Liberty For All

by Lady Liberty

America has long touted to the rest of the world its democratic process. Some claim that, by voting, Americans retain control of their own government and thus their own liberty. Some foreign countries not yet democratic in nature look on in fear of this process because of the changes it might bring; others look on it with hope for those very same changes. But what many people don’t seem to acknowledge is that voting today isn’t really the wonderful thing it’s said to be, nor is it remotely as effective at its job as it ought to be.

If you’re at all politically active, you’re all too well aware that your vote is being sought or bought (don’t let the fact that cash rarely changes hands sway you from the knowledge that, illegal or not, votes are indeed bought). Activist groups urge you to contact your political representatives and ask them to vote one way or another on a specific issue; politicians beseech you to vote for them, or at least against their opponent, every time an election comes around.

The problems with the voting process are two-fold: First and foremost is the fact that many voters are either lazy or uneducated. These idle voters don’t know what the issues or the candidates are, and they don’t care to. But yet they head for the polls and they vote anyway. They are the people who make decisions based solely on how cool a commercial is, what party a politician represents, or the way “everyone” they know has “always” voted. Secondary, but also serious, is the tendency of some who do at least attempt to educate themselves to believe whatever it is they want to hear. And finally, there’s just plain old-fashioned dishonesty.

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by SAF staff

The Second Amendment Foundation said today’s dismissal of a lawsuit filed against the firearms industry by anti-gun New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg should send a clear message that “courthouse demagoguery and harassment of law-abiding business is not the responsible way to fight crime.”

The 2-1 opinion, written by U.S. Appeals Court Judge Robert J. Miner, affirms the constitutionality of the 2005 Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. It overturns a lower court ruling by activist federal judge Jack B. Weinstein, explaining that he should have dismissed the case instead of allowing it to go forward.

“Today’s ruling is clearly a defeat for Michael Bloomberg,” said SAF founder Alan M. Gottlieb. “The law trumps a billionaire’s arrogance and a federal judge’s long standing anti-gun activism. It is time for Bloomberg to grow up, and for Weinstein to step down.

“Judge Weinstein should certainly step aside from a case that will come before the court shortly on Bloomberg’s harassment lawsuit of firearms dealers in other states,” he added.

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by Ari Armstrong

I’m writing to those who call for new laws restricting the use of guns in an effort to help you understand the positions of those of us who oppose such laws and advocate the ownership of guns for self-defense. On Tuesday, February 29, a first-grader used a gun to kill a classmate in Michigan. The very next day, on Wednesday, March 1, a man near Pittsburgh killed two and wounded three more in a racially motivated murder spree. And yet, while I mourn these deaths as horrible tragedies, I am more resolved than ever that my position on firearms is the correct one. You must be wondering what is going on with my thinking. I’m happy to tell you.

I have to get something out of the way, though, before we can proceed in understanding. If you think that I’m paranoid that “everyone’s out to get me,” if you think that I’m somehow advocating my positions for financial gains (it actually costs me money to advocate my beliefs), if you think that I somehow like violence, then let me suggest that you have succumbed to bigoted stereotypes that prevent you from thinking rationally about the firearms issue and from treating me with benevolent understanding. Granted, some people on my side of the debate also perpetuate stereotypes against you, but I try hard to avoid those, and I ask the same courtesy from you in return. So let us continue.

Dave Kopel, a champion of civil gun rights, once said that we shouldn’t let our position on guns be a proxy for deep philosophical values. Instead, he said, we should draw gun policy on grounds of what saves the most lives. I agree with him on a certain level. However, our deeper philosophical beliefs help form our opinions about which laws will or will not save lives, and which laws might even cost more lives. Thus, many simply don’t believe Kopel’s scholarly work that purports to show that civil gun ownership makes society safer. Similarly, my initial impulse is skepticism whenever I hear Handgun Control Inc. claim that civil gun ownership is dangerous. What are some of the root philosophical beliefs that tend to make us more or less inclined to take seriously a set of claims about firearms?

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by Melinda Pillsbury-Foster

There is an envelope of opportunity now confronting the Libertarian Party. The Libertarian Party can fulfill its intended destiny, to be the force that turns America back towards freedom.

The LP came into existence not to engage in politics but to make politics unnecessary, to take power back to people as individuals. Instead of continuing to talk about freedom the time has come to make that promise our reality.

It has been nearly two generations the way these things are counted since our founding. Those of us who were there in the early days expected the LP to stop the IRS, end the FED, stop the intrusion of government into our lives. Our lives were to become the means for each of us to realize the best within ourselves, to find happiness, to delve into the amazing possibilities we see today.

Our reasons for activism were imagined possibilities, our dreams. We worked and donated so that we might leave a very different future to our children and grandchildren. That is what I told my kids, that this was what Mom did so they would live the freedom I never expected to have myself.

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by CCRKBA staff

American gun owners, especially those licensed to carry concealed handguns, are urged to comment on a proposed Interior Department rules change that would allow concealed carry in national parks and national wildlife refuges.

The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms supports this rule change.

“Citizens do not leave their right of self-defense at the gates of a national park or the boundary of a wildlife refuge,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, co-author of America Fights Back: Armed Self-Defense in a Violent Age. “Millions of Americans legally carry concealed for personal protection, and contrary to the rhetoric of anti-gunners, parks and refuges are not immune to crime.

“According to National Park Service data,” he continued, “between 2002 and 2007, there were 63 homicides in national parks, 240 rapes or attempted rapes, 309 robberies, 37 kidnappings and 1,277 aggravated assaults. Opponents of this rule change dismiss those numbers as insignificant, but those crimes are very significant to the victims!”

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by Garry Reed, The Loose Cannon Libertarian

One good thing about kings and queens and related regalcrats is that once they’re crowned they stay crowned.  One state coronation per lifetime is enough.  Not so with US presidents.  Elect one of these powercrats and he gets many multimillion-dollar merrymaking coronation events, going on all over town.  Of course, we call this shindig “Inauguration,” which is just Americanspeak for “coronation.”  But re-elect one of these August American Emirs a mere four years later and he expects yet another round of revelry and worship.

Luckily for all us taxpaying Lilliputians who never get invites to these festivities, they’re all paid for by big-name, big-buck private donors.  Some of the benefactors, like Enron’s former president, Dell Computer’s founder, ExxonMobil and United Technologies, each upchucked $250,000 from their petty cash cache.  Other lesser lights who contributed lesser amounts included Coca-Cola, Anheuser-Busch, General Electric and Microsoft, the latter having apparently learned its antitrust lesson (pony up or get pummeled by the powercrats).

But do American conglomerates really pay for the president’s party favors from their own profits, or are they actually pilfering from our pockets?

Here’s an experiment: punch up your favorite web-walker and type in the phrase “corporate welfare.”  Then add to it any of the cognomens of commerce listed above, such as “ExxonMobil” or “General Electric” or a beverage of your choice, “Coca-Cola” or “Anheuser-Busch.”  Notice how it’s almost impossible not to get hundreds of hits linking those two expressions, oft-times in the same sentence.

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by Kevin Tuma

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by GOA staff

The Bush administration, after more than seven years, has finally issued regulations permitting the carrying of firearms in national parks. Gun owners will soon be able to carry firearms according to the laws of the state in which the park is located.

While not perfect, the proposed regulations, which are likely to take effect at the end of June 2008, represent a sharp contrast with the steadfast refusal to allow for self-defense in national parks.

The bureaucrats responded after a crescendo of congressional activity. Senator Tom Coburn has made efforts to put the matter before the Senate, and would have done so had Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid not broken his word to Coburn to allow him to have a vote on the measure. Also, 47 Senators signed a letter to the Department of the Interior urging that the ban be removed.

In the House, there are now three bills that would open national parks to carrying firearms as regulated by the state in which the park is located.

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by R. Lee Wrights

“The French have a position to protect in Iraq and so do the Russians. They want to be sure they’re not shunted aside. If we do too much of that people will say it really was about oil.”

- Robert E. Ebel, energy program director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies Washington Post, April 3, 2003

All the hawks I have corresponded with throughout the entirety of Mr. Bush’s War have been united and adamant on one issue: “The invasion of Iraq, and the subsequent war for occupation, are absolutely not about the oil.” But, we see as early as the first of April the leaders of the world squabbling over who will control the mineral-rich oil fields in a Middle Eastern country that is yet to be conquered. The corpse is not even cold but already the marauders stand over the body arguing about which of them will receive its boots. In fact, the corpse is not even a corpse yet! It would appear that the vultures have gathered prematurely to haggle over who will get what.

The big buzzards of Europe want post-war Iraq to be ruled by the United Nations. Noelle Knox, reporting for USA Today, pointed out that even the United Kingdom wanted the UN in charge of Iraq after the war when she wrote on April 3, 2003:

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by Dr. Mary Ruwart

In just a few weeks, the Libertarian Party’s national convention delegates will choose our party’s 2008 presidential nominee, who will become our de facto leader and public face of the party for the next four years. Will we choose wisely? Will we choose someone who believes in liberty?

When I first ran as a Libertarian candidate for public office in the early 1980s, many of our positions were very unpopular. For example, our call to end the drug war was considered by many to be an endorsement of drug usage and addiction. Because we didn’t see the War on Drugs as a solution to the drug problem, people automatically assumed that we condoned the problem itself. They supported the War on Drugs because they thought that a ban on them would keep drugs out of the schools.

Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. The black-market profits created by drug prohibition virtually guaranteed that pushers would target our children. Although alcohol and tobacco have been consistently illegal for minors, students had a much harder time getting drinks and smokes than purchasing crack cocaine or heroin. The best reason for doing away with the War on Drugs was to protect our children, even though most Americans thought just the opposite was true.

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