A common misconception.

Kurt and I were speaking tonight about campaign related things, and the following thought came up:

There is a common misconception about libertarians.  It is a misconception that we may have in fact brought upon ourselves.  We are sometimes viewed as cold.  I mean this in respect to socioeconomic  problems.  Let's look at an example of what I speak:

"Libertarians are for removing welfare and government assistance."

This sounds like: "We want to just leave people who are in need to lift themselves by their bootstraps, or else."

Or else what?  Obviously this is not something that we can expect to be changed over night.  We are not advocating sudden abandonment of existing systems to leave people hanging.  This is not realistic.  When ever faced with an issue, it is important to try to figure out four things when coming up with a solution;

• Is the solution realistic?  One cannot survive on ideas alone.  The world is full of wonderful dreams on paper that will never work in the real world

• Is the solution effective?  Not only is effective, but can it be effective in the long run.  We have all heard the teach a man to fish proverb.  Is the solution sustainable?

• Is there a way to keep bureaucracy out of the solution, in other words is it efficient?  Bureaucracy equals waste.  We know this.  The more hands a dollar has to pass through the fewer cents are left by the time it reaches it's destination.

• Is the solution voluntary?  Forcing one party to forfeit property to another part is essentially legalized theft.  This is a slippery slope.  One days it's digital TV signal converters, the next day it's the cost of a 98 Buick.

So, as far as public assistance is concerned; it's not possible to do away with it overnight.  It should of course not be a crutch either.  Charity and helping should start at home, in the family, in the community and as a last resort, in the state.  Our position of allowing people to keep more of their money through lower taxes allows them to put more back into their family and community through voluntary cooperation. 

Huge sums of money already fund charity work through this method, but many people cannot give when they lose a big chunk of the income to the government, which our elected representatives then need to beg to get back into our community.. after it has changed hands a few times.  Your dollar, that you could have given directly to the local food bank or job training center, now becomes 50 cents funding a similar, wasteful government program.

Let us not forget, and there is no denying this; power leads even good people toward corruption.  Being in control of large sums of money, which you have no real accountability for is dangerous.  If an individual or company does not like the work a charity is doing, they can simply stop giving them money.  We do not currently have that option with the government.  Benjamin Franklin once said "When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic". 

We must remove the paternalism and pandering from the system.  It is degrading to all involved.  We are for personal responsibility.  One would be remiss not to realize that some people need help sometimes.  We feel this, like most everything, would best be handled locally.  People are inventive and generally do care about what is going on in their neighborhood.  We want to give people the freedom to come up with better solutions to the very real problems we face.  A community is more apt to work like a living organism, adapting to new circumstances, than like the slow governmental machine, which will continue to run, however ineffectually, until it runs out of fuel, or falls apart.  The way it is does not work. 

So, contrary to the stereotype, we are not cold, heartless jerks (well at least most of us aren't).  We believe in our fellow man's ability to triumph over adversity.  We are willing to voluntarily extend a helping hand to our neighbor who is down on his luck.  We believe that we should work toward the day when we are once again enabled to do it on our own, for ourselves, our families, our neighbors and our communities.  We also believe we can accomplish all of this in a more dignified way.  We want to work on better solutions, for all, while keeping personal freedom at the fore.