Santa Fe New Mexican, USA Oct 30, 2016 B-3

The Gary John­son pres­i­den­tial cam­paign seems to be the Lib­er­tar­ian Party’s best chance at win­ning the White House to date. That pos­si­bil­ity seems to have lots of peo­ple scared out of their minds. So let’s take a look at some ways that a Lib­er­tar­ian ad­min­is­tra­tion would con­duct busi­ness.
First, we need to un­der­stand that lib­er­tar­i­an­ism is all about the nonag­gres­sion prin­ci­ple: No one has the right to ini­ti­ate force or fraud against
any­one else, nor to threaten or del­e­gate that ini­ti­a­tion. No ex­cep­tions will be granted “un­der color of law.” Also un­der­stand that we’re not look­ing to be Mitt Rom­ney/Ge­orge W. Bush Repub­li­cans with an “L” af­ter our names. If we had wanted that, we would sim­ply cut to the chase and sign up as Democrats. With that in mind, here are some ex­am­ples of the poli­cies that our prospec­tive Lib­er­tar­ian ad­min­is­tra­tion will un­der­take:
First, a Lib­er­tar­ian ad­min­is­tra­tion would not seek to ex­pand the size, in­tru­sive­ness or ex­pense of gov­ern­ment by one iota, on any is­sue. We’re not look­ing to grow the fed­eral gov­ern­ment — not by 2 per­cent, much less the 10 per­cent or 20 per­cent that a Hil­lary Clin­ton or Don­ald Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion would at­tempt. At worst, we will freeze it where it’s at when we take the reins. The 2017 bud­get that we re­ceive on Jan. 21 would be the bud­get for 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021.
No, we’re not look­ing to ex­pand the wel­fare state one bit. Nor are we look­ing to cre­ate more reg­u­la­tions upon busi­ness or your per­sonal life. Those reg­u­la­tions sti­fle cre­ativ­ity, growth and eco­nomic progress.
Se­cond, the White House will be­come a par­don fac­tory. All of the peo­ple in prison solely for fed­er­ally man­dated vic­tim­less crimes — saw­ing off a shot­gun bar­rel, hav­ing more than a cer­tain amount of mar­i­juana, drain­ing a pud­dle on their own prop­erty — will be par­doned, be­cause they didn’t re­ally do any­thing wrong.
Third, we’re go­ing to stop putting peo­ple in prison in the first place for those vic­tim­less crimes — af­ter Pres­i­dent Barack Obama de­cided that he can pick and choose which parts of “Oba­macare” he can en­force, we can choose not to en­force the vic­tim­less crime laws, as well — and we’re go­ing to call for the re­peal of those laws.
Fourth, we’re go­ing to dras­ti­cally re­duce taxes, if we
can’t wipe them out com­pletely. This idea that we’re go­ing to set­tle for a 25 to 0 per­cent na­tional sales tax is non­sense. If we’re go­ing to com­pro­mise on a tax rate, it will be more like 5 per­cent, and dis­re­gard that “rev­enue neu­tral­ity” hog­wash — that’s just pun­dit­s­peak for “We don’t re­ally have to cut spend­ing.”
Fifth, we’re look­ing to fun­da­men­tally trans­form the wel­fare state from what it is now — a mas­sive top-down, bu­reau­cratic sys­tem for le­gal­ized vote-buy­ing — into some­thing that ac­tu­ally helps the peo­ple it’s sup­posed to help. We’ll turn the var­i­ous agen­cies into 501(c)3 char­i­ties, and for­bid them from tak­ing tax money or lob­by­ing gov­ern­men­tal bod­ies in their
char­ters. Then the peo­ple who sup­port them will know that their do­na­tions will go a lot fur­ther.
Nor do we sup­port cor­po­rate wel­fare. No more bailouts, no more tax-funded foot­ball sta­di­ums, movie sub­si­dies or con­tracts for white-ele­phant projects. The “Al­bu­querque Rapid Tran­sit” inanity is a prime ex­am­ple of this.
Sixth, on for­eign pol­icy: For decades, Lib­er­tar­i­ans have been de­famed as “iso­la­tion­ists.” True iso­la­tion­ism was Ja­pan be­tween 1635 and 1853, or China be­tween 1757 and 1839. We sim­ply don’t want Amer­ica to be mi­cro­manag­ing the af­fairs of the rest of the world.
Seventh, we will not sup­port forced as­so­ci­a­tion un­der
the rubric of “nondis­crim­i­na­tion” or “pub­lic ac­com­mo­da­tion.” The slo­gan “no means no” used against rape apol­o­gists works just as well here. No Jew should have to bake a cake for a Nazi wed­ding. This con­cept should be ap­plied con­sis­tently across the pop­u­la­tion.
To sum­ma­rize, We the Lib­er­tar­i­ans, sim­ply want to live our own lives, and let ev­ery­one else live theirs.
Mike Bless­ing moved to Al­bu­querque in 1994 and has been ac­tive in the Lib­er­tar­ian move­ment since 1996.