Huntsville, Alabama (205) 936-4010
The Libertarian Party, Washington, DC
1 800 682-1776
Craig Goodrich Candidate for US Congress,
5th District
We're getting close to the turn of the century again, and the politicians are starting to talk about Leading America Into The 21st Century - a new introductory phrase in their canned speeches full of Viewing With Alarm and Pointing With Pride.
Before they lead us bravely into the new millennium, though, it would be comforting to know that they had learned something from this one. The Twentieth Century has been spectacular, all right.
The good news is the incredible advances in medicine, electronics, and other scientific fields that have made miracles part of our everyday life. Scientific experimentation has been wildly successful.
The bad news is that this century has also been marked by endless sociological experimentation, which has been an unmitigated disaster. But the experimenters don't seem to have learned anything from all of it, and they are bravely preparing to march us into the 21st century dragging all the baggage of the failed experiments of the 20th.
Examples abound. Think about the Federal Reserve System, which was established to eliminate the recessions that occurred periodically in various regions or industries, and to strengthen the banking system. Less than 20 years after it was established, the entire country suffered the worst depression in history and bank failures became pandemic. Did the politicians learn from this and eliminate the Federal Reserve? Ask Alan Greenspan.....
Consider socialism, which became fashionable among the intellectual elites early in this century and led to the destruction of entire economies - and traditional cultures, and human lives - all over the planet, from Argentina to China. It has failed everywhere. Have our politicians tossed their Communist Manifestos into the trashbasket labeled "Bad Ideas"? Ask the Democratic National Committee ... or a "moderate" Republican....
"Gun control" is another one. In 1900, any American (or Briton or European, for that matter) could walk into a hardware store and buy any firearm he could afford. Violent crime was rare, even in our largest cities. Then in 1911 the politicians in New York passed a pistol-licensing law, on the pretext that it would help protect the Good Folks from the Lower Classes, i.e. recent Italian and eastern European immigrants. Now in nearly all our major cities the Good Folks are completely helpless in the face of violent crime, itself mostly created by other failed social experiments. And the politicians are still using immigrants and the Lower Classes to scare the Good Folks into giving up more freedom...
Then there's internationalism, the idea that all the Good Countries should get together and form alliances to keep the Bad Countries from starting wars. Before the 20th century, Americans believed in trading with everybody and going to war for nobody. But we tried internationalism early in the century, and brave young American bodies joined brave young British bodies and brave young French bodies and brave young German bodies and brave young Russian bodies in the mud and slime at the bottom of trenches all over Europe, because some tin-hatted dictator somewhere decided his country wasn't big enough. And what did the bloody sacrifices of the First World War buy us? The Second World War. And Korea. And Vietnam. Surely the politicians have discarded this terrible idea, right? Of course, of course, just as soon as the brave young Americans get back from Saudi Arabia and Bosnia.....
Or how about that prizewinner among failed social experiments, Prohibition? The politicians convinced the Good Folks that it was their moral duty to protect the Bad Folks from their own badness by keeping them from drinking alcohol. So we tried it and discovered that it didn't really keep anyone from doing anything, and gang wars between rival bootleggers nearly doubled our murder rate, while profits from the liquor trade corrupted the police and enriched the really, really Bad People in organized crime. But we did learn from that, right? We repealed Prohibition in 1932, didn't we? Sure we did. We never hear about drive-by shootings, gang wars, or smuggling cartels any more, do we? Our city streets are safe now, aren't they?
So the next time you hear a politician going on about Leading American Society into the New World of the 21st Century, ask him what he's learned from the 20th. Do we want our grandchildren to grow up in the same blood-soaked, impoverished world that governments have produced for us?
The United States was founded on the 18th-century ideas of limited government and individual liberty. For the first hundred years of our history these ideas worked well, and our society was the envy of the world for its peace, prosperity, and freedom. It wasn't perfect; it took a civil war to extend our freedom to all Americans. But ask yourself: have the "modern, progressive ideas" of the last century produced a better society than the ideas of Jefferson, Madison, and Washington? Isn't it time to try a really new experiment: Constitutional government?
Only the Libertarian Party is pledged to do what has to be done.
Craig Goodrich for US Congress
Mark Thornton for US Senate
Harry Browne for President