One of my purchases was a collection of short essays, and I wanted to check the copyright date on one of them.  At the bottom of the page with all that sort of information is this:

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American

 National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for Printed

 Library Materials, ANSI Z329.48-1984.

The Libertarian in me balked, and I was going to come home and rant loundly herein.  But a cursory check indicates that the ANSI is a member organization that “coordinates the development of U.S. voluntary national standards in both the private and public sectors.” 

Oh. Okay.

Now I am just left to marvel that there are people, somewhere, who are paid to spend time being concerned with the Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials.

Is access to food a right or a privilege?  The need for food is more immediate and usually more urgent than access to health care.  It follows that the businesses that grow, process, distribute, and sell our food are greedy bastards, too, interested only in making a profit.  They should no longer be allowed to refuse to give their products to people who cannot or will not pay for them.  And when they fail as businesses, well, we can always take on that role as a society.  After all, everyone, no matter what, has the right to access to food.

Is access to clothing a right or a privilege?  Surely it’s more urgent than health insurance.  What will we do about those greedy bastards who would rather make a profit than distribute clothing and shoes, free, to the needy?  Do they even deserve to stay in business?  Doesn’t everyone, no matter what, deserve access to clothing?

Is access to housing a right or a privilege?

Transportation?  Recreation?  House repairs?  Clothing repairs?  Car repairs?  Snow removal?  A furnace?  An air conditioner?  A water heater?  An umbrella?  Hand sanitizer?

I’d like to comment on Don Baldwin’s letter in the October 8 issue of the Topeka Capital-Journal.

While there is merit in much of what Mr. Baldwin says, he is mistaken on one important point. He states that the “Constitution clearly states that the majority rules,” then goes on to decry the fact that we “don’t live in a democracy anymore.”

A democracy is arguably one of the worst forms of government imaginable. In a true democracy, every person votes on every issue, and the majority rules. In a true democracy, the majority can dictate every detail of your life, including where you work, where you live, and even the name of your next child. It’s called “Tyranny of the Majority,” and has been explored by many writers over the past several hundred years.

In a constitutional rebublic such as ours, the voters elect people to vote for them on state and national issues, and the Constitution specifies what items the elected representatives can control — national defense, treaties with other nations, regulation of interstate commerce and the like. Our tenth amendment makes it quite clear that every power not specifically granted to the federal government is reserved to the states or to the people. Echoing that, the Kansas state constitution leaves to the people all powers not specifically granted to the state government.

In other words, you control every aspect of your life, even if you are a minority of one, except for those very few functions specifically granted to the government by the Constitution.

Sharon DuBois

“Vote Libertarian. It Only Feels Kinky the First Time.”
“Vote Libertarian — The Fast-Acting Cure for Electile Disfunction.”

~~~~~

Since this issue of TK Magazine is focused on politics, I am going to take the opportunity to provide some information about the Libertarian Party, of which I am an enthusiastic member.

The Libertarian Party is the third-largest and fastest-growing political party in the nation. We believe in personal freedom and individual responsibility. We are sometimes categorized as economically conservative and socially liberal.

For many years, American politics has been seen, overly simplistically, as a straight line, with the liberal folks on the left and the conservative folks on the right. The left wants personal freedoms and governmental control of the economy; the right wants economic freedom and governmental control of personal behavior.

It’s far more complex than that, of course. There are a few people who want the government to control almost everything, and a large group who want the government to control almost nothing. In 1971, David Nolan, one of the founders of the Libertarian Party, published the diamond-shaped chart that still bears his name. To see the chart, and to take a short quiz that will tell you where you fit on the chart, visit www.theadvocates.org/quiz.

I am not a spokesperson for the Libertarian Party, nor do I intend to paraphrase the party’s platform here. I was at the 2008 convention for much of the platform debate, and that was enough of that, thank you very much. That information, and much more, is available at www.lp.org for those who are interested.

Rather, I would like to present some of the ideas about libertarianism that I, personally, find compelling. They are in no particular order.

• The function of government is to protect your life, your liberty, and your property. It is not the function of government to provide for you.

• You should be able to live your life as you see fit until you start taking that right away from someone else.

• Voluntary charity works better that any government agency. Contrast the FEMA mess with the voluntary outpouring of help from all over the nation sent to the Hurricane Katrina victims.

• When you control your own charitable giving, you have the right to demand an accounting of how your dollars are spent. As things are now, you are required to contribute under threat of incarceration, and yet have no right to demand accountability.

• Lower taxes encourage and attract businesses, which in turn create jobs and lower the need for government programs. If taxes are low, there is no need to force citizens to ante up to entice new businesses to your town.

• The majority does NOT rule, for which we should be grateful. If it did, the majority could dictate to you where to live, what job you could have, even the name of your next child. It’s called Tyranny of the Majority, and has been explored by other writers. No, you should be in charge of every aspect of your own life, even if you are a minority of one, except in those few cases where the Constitution specifies that the majority, via the government, may compel certain behaviors of you.

• The federal government MUST be required to confine its activities to those allowed it by the Constitution. These are functions, such as national defense, which the states and the citizens cannot reasonably be expected to perform for themselves. All other functions are explicitly forbidden to the federal government by the Tenth Amendment. Education, for example, is forbidden as a function of the federal government, but required by the Kansas Constitution as a function of the state. Kansas, and Kansas alone, should be responsible for public education in our state.

• The government should be afraid of the citizens, not the other way around. The IRS is one of the most oppressive and frightening institutions around, and should be abolished, along with the Income Tax. If government were confined to its Constitutional limits, the Income Tax would not be necessary.

• We must end corporate welfare.

• Not everything that’s a good idea should be compelled by law.

• Not everything that’s a bad idea should be prohibited by law.

Now the tiny town is rebuilding, with some help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.  But they can have the money only if they rebuild without basements.

FEMA regulations prohibit recovery funds from being used to rebuild homes with basements if they are in a flood plain.  About 95% of Chapman is in a flood plain.

Story here.