1.0 Personal Liberty

1.0 Personal Liberty

Individuals should be free to make choices for themselves and to accept responsibility for the consequences of the choices they make. No individual, group, or government may initiate force against any other individual, group, or government. Our support of an individual's right to make choices in life does not mean that we necessarily approve or disapprove of those choices.

This is the first plank of the Libertarian platform. It speaks volumes in very few words. I might change it slightly in the first sentence to read "Individuals should be free to make choices for themselves and [must] accept responsibility for the consequences of the choices they make." People are not free to accept responsibility because consequences always manage to assert themselves. It's a minor, perhaps semantic, point.

The Libertarian party puts right at the top of its platform what I believe to be its most sacred guiding principle. That is, do whatever you want so long as it does not involve force (or fraud) against another.

The party sets an exceptionally high bar for itself with this platform. It makes no excuses for poor behavior. It also makes no guarantees for poor choices. Your choices are yours and yours alone, and you have to live with the results of those choices.

At first this may seem harsh, but in fact it is very compassionate because it is honest. All of us, regardless of our philosophy, are fated to reap the rewards of our choices. No amount of mental trickery can avert the laws of existence. Just as in the natural world, if you jump out of an airplane you will fall, if you spend your money on only foolish things you will soon be parted from it. By being honest it forces itself to look at problems objectively and without the mental trickery that clouds the other parties thinking.

It ends with an almost humorous disclaimer where the party reserves the right to not approve of your choices. You might choose to spend your money on foolish things, and the party recognizes your right to be foolish.

This would seem to be a very key difference between the GOP/DNC* platforms and the Libertarian party. Those parties have passed a bevy of laws attempting to rule out foolishness, such as requiring one to wear a helmet while riding a motorcycle. Why does the state presume to have the power to keep one from being foolish with their own bodies? They make arguments about "financial responsibility" and so on, but in truth they are just asserting their power to negate your freedom of choice.

* I think I'll start calling the GOP/DNC the "bicameral uniparty"