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(07/25/02 8:23pm)
More and more people lament that parents do not take enough responsibility for raising their own children these days, for instilling moral values and good behavior in them. Many cite this trend to justify paternalistic big government. Some seem to think a mountain of new laws backed by police power is needed to protect decent folks from neglected youths running rampant.\nHas no one considered that there may be a causal relationship working backwards here? It could be that the more government fashions itself as a moral guide and disciplinarian, the less parents feel obligated to fill that role.\nThe Children's Protection from Violent Programming Act is a product of a "Nanny State" mentality that costs Americans far too much in both lost freedoms and tax dollars. A Bloomington Herald-Times editorial Feb. 27 reaffirmed that "hands-on parenting" impacts teens' behavior much more than "teachers, government leaders or coaches." Censorship cannot accomplish what caring parental supervision can, but its prevalence can teach kids that government interference permeates every corner of American life.\nHow far will politicians go before they get to a point they consider beyond regulatory control? Taxpayers should not be forced to fund the convoluted, counterproductive regulatory processes that employ armies of bureaucrats who produce bad law after unnecessary bad law. Yet our new president has officially declared it the responsibility of government-run schools to "teach right and wrong." The First Amendment and your freedom to determine your family's values and teach them by your chosen method are more endangered than ever. \nAt least we can applaud the American Bar Association for recently announcing it opposes zero tolerance policies in schools that they say "redefine students as criminals." Civil libertarians agree that zero tolerance policies in schools are misguided, too often applied with such paranoia that kids are kicked out of school for brandishing candy, rubber bands and fingers. \nFor example: \n• A 9-year-old was suspended and forced to undergo psychiatric counseling for threatening to shoot a classmate with a rubber band. \n• A 10-year-old's mother put a small knife in her lunchbox so she could cut her apple. The girl realized the knife could violate the school's anti-weapons policy. She turned it in to a teacher and was promptly expelled. \n• Two kindergarten students were suspended for playing "cops and robbers" on a school playground, pointing fingers at each other and shouting "bang, bang." \n• When a 6-year-old shared a lemon drop with a friend at school, the friend was rushed off in an ambulance and the generous kid was suspended for violating the anti-drug policy. \n• A 9-year old was suspended for simply drawing a picture of a gun on paper. \nThese policies compromise educational effectiveness. They force school officials to pay attention to such trivial transgressions that they are distracted, and students may actually be less safe. Kids certainly get an impression of their status as "guilty until proven innocent." \nCurfew laws like the ones under consideration in Indiana's State House also contribute to criminalization of our youth and usurp the parents' role. In July, the U.S. District Court in Indianapolis struck down Indiana's old curfew law as "in violation of the First Amendment."\nA few years ago, in San Diego, the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled its curfew law unconstitutional. That court's decision stated, "The curfew is, quite simply, an exercise of sweeping state control irrespective of parents wishes… (I)t violates the fundamental right to rear children without undue interference…The statist notion that governmental power should supercede parental authority in all cases because some parents abuse and neglect children is repugnant to the American tradition."\nI urge all citizens to ask Indiana legislators to vote "no" on any bill reviving a curfew in Indiana and on other efforts to legislate behavioral learning in children. Let us support fair justice, freedom of expression and strong families. Let us teach children that individuals have rights and responsibilities, preparing them to be intelligent self-governors when they grow up. Please resist buying into the false security promised by compulsory courtesy, censorship, zero tolerance and curfews.
(11/07/00 3:52am)
Why vote Libertarian? To take a stand for your right to keep every dollar you earn. It's a stand against corporate welfare and socialism. Libertarians favor repealing the income tax, letting $3 trillion per year benefit the families of the workers who earned it. At last week's rally in Indianapolis, Libertarian presidential candidate Harry Browne pointed out that the indigent and senior citizens were better off -- and healthcare costs were lower -- before welfare, Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare took away choices about investing, insurance, doctors and treatments. Libertarians don't want to pay for wasteful programs or pork-barrel handouts to companies that buy influence with Republicans and Democrats. The more votes Libertarians get, the more politicians fear we will derail their gravy train.\nWhy vote Libertarian? To help end the insane war on drugs. Police arrested more people last year on marijuana charges than for all violent crimes. "The war on drugs has created a revolving door prison system. In goes the pot smoker; out comes the psychopathic killer, the kidnapper or the child molester released on early parole," Browne said. Federal figures show more than 4 million people have been arrested on marijuana charges during the Clinton-Gore administration, although both admit they smoked marijuana. Browne asks them, and George W. Bush, "Would you be better men today if you had been thrown in jail for 10 years or more for your 'youthful indiscretions?'" The more votes Libertarians get, the less the drug warriors are able to pretend their hypocritical piety is good for America.\nWhy vote Libertarian? To say, "I'm sick of paying for my government to spy on me." Libertarians love the entire Bill of Rights. Today, we must fight for the right to be free from unwarranted search and seizure: the Fourth Amendment. The U.S. government "monitors" our bank accounts, healthcare records, e-mail messages and more. Your message to a friend including a suspicious word such as "bomb" or "weed" might be detected and saved by the FBI's "DragonWare Suite" software. The FBI has already spent more than $2.4 million on e-mail surveillance programs, and it's upgrading them. Narcotics officers looking for indoor marijuana growers ask utility providers to hand over customers' records. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation wants bank tellers to quiz customers who deposit or withdraw unusually large amounts. Police expect hotel clerks and cleaning people to investigate and report "suspicious" behavior by guests. And drivers are pulled over for random checks. The more votes Libertarians get, the more seriously government agencies will take our tireless lobbying for the Fourth Amendment. \nWhy vote Libertarian? To show you want a noninterventionist foreign policy. We are all victims in the Middle East conflict: American taxpayers paid more than $150 billion during the past three decades in foreign aid to Israel and the Arab nations. That money has purchased more and more war. While it's illegal for you to donate more than $1,000 to a presidential candidate, President Bill Clinton spent millions to help defeat Slobodan Milosevic in Yugoslavia. The United States has bombed 10 countries in the last two years alone. This aggressive policy is breeding hatred of America by other countries. The more votes Libertarians get, the closer we come to bringing the troops and funding home.\nWhy vote Libertarian? To work toward freeing the environment from its totalitarian captors. The world's worst polluters are making the pollution laws, protecting themselves and preventing citizens from exercising property rights to preserve land. Those with the most political clout -- the most money for lobbying -- get their way. Big businesses know the courts today won't recognize citizens' right to sue air polluters on the basis of trespass. But Libertarian courts would. Environmental groups such as the Nature Conservancy found private ownership is the best way to protect our resources. Look at how much the environment suffered under socialism in Eastern Europe. Central planning destroys the environment, just as surely as it destroys the economy. The more votes Libertarians get, the closer we come to putting polluters out of business permanently -- by suing rather than paying taxes to clean up their messes.\nWhy vote Libertarian? Because we can win. Three hundred Libertarians serve nationwide, compared with single-digit numbers for other alternative parties. Fourteen hundred Libertarian candidates are running on ballots in every state. That's twice as many as all the other third parties put together. You can have a major effect here in Bloomington by voting for Steve Dillon for judge. \nRemember Mel Gibson in "The Patriot" asking, "Why should I trade one tyrant 3,000 miles away for 3,000 tyrants one mile away?" Remember him at the end of "Braveheart," refusing to renounce his own sovereignty, screaming "Freedom!"? The least we can do is vote Libertarian. \nPlease visit www.lp.org and www.harrybrowne.org.
(10/24/00 4:40am)
Why should you vote for Libertarians this year? Libertarians will treat you like an adult. Republicans want to be your father. Democrats want to be your mother. Greens want to be your bossy stepmother. Libertarians just want to be your neighbor. \nIf you think it should be harder to get a welfare check than it is to get a building permit, then you might be a Libertarian. If you want genuine world peace, where governments do not coerce, enslave and steal from us or fuel terrorism by spending our tax dollars and our children's lives to influence foreign wars, then you might be a Libertarian. If they ask you to take a urine test at work and you feel like offering to give them a taste test, then you might be a Libertarian.\nWe believe all voluntary relationships between consenting adults ought to be allowed. Government's role is to protect Americans from force and fraud, not to make decisions for us. As presidential candidate Harry Browne puts it, when you are a child, your parents keep your money for you and give you an allowance. That is what today's U.S. government does to us. Families on average now pay 47 percent of their income in taxes -- more than they do for clothing, housing and food put together. Libertarians see this as highway robbery. We want to stop paying for wasteful government programs and disastrous foreign interventionist warmongering. \nWe are the "live and let live" party. The "Unparty," to the Republican and Democratic colas, which few people can tell apart in blind taste tests. Libertarians want you to be free to live your life as you think it should be lived, not as Al Gore or George W. Bush or Ralph Nader think you should live it. According to his Web site, Harry Browne said, "These candidates are arguing over one basic issue: Which one is best qualified to run your life? Which one knows best what kind of school your child should attend? Which one knows how your health insurance company should treat you? Which one knows best how to determine how much of your own money you should be allowed to keep and decide the proper way for you to live?"\nAccording to National Libertarian press secretary George Getz, the federal government spends $1 million every five seconds. On what? Name your favorite government program. Can't think of one? Me neither. If you can, could it be run more cost-effectively by private enterprise? Or do you really think government bureaucrats are smarter or more conscientious than you, your friends, your church or your favorite private charity?\nAndy Horning, the Libertarian candidate for governor of Indiana, offers solutions to our education crisis. He believes, "Our public schools have little to do with kids; they're all about funds and salaries and political poker chips. We need to get the state government out of the picture." Horning would like to return decision-making on textbooks and testing to local school boards and individual schools. A home-schooler to his own three children, he emphasizes school choice and charter schools so parents can choose the right education for their children. He hopes to end the monopolistic "closed shop" union policy he says serves only politically driven adults, instead of children, according to his campaign Web site.\nBut can Libertarians win? You bet. We have twice as many elected officials as all the other alternative parties put together. In the 1999 election alone, we elected three Libertarians to city councils here in Indiana. And not one of the 300-plus Libertarians in office nationwide has ever voted for a tax increase. We advocate smaller, less intrusive government every time. \nThis year, we have a very winnable race in Monroe County with Steve Dillon for judge. There is no Democrat in the race. We hope Democrats, Greens and independents will go out of their way to unseat the 22-year incumbent Republican opponent, and pull an extra lever to vote for Dillon.\nLibertarians are fielding twice as many candidates for office as all the other third parties put together -- 1400 nationwide and 113 in Indiana. This is the third presidential election in a row that voters in all 50 states can vote for Libertarians -- a ballot access feat that has never before been accomplished by a third party in this country. Libertarians offer alternatives that could bring discouraged, frustrated citizens back to the polls. \nThank you for reading this, checking out www.lp.org and voting your conscience Nov. 7. Watch this space for information about Steve Dillon for judge.