Its Not Easy to Cross-over To A Third Party
by James Glaser
July 8, 2008

Joining a different political party is easy, they are all ready to take your money, and any time and effort you are willing to volunteer. The hard part is trying to decide what political belief system you are willing to change to.

If you start looking up potential third parties you will be overwhelmed, but if you want a political party that has at least a chance to elect a president the number of viable parties goes down to five. Wikipedia gives the following list:

Each of five parties shares a degree of national attention by attaining the mathematical possibility of its nominee becoming President of the United States—i.e., having ballot status for its presidential candidate in states whose collective total is at least half of the Electoral-College votes—in either the most recent presidential election, in 2004, or the next one, in 2008:

Growing up in Minnesota, I had my mother who was a strong backer of the Democrat Farmer Labor Party (DFL) while my father was a Independent Republican (IR). They tended to cancel out each other's vote. When I was first starting out, I was working as a union carpenter so the Democrats were my party, but later on I started working for myself and the Republicans became my choice.

Back then it was so easy, working people voted DFL and management voted IR. I have to admit I never read the platform of either party, and I would guess most Americans don't. Politics is kind of like buying a car. If you dad was a Ford man, you started out with Fords. If he favored Chevy, most likely you did too. However if the car of your dad's choice let you down, you started looking at other models.

It tends to work the same with political parties. If your parents worked an hourly job, you at least started out as a Democrat, but if they wore a suit and tie to work the Republicans would get your nod.

But what happens after you discover then neither the Democrats nor the Republicans think the way you do? Then you have to spend some time figuring out what the heck you really do believe in, and what you want the government to do or not do for you.

That's not that easy. It takes time and effort to sort out what you believe in, and what you want from your government. Then you have to try and find a political party that is closest to what you want. It took me a long time to figure out that I am really Libertarian in my belief, but that doesn't mean that I am running out and joining the Libertarian Party. Believing in a libertarian philosophy does not mean that you can believe in the Libertarian Party Platform, just as having a business doesn't make you a Republican.

There are a lot of sites on the internet that try to explain what the Libertarian philosophy covers, and I found the one from the Future of Freedom Foundation explains it in a clear understandable way. Here is their explanation:

Libertarianism is a political philosophy that holds that a person should be free to do whatever he wants in life, as long as his conduct is peaceful. Thus, as long a person doesn't murder, rape, burglarize, defraud, trespass, steal, or inflict any other act of violence against another person's life, liberty, or property, libertarians hold that the government should leave him alone. In fact, libertarians believe that a primary purpose of government is to prosecute and punish anti-social individuals who initiate force against others.
What are some policy ramifications of what has become known as the libertarian "non-aggression principle"?
People should be free to engage in any economic enterprise without permission or interference from the state. Thus libertarians oppose all occupational licensure laws and all economic regulations of business activity. Libertarians also believe that people have the right to keep whatever they earn and decide for themselves what to do with their own money—spend it, invest it, save it, hoard it, or donate it.

I think what got me thinking in the direction of libertarianism was reading the banner on the Lewrockwell.com page, which reads, "anti-state, anti-war, pro-market."

I don't approve of any wars except if we are defending our own country. I don't believe that we have the right or duty to decide what is best for other countries and all you have to do is look at the number of innocent people killed, maimed, or displaced in Iraq and Afghanistan to understand we hurt more than we help when we charge in with guns drawn..

I have a business in Tallahassee, Florida, and I could be way more productive and profitable if I didn't have to do all the government paper work. I have to collect State sales tax, pay a city fee and a county fee just to stay in business, and when tax time comes around, my stress level escalates. Local, State, and Federal governments are not business friendly in any way at all.

My dad used to talk about how the government could only get smaller if the Republicans could take charge. Well they had six years under George Bush where they had both Houses of Congress and the White House and the size of Government exploded. I know both the Republicans and the Democrats will continue to increase the size of the federal government, as that increases their power, and power is what those two parties are all about.

So, I have become a Libertarian. What does that mean? I don't really know yet. I read the Libertarian Party Platform, and I can't really say they believe what I believe. The Constitution Party has a good name, and I do like our Constitution, but I don't know enough about them yet, and the Greens are the Greens. They ran Ralph Nader, and Nader says many things I agree with, but he likes government a bit too much. Ralph thinks government is the answer to our problems, while I think they are our problem.

I have made headway though. I have walked away from the Democrat and Republican way of thinking, and know that neither of those two parties are the answer to our country's problems. In fact, those two parties have made the problems we now have. Going Third Party isn't that easy. Try telling some one you are a Libertarian and they look at you like you are an anarchist, or maybe a Communist.

Like many countries, our two dominant parties have been in power so long, they now control almost everything, and they keep other ways of thinking about government out of our education system, and out of the electoral process,

New ideas about how to govern are hard to get out to the masses, but we still have the internet and sites like Lewrockwell.com and the Future of Freedom Foundation are willing to air new ideas. Ron Paul has done a lot to get younger people thinking about their future, and just maybe his campaign will morph into a teaching tool that will help us tilt in a new direction before we lose the country that was given to us. I sure hope so.

Meanwhile, I'll keep looking for a political party that will represent me and my beliefs. I know I'm not the only one doing that in 2008. If John McCain and Barack Obama are the best this nation can pin its hopes on, we certainly are in real trouble.




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