The Market Liberal LP Reform Agenda

by Brian Holtz

These are my current proposals for reforming the LP's core documents.

Bylaws Statement of Party Purpose

The Party's purpose is to implement and give voice to the Statement of Principles by uniting voters who want more liberty behind the electoral choices that will most move public policy in a libertarian direction.

Pledge

The Libertarian Party will always advocate increasing liberty and decreasing government on every issue. As a member of the Libertarian Party, I will not attempt to change this.

Statement of Principles

We, the members of the Libertarian Party, challenge all aggression against the rights of the individual. We advocate maximizing individual rights by continually minimizing the role and incidence of aggression in human society.

We hold that all peaceful honest adults have the right and responsibility to control their own bodies, actions, speech, and property, so long as they use neither force nor fraud to interfere with the same rights of others. Individuals should be free to make choices for themselves and to accept responsibility for the consequences of the choices they make.

The only crimes should be the violation of the rights of others by force or by fraud or by deliberately or negligently imposing significant and unwelcome risk of harm. Individuals retain the right to voluntarily assume risk of harm to themselves. Harming others or their property through pollution is a violation of individual rights, and polluters should be required to pay for the material harm they cause.

The only legitimate use of force is in defense of individual rights — life, liberty, and justly acquired property — against aggression, whether by force or fraud. The only legitimate purpose of government is the protection of individual rights within that government's jurisdiction. We seek to divest government of all functions that can be provided by private individuals or voluntary organizations. It is unjust and unwise to force people to do something for their own good or to provide benefits for others. People should be left free to deal with one another as free traders; and the resultant economic system, the only one compatible with the protection of individual rights, is the free market.

Platform

We reformers on the Platform Committee are promoting the Pure Principles Platform.

Alas, the LP is not intellectually evolved enough to incorporate more of the draft EcoLibertarian Principles into its official documents.

Campaign Program

See the draft MarketLiberal Campaign Program.

California Voter Guide LP Statement of Purpose

The Libertarian Party advocates the freedom and responsibility of peaceful honest adults to control their own bodies, actions, speech, and property, so long as they use neither force nor fraud to interfere with the same freedom of others.

The Left doesn't trust you with your own money. The Right doesn't trust you with your own body. Libertarians trust you to with your own money AND your own body. Left-wing parties want government to be your nanny. Right-wing parties want government to be your chaperone. Libertarians want government to be just your referee and night watchman. Libertarians want the Right out of your bedroom, and the Left out of your wallet.

If you believe that Left and Right are both half-wrong, then vote Libertarian to stand up against politics as usual. Stand up for the environment by legally recognizing its economic value. Stand up for customer choice and individual responsibility in education, health care, and retirement security. Stand up for the Bill of Rights and for limiting the federal government to its Constitutional role of protecting liberty and justice for all — on American soil. Stand up, vote Libertarian, and win a free country.

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