Educate Yourself! Dispelled Myths of Libertarianism Myth #1: Libertarians Don't Care About Poor People. In a more Libertarian America the poor would finally be taken care of. Repealing the income and Social Security taxes will leave a trillion dollars a year in the economy that is currently being sucked out by those taxes and used terribly inefficiently. That will buy a job for everyone who can work, and charity would flourish for everyone who can't work. Myth #2: In a Libertarian society, my teenage daughter would find it easier to smoke marijuana or shoot up heroin. Does the "War on Drugs" do anything to stop teenagers from shooting up with heron? Of course not. A recent study found that teenagers were more likely to drive while high on marijuana than on beer - even though beer is a legal commodity and marijuana isn't. If drugs were legal, there would be no criminal pushers trying to get kids hooked on drugs because the huge profit margin on the black market would disappear - along with the illegal drug dealers. Myth #3: Legalizing drugs would cede control of drugs to the drug dealers. There are no violent gangs fighting over aspirin territories. There are no violent gangs fighting over whisky territories or computer territories or anything else that's legal. Making a non-violent activity a crime creates a black market, which attracts criminals and gangs, which turns what was once a relatively harmless activity affecting a small group of people into a widespread epidemic of drug use and gang warfare. Myth #4: The environment would suffer greatly under a Libertarian government. This is a common misconception and our state chairman is someone heavily involved in environmental concerns. The best solution to the problems of pollution in America is getting the property out of the hands of our government - our largest polluter. Private property owners care far better for the land than our government ever could. And in those rare circumstances that a private owner pollutes their property or a neighbor's property - there a legal ramifications for such actions. Government control of the environment is bad for business, bad for consumers, bad for America, and bad for the environment. Myth #5: Libertarians are against homosexuals. Gays should vote Libertarian because we're the only party that will take away the power of government to inflict one person's values on another. This not only will make gays safe from the moralists, it also will make the moralists feel safe from gays - so they no longer will feel the need to fight them. Myth #6: Libertarians don't believe in government and if they were in charge it would be anarchy. Libertarians believe in rules - so long as the rules are mutually agreed to by everyone participating in any particular activity. But we do not believe in rules that are imposed by one group coercively on another. Because each person thinks for himself, he will not be a willing respecter of rules that have been imposed upon him by force. Myth #7: Voting for a Libertarian is a waste of my vote. It is easy to say you won't vote for a Libertarian because Libertarians can't win - but neither can you. It doesn't matter who you support, Republican or Democrat, you aren't going to get what you want. By now you must have figured out - that no matter what they promise you they never deliver a smaller, more efficient government. You elect Republicans to promote economic freedom - and they raise the minimum wage, make the tax code more complicated, gorge on billion of dollars in pork, and bestow corporate welfare on those with the most political influence. You elect a Democrat to promote personal freedom - and they vote to censor the Internet, force manufacturers to put a V-Chip in your TV set, expand wire-tapping, send your children to die in foreign wars, take away your right to protect your family, and regulate the most intimate details of your life. So, since supporting Republicans or Democrats doesn't produce what you want, why don't you join the Libertarians for a while - and see where that leads you? Vote for your principles, not a strategy of "lesser of two evils".
"Left-wing politicians take away your liberty in the name of children and of fighting poverty, while right-wing politicians do it in the name of family values and fighting drugs. Either way, government gets bigger and you become less free."
Harry Browne | 
