Posted on 07/16/2004 4:10:44 AM PDT by visagoth
The Libertarian Party nominates a candidate without knowing his views or knowing about his brushes with the law.
By now, most libertarians know that the Libertarian Party chose as its presidential nominee Michael Badnarik, the darkest of dark horses, and a figure hardly known within the party and virtually unknown to non-LP libertarians. Badnarik is a self-taught constitutional scholar whose views were scarcely known to most LP members and delegates prior to the nomination.
Coming into the convention, the favorite for the nomination was Gary Nolan, a talk-radio personality who had raised the most money, won all five LP primaries, and put together a professional campaign staff. Nolan proposed the same electoral strategy that the LP candidate had employed in the previous two elections: he'd try to appeal primarily to conservatives, reaching out to them on talk radio.
Badnarik was different. He had embarked on a quixotic quest, traveling from state to state in a 1999 Kia Sephia, visiting state party conventions, speaking wherever he could, staying in the guest rooms of supporters whenever he could arrange it, hitting cheap motels when he couldn't. In late 2003, he interrupted his campaign to take a job in telemarketing to earn some much needed cash.
Badnarik believes that the federal income tax has no legal authority and that people are justified in refusing to file a tax return until such time as the IRS provides them with an explanation of its authority to collect the tax. He hadn't filed income tax returns for several years. He moved from California to Texas because of Texas' more liberal gun laws, but he refused to obtain a Texas driver's license because the state requires drivers to provide their fingerprints and Social Security numbers. He has been ticketed several times for driving without a license; sometimes he has gotten off for various technical legal reasons, but on three occasions he has been convicted and paid a fine. He also refused to use postal ZIP codes, seeing them as "federal territories."
He has written a book on the Constitution for students in his one-day, $50 seminar on the Constitution, but it is available elsewhere, including on Amazon.com. It features an introduction by Congressman Ron Paul and Badnarik's theory about taxes. His campaign website included a potpourri of right-wing constitutional positions, as well as some very unorthodox views on various issues. He proposed that convicted felons serve the first month of their sentence in bed so that their muscles would atrophy and they'd be less trouble for prison guards and to blow up the U.N. building on the eighth day of his administration, after giving the building's occupants a chance to evacuate. In one especially picturesque proposal, he wrote:
I would announce a special one-week session of Congress where all 535 members would be required to sit through a special version of my Constitution class. Once I was convinced that every member of Congress understood my interpretation of their very limited powers, I would insist that they restate their oath of office while being videotaped.
One assumes, although one cannot prove, that none of this is an exercise in irony. At any rate, these opinions were removed from the website shortly after he won the nomination, and they didn't come up when he visited state party conventions. Nor did his refusal to file tax returns, thereby risking federal indictment and felony arrest. While many of his closest supporters were aware of these issues, they were unknown to most LP members.
Read the rest at http://www.libertyunbound.com/archive/2004_08/bradford-dark_horse.html
Hey, I've done that. I've been to some stores where they ask each customer for his zip code, which I find every bit as annoying as Radio Shack asking for a phone number. I always say "I don't have one," or "I don't believe in them." Didn't know I was making a political statement, too!
Strange...this idiot thinks congress reports to the president. Wacko alert.
90210, that the zip I give everytime. Anyway this guy seems to be a few loose.
The LP has been off the deep end for decades. Real libertarians have nothing to do with the LP... the LP is for anarchists.
The WI LP just aligned itself with the Muslims.
Wrong. It affects everybody.
Badnarik is awesome. I will be voting for him this year.
The GOP has abandoned the cause of limited government.
I'm not voting for him. If Aaron Russo had won the nom, I might have, but I'm wasting my vote on Bush.
Drew Carey got a vote at the convention. Him, I like. If we weren't at war, he'd be a great source of whimsy in the Oval Office, and since he's not married, he can have all the interns he wants!
But seriously, though... no. Badnarik is the only Libertarian candidate who won't be getting my vote.
The Libertarian Party is for open borders. They also want to get rid of the welfare state. It seems like a logical solution - hard working immigrants come here and make it on their own, and in the process improve the economy for the rest of us. The problem is that it is a fantasy.
What the Libertarian Party doesn't understand is that the vast majority of people clammering to get into the United States are Socialists. Maybe they aren't explicitly Socialist, but they are from a culture that is alien to libertarian principals.
Have the Socialists of former East Germany improved life for Germans because of re-unification? What about all the people from Massachutsetts moving to New Hampshire?
People naturally will gravitate to a free and prosperous country, but that does not mean they respect the institutions that make the country free and prosperous.
Libertarians are living in a fantasy world if they think immigration is a positive force for the United States. Hundreds of millions of Socialists are beating at the door for an oppurtunity to destroy the United States, and they want to open the door.
Truly!
I will be voting for him this year.
Ditto!
The GOP has abandoned the cause of limited government.
Megaditto!
Not exactly. There are no "the Muslims" any more than there are "the Jews."
The LP welcomes individuals from all backgrounds. It may contact organized groups (i.e., NRA, a mosque, a synagoue or church, a Rotary), but in the end, it's always an outreach to the individuals in that group.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.