Steven J. Uccio was a Libertarian candidate for Mercer County Freeholder in 2014.
In this article, he addresses some of the perceptual problems facing libertarianism, and how he thinks Libertarians should address them.
I believe we should have maximum control over our lives and our money and we should be allowed to do whatever we want, as long as it doesn’t hurt someone else. I think the government’s job is to protect our rights, respect our privacy, do as little as possible, fight wars only to defend us, and have no debt. Its job is not to help people, but to ensure that conditions exist in which people can take care of themselves and by which private charities or an extremely limited social safety net can take care of the rest. That would be a tremendous step forward compared to what our federal government does now and I don’t think it’s outside the values of the average person. […]
The full article can be read at the following link
http://www.nj.com/opinion/index.ssf/2014/12/opinion_the_case_for_moderate_libertarianism.html
Seems in the TAAAList neighborhood…theoretical asymptotic anarchist, applied lessarchist.
To be fair, it is true that the 6th Amendment guarantees the defendant the right to confront and cross-examine the prosecution’s witnesses, and to examine the evidence against them, but it also guarantees the defendant the “right” to compel witnesses to testify on their behalf.
This isn’t the only issue where he has rather unique opinions.
I’m not a lawyer either, but I have taken a couple of postgraduate classes in Constitutional Law, and Robert’s interpretation of the 6th Amendment is quite unlike any I have ever encountered.
This is the same Robert that made extremely incendiary accusations against John Wayne Smith being an admitted government agent on his memorial thread within a very short time of his death, accused others here of being paid to say nice things about him, said he would provide proof, and thus far hasn’t.
I don’t remember ever hearing this interpretation of the 6th amendment, either.
No Robert I am not a lawyer and don’t ever expect to be one but that is not how I understand the text or see it.
That’s not how it has been applied.
Michael Wilson, that’s likely because you don’t understand the Constitution or even basic law.
The 6th Amendment refers to compelling the complainant, which today typically means a government body, to produce their full evidence.
I didn’t finish reading the article, but he starts out by apparently implying that the public perception of Libertarians is that we are pot smoking hippies. I think it’s much more common for people thee days to believe we are a bunch of rabid Tea Party right wingers, migrant bashers, theocons and neocons or “Republicans who really mean it”. I used to run into the “pot smoking hippies” thing but not so much anymore.
The comments on this piece are informative if we want to see how libertarianism is viewed, even when we’re explicitly trying to change it. I see two problems: “Libertarians solely want to leave you alone” is understood perfectly well by libertarians and sympathizers, but is not clearly understood outside of that group. It’s also not a clear description of policy or how we’d govern, it’s just a statement of belief. It’s a correct statement of belief, but Libertarians need to actively engage in the larger policy debate, in my opinion.
Also, we absolutely must emphasize what I try to capture in the slogan “It’s not about libertarians not wanting to do for the poor, it’s about everyone else wanting to do to the poor.” Liberty is the best hope for the poor; it is the only way out of the self-perpetuating system of consolidation of wealth, corporate control, and inescapable poverty. We libertarians tend to think mostly of poor people starting businesses and of corporate welfare in this regard, and those things are very true. A clearer and starker contrast, though, is probably the crippling fees and fines imposed on the poor by the statist system.
If we just recite our NAP mantra, it makes us feel good, but doesn’t help others to understand us – see the comments on this article (the original, not here.) We need to make these points explicitly, not expect people to get them from our ideas. The way to bridge that gap is being more political, meaning, not more cheating and lying, but more directed campaigning, more speaking to issues of interest, more parallel rather than perpendicular participation in the discussions Americans want to have.
What I don’t understand is how some Libertarians refer to the NAP and then promote the Constitution where the Sixth Amendment reads in part “… to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor…”
Am I missing something here?
My only objection to the piece is the title. The title implies that the author is proposing to reform Libertarianism, but in fact is merely presenting Libertarian ideals as ones that are mainstream. This is not a call to Libertarians to change, but to change perceptions of Libertarians.
Good article.