Recent polls indicate that most Americans do not understand what the Libertarian Party stands for.
The word "libertarian" comes from the word "liberty," as in this line from the Declaration of Independence:
| We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. |
And from this line in the Preamble to our Constitution:
| We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. |
James Madison, the "Father of the Constitution," had this to say about "liberty" in the opening pages of his Journal of the Constitutional Convention, published in 1840 under the direction of the U.S. Government:
| Considering the peculiarity and magnitude of the occasion which produced the Convention at Philadelphia, in 1787, the characters who composed it, the Constitution which resulted from their deliberations, its effects during a trial of so many years on the prosperity of the people living under it, and the interest it has inspired among the friends of free government, it is not an unreasonable inference that a careful and extended report of the proceedings and discussions of that body, which were with closed doors, by a member who was constant in his attendance, will be particularly gratifying to the people of the United States, and to all who take an interest in the progress of political science and the cause of true liberty. |
If you are one of those who "take an interest in the progress of political science and the cause of true liberty," you'll be interested in learning about "libertarianism."
This is what we must conclude after reading about "libertarians" and "libertarianism" in official United States documents. Here are a few examples:
A Joint Resolution of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives asked the Librarian of Congress to prepare an annotated edition of the U.S. Constitution. The Title Page of the 1987 edition reads:
Supreme Court Decisions and
Interpretations of the U.S. Constitution |
In his Introduction to the 1953 Edition, contained in the 1987 edition, the great Constitutional scholar and Professor Edward S. Corwin wrote:
| The second great structural principle of
American Constitutional Law is supplied by the doctrine of the Separation of Powers. The
notion of three distinct functions of government approximating what we today term the
legislative, the executive, and the judicial, is set forth in Aristotle's Politics, but it
was the celebrated Montesquieu who, by joining the idea to the notion of a "mixed
constitution" of "checks and balances", in Book XI of his Spirit of the
Laws, brought Aristotle's discovery to the service of the rising libertarianism
of the eighteenth century. It was Montesquieu's fundamental contention that "men
entrusted with power tend to abuse it". Hence it was desirable to divide the powers
of government, first, in order to keep to a minimum the powers lodged in any single organ
of government; secondly, in order to be able to oppose organ to organ. In the United States, libertarian application of the principle was originally not too much embarrassed by inherited institutions. In its most dogmatic form the American conception of the Separation of Powers may be summed up in the following propositions: (1) There are three intrinsically distinct functions of government, the legislative, the executive, and the judicial; (2) these distinct functions ought to be exercised respectively by three separately manned departments of government; which, (3) should be constitutionally equal and mutually independent; and finally, (4) a corollary doctrine stated by Locke—the legislature may not delegate its powers. The U.S. Constitution, Analysis and Interpretation (1987), p. XVII |
In the section on the Fourth Amendment (search and seizure) we read this:
| In order to enforce the revenue laws, English
authorities made use of writs of assistance, which were general warrants authorizing the
bearer to enter any house or other place to search for and seize "prohibited and
uncustomed" goods and commanded all subjects to assist in these endeavors. The writs
once issued remained in force throughout the lifetime of the sovereign and six months
thereafter. When upon the death of George II in 1760 the authorities were required to
obtain the issuance of new writs, opposition was led by James Otis who attacked such writs
on libertarian grounds and who asserted the
invalidity of the authorizing statutes because they conflicted with English
constitutionalism. Otis lost and the writs were issued and utilized, but his arguments
were much cited in the colonies not only on the immediate subject but also with regard to
judicial review. The U.S. Constitution, Analysis and Interpretation, p. 1157 |
Under the Administration of the second President, John Adams, there was passed the "Alien and Sedition Acts," which severely curtailed freedom of speech. The Library of Congress' analysis of the opposition to the Sedition Act by the third President, Thomas Jefferson, contains the following:
| [T]here emerged in the course of the
Jeffersonian counterattack on the Sedition Act and the use by the Adams Administration of
the Act to prosecute its political opponents something of a libertarian
theory of freedom of speech and press, which . . . was to blossom into the theory
undergirding Supreme Court First Amendment jurisprudence in modern times. The U.S. Constitution, Analysis and Interpretation, p. 1001 |
In 1960, the Library of Congress published
A Guide to the Study of the
United States of America: |
In the chapter on General History, in section E. The American Revolution, this Bibliography lists a work by Edmund S. Morgan, who was one of this nation's greatest historians of the colonial and revolutionary era. Here is the listing, on pp. 344-45:
| 3256. Morgan, Edmund S. The birth of the
Republic, 1763–89. [Chicago] University of Chicago Press, 1956. 176 p. (The Chicago
history of American civilization) 56–11003 E208.M85 "Bibliographical note": p. 158–166. A remarkably concise presentation of the political and constitutional essentials of the crucial quarter-century from the Peace of Paris to the ratification of the Constitution, which confines the war and diplomacy of the Revolution to one 10-page chapter because a separate volume on these aspects is in preparation for this very promising series. The antecedents of the Revolution are interpreted as the colonists' search for principles of government which would ensure the continuance of their real and present freedom. The "Critical Period," if less dark than once painted, was yet an exposure of the inadequacy of the Confederation to conduct foreign affairs, to regulate its finances, or even to maintain order. The constitutional movement was no conspiratorial reaction of the rich and well-born, but the work of a group of sincere libertarians, who compromised their disagreements over means in order to raise "a bulwark to protect what they had gained," as well as a base for further exploration of the principles of free government. |
In the section on Art and Architecture, section K. Art and History, we have this entry on p. 871 of the Library of Congress Bibliography:
| 5801. Davidson, Marshall. Life in America.
Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1951. 2 v. 51–7084. E178.5.D3 "Published in association with the Metropolitan Museum of Art." Bibliography: v. 2, p. 463–472. "A graphic survey of American history," particularly of the social, economic, and cultural scene. Drawn mainly from museum collections and other public sources, the gravure illustrations are reproduced from paintings, drawings, photographs, prints, and the like, for the most part contemporary with their subjects, which "faithfully, expressively, and completely depict the American past." The closely linked and lively text, based upon both primary and recent published materials, serves as framework for the pictures and as connective where they are lacking. Volume one is arranged topically in five chronologically subdivided sections. The subjects treated are: colonial America; westward expansion to the Pacific; maritime progress, from packets to clippers and iron steamships; agriculture, from handtools to machinery; and industry, from the handicraft tradition to mass production. Volume two portrays American entertainment and play, the invasion of the city by farmer and immigrant and the growth of urban centers and services, and the tightening of the Nation through development of arteries and vehicles of transportation. A final section, "The Democratic Mold," presents the American political system and libertarian way of life. |
The candidates of the two political parties often use libertarian rhetoric, but the party Insiders are part of the "New World Order" of multinational corporate fascism. Consider this entry from the Library of Congress' bibliography at p. 390:
| 3438. Josephson, Matthew. The politicos,
1865–1896. New York, Harcourt, Brace, 1938. 760 p. 38–27301 E661.J85 Bibliography: p. 709–719. The thesis of this chronicle of the politics and key professional politicians of the age of big business which followed the Civil War is that "Governors, Senators, Presidents come and go; but the Party Organization goes on long after them, and its Inner Circle, its bosses, rule not for four or six years, but for a generation or for life tenure." The business-minded Northern politicians of the Reconstruction era "were literally Jekylls and Hydes," asserts the author: as Dr. Jekyll, they secured support by advancing a humane and libertarian ideology; as Mr. Hyde, they enacted measures of high capitalist policy, designed to hold out against future assault—charters and grants to railroads and land companies, special tariff duties, public contracts, and pensions, while they deliberately delayed the recovery of the conquered South and imposed upon it military rule "subject to the Republican Party Organization at Washington." Down to Garfield's death in 1881, Mr. Josephson asserts, the ruling group of Senator-bosses operated the Republican Party as a patronage organization, deriving profit from the sale of office and assessments upon wages, as well as from the subsidies of bankers and industrialists. From 1881 to 1896, the Republican grip on public office relaxed; it began the shift to politics of "interest" and "class," and the Democratic opposition not merely sloughed off the stigma of disloyalty but began to compete forcefully for capitalist backing. |
In his Third Annual Report to the Congress on United States Foreign Policy, February 9, 1972, President Richard Nixon gave an example of this:
| Intellectually and culturally, the winds are
blowing from the West in Europe. Western economic and political institutions are
flourishing. Western libertarian values are
revered perhaps more strongly in the East where they are suppressed than in the West where
they are taken for granted. Public Papers of the Presidents, Nixon, 1972, p. 231 |
In a News Conference on April 23, 1993, President Clinton followed suit:
| And I might add, it's interesting that I have
been attacked. Obviously, those who disagree with me here are primarily coming from the
political right in America. When I was Governor, I was attacked from the other direction
for sticking up for the rights of religious fundamentalists to run their child care
centers and to practice home schooling under appropriate safeguards. I just have always
had an almost libertarian view that we
should try to protect the rights of American individual citizens to live up to the fullest
of their capacities, and I'm going to stick right with that. Public Papers of the Presidents, Clinton, 1993, p. 487 |
Rhetoric is not enough. Democrats and Republicans like Nixon and Clinton have perpetuated bureaucracies and regulations which one scholar (J. Freedman, Crisis and Legitimacy, p. 6) has described as "a fourth branch of government," which -- to use Madison's words in The Federalist -- "may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny." (Quoted in A. Gulas, "The American Administrative State: The New Leviathan" 28 Duquesne L Rev. 489, 490 (1990)).
Paying lip service to libertarianism is not enough.
The only way to defend the freedoms that made America great
is to be a practicing libertarian.
What It Means to
Be a Libertarian: A Personal Interpretation
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