Platform Issues -- Another View
A correspondent proposes some other issues, foreign and domestic, on which Libertarians might take a stand. The Libertarian Party might better advance in this country if it focused its attentions on issues of liberty of interest to most Americans. For example, in Massachusetts last year, in many areas a Libertarian candidate might have drawn the contrast between LP and Republican/Democratic policies with a two word platform:
Both platform statements refer to positions that are widely popular with the electorate, but which are rejected by one or both parties. In taking such a stand, the candidate is not obliged to deny that the LP admits a range of opinions on abortion, based not on a disagreement with LP principle but on a disagreement over the *non-partisan* question "What is a person?"
Similarly, given the nature of the overwhelming mass of taxes, a Libertarian may state her general opposition to taxation while still supporting taxation for the legitimate purposes of government, such as military defense, the civil and criminal justice systems, and the maintenance of civic property.
The Libertarian Party might also focus on Clinton Administration attacks on the Constitution. President Clinton has claimed, and defended before parts of the Federal judiciary, the assertion that his wife is a civil officer of the United States. The American Revolution was fought to rid America of a hereditary monarch, namely that odious tyrant George III Hanover. We now have a President who seeks to restore titles of nobility by the back door. (Actually, the notion that Hillary is a civil officer of the United States has certain hilarious legal consequences. If she is a Civil Officer, can she not be impeached? The Constitution says yes. If she were impeached, would not the Clintons, by act of Congress, cease to be legally married? If Hilary were removed as First Lady, would she leave the White House, or would the Clintons present their daughter with the sight of their parents living in sin in the White House, all at taxpayers' expense?)
Similarly, the Clinton Health plan proposes that states that do not foist new bureaucracies on their people will be taxed to support a federal bureaucracy for their state. Federal taxes laid on some states but not others are explicitly forbidden by the Constitution. Have we no LP legal scholars, none at all, to protest this unconstitutional monstrosity, to speak in defense of our Constitutional Liberties as Americans?
The Libertarian National Convention is to be congratulated for its stand on Bosnia-Herzogovinia. The terrors inflicted on the bulk of the Bosnian people, Serb and Croat as well as Bosnian, would have been avoided if the private enterprise system, namely the free trade in arms, had not been obstructed by the United Nations blockade. We should emphasize the free enterprise issue more in the future. The material effect of the United Nations blockade of Yugoslavia is to support Serbian fascist ethnic cleansing practices, which the LP was right to denounce.
The Libertarian Party might turn its attention on Somalia. UN intervention began under the pretext of supplying humanitarian aid to the Somalis. The UN has now managed to get into a war with several Somali tribes. According to the New York Times, it arrested Somalis and places them in a state of "administrative detention", where they are neither prisoners of war nor allowed access to lawyers or the press, a clear violation of Conventions on military prisoners and human rights. According to the same source, a major UN compound was subject to sniper fire. Television news footage and reports in the press show that the UN has since leveled all homes in a three-block-deep perimeter around the compound. Destruction of private property on this scale, when committed by a foreign force in a country that has not invaded its neighbors, is certainly incompatible with Libertarian principles. It is also a gross violation of the laws of war; after World War II, we punished army officers of other nations for similar misdeeds.