I would like to devote a series of posts to commentary about the Libertarian Party Platform. It was in reading through this two years ago that I found a political home and hope for electing individuals to public service whose views were more aligned to my own.

I start with the Preamble, which reads:

As Libertarians, we seek a world of liberty; a world in which all individuals are sovereign over their own lives and no one is forced to sacrifice his or her values for the benefit of others.

We believe that respect for individual rights is the essential precondition for a free and prosperous world, that force and fraud must be banished from human relationships, and that only through freedom can peace and prosperity be realized.

Consequently, we defend each person’s right to engage in any activity that is peaceful and honest, and welcome the diversity that freedom brings. The world we seek to build is one where individuals are free to follow their own dreams in their own ways, without interference from government or any authoritarian power.

In the following pages we have set forth our basic principles and enumerated various policy stands derived from those principles.

These specific policies are not our goal, however. Our goal is nothing more nor less than a world set free in our lifetime, and it is to this end that we take these stands.

The founders of the US government stated clearly that we hold the following truths to be “self-evident,” or “blatantly obvious” for those more obliged to use such a description, meaning that they need no proof:
* All men (people) all created equal
* All men (people) are endowed by “their Creator” with certain unalienable rights, meaning rights that are theirs alone and cannot be stripped from them
* Among these unalienable rights are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

The Pledge of Allegiance recited in reverence to the flag of the United States of America states that we also pledge allegiance to a republic that observes “liberty and justice for all.”

It is curious that as a nation that we have become so caught up in the “justice” portion of our pledge that the original concept of “liberty” has become horribly sacrificed. We currently have a government that seems to think that its citizens cannot take care of themselves. Government entities take money and property from its citizens and redistribute them with the justification of keeping people protected, educated, healthy, and steered on the right moral track. In these ways, the nation is moving toward socialism, in direct contradiction to the original goals of the republican democracy.

How much of an individual’s life is the government’s responsibility? Are people no longer expected to be responsible for themselves, free to pursue their own brand of happiness, and trusted to respect others’ rights to the same if they wish to continue their freedom?

Libertarians seek to preserve the value of “liberty” as it was often expressed by the nation’s founders. Libertarians believe that it is in the nation’s interest to trust individuals to make decisions for themselves, and to simply ensure that those decisions do not interfere the rights of others. We can truly have a free and democratic society when when government and authoritarian entities reserve their powers and do not extend their scope to removing the rights of individuals.

Individual rights “is the essential precondition for a free and prosperous world,” as stated in the Preamble. Therefore, on a world-wide scale, Libertarians also believe in respecting the rights of other nations to make decisions for themselves without US government interference.

The Preamble ends with a reminder that though the platform states what Libertarians believe, it does not necessarily resemble the goals of the party or its elected public servants. Instead, the party goal is simply “a world set free in our lifetime,” and the platform is a statement of how the party believes such a goal might be accomplished in today’s United States of America.

Does the party intend to make drastic changes on a large scale in a short time through elected officials? No. There are very few in the party who would immediately and drastically restructure their government at any level. The people of the US need to be weaned from government dependency and lead back toward to self-government. Many Libertarians believe that because individuals can govern their own lives, many changes can start at a local level with communities willing to take the necessary steps toward more freedom. Libertarians elected for national-level positions would ensure that the federal government interferes less with those who make decisions for what is right for themselves as individuals, for their communities, and for their states.

In my next post, I’ll explore the Statement of Principles, perhaps in two parts.

For the Liberty of this great nation,
Stephanie Watson