Libertarian Party

[grammafreddy]

I didn't put this in the Election threads because its not an issue related to this election.

But perhaps we could discuss the Libertarian Party of Canada?

What's good about it?

What's bad about it?

http://www.libertarian.ca/

Instead of government dominating the lives of Canadians through taxes and regulations, the Libertarian Party of Canada believes that Canadians should be free to run their own lives.

We believe in a just, voluntary society that does not use government power to confiscate property or interfere with peaceful activities.

Government should act only as our servant and never as our master.

Government should exist only to provide a framework that defends individual rights.

We believe that Canada needs a major reduction in the size and power of government.

We need a system that addresses the power imbalance between a centrally planned society and individuals.

We need a system that empowers individuals to defend their lives, health, and property.

What do we stand for?
Property rights. Personal responsibility. And liberty.

Do we really need another political party in Canada?

The Canadian government has grown enormous over the past few years, in both size and scope, and we're concerned with the levels to which various government and regulatory bodies infringe on our basic freedoms.


No other party seems to recognize this threat. But we have, and we just want to make sure we retain our birthright to govern ourselves as much as we can.

Specific Issues of Concern

Property Rights: Do you know that if the government decides that it wants "or needs" your house, they can actually take it - with or without adequate compensation? Naturally, this is wrong. So we want to protect Canadians' property rights through a constitutional amendment.

Free Enterprise: Take the smoking issue; it's not about smoking at all. If we intend to live in a free society with free enterprise, then we have to respect the rights of hard-working business owners to run their operations in a way that they believe will meet the needs of their customers.

Individual Rights. As Marilee Haylock wrote in her classic piece, What is Libertarianism?, "The very concept of the individual is becoming obsolete." And how right she is! Because increasingly, we're told what to do, what to say and what to think. It's our job as people, as Canadians, to stand up and say enough!

Socialism and Interventionism. The ideal of socialism is to redistribute wealth in order to make everyone supposedly equal, but nothing could be further from the truth. Many government programs, whether motivated by socialism or special interests or other types of interventionist thinking actually create more problems than they solve. So what we need to do is change this culture of socialism and statism into a culture of freedom.

Big Brother. Do you remember George Orwell's 1984? We do and that's a large part of what we're trying to prevent.

http://www.libertarian.ca/english/liber ... tions.html - unfortunately, the info there seems to be last updated in 2007.

[The Green Barbarian]

I give them a thumbs up.

[Tacklewasher]

In lala land as far as reality goes.

For example, from http://www.libertarian.ca/english/lpc-p ... -2007.html

2. Taxation

* Ultimately, our goal is a society that moves away from coercive taxation completely to a system of fees for services. We want Canadians to pay only for the services they use and agree to.

* We would abolish the Goods and Services Tax, which is an intrusive burden on consumers and business owners who are forced to collect it.

* We would end payroll deductions for personal income tax.

* We would seek to eliminate or substantially reduce personal income tax and convert it to a fees for service system.

* We would seek to eliminate or substantially reduce corporate income tax.

* We would seek to eliminate excise taxes on gasoline and other goods.

* Provinces should raise their taxes independently.

They want to replace all taxes with user fees. Now I'm not a socialist, but I do think there is a reasonable burden that can be placed on people to support a common infrastructure and going as far as they are looking to do is not possible.

Sames goes for a lot of what they espouse. Good in concept but will fall down with the reality of running a country.

They have some good talking points but when you dig into it a bit, I found that they are proposing we go too far in most areas they address.

Might be different if they actually had some chance of gaining power (much like Layton), but as their platform stands I don't see it working in the real world.

They attained 7,300 votes last time around. A literal drop in the bucket.

[steelrules]

Any party that want's to enshrine individual property rights into the constitution gets my vote.
also the small government part of their platform also gets my vote.

[grammafreddy]

Here's their candidate list ... it seems they only have people running in BC and Ontario.

http://www.libertarian.ca/english/liber ... lines.html

[NAB]

Any party that want's to enshrine individual property rights into the constitution gets my vote.
also the small government part of their platform also gets my vote.

Yup, I agree. I also think tolling every highway and bridge is the right way to go - user pay. Same with such things as libraries, health care, education, and no subsidies for those who use public transit. and anyone who breaks the law pays their own legal fees or rots in a prison cell until they can. The list could go on and on LOL.

Nab

[steven lloyd]

I didn't put this in the Election threads because its not an issue related to this election. But perhaps we could discuss the Libertarian Party of Canada? What's good about it? What's bad about it?

http://www.libertarian.ca/

Maybe under a Libertarian Party we could finally get rid of our moronic, prohibitively costly and counter-productive marijuana laws (ie. it’s none of the government’s freaking business and a huge waste of scarce taxpayer resources and time).

[steven lloyd]

.. and anyone who breaks the law pays their own legal fees or rots in a prison cell until they can. Nab

We should just skip that pesky "innocent until proven guilty" thing then ? I mean, that'd only affect the poor folk.

[NAB]

.. and anyone who breaks the law pays their own legal fees or rots in a prison cell until they can. Nab

We should just skip that pesky "innocent until proven guilty" thing then ? I mean, that'd only affect the poor folk.

Nah, I prefer "guilty until proven innocent". Much less bother and less costly. ;-)

Nab

[grammafreddy]

http://www.libertarian.ca/english/posit ... order.html

Crime
Crime, the initiation of force or fraud, threatens the lives, happiness, and property of all Canadians.

To prevent and suppress crime, we support the following: clear, consistent, and impartial laws protecting individual rights; strong, well-financed police force and judicial system; the right of any private security agency to offer protection services, consistent with the Constitution and the Charter of Rights; and the right of any individual to defend himself/herself and his/her property and to contract with any security agency for this purpose.

Victimless Crimes
Since only actions which violate the rights of others may properly be termed crimes, we favour the repeal of all federal laws creating "crimes" without victims.

In particular, we advocate: the repeal of all legislation prohibiting the production, sale, possession, or use of any drug, and of all legislation requiring medical prescriptions for the purchase of any drug, vitamin, or other substance; the repeal of all laws regulating or prohibiting gambling; and unconditional amnesty for all those currently incarcerated for the commission of these "crimes."

Due Process
Until a person is proven guilty of any crime of which she/he may be accused, that person's individual rights must be respected.

No person shall be held or questioned against his/her will unless charges are laid, or prevented for any reason from consulting with an attorney.

We advocate the repeal of the War Measures Act and all other preventive detention legislation, uphold the right of the accused to a speedy trial, and support full restitution by the government for all losses suffered by persons arrested but not convicted.

Police Powers
We favour the repeal of all laws permitting the government to declare martial laws, or to give the police extraordinary powers. We believe that a law enforcement officer has the same rights, and the same obligation under the law to respect the rights of others, as does any other individual.

Justice for the Victim
The purpose of any system of courts is to provide justice. The present system of criminal law is based on punishment with little concern for the victim. We support restitution for the victim to the greatest degree possible, at the expense of the criminal.

Accordingly we oppose all no-fault laws, which deprive the victim of the exercise of his right to recover damages from the responsible party. We also support the right of the victim to pardon the criminal. We advocate an end to defense based on "insanity" or "diminished capacity," which absolve the guilty of their responsibility.

Government & Psychiatry
We urge that no person who has not been charged or convicted of a crime shall be incarcerated or detained against her/his will, for psychiatric or any other reasons, in a mental hospital or other institution.

We further advocate: the repeal of all laws permitting the involuntary psychiatric treatment of any persons, including children; an end to all involuntary treatment of prisoners, as, for example, by such means as psycho-surgery, drug therapy, and aversion therapy; an immediate end to the spending of tax money for any program of psychiatric or psychological research or treatment; and an end to tax-supported "mental health" centres and programs.

Passports and Travel Restrictions
We oppose any attempt by the government to restrict the right of any individual to travel to, from, or within Canada. We believe that the government may properly refuse to provide protection services to an individual who is outside Canada.

Immigration
We believe that all individuals have the right to choose where to live, provided they do not do so in violation of the rights of others. Therefore we advocate open immigration policies, along with the elimination of all government programs which subsidize immigration

[steven lloyd]

Victimless Crimes
Since only actions which violate the rights of others may properly be termed crimes, we favour the repeal of all federal laws creating "crimes" without victims.In particular, we advocate: the repeal of all legislation prohibiting the production, sale, possession, or use of any drug, and of all legislation requiring medical prescriptions for the purchase of any drug, vitamin, or other substance; the repeal of all laws regulating or prohibiting gambling; and unconditional amnesty for all those currently incarcerated for the commission of these "crimes."

I like this.

Due Process
Until a person is proven guilty of any crime of which she/he may be accused, that person's individual rights must be respected. No person shall be held or questioned against his/her will unless charges are laid, or prevented for any reason from consulting with an attorney.

I like this as well, but recognize this costs money (ie. adequately funded legal aid)

Justice for the Victim
The purpose of any system of courts is to provide justice. The present system of criminal law is based on punishment with little concern for the victim. We support restitution for the victim to the greatest degree possible, at the expense of the criminal. Accordingly we oppose all no-fault laws, which deprive the victim of the exercise of his right to recover damages from the responsible party.

That much I agree with.

Government & Psychiatry
We urge that no person who has not been charged or convicted of a crime shall be incarcerated or detained against her/his will, for psychiatric or any other reasons, in a mental hospital or other institution. We further advocate: the repeal of all laws permitting the involuntary psychiatric treatment of any persons, …

Totally disagree with this. Someone who is determined to be dangerous due to a mental disorder should not be walking around unsupervised and un-medicated. This is already a huge problem and people are actually being murdered because of it (anyone not paying attention to the consequences of our provincial government’s mismanagement of this issue?)

Immigration
We believe that all individuals have the right to choose where to live, provided they do not do so in violation of the rights of others. Therefore we advocate open immigration policies, along with the elimination of all government programs which subsidize immigration

I think there’s room for work (needs to be some more reasearch and thought put into some of these issues), but overall I seem to be in agreement with most of this platform so far. Interestingly enough (for me anyway), on one of those political spectrum analysis thingies that links were being posted for I turned out to be “left-Libertarian”.

[WhatThe]

Welcome to the club Steven.

I do like much of their platform but several things have stuck in my craw, the user pay and mental health positions are loopy for example.

If I can't have free health care, decent roads, police, fire, ambulance, sewer, water, etc. I just don't see a point in paying taxes at all. That's the point of taxation, to provide depth of collective resources unavailable to the individual.

[eMeM]

I just thought I'd point out that the Libertarian Party's platform sounds a whole lot like the "World Freeman Society" guys that many posters take every opportunity to attack.

Now that that's out of the way... I like it. Do I think it would actually work? Not anytime soon. Would I vote for them if they were an option? Absolutely.
I'm not voting this time 'round because I don't like any of my options. I'm not going to go with a "lesser of two evils" approach, either. I'm sick of it and I consider it a complete waste of time.

[steven lloyd]

Welcome to the club Steven.

Which club is that ???

[WhatThe]

Welcome to the club Steven.

Which club is that ???

Right, you can't read my mind lol. Libertarianism. Your "left libertarian" test result made me chuckle. Reminded me of a convo we had a couple years ago about varying degrees of political alignment.


Im just amusing myself