>From www.foxnews.com/views/felzenberg/index.sml
}}>Begin
Browne Stands His Ground | July 10, 2000
If the Libertarian Party — or at least its national spokesmen — had a sense of
humor, it might come close to achieving some of its goals. Were it to display
the slightest sense of proportion, it might persuade more Americans to take it
seriously. In time, it might even secure one of the most coveted prizes to
which a third party can aspire in American politics: inclusion of its candidate
in the nationally televised presidential debates.
Judging from the rhetoric that flowed freely (they are after all
"libertarians") at the party's convention, recently held in Anaheim,
California, there is no chance of any of this happening.
Articulating pristine purist positions is a self-indulgence only the smallest
of parties with a firm ideological base can afford. They can cling to this
luxury so long as they remain free of any responsibility for making or
influencing policy.
But Libertarians say they aspire to something more. If they do, they would have
done better to pursue alternative paths to the one they have chosen.
The party professes to favor lower taxes, increased personal freedom, and
reduced government intervention in the lives of its citizens.
>From the whines and moans of its leaders, one would never know that in the past
six years alone: welfare has been reformed, with an emphasis on work; the
federal budget is balanced; the deficit is gone; taxes on capital gains taxes
are lower; attacks on the inheritance tax and marriage penalty mount daily;
governments are privatizing and contracting out services; and forces favoring
competition in education have forced their opponents on the defensive.
All of these, incorporated libertarian concepts. A smart party would be taking
credit for their enactment.
Not that anyone would know from the party's rants, rages, and floor fights
(there is something inherently contradictory in the very idea of a libertarian
"party") that Ronald Reagan had ever been president. In its 224 years of
existence, the United States never had a leader more willing to use the bully
pulpit to warn against the evils of "big government". Reagan's tax, regulatory
and economic policies spurred on the longest period of economic growth in
American history. They also produced much of the wealth today's "libertarians"
want to preserve.
As its presidential candidate, the Libertarian Party nominated, as it did in
1996, financial writer Harry Browne. In a speech that was as ponderous as it
was pompous, he set his sites on two longstanding libertarian targets, the war
on drugs and the military "establishment." In both instances, his position is
closer to that of his counterpart on the left, Ralph Nader, than to his "fellow
conservatives."
Branding it a failure, Browne would call off the "war on drugs." He is hardly
alone in arguing that legalization of all substances would reduce crime and
remove the criminal element and incentive from a potentially thriving industry.
Conceding the miseries inherent in addiction, Browne would lower demand through
parental and other forms of persuasion. Presumably, he would oppose using
government funds or tax incentives to treat or cure addicts and would regard
Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign as but another wasteful government
program.
Browne insists his proposal is anything but a ruse to attract votes of
recreational drug users. And why would he not reach out to such voters, given
that he wants to make such behavior legal?
Browne opposes a national missile defense system as another example of
"corporate welfare". He would curtail American military commitments abroad and
cut the defense budget to the point where it could defend the United States,
but do little more. What size should it be and what weaponry would it have? He
does not say. One can envision Browne sending Mel Gibson to the Pentagon to
inventory its supply of cannon balls, Morgan rifles and crossbows with an order
to requisition supplies at gun shows all across the nation.
Strangely, a party that attacks the Republican and Democratic Parties for
blurring their differences retreats to obfuscation on one issue over which the
major parties most clearly diverge: abortion. Browne acknowledges that his base
is split between those favoring a woman's right to choose and those insisting
that aborting a fetus in some or all stages of a pregnancy is murder. He says
that the state should stay out of matter entirely.
That dodge, however crafty and cute, will not cut it in the world in which most
people live. There, the government must decide whether to allow what some
consider "murder" or deny what others call "choice". Whatever their
differences, Bush, Gore, Nader, and Buchanan have all voiced a personal opinion
on the subject and suggested a direction in which their administration would
travel.
Browne would bring to the post he seeks a rather peculiar sense both of the
presidency and of American nationhood. He told an interviewer that he believes
a state has a right to secede from the union. But is the United States
Constitution a compact among states or among individual citizens? A civil war
and several amendments were supposed to have decided that. Browne might pull a
first by hanging James Buchanan's portrait in the Cabinet room.
Articulating pristine purist positions is a self-indulgence only the smallest
of parties with a firm ideological base can afford. They can cling to this
luxury so long as they remain free of any responsibility for making or
influencing policy. But Libertarians say they aspire to something more. If they
do, they would have done better to pursue alternative paths to the one they
have chosen.
One such path would have been to build a strong third party in states where
they could draw enough support from the Republican Party as to assure its
defeat. Such is an approach the Conservative Party has taken in New York. As an
enforcer of discipline, Libertarians would be able to share in the governing
process and implement some of their ideas.
The other would have been to have nominated a presidential candidate with the
reputation and standing necessary to attract sustained public and media
attention. The Libertarians had their opportunity when Jesse Ventura resigned
from the Reform Party. The socially liberal and fiscally conservative Minnesota
Governor actually calls himself a "libertarian". Moreover, he agrees with the
Libertarian Party on the issue on which it is most vocal, ending the drug war.
The prospect of such a visible and witty personality joining its ranks — even
if he declined to run — would have elevated the party's public standing.
That, though, would have required the kind of accommodation to Ventura that the
Greens have made with Nader. And compromise is, as they keep reminding their
listeners, not what Libertarians do.
Alvin S. Felzenberg
Columnist, FOXNews.com
End<{{
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Integrity has no need of rules. -Albert Camus (1913-1960)
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The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The libertarian therefore considers one of his prime educational
tasks is to spread the demystification and desanctification of the
State among its hapless subjects. His task is to demonstrate
repeatedly and in depth that not only the emperor but even the
"democratic" State has no clothes; that all governments subsist
by exploitive rule over the public; and that such rule is the reverse
of objective necessity. He strives to show that the existence of
taxation and the State necessarily sets up a class division between
the exploiting rulers and the exploited ruled. He seeks to show that
the task of the court intellectuals who have always supported the State
has ever been to weave mystification in order to induce the public to
accept State rule and that these intellectuals obtain, in return, a
share in the power and pelf extracted by the rulers from their deluded
subjects.
[[For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifest, Murray N. Rothbard,
Fox & Wilkes, 1973, 1978, p. 25]]
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