June 21, 2010
Dear Friend of Liberty,
Before getting to more serious issues, I’m asking you to take another quick poll on slogans. We picked the top two from our primary poll, and added a new third choice. (Two choices on the ballot just aren’t enough!)
Here’s the serious issue: I’m told from time to time that Libertarians complain too much and don’t offer solutions. Most recently, I received those comments about our BP oil spill press release.
Many Libertarian policies help create conditions that prevent problems. Government usually creates the conditions that cause problems, such as placing limits on liability for drilling in the Gulf.
Once an oil spill has begun, there’s no great utopian Republican, Democratic, or Libertarian way to clean it up quickly and easily.
The same holds true for other disasters, man-made and natural. There’s no Republican, Democratic, or Libertarian way to bring back the thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Middle Easterners killed in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
Had Congress or the President followed Libertarian policies, those wars would not have happened. It’s too late for the money that has already been spent, and for the people who have already lost their lives. But it’s not too late to bring our remaining troops home and end those wars. We can’t undo the bad decisions of the past, but we can avoid repeating bad decisions in the future.
I don’t think anyone should expect a political party to draw up a detailed plan for bringing our troops home, specifying how many, at which port, on what date. That’s for the military to figure out once the politicians have made it clear the policy is to end those wars.
Freedom is the solution — once people agree on that, it becomes easier to work out the details.
Once again I want to thank our thousands of Libertarian Party candidates, party officials, volunteers, and donors for doing their part to lead more Americans on the path towards liberty.
Sincerely,
Wes Benedict
Executive Director
Libertarian National Committee
P.S. If you have not yet become a member of the Libertarian Party and
wish to do so, please click here and join the only political party dedicated to free markets and civil liberties. If you need to renew, please click here. If you would like to make a contribution separate from membership, please click here.
