Liberty For All

by R. Lee Wrights 

“Government is essentially the negation of liberty.”

- Ludwig von Mises

Earlier today Libertarian Party national chair candidate, and future presidential hopeful, Wayne Allyn Root posted an article on his own blog Root for America entitled, “Lessons Obama Should Have Learned From Watching the Super Bowl.” While the article is light-hearted and even entertaining for some I suppose, I came away from it asking myself, “When is Mr. Root going to learn his lesson about Libertarianism?”

In his missive Mr. Root says:

“Sports gambling (and all forms of online gaming) needs to be legalized. Our country is bankrupt. We need to use Nevada as a role model for the nation and legalize, regulate and tax “sin,” like any other business. Legalizing medical marijuana and online gaming has the potential to bring in $300 billion in new tax revenues. That could pay down government debts, or allow us to lower taxes for our hardworking American taxpayers.”

No matter how you look at things, this is Republican rhetoric not Libertarian philosophy. He calls for the government to “legalize,” which says the government has the right to tell us what we can and cannot do with our hard-earned cash. He says “regulate” and “tax” which again says government has a right to our money that we all work hard for. Why doesn’t he just come right out and say, “It is okay for the government to steal from us.”

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by SAF staff

MISSOULA - The United States has made its first response to a lawsuit filed in federal district court in Missoula to test the Montana Firearms Freedom Act (MFFA), passed by the 2009 Legislature and signed into law by Governor Schweitzer.

The MFFA declares that any firearms, ammunition or firearms accessories made and retained in Montana are not subject to federal regulation under the power given to Congress in the U.S. Constitution to regulate commerce “among the several states.” The MFFA is a states’ rights challenge on Tenth Amendment grounds, with firearms serving as the vehicle for the challenge.

This lawsuit to validate the MFFA was brought by the Montana Shooting Sports Association (MSSA) and Second Amendment Foundation (SAF). The suit names U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder as defendant, and is referred to as MSSA v. Holder.

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by Laura Duke Stansbury

What if Christians were to wake tomorrow and realize that their political strategy over the course of the past century had been utterly misguided? Consider the timing. Few would argue that the Obama administration’s new culture of corruption has left the door wide open for Republican victory in November. But as it stands, today’s conservatives have become so embroiled in a philosophical deadlock that many are wondering whether unity will be possible.

I am a Christian, a so-called social conservative. Many of my colleagues are of the libertarian breed: Ayn Rand Republicans. Our party has long been divided between these two very distinct schools of thought. For a long time, I had lent my support to the legislating of virtue issues such as gay marriage and prayer in schools. Recently however, I attended an early morning lecture where business strategist and evangelical Christian Kevin Miller called into question many of my preconceived notions about the roles of virtue, politics and morality.

“Freedom Nationally, Virtue Locally” was Miller’s mantra. He pointed out that our government had only initially been established to provide this nation with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In Joseph Ellis’ The Founding Brothers, the author astutely unraveled a major conflict faced by the first Congress in 1790. “Perhaps it was inevitable, even preferable, that slavery as a national problem be moved from the Congress to the churches, where it could come under scrutiny as a sin requiring a national purging, rather than a social dilemma requiring a political solution.” In other words it was man’s heart, not his politics that weakened and eventually destroyed the institution of slavery.

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by Kevin Tuma

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by Fran Tully

I recently spoke with a woman who lives in New Jersey. She had some great questions about gun ownership. Her questions were so good that I decided that the answers should be shared with others who might be in a similar situation. Please let me know if this helps you and if you have comments on anything else that I should have mentioned.

Before I answer her specific questions, I want to make a general argument about how gun ownership can help people.

Gun ownership is like wrestling in water - it levels the playing field. A 110 lb woman who pulls a gun out of her purse can instantly stop two 250 lb drug crazed rapists. Gun ownership allows citizens the ability to protect their life and property from criminals. Police will rarely be in a position to stop a rape, a mugging, or a car-jacking. In these situations, only an armed female stands a good chance of surviving unharmed. Even a grown man is no match for a group of hardened hoodlums intent on hurting him or taking his property. However, a single gun in the hands of someone who is not afraid to use it can quickly quiet the most obnoxious hoodlums.

Today’s criminal is a parasite. They prey on the weak. They will attack in garages, on quiet streets, in school parking lots, in empty homes, while you are carrying groceries, and while you are pushing a stroller. They are looking for the quickest “score” where they will meet with the least amount of resistance. Simply having a gun on you may raise your awareness and confidence to a degree that a criminal will sense that you may offer too much resistance. Whose walk do you think would be faster and appear more nervous; The girl walking down a deserted street alone, or the girl with her hand in her backpack holding her gun and looking around for danger?

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by Friends of the membership

We strongly oppose the imposition of a floor fee by the LNC for credentialing of national delegates. The By-laws and Convention Rules are quite clear in saying that delegates are chosen by the states and do not allow additional requirements to be added by the national party.

A floor fee will restrict the delegates’ participation in party business, hindering their ability to carry out their responsibilities to the state parties.

Given that the anticipated revenue from the floor fee amounts to only one percent of the LNC’s 2-year budget, it seems unreasonable that the LNC should be unable to earmark 1% of its annual budget to cover expenses for a required event.

If we allow the LNC to circumvent the By-laws and Convention Rules in this seemingly small regard, we may find it difficult to keep it from running roughshod over the By-laws in more controversial matters in the future.

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by Ed Lewis

By “it”, I mean direct taxation on our private personal property, including our homes, our motorized conveyances, our right to travel, our right to earn a living as we see fit, our marriages, and so on down the list of rights that are taxed, regulated, and then taxed and regulated some more.

“Honest” Abe Lincoln, even though he is one of the worst traitor/tyrants of this land of ours, said,

“I believe that every individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruits of his labor, so far as it in no way interferes with any other men’s rights.”

Hey, if it is our property and it is private and its is obtained by right, then government has no say-so whatsoever in when, how, where, or if we can use it, as private means “not under government control.”  If government has no control over private property or the man/woman, then it has no authority to tax or regulate.

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by Rhys M. Blavier

“Onan… spilled his seed on the earth, lest that he should give seed to his brother.”

Ballot access is a major goal of the Libertarian Party, so much so that we seem to be more concerned with keeping or gaining ballot access for whatever election is next rather than with getting any Libertarian actually elected in whatever election is before us today. Ballot access seems to have become that tail that wags the dog in third-party politics. Yes, it is important to have our candidates on ballots, but doing that should not come at the cost of using our resources, time and efforts to actually get Libertarians elected to higher offices than city councils, county commissioners and Justices of the Peace.

Without actually quoting any specific messages or e-mails to me, I will say that when I have asked my state Party Leadership for Party help with my own election, I have been told that, rather than focusing resources on any specific race, they don’t want to show “preference” for any candidates or any particular races because “it wouldn’t be fair”. I was told that “with 193 candidates, we can’t play favorites”. I say that it is because of attitudes like that which have resulted in NO major or significant election wins in almost 40 years. When election results are tallied, we crow about how significant we are because Libertarian candidates got 5% of the vote here and 7% of the vote there. Getting 5% of the votes in an election is still losing that election.

The reason I used the infamous line about Onan is that what we are doing as a Party is “spilling our seed on the earth” instead of creating any actual elected officials. I have a feeling, in fact, that Libertarians have been telling each other for so long that is it so important to view the percentages of our loses as victories that I think that there will be a lot of anger, resentment and even hatred showered on the first Libertarian who actually wins a notable office. In Irving Janis’ ground breaking book ‘Groupthink’, he tells us this story:

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by Larken Rose

Despite all the lovey-dovey rhetoric about the supposed greatness of “democracy,” there’s only one thing its proponents want it for: to get moral permission to force their preferences, opinions and ideas on other people. People vote, hoping “their guy” will win. Why? So their own interests and agenda, and not the interests and agenda of the people who voted for “the other guy,” will be served by the machine of “government.” And everything “government” does, it does by threat of force. (It doesn’t just ask nicely; it commands, and inflicts harm on any who don’t obey.)

I realize that’s not the flowery explanation that democracy- worshipers prefer, but it happens to be the truth. The left-wing statists want to win elections so the right-wing statists (and everyone else) will be forced to fund welfare programs, wealth redistribution, more government control (a.k.a. “regulation”) of commerce, etc. Meanwhile, right-wing statists want to win so the left-wing statists (and everyone else) will be forced to fund a huge military, a bigger police force, more border patrols, a “war on drugs,” etc.

In short, democracy is gang warfare for cowards. The voters, being too chicken-poop to do it themselves, desperately try to get “government” to rob and control all of their neighbors (while accepting no responsibility for having advocated that). If your gang of voters outnumbers the other gang, you can get the mercenaries of the state to boss them around. Yippee! Ain’t democracy great?

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by George Phillies

Change is time-consuming.  Change is demanding.  Change is frightening.

Sometimes, change is necessary.

In a previous article I described LNC fund raising over the last decade and a half.  From 2000 to date, LNC yearly fundraising has fallen by three quarters in real terms.  This article turns to another challenge facing our national party:  Membership.

The graph shows National Party membership for 1998-2009. (Click on image to enlarge.)  The little gray diamonds are the actual number of members for dates on which I have numbers.  Those numbers are counted monthly, so in some periods the diamonds overlaps.

Over the last decade, our National Party has lost more than half of its membership.  We’re back to a membership count we last had in 1995.

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