Opening Salvos
I am setting aside the ordinary prefatory comments about newfangled technologies, the blogosphere and old men such as myself. Suffice it to say for now that liberty is, or should be, timeless, and the internet is one way to keep the flames afire, even if it does mean an old dog needs to learn new tricks.
This blog will be a vehicle for my own comments and the comments of others (assuming I can properly set the preferences) about the cause of liberty in the State of Washington, and more specifically the future of the Libertarian Party of Washington State.
No doubt there will be times when national or local events will bear on the matter. But the basic premise is that things periodically happen that affect the work of liberty, and which things will sometimes need to be publicized in ways that prior to the internet were simply not possible.
Over time I am hoping this site can become a place where the curious can find out what at least one libertarian (me) thinks about current events, and what a world of the future based on libertarian thinking might be like.
So much of our public speech these days contain the words of freedom and liberty -- e.g., "Where do you want to go today?" or "Let's motor!" -- but so much of that is ersatz freedom. Where we go and what we do is severely limited by laws allegedly designed to protect us from ourselves. What we do in our own back yards or in our own bedrooms are, for the most part, nobody's business but our own. But I'll wager each person reading this can think of at least one thing they might do in each of these places that really has no legitimate public consequences, but which the law prohibits anyway.
This isn't to suggest there are no public problems and that government is unnecessary. Rather, it is simply to suggest, a public problem does not always lend itself to a government solution. Further, it is sometimes true that government IS the problem, and if it simply butted out things would work much better.
But even if these postulations are accepted as true, government continues to grow at a phenomenal rate. So, I suppose, the first question is: Is liberty still a viable principle in the 21st century? Or is it merely a relic of a bygone era?
My answer is that liberty is the foundation of human progress and there is no philosophy that has proven better. The problem is the corrupting influence of power. And since, to paraphrase Washington, government is nothing but an aggregation of power, one must deal with the potential for corruption of power in government.
This blog will be a vehicle for my own comments and the comments of others (assuming I can properly set the preferences) about the cause of liberty in the State of Washington, and more specifically the future of the Libertarian Party of Washington State.
No doubt there will be times when national or local events will bear on the matter. But the basic premise is that things periodically happen that affect the work of liberty, and which things will sometimes need to be publicized in ways that prior to the internet were simply not possible.
Over time I am hoping this site can become a place where the curious can find out what at least one libertarian (me) thinks about current events, and what a world of the future based on libertarian thinking might be like.
So much of our public speech these days contain the words of freedom and liberty -- e.g., "Where do you want to go today?" or "Let's motor!" -- but so much of that is ersatz freedom. Where we go and what we do is severely limited by laws allegedly designed to protect us from ourselves. What we do in our own back yards or in our own bedrooms are, for the most part, nobody's business but our own. But I'll wager each person reading this can think of at least one thing they might do in each of these places that really has no legitimate public consequences, but which the law prohibits anyway.
This isn't to suggest there are no public problems and that government is unnecessary. Rather, it is simply to suggest, a public problem does not always lend itself to a government solution. Further, it is sometimes true that government IS the problem, and if it simply butted out things would work much better.
But even if these postulations are accepted as true, government continues to grow at a phenomenal rate. So, I suppose, the first question is: Is liberty still a viable principle in the 21st century? Or is it merely a relic of a bygone era?
My answer is that liberty is the foundation of human progress and there is no philosophy that has proven better. The problem is the corrupting influence of power. And since, to paraphrase Washington, government is nothing but an aggregation of power, one must deal with the potential for corruption of power in government.
posted by Richard Shepard | 3:33 PM
2 Comments:
Glad to follow your future commentary.
Of course the proper power of guv'ment needs to be used to eradicate the corruption of Vern Fonk TV ads - http://www.vernfonk.com
(that's a joke for those who can't tell the difference)
And many thanks to the man (RS) who got the Thurston County court to throw out the 1% primary rule, which restored the Libertarian candidates to the 2004 ballot (Ruth Bennett, J. Mills). Richard walks the talk, not just an armchair Libertarian - if we only had a few hundred more like Richard, we might make Washington State the west coast "free state" (http://www.freestateproject.org)
Cary
The people running the Tacoma Dome want to spend $40-120 million on renovating and/or improving the Dome and related facilities. The Tacoma Dome is owned by the City of Tacoma.
Do you think the City should issue bonds to finance the improvements or sell the Tacoma Dome?
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