By Barbara Ortutay
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Harry Browne wants voters to recognize his name when they go to
the polls in November. For a third party candidate who is not a
celebrity, this is seldom a small task.
Browne received the Libertarian Party’s nomination for
president at the party’s national convention in Anaheim last
weekend, where amid the suits and ties, delegates also wore hats
and shirts made of the American flag to show their support for
self-government and personal liberties.
“We need to break the limitations of a small, marginal
party and become important enough to have an impact on the outcome
of this election,” Browne said during the July 2 presidential
debate. He accepted his nomination the next day, expressing pride
to be part of the Libertarian Party.
“I hope to see you all aboard,” he said to the more
than 1,000 Libertarians gathered at the convention from across the
country.
Although the party claims to be the largest and most active
third party in the United States, Browne finished fifth in the 1996
elections, behind Reform Party candidate Ross Perot and Green Party
candidate Ralph Nader.
The party’s slogan, “live and let live,” also
describes its platform, which includes the legalization of all
drugs and the privatization of public schools.
All five presidential nominees favored what they called the
“separation of school and state.”
“We want to be in a position where the state doesn’t
educate our children,” said Don Gorman, a former Libertarian
representative in the New Hampshire state Senate who lost the
party’s presidential nomination. “If you take away
government schools, that doesn’t mean we raise a generation
of babbling idiots. The reality is that people will educate their
children.”
Paul Salvette, member of the Bruin Libertarians and third-year
chemical engineering student, said he doesn’t support the
public-school system and called it socialist ““ despite
attending UCLA.
“It’s already here. My parents paid all these taxes
for it, I may as well go to it,” he said.
In addition to abolishing the public education system and
privatizing everything, the Libertarian Party advocates drastic
reductions in the government’s role in people’s
lives.
“The Libertarian party believes in liberty and in very
limited government,” said Gail Lightfoot, U.S. senatorial
candidate for California. “We need few, simple, clear laws
that everyone understands.
“You have the right to live your life as long as
you’re peaceful and not hurting anyone,” she
continued.
The Libertarian Party may be most famous for its stance on the
drug war. While they don’t oppose or favor drug use, they are
for the legalization of all drugs. In addition, many oppose age
restrictions on alcohol and tobacco use.
Many party members agree that the government’s tentacles
reach into too many aspects of people’s personal lives and
liberties.
The party is against welfare, social security, public health
care, abortion laws”“ both for and against”“as well as
hate-speech codes on college campuses, anti-immigration laws and
affirmative action. In other words, they support very limited
government.
Many Libertarians are dissatisfied with bureaucracy and what
they see as too many laws infringing on people’s rights.
“I used to get absolutely infuriated over the bungling of
bureaucracy,” Gorman said.
He said he used to stand in line outside the DMV in the cold for
hours to get his registration.
“I used to sit there and say to myself, “˜What is
this all about?’ That’s when I started to take a really
hard look at government,” he continued. “One day I
figured out that I’ve always been a Libertarian.”
Barry Hess, another unsuccessful presidential nominee, said the
Libertarian Party represents the ideas America was founded on.
“We are not a third party. We are the first party in
America,” he said.
“In a Libertarian world, you can be a Democrat, but in a
Democratic world, you can’t be a Libertarian.
Libertarians at the convention expressed dissatisfaction with
the current two-party system.
“The Democrats and the Republicans are carbon copies of
each other,” Salvette said. “The bi-partisan system
doesn’t really care about you.”
Delegates voted to add their opposition to the death penalty to
the party’s platform at the convention.
“As life cannot be restored to a person who has been
wrongfully executed, we oppose the death penalty in all
cases,” reads the party’s new platform.
Although, in general, Libertarians favor hands-off government
and radical capitalism, there are some disagreements among the
party’s members on issues of ownership, for example.
“Who should own things that no one created?” asked
Harold Kyriazi, a delegate from Pittsburgh. “The current
position is the first users are the owners.”
“One thing is that we want the platform to stay clear of
the principles of private property,” he continued.
Among those attending the convention was former Sex Pistols lead
singer John Lydon ““ also known as Johnny Rotten. One of the
band’s most famous songs is “Anarchy in the U.K,”
which might explain Lydon’s attraction to the Libertarian
Party’s ideals.
Entertaining a small crowd gathered around him, Lydon said the
Libertarian Party offers a “viable alternative” to
America’s two-party system.
“The Reform Party is a joke; it’s Ross Perot’s
tool,” he said. “The Green Party has good will and no
content. They don’t understand that people are just
nasty.”
With reports from Timothy Kudo and Linh Tat, Daily Bruin Senior
Staff.