What Is a Libertarian?

What Is a Libertarian?

By Lenny Rasch, Plymouth

Again this year, the Connecticut political landscape includes a number of Libertarians running for office—three statewide, one Congressional (in the 5th District), and three state representatives. It’s easy to say that the Libertarian Party is the third largest political party in the U.S., which it is. It’s easy to say that nationally it is running more candidates for office, by double, than all of the other 21 independent parties combined—which it is. But what, exactly, is a Libertarian?

As State Chair of the Libertarian Party of Connecticut and candidate for State Comptroller, I have found that people know little about the Libertarian political position. Sometimes people assume Libertarians hold views that are quite opposite to our actual positions. While there is considerable variation in any group of people, there is a basic set of principles that are the starting point for nearly all Libertarians.

Libertarians represent the only fresh view in politics. The political debate that they propose is quite different from that of the other parties:

(1) Should government be in the position of giving handouts to powerful special interests and corporations, or should it focus on more appropriate functions, like protecting its citizens from foreign attack and domestic fraud?

(2) Is a total tax rate that approaches 50%, when all taxes are calculated, morally and practically appropriate, or would it be better to leave more money in people’s pockets and let them make their own choices about what to do with it?

(3) With literally at least a couple of million pages of laws at all levels of government combined, how much more regulation do we need? How can any citizen know if he is in violation of these laws? What respect does he have for the law if it is this outrageous, and frequently tailored to support special interests at his expense?

On the other hand, Democrats and Republicans, and most other independent parties, define the public issues forum in a very different way. The only domestic conflicts they have is over which special interest groups should get the most money, what’s the best way to take the money from everybody else, and how many new regulations are needed on every aspect of daily life. Watch their debates and their ads—all of their issues fall into one of these three categories.

Of course, elected major party politicians are not interested in having these discussions. It is vital to their personal interests to keep the public focused on the details of their job, under the assumption that of course they should be taking your money, redistributing it to those who support them, and keeping other groups happy by regulating your activities. This maintains the status quo.

It is said that everyone is a Libertarian for themselves, and a dictator in their attitude toward everyone else. People frequently moan about tax rates, only to complain in the next breath that the state should be building stadiums (for the benefit of wealthy team owners). They complain that a relative lost their house to eminent domain for an industrial park, and then demand that the zoning officer make their neighbor stop running a plumbing business out of his home.

I hope that you as a reader can extend these examples to many others, and see the mental disconnect that you must make to keep the whole process going. The real issue is not who gets the loot, but whether the government should be taking it from us in the first place. The Libertarian position is that you should retain your own life and property (you can’t really have one without the other), and make your own choices. In a nutshell, all other Libertarian positions derive from that principle. The Libertarian Party platform is available in executive summary form on <www.lp.org>.