington Times, December 20, 2006:
The LP is worse than a waste of time. I believe it has done far more to hamper the advancement of libertarian ideas and policies than to advance them. In my view, it is essential for the LP to completely disappear before libertarian ideas will again have political currency.Over the years, I have known a great many people who have flirted with the LP, but were ultimately turned off by its political impotence and immaturity. C-SPAN runs LP conventions and viewers can see for themselves how unserious and childish they are. They show the LP is essentially a high-school-level debating club where only one question is ever debated -- who is the purest libertarian and what is the purest libertarian position? At times, serious people have tried to get control of the LP and make it a viable organization. But in the end, the crazies who like the LP just as it is have always run them off.
Both major parties have fewer libertarians than they would without the LP, meaning the net result of the LP has been to make our government less libertarian than it would otherwise be.
In place of the LP, there should arise a new libertarian interest group organized like the National Rifle Association or the various pro- and anti-abortion groups. This new group, whatever it is called, would hire lobbyists, run advertisements and make political contributions to candidates supporting libertarian ideas. It will work with both major parties. It can magnify its influence by creating temporary coalitions on particular issues and being willing to work with elected officials who may hold libertarian positions on only one or a handful of issues. ... As long as the LP continues, unfortunately, it will an albatross around the necks of small-L libertarians, destroying any political effectiveness they might have. It must die for libertarian ideas to succeed.
Instead of pie in the sky platforms that don't have a snowball's chance of ever becoming law, how about this? The Constitution specifies in Article V:
on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, [Congress] shall call a convention for proposing amendments...
This has never been done in American history although it has been tried. Libertarians would advance their agendas much better if they began pushing for such a convention and then worked to have it dominated by people who supported some of their ideas. Once a convention is called, amendments still have to be ratified by three fourths of the states, so the bar is still set high. But a convention could make an end run around entrenched interests. I personally think the worst missed opportunity in recent American history was our failure to call a Constitutional Convention to mark the bicentennial of the Constitution. So what amendments might such a convention propose?
Created 20 September 2002, Last Update 24 May 2020
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