Libertarian Majority

The Pure Principles Platform consists so far of nearly 100% recycled language from past platforms. However, there are some changes that Platform Committee members would like to propose and support as pending amendments in our Report, or floor amendments if/when the planks are considered individually during the Platform debate.

1.2. Personal Privacy

1. Add: We favor the freedom of association among private parties to negotiate how they use information voluntarily disclosed to each other.
   • Supported by: BCapozzi, Haller, Holtz
2. Add: We support the right of terminally ill, mentally competent individuals to end their lives.
   • Supported by: BCapozzi, Bennett, Holtz

1.5. Crime and Justice

1. Change: We favor all-volunteer juries and assert the common-law right of juries to judge not only the facts but also the justice of the law. We support the right of parties in a judicial case not to have the bench decide motions until all legal arguments are made, and to defer making such arguments until they can be made before the jury.
   • Supported by: Roland

1.6. Self-Defense

1. Add: We oppose all laws at any level of government requiring registration of, or restricting, the ownership, manufacture, or transfer or sale of firearms or ammunition. Individuals have the right to possess any weapon except those so powerful (such as nuclear or biological) that their mere possession puts the surrounding community at risk.
   • Supported by: BCapozzi, Haller?, Holtz
2. Add: We affirm the individual right to keep and bear arms.
   • Supported by: BCapozzi, Burden, Holtz
3. Add: Libertarians believe that the Bill of Rights is not optional, and that upholding the Second Amendment is just as important to maintaining our liberties as the other amendments.
   • Supported by: BCapozzi

2.2. The Environment

1. Add: Pollution of other people's property is a violation of individual rights. We favor including in market prices the measurable costs that products and actions demonstrably and physically (not psychologically or sociologically) impose on non-consenting third parties. Environmental awareness and the voluntary responses to such green pricing are the only fair and effective ways to stimulate the technological innovations and social changes required for protecting our environment and threatened ecosystems.
   • Supported by: Holtz
2. Add: Revise environmental protections to balance both the rights of property owners and the rights of citizens to be free of environmental hazards.
   • Supported by: BCapozzi, Mattson
3. Add: A healthy environment is essential to a free society. The use of resources in a sustainable and objective system will protect individual property rights. We encourage the use of cleaner alternative energies in a free market system and to work to protect natural resources and endangered species in a fair and open system.
   • Supported by: BCapozzi, Mayer

2.4. Government Finance and Spending

1. Add: We favor continuously reducing taxes as the functions of government are privatized or made voluntary.
   • Supported by: Haller?, Holtz
2. Add: All persons are entitled to keep the fruits of their labor, and it is unjust to tax people in order to finance benefits for other people. We oppose any such tax, as distinct from taxes that serve as fees for pollution, congestion, consumption of unowned resources, or government services not yet privatized.
   • Supported by: Holtz
3. Add: We call for the eventual repeal of the income tax
   • Supported by: Capozzi

2.6. Monopolies and Corporations

1. Add: We also seek to free private business owners of requirements imposed by the government that are not related to their business, such as the collection of payroll taxes or the verification of immigration status.
   • Supported by: BCapozzi, Haller

3.1. National Defense

1. We support the maintenance of a sufficient military to defend the United States and its trade routes against aggression.
   • Supported by: Aitken

3.3. International Affairs

1. Add: We encourage the use of diplomacy to resolve disputes.
   • Supported by: Aitken, BCapozzi

3.4. Free Trade and Migration

1. Change: Trade and migration across borders should be without constraints, provided that migrants do not trespass and are sponsored by someone (perhaps themselves) who can afford to assume the same responsibility for their resource impact and congestion impact and subsistence needs as parents do for native children. We support the removal of governmental impediments to free trade. Political freedom and escape from tyranny demand that individuals not be unreasonably constrained by government in the crossing of political boundaries. Economic freedom demands the unrestricted movement of human as well as financial capital across national borders. We support control over the entry into our country of foreign nationals who pose a threat to security, health or property.
   • Supported by: Holtz
2. Add: Simplifying the immigration process and redeployment of surveillance technology to focus on the borders will encourage the use of regular and monitored entry points, thus preventing trespass and saving lives.
   • Supported by: BCapozzi, McLendon

3.8. Constitutional Government

1. Add: Problems should always be addressed in the most local and voluntary way possible, which ideally is the level of the peaceful honest individual. We support a strict interpretation of the Constitution and enforcement of the Tenth Amendment rule that the federal government has no powers beyond those delegated to it by the Constitution. We support the repeal or overturning of all Acts of Congress outside the narrow powers delegated to it in the Constitution, which are primarily national defense and providing an impartial judicial system. We oppose the President initiating military hostilities in the absence of a declaration of war by Congress.
   • Supported by: Holtz
2. Add: The Constitution must be interpreted according to the historical evidence of what the language meant when it was ratified. The Constitution implies a right to a presumption of nonauthority, and a right of any person to challenge any official to prove his authority before that official is allowed to exercise it.
   • Supported by: Roland