Document:National Platform 2004: Difference between revisions

No conflict exists between civil order and individual rights. Both concepts are based on the same fundamental principle: that no individual, group, or government may initiate force against any other individual, group, or government.

The Issue: Personal responsibility is discouraged by government denying individuals the opportunity to exercise it. In fact, the denial of freedom fosters irresponsibility.

The Issue: The continuing high level of violent crime -- and the government's demonstrated inability to deal with it -- threatens the lives, happiness and belongings of Americans. At the same time, governmental violations of rights undermine people's sense of justice with regard to crime. Victimless crime laws themselves violate individual rights and also breed genuine crime.  

The Issue: Activities which do not affect anyone but the actor have been criminalized by government on the basis of encoding a particular morality into law.

The Issue: The suffering that drug misuse has brought about is deplorable; however, drug prohibition causes more harm than drugs themselves. The so-called "War on Drugs" is in reality a war against the American people, our Constitution and the Bill of Rights. It is a grave threat to individual liberty, to domestic order and to peace in the world.

The Issue: Instant-punishment policies deprive the accused of important checks on government power -- juries and the judicial process.

The Issue: The present system of criminal law is based almost solely on punishment with little concern for the victim.

The Issue: The right to a trial by a citizen jury is an important check on the infringement of our rights by government. Current practice has seriously eroded that protection.

The Issue: The government has placed itself in a position of superiority above its citizens, has denied our rights under a policy of "compelling state interest" (thereby becoming the primary threat to our rights, rather than the protector of them), and has denied its citizens their right to sue their government for redress of grievances, claiming a position of sovereign immunity.

The Issue: Individuals are forcibly medicated or denied medication, not based on medical need, but based rather on a social agenda as enforced by government.  

The Issue: We oppose any abridgment of the freedom of speech through government censorship, regulation or control of communications media, including, but not limited to, laws concerning:  

Issue: Government routinely invades personal privacy rights based solely on individuals' religious beliefs. Arbitrary tax structures are designed to give aid to certain religions, and deny it to others.

The Issue: We oppose all violations of the right to private property, liberty of contract, and freedom of trade, especially those done in the name of national security. We also condemn current government efforts to regulate or ban the use of property in the name of aesthetic values, risk, moral standards, cost-benefit estimates, or the promotion or restriction of economic growth. We specifically condemn all government interference in the operation of private businesses, such as restaurants and airlines, by either requiring or prohibiting designated smoking or non-smoking areas for their employees or their customers. The taxation of privately owned real property actually makes the State the owner of all lands and forces individuals to rent their homes and places of business from the State. We condemn attempts to employ eminent domain to municipalize sports teams or to try to force them to stay in their present location.

The Issue: Privacy protections have been eroded gradually over many years. The Social Security Number has become a universal ID number, causing rampant and massive identity theft. Government routinely keeps records on the bank accounts, travel plans, and spending habits of law-abiding civilians, for no other reason than they "might" commit a crime in the future.

The Issue: We condemn the government's use of secret classifications to keep from the public information that it should have.

The Issue: Lacking appropriate citizen oversight, government bureaucracies have deprived citizens of their privacy, property, and freedom, under the pretense that such action is necessary to protect us from our enemies. Such actions include the suspension of the right of habeas corpus during the Civil War, the internment of Japanese-American citizens during World War II, the Patriot Act and the classification of "enemy combatants" today.  

The Issue: Governments at all levels often violate their citizens' right of self defense with laws that restrict, limit or outright prohibit the ownership and use of firearms. These "gun control" laws are often justified by the mistaken premise that they will lead to a reduction in the level of violence in our society.  

The Issue: We oppose any form of national service, including conscription into the military, a compulsory youth labor program, or any other kind of coerced social program.  

The Issue: We welcome all refugees to our country and condemn the efforts of U.S. officials to create a new "Berlin Wall" which would keep them captive. We condemn the U.S. government's policy of barring those refugees from our country and preventing Americans from assisting their passage to help them escape tyranny or improve their economic prospects.

The Issue: Discrimination imposed by government has caused a multitude of problems. Anti-discrimination laws create the same problems.

The Issue: 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. We condemn state-funded and state-mandated abortions. It is particularly harsh to force someone who believes that abortion is murder to pay for another's abortion.

The Issue: Government involvement in traditional parenting responsibilities has weakened families and replaced family-taught morals with government-taught morals.

The Issue: Government has presumed to decide acceptability over sexual practices in personal relationships, imposing a particular code of moral and social values and displacing personal choice in such matters.  

The Issue: The rights of American Indians have been usurped over the years.

We believe that each person has the right to offer goods and services to others on the free market. Therefore we oppose all intervention by government into the area of economics. The only proper role of existing governments in the economic realm is to protect property rights, adjudicate disputes, and provide a legal framework in which voluntary trade is protected.  

The Issue: Government intervention in the economy imperils both the personal freedom and the material prosperity of every American.  

The Issue: Government manipulation of the economy creates an entrenched privileged class -- those with access to tax money -- and an exploited class -- those who are net taxpayers.

The Issue: Government control over money and banking is the primary cause of inflation and depression.

The Issue: Government regulation of capital markets inhibits investment, and creates marketplace advantage for those with political access, through exemptions to laws against fraud and breach of contract.

The Issue: Government debt forces individuals to assume debt that they did not choose to incur; distorts capital markets and rates and ruins the economy.

The Issue: We recognize that government is the source of monopoly, through its grants of legal privilege to special interests in the economy.

The Issue: The unrestricted competition of the free market is the best way to foster prosperity.

The Issue: Tariffs and quotas serve only to give special treatment to favored special interests and to diminish the welfare of consumers and other individuals, as do point-of-origin or content regulation. These measures also reduce the scope of contracts and understanding among different peoples.

The Issue: We believe government involvement in the provision of utilities has weakened our free market and limited the development and availability of state of the art services.

The Issue: Government interference in the employer/employee relationship has imposed undue burdens on our economy, destroying the rights of both to contract in the free market.  

Current problems in such areas as energy, pollution, health care delivery, decaying cities, and poverty are not solved, but are primarily caused, by government. The welfare state, supposedly designed to aid the poor, is in reality a growing and parasitic burden on all productive people, and injures, rather than benefits, the poor themselves.

The Issue: Government regulation of the energy industry has resulted in high prices, shortages, lack of competition, stunted exploration and development of alternative energy sources, and displaced responsibility for wrongdoing in the energy markets, while granting advantage in existing markets to those with political access.

The Issue: Toxic waste disposal problems have been created by government policies that separate liability from property. Present legal principles, particularly the unjust and false concept of "public property," block privatization of the use of the environment and hence block resolution of controversies over resource use. We condemn the EPA's Superfund whose taxing powers are used to penalize all chemical firms, regardless of their conduct. Such clean-ups are a subsidy of irresponsible companies at the expense of responsible ones.

The Issue: Government consumer protection regulation restricts the competition of the free market and replaces the individual's right to make independent choices with government-determined, "one size fits all" standards.

The Issue: Government schools lead to the indoctrination of children and interfere with the free choice of individuals. Compulsory education laws… spawn prison-like schools with many of the problems associated with prisons…

The Issue: We regard the tragedies caused by unplanned, unwanted pregnancies to be aggravated, if not created, by government policies of censorship, restriction, regulation and prohibition.

The Issue: Government interference in transportation is characterized by monopolistic restriction, corruption and gross inefficiency. We condemn the re-cartelization of commercial aviation by the Federal Aviation Administration via rationing of take-off and landing rights and controlling scheduling in the name of safety.

The Issue: Government fiscal and monetary measures that artificially foster business expansion guarantee an eventual increase in unemployment rather than curtailing it. Government programs are inefficient, paternalistic, demeaning and invasive of privacy.

The Issue: Recent decades have witnessed growing government involvement in the health care system. That involvement has led to bureaucratic top-down management, rapidly escalating prices, costly regulations, the criminalization of the practice of medicine and a host of other problems. None of these problems was prevalent prior to the time when government began to increase its involvement. We believe that government involvement is the principal cause of many of the problems we face in the health care system today. The high cost of health insurance is largely due to government's excessive regulation of the industry.

The Issue: We oppose government control of resource use through eminent domain, zoning laws, building codes, rent control, regional planning, urban renewal, or purchase of development rights with tax money. Such regulations and programs violate property rights, discriminate against minorities, create housing shortages, and tend to cause higher rents. All government restrictions upon private use or voluntary transfer of water rights or similar despotic controls can only aggravate the misallocation of water. Forced surface-mining of privately homesteaded lands, in which the government has reserved surface mining rights for itself, is a violation of the rights of the present landholders.

The Issue: America's free market in agriculture, the system that feeds much of the world, has been plowed under by government intervention. Government subsidies, regulation and taxes have encouraged the centralization of agricultural business. Government export policies hold American farmers hostage to the political whims of both Republican and Democratic administrations. Government embargoes on grain sales and other obstacles to free trade have frustrated the development of free and stable trade relationships between peoples of the world.

The Issue: The arbitrary and high-handed actions of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration invade property rights, raise costs and unjustly impose upon the business community.

The Issue: Social Security is a bankrupt, immoral pyramid-scheme that has trillions of dollars of unfunded liabilities and yields below average returns for those trapped in it. Any financial advisor who suggested investing in a program like this would go to jail, but the members of Congress get off scot-free.

The Issue: The present postal system, in addition to being inefficient, encourages government surveillance of private correspondence.

The Issue: We recognize that the Civil Service is inherently a system of concealed patronage, which entrenches a permanent and growing bureaucracy upon the land.  

The Issue: Electoral systems matter. Many state legislatures have established gerrymandered districts and prohibitively restrictive laws that effectively exclude alternative candidates and parties from their rightful places on election ballots. Such laws wrongfully deny ballot access to political candidates and groups, and further deny the voters their right to consider all legitimate alternatives. Various laws enable the federal and state governments to control the elections of their own administrators and beneficiaries, thereby further reducing accountability to citizens.

The Issue: People are forced to be subject to governments and to participate in their programs, usually as providers of financial support, regardless of their wishes to the contrary.

American foreign policy should seek an America at peace with the world and the defense -- against attack from abroad -- of the lives, liberty, and property of the American people on American soil. Provision of such defense must respect the individual rights of people everywhere.

The Issue: Intervention by the government in Washington in the affairs of other nations is an attempt to impose our values on those nations by force.

The Issue: We recognize that foreign governments might violate the rights of Americans traveling, living or owning property abroad, just as those governments violate the rights of their own citizens. Any effort, however, to extend the protection of the United States government to U.S. citizens when they or their property fall within the jurisdiction of a foreign government involves potential military intervention. In particular, the protection of the foreign investments of U.S. citizens or businesses is an unjust tax-supported subsidy.

The Issue: We condemn the violations of human rights in all nations around the world. We particularly abhor the widespread and increasing use of torture for interrogation and punishment. The violation of rights and liberty by other governments can never justify foreign intervention by the United States government. Today, no government is innocent of violating human rights and liberty, and none can approach the issue with clean hands.

The Issue: Participation in any form of world or international government threatens the sovereignty of the United States, its citizens and its Constitution.

The Issue: The potential use of nuclear weapons is the greatest threat to all the peoples of the world, not only Americans. Thus, the objective should be to reduce the risk that a nuclear war might begin and its scope if it does.

The Issue: Recent Presidents have -- on their own through declarations of "states of emergency" and with the assistance of Congress via the War Powers Act -- expanded the role of Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces to assume the power to wage limited (and not so limited) war without the Constitutionally required explicit Declaration of War by Congress. These wars often occur in secret, funded and/or operated by the CIA, NSA, and other agencies not directly accountable to the People.

The Issue: The federal government has used foreign aid as a tool of influencing the policy of other sovereign nations under the guise of aiding needy people in those nations. This forces American taxpayers to subsidize governments and policies of which they may not approve.

The Issue: The federal government's involvement in international currency markets undermines the stability of the dollar, artificially inflates and deflates the currency and undermines the free market.  

The Issue: Governments and international groups claim the right to unowned resources that they have no jurisdiction over, imposing those claims against individuals by force.

The Issue: United States colonialism has left a legacy of property confiscation, economic manipulation and over-extended defense boundaries.

The Issue: Intervention in the affairs of other countries has provoked resentment and hatred of the United States among many groups and nations throughout the world. In addition, legal barriers to private and personal aid (both military and economic) have fostered internal discord.

The Issue: Government has historically asserted a monopoly on space exploration.  

Our silence about any other particular government law, regulation, ordinance, directive, edict, control, regulatory agency, activity, or machination should not be construed to imply approval.