What Is The Libertarian Party
And Why Should You Join?

"Our legislators are not sufficiently apprised of the rightful limits of their power; that their true office is to declare and enforce our natural rights and duties, and to take none of them from us . . . When the laws have declared and enforced all this, they have fulfilled their functions; and the idea is quite unfounded that on entering society we give up any natural right." --- Thomas Jefferson

Libertarian Party a Home for the "Politically Homeless"

The Libertarian Party is America's third-largest political party,with active organizations in all 50 states and hundreds of counties.

It was organized during the turmoil of the late 1960s by freedom-minded people who discovered, to their dismay, that all sides in the great controversies of that eventful decade--the Vietnam War, the civil rights struggle, the ''War on Poverty''--had lost sight of the ancient, overriding theme of American history and the declared goal of its political institutions: the preservation and enhancement of individual liberty.

On the one hand, a socialist-tending Democrat Party demanded coerced equality and redistribution of wealth; on the other, a fascist-tending Republican Party demanded coerced participation in a seemingly unwinnable war against a distant people who posed no threat to American security, and police-state intrusions into personal affairs. With both major parties advocating expansion of State power to advance their illiberal agendas, citizens who preferred peace, limited government, voluntary cooperation, equality before the law, and personal freedom with responsibility found that they had become politically homeless.

In 1972 the Libertarian Party fielded its first candidates for President and Vice President of the United States. In 1996, the Party's presidential ticket appeared on the ballot in all 50 states, and Libertarian candidates stood for election in over 800 other local, state, and federal races.

Libertarian Party is the Party of Freedom

Unlike the dominant parties, which maintain their power by apportioning pork and perks among shifting coalitions of interest groups, the Libertarian Party is a party of principle--the principle of universal human freedom.

It is committed to Jefferson's dictum that all people are naturally endowed with the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that the only purpose of government is to secure these rights.

Libertarians are neither pro-business nor pro-labor; neither pro- nor anti-Christian, Jew, Muslim, or humanist. We are not special pleaders for whites, blacks, Latinos, or Asians, nor for corporations, farmers, urban dwellers, or senior citizens. There is but one item on the Libertarian agenda: preserving the rights and freedoms that remain to us and regaining those that have already been lost--the rights and freedoms that are the birthright of all Americans (indeed, all human beings), whether white or black, male or female, young or old, Christian, Jew, or atheist.

Those rights and freedoms, we believe, can be summed up as the right to live one's life and pursue one's happiness in any manner one chooses, as long as one does not violate the similar rights of any other person.

Libertarian Positions on Issues are Consistently Pro-Freedom

The Libertarian Party takes the side of freedom on all issues, all the time. It supports free enterprise, free trade, free thought, and the freedoms to speak, write, publish, worship, and contract with other persons, against all threats and challenges.

It opposes all forms of censorship, all government interference in markets, religion, and personal affairs, and all attempts by government to seize wealth from persons who have earned it in order to give it to others who have not.

Libertarians oppose all overseas military adventures where American security is not at stake, all subsidies to particular industries and other interest groups, and all taxes extracted from productive citizens in order to finance such illegitimate government activities. To quote Jefferson once again,

''I believe with you that morality, compassion, generosity, are innate elements of the human constitution; that there exists a right independent of force; that a right to property is founded in our natural wants, in the means by which we endowed to satisfy those wants, and the right to what we acquire by those means without violating the similar rights of other sensible beings; that no one has a right to obstruct another, exercising his faculties innocently for the relief of sensibilities made a part of his nature; that justice is the fundamental law of society; that the majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society . . . ''

Hence, Libertarians oppose such State invasions of the private realm as laws that regulate the sexual conduct of adults; that demand that employers offer certain wages or benefits to employees; that compel merchants and employers to serve or hire persons with whom they do not want to do business; that stipulate prices landlords or other businessmen may charge for their goods or services; that forbid honest citizens to own firearms; that force parents to pay for schools they consider unfit to teach their children; or that force citizens to participate in or pay for government programs in which they have no interest and from which they receive no benefit.

Libertarians believe that your life, your person, and your property belong to you, not to the State, and that the purposes to which your assets will be applied is a decision for you, not some government bureaucrat, to make.

Libertarians Believe Freedom Entails Responsibility

Libertarians reject, as scientifically baseless and morally devastating, fashionable theories of human behavior that remove responsibility for good or evil acts from the individual person, to blame them instead on irresistible historical or economic forces, ''social injustices,'' or forgotten childhood traumas. Libertarians believe persons always act in their own perceived best interests, constrained by values and beliefs they have learned from their parents and the surrounding culture.

Thus, Libertarians hold that an armed robber commits his crime, not because he has been ''oppressed by the system,'' but because he wants money and does not wish (or has not prepared himself) to work for it, because he is confident that he will be not be caught (or if caught, not too severely punished), and because he imagines that his wants override the rights of others--a belief that may well rest on an implicit, underlying assumption that society is ''oppressive,'' or that everyone with money obtained it by cheating or exploiting someone--malignant notions that many strident and misguided ideologues assiduously strive to instill in us.

Libertarians, by contrast, hold that persons will generally behave responsibly only if they are consistently held responsible for what they do, and if they are consistently taught, from childhood, the rules that make civilized life possible--that all wealth originates from work, that each person has not only a right to his own life but a responsibility for it, that the world--society--does not owe anyone a living (or a job, housing, health care, or a retirement income), that one must create one's own opportunities and be prepared to seize them, that others have rights that are the equal of one's own.

Many elements within American culture today--particularly the political culture--disparage and undermine these precepts. Politicians and bureaucrats have discovered that offering to relieve people of responsibility for their own conduct and welfare readily wins votes, and that as ordinary people become less resourceful and more dependent, more lucrative opportunities open for those same politicians and bureaucrats. Libertarians recognize that America today is well on its way toward the democratic despotism of which Tocqueville warned:

''For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, directs their industry . . . It covers the surface of society with a network of small and complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting: such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.''

Tocqueville may be faulted here for failing to anticipate how many of the animals would become lazy and vicious. But how far America has degenerated toward the dismal state he describes is evident for all to see. Yet, only Libertarians seem to be sounding the alarm.

Libertarian Party Part of Broader Movement

The libertarian movement is not confined to the organized Libertarian Party. There are many influential libertarians and libertarian organizations active today which are not affiliated with the Libertarian Party, or are affiliated only loosely or informally. Among the most important of these are the Cato Institute in Washington, DC, which is now widely considered to be the most respected and influential public policy center--''think tank'' --in America. Cato analysts regularly appear on radio and television talk shows and participate in public policy debates.

Other growing centers of libertarian research and scholarship include the Manhattan Institute, the Ludwig von Mises Institute, the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University, and tiny Hillsdale College in Michigan, which refuses all federal financing and has defied federal ''affirmative action'' edicts.

Libertarians have also acquired an influential presence at such mainstream schools as Harvard University, the University of Chicago, Auburn University, and many others.

Several private foundations support libertarian scholars and causes, including the Future of Freedom Foundation, the Foundation for Economic Education, the International Society for Individual Liberty, the Reason Foundation, and the Charles Koch Charitable Foundation.

Libertarian publications include Reason, a current affairs magazine, Liberty magazine, The Freeman, and several scholarly journals. Laissez Faire Books in San Francisco is a major distributor of libertarian literature, both scholarly and popular.

The Institute for Justice, a libertarian answer to the ACLU, provides legal support for personal and property rights.

Noted personalities who have publicly identified themselves as libertarians--not all of whom are members of the Libertarian Party--include Nobel Prize-winning economists Milton Friedman and James Buchanan, humorist Dave Barry, actor and former American Indian activist Russell Means, controversial author and critic Camille Paglia, actor/director Clint Eastwood, and, of course, many writers and scholars prominent in their fields but not otherwise widely known.

While the Libertarian Party urges your support of all of these institutions and publications, the Party itself offers the best opportunity for ordinary citizens to participate actively in the struggle for a free society. The Party is where you can get involved.

A Time to Act

At the height of Franklin Roosevelt's ''New Deal,'' the U. S. government consumed 10% of America's GNP. It now consumes 25%, and the current administration's new taxes will boost this percentage further. State and local governments devour another 22%, and their rates of growth exceed that of the federal government.

Within a few more years, government at all levels will confiscate over half the value of all goods and services produced by the American people--America's productive citizens will truly have becomes slaves of the State. Nor will the expropriation end at that point: the appetites of governments for money and power are insatiable, and because government holds a monopoly on force, all but irresistable.

There is no mechanism in sight that will halt this trend--other than the chance that significant numbers of aware and responsible people come together to rein it to a halt.

Writing to your congressman is futile--were you to ask him for new benefits or programs he might pay heed, but asking him to give up some of his power is a fool's errand. Replacing a Democrat with a Republican, or vice versa, is also pointless, as they are but the two sides of a single counterfeit coin.

What you can do is re-aquaint yourself with America's libertarian tradition--the ideals and principles that transformed America from a rabble of backward colonies into the freest and most prosperous nation in history.

You can also promote the cause of freedom at every opportunity, in public and private; resist government encroachments with every non-rights violating means at your disposal; support libertarian candidates and organizations; and join the Libertarian Party.

There are active and growing chapters of the Party in many localities in Washington State; where you can become acquainted with other conscientious men and women, of all ages, races, religions, and occupations, who have at least these things in common: good will and respect for the rights of all other persons, and an abiding commitment to the preservation of individual liberty.

We need and warmly welcome the support and energy of productive people like you--indeed, they are our only hope--and you can make a difference.

We hope you will join forces with us. Only if there are enough of us left who share the values the American founders bequeathed to us, and are willing to defend them, can we perhaps snare and hobble the devouring beast that lumbers toward us.

If we fail, we will bequeath to our own posterity a society more wretched and oppressive than those America's original colonists struggled to escape--and there is no place left to which they can flee.

Yours in Liberty,

The LIBERTARIAN PARTY of WASHINGTON STATE
P.O. Box 20732
Seattle, WA 98102