Libertarians win majority on Colorado City Council

On November 6, local voters gave registered Libertarians a voting majority on the seven-member Leadville city council. Four council seats are now occupied by Libertarians.

LP Political Director Ron Crickenberger said this is an "historic event" for the Libertarian Party.

"I think it's fantastic that the LP has achieved its goal of taking over a town with Libertarians -- with the support of the voters, of course," he said."This really is the next political step for the party: Going from winning individual offices to winning enough seats to have a working majority."

* Carol Hill (Ward 1), who defeated an incumbent and another challenger in a three-way race, garnering 48.6% of the vote. Previously, she had unsuccessfully run for city council in 1995 and for Lake County Commissioner in 1996.

* Ken Cary (Ward 2), who registered as a Libertarian just days before the election. Ward won his election with 52% of the vote in a two-way race.

* Joe Swyers (Ward 2), a Libertarian who had already been serving on the council, elected in 1999.

* Lisa Dowdney (Ward 3), who was also elected in 1999 and registered as a Libertarian on November 8, shifting the balance of power to the Libertarian Party.

Leadville city council members are elected for four-year terms in non-partisan races.

"Congratulations to Joe, Carol, Lisa, and Ken!" said Colorado LP Information Director David Bryant. "Thanks to the four of you, Leadville is poised to become the most Libertarian city in America. Way to go!"

With a Libertarian majority, the city will be "very interesting," said Hill, "especially on financial issues. We should get some reasonable budgets and some sensible policies -- we should be able to cut back."

Specifically, Hill said she would like to cut back the activity of the local planning and zoning board --or abolish the board completely -- and stop spending money from city reserve funds.

Although she said she might meet some resistance from the mayor, she said she is able to hold her own in a debate on local issues.

"The key is to redefine the issue at hand so your political opponents don't have you constantly on the defensive," she said. "Don't try to debate on their terms."

The situation in Leadville is a good sign for future local Libertarian candidates, said Crickenberger.

"I expect situations such as this one to become more and more common in the near future," he said. "And the movement of our American communities in a Libertarian direction will inevitably translate to bigger victories down the road."

This is not the first time that Libertarians have had a working majority on a city council, said Crickenberger. That feat was accomplished in the late 1980s in Big Water, Utah.

Located just west of Denver, Leadville has the distinction of being America's highest incorporated city, at a perch of more than 10,000 feet. It has a population of about 2,800 residents.

From the gist of what I have seen, Libertarians want no governmental intrusion into their lives. They want to do what they want to do without regard to rules and regulations.

Not exactly. A libertarian believes government has no legitimate business except to stay out of your business, my business, and any citizen's business, unless one citizen would obstruct or abrogate a fellow citizen's equivalent rights; and, to protect her citizens against predators at home (real predators, if you please, not mere vicemongers) and attackers from abroad. (Which reminds me: I for one can barely comprehend why it was that some libertarians, conservatives, libertarian conservatives, or paleo all the above, had such a problem as they seem to have had with our hitting back after 11 September. Reality check: force was used against us! Whatever it was about our foreign policy and our ways and means of entangling with other nations that was, to be polite, ill-advised, that hardly confers licence on any foreign power - and though he is not strictly defined a foreign government, Osama Yo Mama [thank you, Mr. Boortz] certainly did have the protection and shelter, indeed the sanction, of a foreign government - to commission suicide bombers to hijack civilian airliners and slaughter five thousand innocents in the World Trade Center.)

What one citizen does in his or her own home on his or her own property is no one else's legitimate affair, unless they would a) cause deliberate physical harm upon anyone else while so doing; or, b) compel another by force to partake against their will. Example: An adult wants to watch porn in his own house, that's his own business. He wants to jam it down his wife's throat or substitute it for real intimacy with his wife, that's one reason they made divorce court. He wants to show it in your house against your will, or drag you into his house to watch against your will, then it's your and your local law enforcement's business - and let's have the punishment fitting the crime, please, punishing porn lovers as though they were attempted murderers is as ridiculous as it is to end up punishing burglars or shootists as though they were just shoplifting a couple of packs of Twinkies from the local deli.

Or, since only so many folk here seemed impatient to toss in the drug issue on this thread, let's have a whack at it: Someone's smoking pot or doing a few lines in his own house - that's his business. Someone attacks his wife or family while he's smoking pot or doing a few lines in his own house, bring in the police. And it shouldn't matter a damn what he was consuming - assault and battery are just that. Your neighbour decides you ought to join in the fun and smoke a joint or do a few lines with him, you don't want to join in but he forces you to join in either by dragging you into his house and not letting you out until you take a few good healthy hits - that's holding you against your will. He barrels his way into your house to force you to join in - that's breaking and entering. He decides to take a walk up the street and smoke his joint or do his lines out around the neighbourhood? Well, since he didn't exactly get the okay to do it anyplace outside his own four walls and square feet of property, that's a public nuisance. Then you have a perfect right to a) deploy whatever force might be at your disposal to defend yourself against his attempt to hold you against your will, b) call in the police if you can't hold him off, c) demand prosecution for his having carried his particular vice from behind his own four walls and square feet into the public square, so to say. But until or unless he does bring it out into the public square, someone else's vice, however distasteful or sinful to you or to myself, is merely someone else's vice and none of our business.

A libertarian, in other words, believes you know best how your own life should be lived, your keep earned, your home composed and run, your fellow helped by you, and how you relate to God. And, that when the government compromises or usurps that sovereignty - taking your money or other property from you by arbitrary force, deciding likewise that you have not used your money, property, or social power in what it determines the appropriate manner (as most clearly it has done, and continues to do), while failing to protect you against real predators at home and attackers from abroad - it is government no longer but, rather, the State.

Ha ha ha lol, which society has ever been Libertarian? None.

Refer, please, to the founding era of these United States. No, it was not a Libertarian government, since there was no Libertarian Party in existence, but it was very much a libertarian (lower case "l") government - as in, it butted out of her citizens' business unless one of them had any bright ideas about obstructing or abrogating his fellow citizens' equivalent rights - though not for very long...

You utopians are no different than the Marxists in their fantasy-land.

Utopians properly defined believe, generally, that it is the State's business to create nothing short of heaven on earth or else, since we poor individuals are just so not competent enough to know what is best for us. A libertarian believes, generally, that since heaven on earth has three chances in hell of coming about in the hands of imperfect men - namely, jack, diddley, and squat - it is left properly enough to individuals to decide how best their lives should be lived, their lives between themselves and God and nobody else's bloody business except as within their freely made associations, with government's single legitimate affair being to keep them within reasonable bounds from harming or murdering their fellow sovereigns. Or, in simpler language: To the utopian, the State is everything and the individual is nothing; to the libertarian, the individual is sovereign and the State - as opposed to a proper, legitimate, and unobtrusive government - is his enemy.

Best wishes for success in getting 100% of what you want 100% of the time. Especially with those less than single-digit candidates.

I realize that the libertarians are far from garnering political power. But I am arguing pure morality, rather than practicality. Morally speaking, people have a right to spend their money on what they want. Or, in other words: If you use it, you should pay for it. If you pay for it, you should get to use it. Rephrasing it again: It is immoral to force you to pay for things you don't use or want.

The only way this moral goal can be achieved is if taxes are cut back to provide only for common defense and security.

That is why I support libertarians. The Republicans haven't truly protected us against the leviathan. More than half of what I make is taken away from me by force (newsflash: Like most taxpayers, I pay taxes under threat of criminal prosecution! I don't pay them voluntarily)

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