Exclusive Interview: Professor James W. Lark III, Libertarian Party National Chairman
Posted in by J. Michael Bragg
Webmasters Note: I along with our Editor and several other Libertarians from around the state of North Carolina, had the personal pleasure of meeting with Professor Lark last week in Charlotte. I left the meeting with a new sense of focus, determination and fire for the fight for liberty, which can be credited, in large part to Jim Lark. I relish participating in this incredible moment in time we ALL have placed before us as we unite, organize and grow our Party with the help of such a humble and dedicated individual. I believe Dr. Lark to truly care about the needs and goals of all our affiliates no how matter how small or unorganized, and he is certainly not afraid to “roll up the sleeves” and help us. We should be proud to have a Chair with the credentials that Jim has and should certainly be thankful for his commitment to us. Liberty For All also extends a special thank you for the opportunity to do this interview! Jim, we salute you!
Dr. James W. Lark is assistant professor in the Systems Engineering Department and adjunct professor in the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia. He is a director of the Financial Engineering Research Group at UVa. He holds degrees from Virginia Tech (B.S., Mathematics) and U.Va. (Ph.D., Systems Engineering). He has served as visiting scholar at the Center for the Study of Public Choice (Virginia Tech) and Earhart Foundation Visiting Fellow at the Center for Research in Government Policy and Business (University of Rochester).
Libertarian Party activity LNC member (elected at-large, 1998) National campus coordinator Organized several local parties in Virginia and other states Secretary, Jefferson Area Libertarians (LPVa. local affiliate) Ninth Congressional District chair Vice Chairman, LPVa. (1998-2000) LP Platform Committee (1991, 1998), LP Bylaws Committee (2000) Success ‘97, Success ‘99 seminar faculty member Advisor to several candidates/campaigns (1999, 2000)
LFA: When did you first realize you were a libertarian?
Dr. Lark: I first heard the word “libertarian” the day before the 1976 presidential election. One of my Physics professors decided we didn’t need to talk about electricity and magnetism that day, and he wanted to talk about ideas involving society and politics. As it turned out he was a libertarian. When I first heard about these ideas I kind of liked the basic moral aspect of them, but I’m not sure how this will work, because [example] what happens if we allow drugs to be legal? You know, I’m a straight arrow. I’ve never used any of these substances that are considered to be illegal. My drug use is beer, a glass of tea, coffee and stuff like that. I do take Tylenol for an occasional headache but I have never used any of these substances that are illegal. And I have wondered what is going to happen if we make this stuff legal. Another thing was that even though I grew up in an area where everybody had guns, I’ve wondered how widely we can allow people to have guns. And what basically happened was I didn’t change my way of thinking because I’ve always had this Libertarian streak. But, I started thinking about matters of politics and I realized after a while, my philosophy had a name, and it was called the Libertarian philosophy! Now later in 1980 there were libertarians out gathering signatures to put Ed Clark on the ballot and things like that. But I had decided I was going to vote for Reagan because first of all I thought he could win, and he “sounded” very Libertarian. But, I told some of the Libertarians around that I was closer to Ed Clark in terms of philosophy, but I was going to vote for Reagan. But a couple years later I finally decided, “look, I’m a Libertarian”, and by 1984 I had actually joined the party and started getting involved.
LFA: You mentioned the “war on drugs” issue. Now, I understand the “no knock” 3AM raids, and 70 year old men getting their head blown off by the DEA. God, there was an 11 year old kid murdered in the back with a shotgun. But many people wouldn’t believe these things are going on, or are to desensitized, to understand the due process violations, not to mention all the other 4tth amendment violations. Do you think our stance on this being one of the focal points in our platform helps or hurts us? Could we take a “kinder and gentler” stance to some of the more controversial issues?
Dr. Lark: Well there is no doubt that taking the principled stance on drug prohibition costs us some votes. But it also helps us get some votes. There are people who have told me that if we were just to moderate our stance a little bit on that issue that they would consider voting very seriously, or even vote for us. I think that there are certainly ways that we can learn how to sell our position better, without watering it down. I think a lot of Libertarians, frankly are not very good at explaining why the war on drugs is bad. It turns out that there are three good reasons. One is just the moral issue. It basically just not the governments business to regulate these things unless of course you are out there hurting people while you are under the influence. But you should be held responsible for hurting people anyway whether you are under the influence or not.
LFA: There are already laws against that anyway.
Dr. Lark: Exactly. The second point is that by having a war on drugs, you end up having all these horrible consequences. Let’s say that you don’t agree with the libertarians that it’s not the governments business to tell you what you can put into your body. However, using your own standards on causing harm, does the war on drugs cause more harm that it does good. And I think clearly that the answer is that the war on drugs makes the situation much, much worse. I don’t see how anybody can look at the evidence and think that having a war on drugs makes the drug problem better.
And the third issue, is the issue of the Constitution. And that is that the Federal government, as far as I am concerned, simply has no business being involved. Of course whether the state or local government have any issue with it is a different question. But in the very least, in terms of federal involvement, it is of course the federal government in many cases who are putting tremendous amounts of pressure on the states and localities. The federal government simply doesn’t have any say in this, or anywhere near the constitutional responsibility that are claiming.
LFA: Yes, especially with not allowing such things as “medical marijuana”.
Dr. Lark: Yes, very good point. That raises an incredibly important federal issue. You have federal officials telling the State of California, that in effect, you can’t do what the people of the great state of California have passed in their own constitution.
LFA: Yeah that you can’t medicate yourself with a treatment that works for you.
Dr. Lark: Yes, there are many very important federal issues in that matter.
LFA: OK, let’s switch gears. Have you ever run for office or considered running for office?
Dr. Lark: I have considered running for office many times but I haven’t done it for several reasons. One of which is that where I spend most of my time, is not where I am registered to vote. But I have given much thought to running and I will probably do it at some point. I suspect that it will happen at some point so the question is just when! By the way, I believe if I am going to run I am running to win.
LFA: Absolutely!
Dr. Lark: I hate losing. I was a jock in my younger days and I don’t run to come in second.
LFA: What do you think is our biggest challenge in the future?
Dr. Lark: That’s a hard one. I don’t know if I can identify the biggest one, but I can identify some big ones. First of all there is sort of a basic issue and that is that most libertarians don’t like politics. So, you have an almost immediate selection bias problem. By and large, libertarians don’t like to participate in politics. The very thing that makes you a libertarian means that you probably are not going to look to politics as a way of solving social problems. Look at your local organizations. How many people who are actually libertarians are actually involved and doing something.
LFA: Only a handful.
Dr. Lark: Now to some extent that may be true for most organizations, in that you have the old principle that 80% of the work is done by 20% of the people. In the LP, there are just so many libertarians that just don’t want to get involved in politics. And in fact, most people who are libertarians are not party members. I’ve used a phrase many times that one of the biggest jobs for the Libertarian Party is to get libertarians to join. We’re not even close to getting all the libertarians in the LP. That’s an incredibly important issue.
The second issue is a problem with all third parties. You have what are called “single member plurality districts”. In other words, the way the voting system works, third parties are at a disadvantage, because if people think you are the “spoiler” or you have no chance to win, they are less likely to come in and vote for you.
LFA: Some of it is “straight ticket” voters too.
Dr. Lark: That’s certainly an issue. I think that there is still, for many people, we haven’t reached that critical mass where people who really do agree with us are willing to come out and vote for us. It’s not just the issue of getting them to join the party; it’s in some cases a more basic issue of getting them to vote for us. How many people told you during this campaign that they really were libertarians but they just couldn’t allow that evil SOB, whoever he was, to become president? So, they ended up voting for the lesser of two evils. I think that those two, are sort of the biggest ones that we see on the horizon. There are also some issues that we need to take care of in terms of making the transition from where we are now to where we want to be. There are some genuinely hard issues, dealing in many cases with environmental issues, where it is not immediately obvious what the Libertarian response is. In fact there may not be “the” libertarian response, but a whole bunch of libertarian responses, all of which libertarians can agree on. You can have different libertarians with different answers. I guess that’s the point.
LFA: So, you are talking in terms of environmental policy?
Dr. Lark: Yeah, for example, what exactly what constitutes a violation of rights? Let’s say you have a bunch of people driving internal combustion engines. If there is only one guy on the planet with an internal combustion engine, I’m not sure that we would consider THAT use, a real problem. If you have say 6 billion of them, and it’s creating pollution, that doesn’t necessarily respect property rights. So, it’s not immediately obvious how you handle that. I think you can do it in a libertarian framework, but it seems to me that libertarians of good will can have different ideas of how to deal with that.
LFA: So is what we need a sort of cohesive unity with all of the different ideas different people have?
Dr. Lark: That would be helpful, but I think it is actually a more fundamental problem. And that is that you may have differences among libertarians, and if we libertarians don’t necessarily agree on the answers, it’s kind of hard to think that people who are not libertarians are going to be able to come to a libertarian solution.
LFA: How about our education system?
Dr. Lark: There are just so many people our there, who are going through not just public schools, but in terms of their education who are being exposed to ideas that are basically completely divorced from any sort of libertarian notions.
LFA: Would you go as far as to say liberal, Marxist-socialist philosophy.
Dr. Lark: Well, yeah and in many cases, it’s not necessarily because of deliberate ideological bias. I think it’s more like people just don’t understand basic economics. In some cases they simply don’t understand some of the problems government causes. So, I think that what frequently happens is that you have kids who come along, and they just have never really given serious thought to the problems we face. And what happens is that it’s so easy when you’re dealing with social problems, to look at what’s going on and to get government to solve the problem. Well, what happens is when you don’t understand some of the laws of unintended consequences; if you don’t understand some of the problems that government intervention can cause, it’s very easy to look at government as a vehicle for solving big problems, and many times it just doesn’t work out.
LFA: Just look at what the government has done to education - present company excluded of course. I feel that there has been a “dumbing down” especially in those issues and personal responsibility. And we get no fiscal responsibility or accountability from them in return.
Dr. Lark: I think, a lot of those who are teaching, not necessarily deliberate ideological bias, just don’t understand how to analyze some of these problems. And in cases dealing with all manners of risk and economic consequences, they just don’t understand how to analyze these problems. One example that I like to use in my college classes is when I talk about things like passing seat belt laws. When you pass a seat belt law, do you necessarily make the automobile system any safer? Even if you agree that at any given speed if you are involved in an accident and you’re wearing your belt, you’re safer than if you’re not wearing your belt.
LFA: Like does The Brady Bill prevent crime. You know you would think especially with political science and even law, that these people would read and know the Constitution. You would think that these people would be able to read it and see how far we really are from working within its limits.
Dr. Lark: We have gone through many years now where a culture has developed where basically people don’t care what the constitution says. They don’t care what restrictions are placed on our government. They want what they want, they want it now and they want somebody else to pay for it.
LFA: What role do you think bias has played in this?
Dr. Lark: There’s no doubt that that there are people for whom they do have biases, and they do frequently let their biases show through in terms of what they are doing. But I dare say the majority is just a case of ignorance. They don’t think clearly about the Constitution, and I think what happens is that we end up getting people taught by folks who are not really doing a very good job educating. Of course, these kids are not getting much in the way of education about such values at home either.
LFA: And THAT’S a MUCH bigger problem!
Dr. Lark: And of course we get a generation of children raised by parents, who themselves don’t know, and so it’s not surprising that these young people come along and don’t learn much from their parents.
LFA: Any ideas of how we can raise awareness and mobilize on campus?
Dr. Lark: The first thing that you have to do in any type of organizing, is sit down and think what do we want to do. What do we want to accomplish? How are we going to do it, and then you have got to work hard! Campus organizing, just like any form of local organizing, is hard work. So you want to get people there, and get people organized. You want to have things for them to do. You want to have educational programs, but the point is that you need to give it some thought. What can your local group do? Can you go on campus and set up “Politically Homeless” tables? Can you distribute literature? Can you put up posters? Can you bring speakers to the University? There are all sorts of things you can do. You can show movies and get on their local radio station. I guess the main thing is to take the time to sit down and think what you want to do…and then do it!
LFA: Tell us about the “Driving Tours” you are doing!
Dr. Lark: Well, first of all I love to drive. I have always enjoyed getting in my car and touring and site seeing. And so what I try to do, both for reasons of personal enjoyment and also for the purpose of helping out my Libertarian colleagues, is lets say I want to take a trip or vacation. I might want to go, to let’s say, Montana or something like that. We’ll, I’ll just contact Libertarian Parties all along the way and say, “Hey, I’m coming through, how can I be of help to you?” And in some cases, there are specific places I go, perhaps because I know someone there, or there is a situation in which I think I can be of particular help. But basically, whenever I am traveling somewhere, I try to contact the local Libertarians and help them out if I can. In many cases the local Libertarian groups don’t get the chance to have someone such as the National Chairman coming through so I try to help them out.
LFA: Well, I am certainly glad to have met you, and I know sometimes folks get to feeling like an island and lonely out here.
Dr. Lark: The pleasure was mine I assure you. It gives me a chance to meet a lot of real heroes. People who are out there fighting for Liberty. So the pleasure was definitely mine.
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