Posted on 05/07/2016 7:57:55 AM PDT by Brookhaven
In the following pages we have set forth our basic principles and enumerated various policy stands derived from those principles.
(Excerpt) Read more at lp.org ...
When it comes to many of their positions, they are not only to the left of the Democrats, they are to the left of the Green Party.
As the NeverTrumps start saying they are going to vote Libertarian as "an act of conscious" ask them how supporting these positions is an act of conscious.
1.5 Abortion
They are pro-abortion for any reason at any time.
1.6 Crime and Justice
They favor legalizing all drugs and prostitution.
2.0 Economic Liberty
They do not believe in national borders--period. People should be free to enter into the USA at will, with no government oversight whatsoever.
They are free traders. They do not believe in ANY barriers to the importation of goods.
2.5 Money and Financial Markets
They oppose any government regulation of financial markets.
2.8 Education
They would abolish ALL public education at every level.
2.9 Health Care
They oppose any government involvement in health care. They would eliminate the VA health system, medicare, & medicaide.
2.10 Retirement and Income Security
They would eliminate Social Security and all government retirement systems. They have no plans to replace it with anything.
3.1 National Defense
They are isolationist--plain and simple. They would withdraw the US not only from NATO, but from all foreign countries and close any US military bases not on US soil.
13% of my pay was paid into social security during my lifetime. Half of that was hidden as “employer contribution” but let’s face it - it came out of my pay.
Return all that to me right now, and you can close down Social Security forever.
Libertarians have some good stuff but its open borders, legal drugs, gay marriage, pro-abortion. Screw that.
> They favor legalizing all drugs and prostitution.
Don’t see the problem with this. Prohibitionist laws always cause more harm than good. It’s the closest thing to a physical axiom in legislation.
> They do not believe in national borders—period. People should be free to enter into the USA at will, with no government oversight whatsoever.
This point is hotly disputed. What you describe is the anarchist position, and the LP is infested with them. Other libertarians recognize the essential role sovereignty plays in protection of liberty.
> They oppose any government regulation of financial markets.
Government regulation of financial markets has been catastrophic - it has created an oligopoly of “too big to fail” banks and other abuses. “Markets are not actually free unless fraud is vigorously combated and neither profits nor losses are socialized.” - hard to argue with that.
> They would abolish ALL public education at every level.
Bravo to them. GOP would be well to adopt this as public education is almost universally socialist indoctrination. If you send your kids to Catholic school they’ll learn Catholic values. If you send your kids to a government school they’ll learn government values.
> They oppose any government involvement in health care. They would eliminate the VA health system, medicare, & medicaide.
It’s indisputable that government involvement in the health care sector has been catastrophic. Veteran’s health care should be considered an inseparable part of national defense and should not be a separate, civilian institution left to languish in corrupt and unaccountable bureaucracy.
> They would eliminate Social Security and all government retirement systems. They have no plans to replace it with anything.
As anything put in government hands is inevitably stolen, I don’t see the problem here.
> They are isolationist—plain and simple. They would withdraw the US not only from NATO, but from all foreign countries and close any US military bases not on US soil.
It’s not isolationist to avoid entangling alliances. NATO has betrayed its mission and is now doing continuous harm to our national security. Keeping bases around the world is hideously expensive and its contribution to national security is dubious at best.
Losertarians have some good ideas but for the most part they are wackadoo stoners. Not all, just most.
Well, they’re about half right on most things. That’s more than I can say for practically all Democrats and quite a few Republicans.
They hate government so much they have become anarchists. I wish they could go live in Somalia for a year and learn what no effective government is really like.
2.8 is one I support - whole heartedly. Abolish public education. In it’s present form people that send their kids to public school, any public school are guilty of child abuse
I would also be somewhat of an isolationist though a muscle bound one - I want a powerful military to preserve the nation. Other places can live or die on their own.
But yeah, the Libertarians are pretty out there in a lot of ways
What make this funny is a lot of the #NeverTrump guys don’t like him because he isn’t pure enough, not a “Constitutional conservative” (Whatever that means). They think he is to liberal and then they run to this party?
The Libertarians lost me several years ago.
You have a very distorted view of the LP...and probably of libertarians, most of whom are in the RLC or other libertarian groups and not in the LP.
Note the internal contradictions in your own list. It is impossible to be isolationist and free trade/open borders. You can’t have it both ways.
The reality is that some libertarians (in and out of the LP) agree with Trump on the border while others are open border. Most libertarians are for some government control of immigrants to focus on terrorists, murderers, rapists, DUI drivers. And no immigrant, legal, illegal or naturalized should ever be allowed to even apply for welfare.
eVerify is where virturlly all libertarians agree. It is a big mistake to give the government the power to tell private employers whom they can and cannot employ. Anyone who thinks that will be used as intended is extremely naive.
Half of libertarians, like Ron Paul, are Pro-life. Half are in various stages of pro-abort.
Half of libertarians are extremely pro-Israel and have a foreign policy to match. But to them pro-Israel does not mean creating a place dependent on foreign welfare.
They are for the moral breakdown of society. Anything goes as long as most of them get their recreational drugs.
They promote social and employment disability by pushing the drugs.
They should only be for the massively disabled or dying having access and never for kids or working age adults to get them.
To me they are ass backwards on many issues.
I have voted for a Constitution Party candidate for Congress, but I have never voted for a Libertarian Party candidate and have no intention of doing so. I’m a social conservative, and libertarians and social conservatives just don’t seem to be on the same page.
Talk about a wasted vote.
I've been called anarchist because of my Constitutionalist views: namely saying that if I were in charge, any fed-gov agency/program not authorized by the Constitution is gone. This would leave Army, Navy, Post Office, Department of Transportation (though w/ a reduced scope), the Secret Service (no security details, ONLY investigating counterfeiting), and the IRS (tax collection is authorized), Customs & Immigration… and I think that's it.
“Other libertarians recognize the essential role sovereignty plays in protection of liberty.”
You’ll hear things along the line of “if there’s no welfare state, there’s no problem with an open border”. Partially true. The Libertarian platform would be hunky dory if there was little economic and cultural disparity in the world.
I’m as radical Libertarian as they come, but the platform itself is pure fantasy with respect to what’s practically attainable in the American political context.
The #NeverTrump cultists strike me as having a confusingly conceited and wildly impractical idea about what it means to be ‘principled’. As I’m pretty sure sitting on one’s ass and waiting for something 90-100% in accord with one’s beliefs, is probably not a viable path of attainment.
With regards to ending the welfare state and having an open border, the order in which those two things happen is crucial to the outcome.
End the welfare state first, and an open border (with some nominal checks for security purposes) might be feasible. Opening the borders first - as has happened - invites a globe full of benefit-seekers to come and suck the life out of the country.
Of course. But because all countries/cultures are not equal, and we are in the unenviable position of having a prime example to our south, there will always be “economic refugees”. Our country would continue to be flooded with those that would work for frijoles.
In the end the libertarian platform is little more than theory, like communism, that would never work in the real world.
My problem with the LP, is the unwavering idealog nature of the stand. I counted myself a conservative/libertarian for 20 years. “The free market will handle it” was my mantra. I was on board with with free trade. Admittedly it was only the idea I liked. The practice of it was anything but free and it ended up being an example of Orwellian double speak.
Reagan was not a strict conservative but he was a great president. That’s an example of a good negotiator who sometimes disappoints.
I was originally for Ted Cruz in this race but he ended up really turning me off.
At this age , I’m tired of the bullet point, non negotiable nature of the idealistic, but non attainable platform of the libertarian party. I voted that way in the Clinton / dole election. I have never done so again.
I pretty much vote against the more potentially damaging candidate. In this case that would be Clinton. A vote for an LP candidate will not come from this citizen.
“Economic refugees” are not necessarily bad if they’re the productive, self-supporting type.
But when we have a welfare state, that’s not the type we get.
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