Why Vote Libertarianz?

Why Vote Libertarianz?
by Andrew Bates

Good evening.

The Libertarianz Party was founded on the principle that you should be free to do what you like with your life, so long as you respect that same right in others. Our policies are completely in keeping with that principle. And while other parties claim to speak of freedom, their policies undermine it and votes for those parties only serve to derail the cause of freedom.

Why should liberty be the central issue of politics? It is because man’s life, prosperity and happiness depend upon it. To be able to pursue the things that secure and advance his life, man must be free to act based on decisions of his mind. Put a gun to his head, take away his liberty and man becomes a destitute, miserable slave -- and the history of the twentieth century reveals all this all too bleakly. Take away freedom and you get the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, the gulags of Soviet Russia, and the killing fields of Cambodia.

But, free man and his mind and witness the innovation, the progress, the prosperity and dynamic economies of places like New York and Hong Kong. And witness how war-ravaged but deregulated West Germany outperformed semi-socialist Britain and see that the freer man is, the more prosperous he is.

So important is freedom that libertarians make it our first concern in all political issues. Unlike the parties of the left, we do not seek to regulate your economic freedom. And unlike the parties of the right, we do not seek to regulate your personal freedom. We seek to keep the state out of the boardroom and out of the bedroom.

We hold that the only role for government is defending your freedom by upholding your rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and private property, and those rights’ corollaries such as freedom of speech, freedom of conscience and freedom of association.

As such, libertarians say that government should be constitutionally limited to a defence force, to protect us from foreign aggressors, a police force, to protect us from domestic aggressors, and a justice system to punish domestic aggressors and resolve disputes.

Consequently, we say that the government should extract itself from the businesses of healthcare, of education, of retirement funding, of roading, of telecommunications, of energy, of charity for the poor and the sick and for anything it has its fingers into that doesn’t have to do with upholding liberty. And we recently issued an eight page press release listing only titles of the ministries that we’d abolish -- gone by lunchtime.

We believe that regardless of your ethnicity, gender or sexuality the state should treat you as any other adult. We believe that consenting adults, as rightful owners of their own bodies, have the right to engage in whatever sexual activities they like and to enter into any relational contract that pleases them. The only role for the state in this regard is to prevent the initiation of force and to resolve disputes through enforcement of agreements.

We say that all drugs should be legalised and remain unregulated, leaving you to choose what you put in your bodies and how you alter your minds and leaving you to bear the consequences of such actions.

In economic affairs, we see regulations as stifling the ability of people to freely enter contracts mutually beneficial to both parties in the absence of coercion -- and so we plan to get rid of the commerce commission and numerous state-ordained regulatory bodies, leaving the market to solve whatever questions of standards that may arise from time to time.

We hold that property rights are inviolable, that they are the legal manifestation of the principle that your life is your own and so, as a corollary, are the rewards of the time in your life that you dedicate to production. And so we seek to get rid of the fascist Resource Management Act, which takes control of your land and gives it to local bureaucrats and associated busybodies, and to get rid of the Public Works Act with its dreaded compulsory land acquisitions.

We recognise tax for what it is -- the legalised theft of your hard earned dollar -- and plan to reduce the size of government to such an extent that it can ultimately be funded by the voluntary contributions of a much changed culture.

I said before that other parties include the notion of freedom in their rhetoric while embracing policies that abrogate our rights. The Greens once favoured more liberal marijuana laws. They based their arguments not on rights but on some floating notion of practicality, and they have retreated not just to decriminalising marijuana but to seeing $100 spot fines issued to users.

The Labour Party commendably legalised prostitution, but then regulated the hell out of it. Similarly, they introduced the Civil Unions Act -- a step in the right direction, no doubt -- but then forced thousands of couples into effective marriages they did not want with the de facto Marriage Amendment Act.

And all this is to say nothing of these parties’ repugnant America-bashing and their attacks on economic freedom. Both are militantly opposed to tax cuts -- a sure sign of a hatred of success. And both endorse beefing up the Resource Management Act, trampling on property rights and putting more red tape in front of those who seek to get off their chuffs, get on with the job and create something useful. That is, both want to make those who produce go before those who produce nothing in order to seek permission to create the values that sustain them both -- a sure sign of cultural failure.

What’s more, both endorse forcing teachers from early childhood on up to get state-sanctioned degrees, ensuring that the hands that rock the cradle are guided by heads inculcated with state-worshipping propaganda.

I won’t waste our time outlining the economically stagnant, socialist, xenophobic and socially authoritarian policies of Winston First, United Fundamentalists, the Jim Neanderton Personality Cult, the More Money for Maori or Density parties.

Let us instead consider National, whose constitution speaks of legislating for maximum freedom in the absence of bureaucratic controls. During the leaders debate on TV the other night, we saw Don Brash say that National would not cut government spending, that whereas Labour would increase spending by $1.9 Billion a year, National would still increase it, but only by $1.3 Billion a year. And this was meant to be a point-scoring remark. In truth, it just goes to show how paltry the tax cuts are relative to how big they could and should be.

No party leader that makes such an utterance, that intends to keep in place our socialist die-while-you-wait health system or illiterate-teacher producing education system, can be considered a friend of freedom.

While Brash started courageously with his Orewa speech and claims that crown entities like TVNZ, with all its statist bias, should be privatised, he has since acquiesced to the claims of his advisers that he would need to buy his way onto the Treasury benches, offering the sheeple more socialism in order to get elected. In the face of their capitalists-under-the-bed volleys, he has cowered and started me-tooing the Labour Party, claiming, for example, that the only difference between his foreign policy and that of the America-haters in Labour is that our troops would have gone to Iraq slightly faster.

Or what about ACT, who call themselves the Liberal Party while nearly half of their MPs voted against the Civil Unions Bill, and while nearly half supported forcing people into unwanted marriages, and who oppose the legalisation of voluntary euthanasia, prostitution and marijuana, let alone all drugs. Think of their zero tolerance for crime policy -- and remember that applies to victimless crimes.

They used to claim they were about Values, Not Politics. Remember their former leader Richard Prebble jumping on the populist bandwagon, claiming the government should aid the Rugby Union in breaking contracts with stadium sponsors in order to secure a share of hosting the Rugby World Cup. So much for the sanctity of contracts. So much for opposing government winner-picking and redundant tourism promotion quangoes. So much for Values, Not Politics.

And yet somehow, the party’s board thought Rodney Hide, one of their most ideological MPs, was too populist to be leader. Perhaps they were right to question Rodney’s commitment to principles. Just weeks ago, he sent out a pamphlet saying what he had achieved in parliament and containing endorsements from people he had helped out. The pamphlet did not, however, say that people should vote for him, and consequently, Rodney was able to get the taxpayer to pay for the pamphlet to be delivered to Epsom voters when he put the parliamentary logo on it.

ACT and National talk about the importance of property rights, yet, rather than saying they will get rid of the RMA, which in 228 pages does not mention property rights once, they say they wish to reform it. What is needed is to get rid of it and revert to the absolute protection of property rights through common law, which served us well for 700 years.

They claim to respect free markets, yet they believe in competition laws which keep bureaucrats interfering in the economy, which effectively nationalise all businesses in the name of the consumer, trampling on the property rights of the productive, and which hamstring the most competitive companies in the name of competition from uncompetitive companies.

I once read that the worst trade a man can make is to give up his independence for that which is called respectability. I am often told by ACT & National supporters, even by their list members, that they believe in libertarian ideals, but that they are working to bring the sheeple to freedom step by step and that voting for the Libertarianz is a wasted vote while we are nowhere near making the threshold. Of course, they don’t know how numerous they are, how their cowardice keeps the pragmatists in parliament doing the message of liberty a disservice. If everyone who said that had the courage of their convictions, we’d have principled voices for liberty in parliament. But, alas, they trade their independence for the respectability of numbers.

The trouble with both these parties is that while they claim on a political level to be for freedom, they undermine their message by accepting their opponents’ ethical premise that the individual exists for the sake of society, and especially its weakest members. As a necessary consequence, they embrace legislation that sees the state enforce the sacrifice of the individual to the collective.

If you want to change a political environment you need to change the culture. To change the culture, you need to change the ideas of a significant number, a critical mass, of people and to do that you must at every opportunity offer a clear, rational, unswerving message. You cannot do that while capitulating and dumbing down your message, destroying its ideological consistency whenever your state-worshipping collectivist opponents cry “Capitalist!”

Let us remember the words of radical abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. “I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire, to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hand of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; -- but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest -- I will not equivocate -- I will not excuse -- I will not retreat a single inch -- AND I WILL BE HEARD.”

If you want your freedom defended, you need a party committed to the principle that you own your life and should be free to live it as you see fit. People here tonight have shunned the stifling self-denying conformism promoted by Conservatives. By carrying on in business, you thumb your noses at Leftist efforts to drive you under through excessive taxation, bureaucracy and red tape.

You need now to shun the voices of compromise and vote for the party prepared to work patiently to change the culture.You need to vote your conscience. You need to vote, and, of course, join, the Libertarianz.

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