Getting It Right - The Libertarian Belief 04/17/08

"Absolute Minimum of Government in Our Lives and Our Pocketbooks"

This column presents a non-partisan, conservative viewpoint about items of interest in our community and our lives. Focus is on items impacting your pocket book, your personal freedoms, and your rights. I hope you will read the column regularly and it occasionally influences your opinions and actions. Now, on to the subject of the week:

"After much study and consideration, I have decided that I am a Libertarian rather than being a traditional Republican or a Democrat."

Libertarians believe in staunchly defending our basic liberties and rights. They believe that government should provide only the most essential of services, and that government has no place in decisions involving our personal lives. Government size and control should be held to an absolute minimum.

Now, I realize that some government is necessary in order to provide protection to the citizens from lawless villains, and provision of common public services such as roads, electricity, and in cities water and sewage is a requirement. However, in today’s society in the United States our governments are assuming that they are needed to fill every need for every citizen and in conjunction with providing this broad range of services they have the right to make every decision for you. There is no longer any personal responsibility for anything that happens. And, oh yes, the government believes it has the right to tax and take almost all you earn and spend it for you in your best interest. Government is our "Big Brother" in today’s society.

I believe there are millions of citizens across the nation that are disillusioned with the Republican and the Democratic parties, since both have helped create our big government, over regulated, over taxed, wasteful system of government. They would welcome a fresh, new party with conservative motives, but the existing legislators have created a system that makes it almost impossible for a third party to form and place candidates on all ballots in all states. It will take a tremendous, emotional groundswell of resentment to ever allow a third party to form and overcome these intentional barriers.

The front page contains a story about a local author, Richard Folsom, who has written a book expounding his personal philosophies, in some cases expressing these beliefs through poems. I want to quote one of the poems from his book "Was I a Poet, and Didn’t Know It?". This poem expresses some of the Libertarian philosophy in very direct terms.

"A Redneck Anthem"
by Richard Folsom
Don’t count on me to cooperate
With everything you legislate
Don’t assume my path will deviate
At every whim of some magistrate
Whose main objective is to regulate
My ability to communicate
With the energies that dominate
My consciousness in the waking state
I would rather have you concentrate
On first the issues of good and hate
And find a way to appropriate
The means to start to educate
All those who bother and aggravate
The important conditions that seal our fate
Don’t act as if there is time to wait
Change is coming at a ferocious rate
It may already be too late
We have already begun to deteriorate
Our status quo is not that great
It is time to cultivate
Brotherly love and alleviate
The pressures that we accumulate
By the way, we continue to operate while we still continue to mutilate
Until we finally annihilate
This planet that we populate
And there is no place to emigrate
If our whole world does disintegrate
But what if we could just fabricate
A really good way to negotiate
So that everyone could participate
And maybe that would eliminate
Some jerk from wanting to administrate
And we could all help to officiate
Without the need for a thirty-eight

RUDIMENTS: ODDS AND ENDS WORTH MENTIONING
♦ I want to congratulate all organizations and individuals who helped create the "Paint and Pork" spring festival that was such a success this weekend. It has become a meaningful and significant event for our area.
What we need to do now is concentrate on forming a similar fall festival event of equal significance. I would suggest that it be built around a downtown, on site reenactment of the Battle of Marianna, to be held at the closest weekend to the date of the battle in September. This could be done in conjunction with an arts and crafts exhibition, a jazz festival, and a chili cook-off.
♦ The County Commissioners have dropped all consideration of any expenditures on a new county administration building until next year, due to fears of future revenue reductions. Although I understand this approach, I still feel that they should investigate the advisability of purchasing and using the old Wall Mart Building while it is available. To delay and lose the opportunity to buy the building may be a "penny wise and a dollar foolish".
♦ On the national scene, the FAA demonstrated some bureaucratic foolishness as they unnecessarily tortured the hundreds of thousands of travelers and financially crippled American Air Lines. They forced immediate shut down in order to bundle some wiring in the wheel wells of their aircraft. Then, after the airline had complied they stated that they had used the wrong kind of plastic ties to hold the bundles of wires and then forced the job to be redone. They were flexing their bureaucratic muscles to show congress their power over the air lines, but instead demonstrated their bureaucratic lunacy.
♦ The Marianna City Commission has scheduled a public workshop to discuss the existing city sign ordinance on May 7. I encourage every car dealer, real estate agent, restaurant owner, and business operator to attend and help correct a bad ordinance. If you do not take time to attend, then you will have no right to complain about the restrictions in the future. This is an opportunity…use it.
♦ I also applaud the Marianna City Commission for working to accomplish the purchase of the Old National Bank Building at Confederate Park in downtown Marianna. A well conceived museum would be a great new downtown visitor attraction.
Get involved, speak your mind, and work for the betterment of our area, state, and nation…..and you will be "Getting It Right".