Letter to the Editor

Why do libertarians choose to defend liberty? People look at the libertarian defense of free markets and assume we only care about the rich and big business. They think we are naive about national security because we favor peace, not just in Iraq but generally. They think our opposition to the “War on Drugs” comes from an obsession with drugs.

In reality, most people care about more than narrow class or self-interest. The pro-lifers, pro-choicers, environmentalists, conservatives, liberals, and others are motivated by ideology and principle.

Surely, what excited the Ron Paul movement—an unprecedented libertarian grassroots uprising—was ideas…the ideas of liberty.

So why is liberty the idea we choose to defend? It is the right thing to do.

Look at the alternative.

We favor economic freedom because the state’s attacks on free enterprise lead to stagnation, impoverishment, inflation, and wealth destruction on a horrific scale. The Federal Reserve’s cheap credit and inflation of the money supply have driven prices up. Healthcare is a mess. The unfunded liabilities for Social Security and Medicare are in the tens of trillions of dollars.

From economic freedom comes prosperity, as seen in all former socialist nations moving toward free enterprise. America’s move away from it has been disastrous.

We defend personal liberty for the same reasons.

Some say the libertarian position on drugs is utopian, but look at what the drug war has actually created. The U.S. has the largest prison population on earth. This is supposed to be law enforcement, but these prisons are totalitarian hells of lawlessness. Inmates are raped, beaten, and treated like slaves. Half a million people are behind bars for drugs alone. Conservatives wanted to create a drug-free America. They instead created a police state where the Bill of Rights and the rule of law are a dead letter. This police statism has leaked into other areas, leading to police brutality, martial law after Katrina, and such abuses as the mass kidnapping of children from Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints in Texas.

The principles apply to war, too. Our empire alienates foreign allies, cozies up with despots, destabilizes cultures, promotes conflicts, gets us embroiled in civil wars, destroys our dollar, distorts the economy, and lays claim to the unimpeded right to set international policy and interrogate anyone around the world.

The U.S. had been treating the Middle East like a playground for decades—from the CIA overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected leader in 1953 to President Jimmy Carter’s support of religious extremists in Afghanistan…from President Ronald Reagan’s support for Saddam Hussein in the 1980s to the sanctions that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians in the 1990s.

The blowback many libertarians warned about happened on 9/11. The resulting war on terror has been exceedingly costly in lives, liberties, and wealth. A million have died in Iraq because of the invasion. Warrantless surveillance, indefinite detentions without habeas corpus, and even torture, have become law in America. These are urgent concerns, emergencies even. Stopping the next war is our great moral duty.

Horror stories are not the only things that inspire libertarians, of course. Where liberty is allowed, humanity has flourished. Throughout history, American idealists set their sights high, envisioning independence from Britain, the abolition of slavery and Jim Crow, and an end to the Vietnam War. The classical liberals, revolutionaries, abolitionists, and anti-imperialists were ridiculed as utopians and dreamers, but they won the day, and America benefited immensely as a result.

Indeed, civilization itself depends on the principles of individual liberty. Without the market, there is no economy. Without social tolerance, there is no social peace. Without freedom there is no justice.

Libertarians take positions that horrify detractors on the left and right. We defend some people whom others won’t. We take some very unpopular stands.

But we have to. The statists on left and right have had their way, and they have devastated the lives of millions.

Libertarianism is not about protecting big business at the expense of the little guy. It is not an obsession with drugs, or a naive view of foreign affairs, or wanting to throw all manner of civility, community, law, and personal discipline out the window. That is not our interest.

Quite the reverse.

Ours is a program and philosophy concerned with dismantling state oppression and setting people free. The short-term remedy and the long-term goal are the same thing: Liberty. Everything we care about is on the line.

Editor:

The Garment & Citizen has always been respectful of my correspondence. Now I would like your help in thanking the many Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers who seldom get the credit they so often deserve.

I have some psychiatric disorders, which often lead to suicidal tendencies. LAPD officers have been to my home in Echo Park on numerous occasions. They have unfailingly acted toward me with respect, care, and concern. They’ve done this even on several occasions when I have been a big problem for them. They have saved my life on more than one occasion.

Most recently, on July 26, they responded to my home as I was in another crisis. There was a two-hour standoff. What a pain I must have been to them. But they were patient and respectful, and I believe they really cared about me.

They took me to County-USC for treatment of self-inflicted knife wounds, and doctors there also stabilized my psychiatric condition by getting me back on my medicines.

These LAPD officers deserve praise for service such as this, which they provide to many, many members of the communities they patrol.

Another notable part of this incident is the fact that I am under a great deal of stress because the subsidized housing where I live is going to shift to market-rate units, so I must move soon. Well, an LAPD detective—a woman named Wilson, who serves on the department’s mental health unit—recently contacted me to follow up on my latest incident. She and her colleagues are meeting with me next week to help me transition from the Section 8 unit where I have lived for the past eight years to another location. They have assured me that they will not let me revert back to my previous homeless status.

That’s LAPD in action. I need them, I respect them, and I thank them.

You and your newspaper have an influential voice in the community. Could you please issue a “Thank You” to LAPD of my behalf?

Neil Macey

Echo Park

Ed’s Note: The Garment & Citizen will do our half on the “thank you” by printing this letter. You have done the rest by gathering your thoughts, putting them on paper, and making the effort to send them along to us publication.

Editor:

I was inching north on the 5 (Golden State/Santa Ana) Freeway on a recent morning when, as usual, several motorcycles passed me, riding between the lanes at dangerous speeds. This a common occurrence—and so are the radio traffic reports of motorcycles down.

This particular morning was different, though, because 20 minutes later a report came over the radio that a motorcycle was down in the fast lane. Then came another, separate report of a motorcycle down—with a fatality.

It is a wonder that we do not see more accidents with fatalities involving motorcycles as these riders risk their lives and the lives of others by darting through traffic.

Perhaps if the fines and other penalties assessed against these dangerous drivers was commensurate with the time and money they cost motorists who obey the laws it would cut down on the number of such incidents.

Gary Brownstein

Fashion District

Editor:

Regarding your Commentary in the issue of August 1 [“What Mercenaries in Colombia Have to Do With Our Troops in Iraq & Afghanistan”]: What gives you the right to use the term “mercenaries” to describe the three men who were held hostage by guerrillas in Colombia,

Name Withheld

Downtown

Ed’s Note: The 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides the right, as do the circumstances of the former hostages, who were “civilian contractors” working for a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman Corp. at the time of the their capture. You do not dispute any facts, so that leaves a disagreement over opinion, which are protected by the 1st Amendment. Thank you for passing your opinions along.