lvc@cbsck.UUCP (Larry Cipriani) (11/02/84)
Topics: Preamble
Statement of Principles
Individual Rights and Civil Order
Freedom and Responsibility
Crime
Victimless Crime
1984 Platform of the Libertarian Party
The Party of Principle
Adopted in Convention, New York City, September 1-4, 1983
Preamble
As Libertarians, we seek a world of liberty; a world in which all
individuals are sovereign over their own lives, and no one is forced
to sacrifice his or her values for the benefit of others.
We Believe that respect for individual rights is the essential precondition
for a free and prosperous world, that force and fraud must be banished from
human relationships, and that only through freedom can peace and prosperity
be realized.
Consequently, we defend each person's right to engage in any activity
that is peaceful and honest, and welcome the diversity that freedom brings.
The world we seek to build is one where individuals are free to follow their
own dreams in their own ways, without interference from government or any
authoritarian power.
In the following pages we have set forth our basic principles and enumerated
various policy stands derived from those principles.
The specific policies are not our goal, however. Our goal is nothing more
nor less than a world set free in our lifetime, and it is to this end that
we take these stands.
Statement of Principles
We, the members of the Libertarian Party, challenge the cult of the omnipotent
state and defend the rights of individuals.
We hold that all individuals have the right to exercise sole dominion over
their own lives, and have the right to live in whatever manner they choose,
so long as they do not forcibly interfere with the equal right of others
to live in whatever manner they choose.
Governments throughout history have regularly operated on the opposite
principle, that the State has the right to dispose of the lives of individuals
and the fruits of their labor. Even within the United States, all political
parties other that our own grant to government the right to regulate the
lives of individuals and seize the fruits of their labor without their consent.
We, on the contrary, deny the right of any government to do these things, and
hold that where governments exist, they must not violate the rights of any
individual: namely, (1) the right to life -- accordingly we support prohibition
of the initiation of physical force against other; (2) the right to liberty
of speech and action -- accordingly we oppose all attempts by government to
abridge the freedom of speech and press, as well as government interference
with private property, such as confiscation, nationalization, and eminent
domain, and support the prohibition of robbery, trespass, fraud, and
misrepresentation.
Since governments, when instituted, must not violate individual rights, we
oppose all interference by government in the areas of voluntary and
contractual relations among individuals. People should not be forced
to sacrifice their lives and property for the benefit of others. They should
be left free by government to deal with one another as free traders; and the
resultant economic system, the only one compatible with the protection of
individual rights, is the free market.
Individual Rights and Civil Order
No conflict exists between civil order and individual rights. Both concepts
are based on the same fundamental principle; that no individual, group, or
government may initiate force against any other individual, group, or
government.
1. Freedom and Responsibility
Members of the Libertarian Party do not necessarily advocate or condone
any of the practices our policies would make legal. Our exclusion of moral
approval and disapproval is deliberate: People's rights must be recognized;
the wisdom of any course of peaceful action is a matter for the acting
individual(s) to decide. Personal responsibility is routinely discouraged
by society routinely denying the people the opportunity to exercise it.
Libertarian policies will create a society where people are free to make
and learn from their own decisions.
2. Crime
The continuing high level of violent crime -- and the government's
demonstrated inability to deal with it -- threatens the lives, happiness,
and belongings of Americans. At the same time, governmental violations
of rights undermine the people's sense of justice with regard to crime.
The appropriate way to suppress crime is through consistent and impartial
enforcement of laws that protect individual rights. Laws pertaining to
"victimless crimes" should be repealed since such laws themselves violate
individual rights and also breed other types of crime. We applaud the
trend toward private protection services and voluntary community crime
control groups. We support institutional changed, consistent with full
respect for the rights of the accused, that would permit victims to
direct prosecution in criminal cases.
3. Victimless Crimes
Because only actions that infringe the rights of others can properly be
termed crimes, we favor the repeal of all federal, state, and local
laws creating "crimes" without victims. In particular, we advocate:
a. the repeal of all laws prohibiting the production, sale, possession,
or use of drugs, and of all medical prescription requirements for
the purchase of vitamins, drugs, and similar substances;
b. the repeal of all laws regarding consensual sexual relations, including
prostitution and solicitation, and the cessation of state oppression
and harassment of homosexual men and women, that they, at last, be
accorded their full rights as individuals;
c. the repeal of all laws regulating or prohibiting the possession, use,
sale, production, or distribution of sexually explicit material,
independent of "socially redeeming value" or compliance with
"community standards";
d. the repeal of all laws regulating or prohibiting gambling; and
e. the repeal of all laws interfering with the right to commit suicide
as infringements of the ultimate right of an individual to his
or her own life.
We demand the use of executive pardon to free and exonerate all those
presently incarcerated or ever convicted solely for the commission
of these "crimes".