What I Want Copyright © 2001 Tim Daneliuk (musings@tundraware.com). Permission to freely reproduce this material is hereby granted under the following conditions: 1) The material must be reproduced in its entirely without modification, editing, condensing, or any change. 2) No fee may be charged for the dissemination of this material. Commercial use such as publishing this material in a book or anthology is expressly forbidden. 3) Full attribution of the author and source of this material must be included in the reproduction.
I'm a Libertarian. That means I get accused of being everything from an Anarchist to (God-forbid) a Conservative. Now, there are lots of good books on Libertarian politics and philosophy, but it's much simpler than even these fine books make it. Your politics like anything else in your life, come down to what you really want. So, I decided to write down what I want from politics and society at-large:
What I Want...
- I want a civil society that observes the rule of law and the boundaries of private property. I want people who don't observe these rules promptly yanked out of circulation where they cannot be a threat to the rest of us.
- I want the rule of law to be built on what we have in common - our status as citizens - not Balkanized around our many differences.
- Where property cannot be private - that is, shared resources like air and water - I want a rule of law that has some teeth in it to punish those people and institutions who destroy or defile these common assets. I want these people in jail, not arguing with the Regulators in Washington, D.C.
- I want to be free of significant threat of force or fraud from both my fellow citizens and the various government bodies with whom I deal.
- I want to keep what I earn and be free to voluntarily deploy my assets as I see fit (absent fraud or force).
- I want what money I do have to pony up to run government to be used wisely and in the interests of my country, not spent administering spankings around the world.
- I want my country to be a beacon and example of the virtues of freedom and peace to everyone else on the globe.
- I want the men and women of our military, who guard our precious assets of freedom, treated with the highest degree of respect, given the best possible tools to do their jobs, paid decently, and blessed with politicians and diplomats savvy enough to mimimize the need to deploy them in combat.
- I want people to join our military voluntarily and peacefully, not forced into service like slaves.
- I want my government's single, compelling, and never-ending passion to be my and my fellow-citizens' ongoing liberty and peace.
What I Don't Want
- I don't want to tell other people how to run their lives - I'd appreciate it if they'd do the same for me.
- I don't want my tax money spent locking people up for doing things that cause no harm to others.
- I don't want my tax money spent paying for things which are morally contentious, like abortions.
- I don't want to have to apologize for, or be embarassed by, my government in any of its forms.
- I don't want people who are smarter, more productive, more inventive, or just plain harder working than me to be punished for their greater success.
- I don't ever want to have to ask my government permission to engage in any peaceful, honest activity.
- Outside the very narrow case of defending the borders of my country, I don't want my government putting people to death for any reason.
- I want my country's dealings with other countries to principally be commercial, not military. Only when there is a clear danger to my country and society do I want the military I help pay for, deployed to interfere.
- I don't want to have to explain to the next generation of citizens why the gifts of liberty and reason given to all of us were squandered by my generation.