but I still have problems with the standing army aspects of it,
especially the federal
army.
Hey I'm from East Tennessee, my family has lived in this area
before the civil war, stories are told about how badly both the
Northern Army and the Confederate Army acted coming through East
Tennessee, neither was welcome by several people and for good reason.
Most if not all the early state constitutions had warnings about the
danger of standing Armies and for good reason.--- In
[email protected], "Thomas L. Knapp" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>
> Terry,
>
> > Tom, I can't belive that is the way Gregory or you would have
worded
> > it. Both of you have more sense. At least I hope you do. and with
the
> > exeption of one or two of you pieces both of you act like you
have good
> > sense.
>
> OK, from the top:
>
> 1) Anthony (I believe) wrote a straight libertarian immigration
piece.
>
> 2) My job was twofold: a) to "re-voice" the piece so that
it "sounded
> like Badnarik," and b) to bring Badnarik's positions and the LP's
> platform into accomodation with each other. As a writer for the
> Badnarik campaign, my job was not to express my own views, but to
> express Badnarik's. The writing of the paper was informed by his
input
> and ultimately issued under his name, with his approval. It
represents
> his statement on immigration, not mine.
>
> The same is true of each of his position papers, most of which I
> wrote, re-wrote or edited. The single exception to that was the
> abortion paper, which I declined to have anything to do with. I can
> write a pro-choice paper, but my very strident opinion was and is
that
> a presidential candidate should not change his position on an issue
> twice in the course of his campaign, which is the point we were at
> when the task of writing that paper came across my desk. Badnarik
was
> pro-life prior to receiving the nomination, having second thoughts
> about "electrical brain activity as the point of personhood" by the
> time of the convention (as revealed in an interview in The Free
> Liberal, distributed in its print edition AT the convention), and
> ultimately agreed, under pressure from within the campaign, to
issue a
> position paper that simply parroted the LP's pro-choice platform
> plank. Someone else wrote that paper, someone else edited and
proofed it.
>
> 3) Since 2004, the paper has undergone major alterations in both
> language and content. I don't consider it the same paper at all even
> though it is composed of re-arranged chunks of the old paper, with
new
> sections inserted.
>
> The text from the 2004 paper, as best I could recover it, is below
my
> signature (there's one curious ungrammatical break in it -- I'm
> assuming that happened due to file corruption or something some time
> after the campaign -- since the position papers received numerous
> critical readings during that campaign, it would have been caught
and
> corrected at that time. You'll see that a lot of fairly unequivocal
> libertarian positions in that paper are equivocated on in the 2006
> version.
>
> Regards,
> Tom Knapp
>
> -----
> Immigration is among the most contentious issues facing America
today,
> and the specters of terrorism and war have only added fuel to an
> already fiery debate. Let's take an objective look at immigration,
> borders and legitimate national security concerns.
>
> By any reasonable measure, immigration is not just beneficial to the
> American economy but indispensable to the goal of a nation of
freedom
> and opportunity. This nation was built on immigration. Allowing
> peaceful people to enter our country is not just an option. It's a
> benchmark by which we measure whether or not we're living up to the
> American ideal.
>
> This does not mean, however, that the national defense must be
> sacrificed to some naive conception of "open borders." The right to
> enter the United States is not the same as the right to enter the
> United States in contravention of its legitimate interest in
securing
> itself against those who would do it harm.
>
> Immigration and borders are two separate issues. When they are
mixed,
> the result is both deadly to peaceful immigrants and subversive of
the
> security of the United States.
>
> Peaceful immigrants should be allowed to enter the US at
conveniently
> located Customs and Immigration stations, subject only to brief
> vetting to ensure that they are not terrorists or criminals. They
> should not be forced by restrictions or quotas to place their lives
at
> risk by crossing the border at remote locations, often under the
> guidance of ruthless "coyotes" who are as likely to leave them to
die
> as to get them safely across, and to then lead lives of fear of
> detection, detention and deportation. I do not regard the existence
of
> the social "safety net" as a good excuse for excluding immigrants.
The
> welfare state needs to be eliminated. It would need to be eliminated
> whether immigration was an issue or not.
>
> Not only are immigration restrictions bad policy in and of
themselves,
> they make national defense a more difficult task. Immigrants
crossing
> into the US illegally, because they were denied legal entry for no
> good reason, provide cover, by sheer dint of numbers, for terrorists
> and criminals. The black market in smuggling humans constitutes a
> vector for bringing the nation's enemies into our homeland.
>
> Coupled with open, easy immigration for the peaceful, I advocate a
> vigorous national defense against our enemies. Terrorists and
> criminals who attempt to enter the US via a Customs and Immigration
> station should be denied entry and, where applicable, arrested or
> extradited. Terrorists and criminals who attempt to enter the US via
> other points along its 95,000 miles of border and coastline should
be
> treated as what they are: invaders against whom our armed forces
must
> respond. There are obvious exceptions Cuban and Haitian "boat
> refugees" who don't have much control over where they make landfall,
> for example but they are exceptions, not the rule.
>
> As a Libertarian, I reject a conception of national defense that
keeps
> American troops overseas, meddling in the affairs of other nations.
> Instead, I advocate a national defense which, sans any attack which
> might require retaliation elsewhere, focuses on the logical area:
the
> nation's borders. As president, I would work to eliminate the Border
> Patrol and treat border issues as what they are: defense issues
coming
> under the mission and scope of the armed forces. In an age where the
> equivalent of a large invasion force can be packed into a
> suitcase-sized box containing nuclear, chemical or biological
weapons,
> no lesser response will do.
> -----
>
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