Attribute to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

I had a “discussion” earlier this week, online, with an individual attempting to excuse the many and grievous shortcomings of Libertarian Party Presidential candidates over the years. I had remarked that it was a damned shame that the LP has always been unable—or unwilling—to nominate a candidate who is actually a libertarian.

It was this fellow’s view—the “Mrs.Grundy” hypothesis—that traditional libertarian positions on issues (i.e., the plain, unvarnished truth about who we are and what we believe) are too frightening for folks in general, and have to be watered down and nearly compromised away before the great, unwashed voting and taxpaying masses can be fooled into accepting them. This is why a pack of morons felt it nexessary to rape the national LP platform, and why I stepped in with my policy book, Down With Power. We can’t get any votes, they whimper, if we scare voters away. And of course the whole object of having a political party in the first place is to win elections and put our own people in command—and our own hogs at the public trough.

Actually, the Libertarian Party was founded by individualists—I was thereat the time; I personally knew most of them and counted them among my friends—whose objective, simply, was to advance the cause of liberty. This did not necessarily involve getting anybody elected; it simply required vigorous and truthful campaigns that would put constant and consistent pressure on the other parties and map a way out of the morass of over-government.

Exactly how do you conduct campaigns like that? Given a small competitor to the Republicans and Democrats like the LP, the only possible answer is contrast—clear product differentiation—and a higher energy level than the elephants and donkeys usually display. Go after the government’s worst abuses.

For example, there is one and only one completely libertarian answer to the healthcare debate that is about to flare up again. It says here that the Republicans plan to take three years getting rid of Obamacare, and after all their flapping and squawking, they want to retain some of its provisions. My way would take three minutes and get rid of the entire mess we’re saddled with: act as if a Constitutional amendment had been passed, mandating complete separation of medicine and state. Yes, repeal Obamacare (a repealed law of any kind is always good news) and maybe even pass the amendment, but stop there. Do not try to replace Obamacare with some other socialist cluttery. Let the free market come up with whatever solutions are required. If you don’t believe it can and will, why are you calling yourself a libertarian? This is a position it hasn’t occurred to anybody else to take, one that is uniquely libertarian.

In the light of the astonishingly vast climate change hoax, it might be advisable to separate government and science, as well.

Next, if Trump keeps his promises—universal, reciprocal, concealed weapons carry, for instance—it would appear that libertarians have lost the Second Amendment issues they have counted on to move voters in their direction. But it doesn’t have to be that way. New issues must take their place, issues that every other party is too unimaginitive or cowardly to take up: serial numbers on guns may be necessary to the firearms manufacturing process. But at the end of that process, they must be totally and permanently removed. A serial number gives the government a permanent handle on your personal gun, enfringing your individual and Constitutional right to own and carry weapons. Only a slave who loves and cherishes his chains would oppose this measure.

Finally (for now), and probably the most important thing it has ever done, the LP must take the position that, having caused unspeakable misery across the plant for 10,000 years, all taxes must be utterly abolished.

Remember, taxation is theft, the taking, against your will, of what you’ve worked so hard to earn.

Taxation is slavery—how long must you labor, every year. to pay what the government demands?

And taxation is the fuel of war.

Remain steadfast: it is by no means the LP’s place to try to figure out what the government would do without tax-looting. It is its job to free America from its fetters. Try to imagine your life without taxes. Try to imagine the course of history. If you experience trouble with this, have your browser find and read my speech “I Dreamed I Was A Libertarian In My Maidenform Bra” (a version of which you’ll find here: http://www.lneilsmith.org/utopian.html)

The world will never look the same to you again.