-Caveat Lector- http://www2.georgemag.com/interviews/harry1.html Interview with Harry Browne By Brian Weiss Ralph Nader might make the most noise, and the battle over the Reform party may hog the headlines, but the Libertarian party and presidential candidate Harry Browne have quietly emerged as America's best organized third party. Running for president for the second time, candidate Harry Browne talks to Georgemag.com about his message of eliminating the income tax, stopping the War on Drugs and why Al Gore and George W. Bush might belong in prison. For people who may not be familiar with it, explain the Libertarian philosophy. It's very simple. Libertarians want you to be free to live your life as you want to live it, just as long as you don't intrude on somebody else's person or property. Libertarians think you go to work everyday, so you ought to keep the money that you earn. If the politicians want some of that money, they ought to ask for it instead of taking it by force. This is what separated America from the rest of the world. Instead of kings ruling by divine right you had a right to self-determination. All of that has been lost in the United States. Politicians decide everything. They decide how much of your income you are going to be allowed to keep, they decide how big your toilet is going to be, they decide how your child's school is going to be run, how your health insurance company has to treat you. They make all the rules. And as a result, America is no different from any other country in the world. Who is Harry Browne? Where did he come from and what infused him with Libertarian values? I was born in New York City, grew up in Los Angeles and moved to Tennessee five years ago. I have also lived in Switzerland, Canada and California. Professionally, I was in the investment world for thirty years and wrote a number of books, published a newsletter and was an investment consultant. But I didn't vote for 30 years, because I didn't see any point in trying to chose between Democrats and Republicans because I knew that no matter who got elected, government was just going to get bigger and more expensive and more intrusive and more oppressive. So you became a Libertarian? I joined the Libertarian party in 1994 and ran for president in 1996 because I though we had reached the point where people were so disenchanted with government that we really did have a chance to turn things around and to reduce the size government dramatically. And we have a chance to give you your freedom back and let you run your life instead of having Al Gore or George Bush do it. Explain "The Great Libertarian Offer" in the party's platform? The Great Libertarian offer asks this question: Would you give up your favorite federal programs if it meant you never had to pay income tax again? We want government to live by it's constitutional mandate. There might be one or two things you are getting from the government that you don't want to give up, but under a Libertarian president, you're never going to pay income tax again, and your children will never pay income tax. Your grandchildren will go through life without ever having to pay the terrible burden of taxation that you had to endure. Early on, there was a lot of speculation that Pat Buchanan's candidacy would siphon votes from Bush. More recently Ralph Nader seemed to pose a similar threat to Al Gore. From which party do you take votes? Our situation is a bit different. All I have is anecdotal evidence, no statistics, but it would certainly appear from the people who call the talk shows and from the people I meet at political events that we are getting about 1/3 of our new votes from Democrats and 1/3 from Republicans. The other 1/3 are from people who just haven't voted in the past because they didn't see any point to it. This is your second run for the presidency. In 1996 you received about half a million votes. What are you doing differently this time around? We have gotten better at presenting the message as anybody would over a period of time. But the political landscape continues to change in the sense that people are just becoming more and more disenchanted with government. So is this approach working? Is your message resonating? Oh sure. The party is nearly three times as large as it was in the beginning of 1996. This makes it possible for us to do a lot of things we weren't able to do last time. We are doing a lot more national TV advertising this time. I've been on far more national television shows than I was in all of 1996. It won't be enough to elect us this year, but every vote that I get lays the groundwork to elect a Libertarian president and Libertarian congresspeople in 2002, 2004, 2006. I believe it is entirely possible that we could have a Libertarian president and congress before the end of this decade. Is your philosophy a harder sell amidst the prosperity in America? I don't think so. We simply have to change the question from "are you better off than you were 8 years ago." And most people are a little better off, though not like Bill Clinton has tried to claim. The real question should be, "Are you as well off as you could be?" Think of all that you would do if you weren't paying income tax. You'd put your child in a private school, you'd start your own business, you'd take your family on a world vacation. You would be able to support your church or your favorite cause or charity in a way that you've never been able to do before. You could have a secure retirement just by having 5% deducted from your paycheck by your employer and put directly into a bank savings account. That would be far better than social security even promises. You don't take federal matching dollars, so how is your fundraising going this cycle? It's a lot better than it was in 1996 because we are bigger and stronger now and have a much bigger fundraising base. Certainly we don't have nearly the money we need to reach every American. Our message though is very powerful. I never met anybody who thought Bill Clinton could run their life better than they can. But you not only have to reach everybody with the message, you have to reach them often enough so that they feel comfortable with it and so they can believe that the Libertarian party isn't just some fantasy that sounds good but could never work in reality. Is George W. Bush's tax cutting plan more in sync with the Libertarian philosophy of eliminating the income tax? Does it matter that Bush is a tax cutter and seems to want smaller government? No. It doesn't matter because you are still talking about a government that's almost 2 trillion dollars and somebody is going to have to pay for that. Who is it going to be? The Russians? The Martians? Hmmm, or maybe the American people? It doesn't matter how much they say they are going to change the tax code, it still is going to come out of your hide one way or another. Bush and Gore know that. The rest of us just have to be reminded of it. If you could ask one question of either Gore or Bush, what would it be? Would you be a better person today if for your youthful indiscretions, you spent ten years in prison? Because they are both promoting the idea that people ought to be sent away to prison for doing what they did when they were younger. Are you are referring to drug use? We have a million people in prison who have never done harm to anybody else. Who have never intruded on anybody's person or property, who have never committed violence. At the same time we have running around on the streets murderers and rapists and child molesters who have gotten out of jail through plea bargaining and because of overcrowded prisons. They are terrorizing the American people while pot smokers are sitting in prison taking up cells. Part of the Libertarian platform calls for an end to "The insane War on Drugs." The 80's was the worst time for this when Democrats and Republicans were trying to out posture each other on this issue. Tip O'Neil told the Democrats that we have to do something to show that we are tougher than the Reagan administration. So they rammed through these mandatory minimums that set up these stringent mandatory minimums and took away a judge's discretion. In the 90's they made it worse. Now the only way for people to avoid the worst possible sentence is to turn other people in. So now they catch a big kingpin and he turns in a bunch of people under him who are not violent, who are not a problem at all, and he gets out with a 2 year sentence and they have 30 years to life. So Gore and Bush may have been sentenced to 30 years for past drug use? Yes, and this might be a better country after all. (Laughs). It's so insane that it's like a comic novel, it's just so ludicrous. What does the Libertarian Party have to say on Medicare and prescription drugs? Before we had Medicare and Medicaid, this country had charity hospitals and free clinics to take care of poor people. Health insurance was available to virtually everybody, even if you had a preexisting condition. All the things that politicians keep promising us today were the things we once had in this country. But then politicians realized they could get more votes by appealing to the elderly with Medicare and to the poor with Medicaid. Now elderly are paying twice as much out of their own pocket as they did before Medicare. And as far as the poor are concerned, the state Medicaid programs all around the country are just fraught with corruption and waste. The healthcare system which once was the best in the world is now an absolute mess and it's all because of the government. It's typical of the government though. Government knows how to break your legs and then hand you a crutch and say "See if it weren't for the government you couldn't walk." What role should the federal government play? The easy agreement is this: let's reduce the government to it's Constitutionally mandated size. That means the government should provide national defense, the judiciary, a mint, a postoffice, a patent office and a few other trivial things. We would have a much better national defense if we weren't so focused on a national offense. If we were less concerned about running the rest of the world and having troops in 100 countries and the ability to annihilate everybody in the world we could defend this country very very well for no more than $50 billion a year. We would be a lot safer than we are now and we would also be a lot safer from terrorism because nobody would have any reason to come over here and try to influence our foreign policy. Where would that $50 billion come from? Tariffs and excise taxes. That would be enough. In fact, those could be cut over a period of time too. And you are optimistic about the future of your party? We have a very high profile Senate race in Massachusetts, with Carla Howell running ahead of the Republican who is challenging Teddy Kennedy. I doubt that we will elect a congressman this year, but we may elect a few state representatives and we will certainly do very well in some of the Congressional races. In Texas, we have more candidates running statewide than the Democrats do. We have over 1400 local, state and federal candidates running. We have strong parties in Massachusetts, Georgia, Michigan, California and Florida, We're not a celebrity party, we haven't been financed by a billionaire. So it means that everything we have has been earned and it's not going to fade away when somebody walks out of the party. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- For more info on Harry Browne go to www.harrybrowne2000.org <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html <A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html">Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]</A> http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/">ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
