Key tenets of the Libertarian Party platform include the following:
- a mostly unregulated free-market economy,
- strong civil liberties,
- a foreign policy of non-intervention, peace, and free trade, and
- opposition to the War on Drugs.
Libertarians claim that their platform follows from the ultimate value of
individual liberty: the right of individuals to exercise sole dominion
over their own lives and property, and to live in whatever manner they choose,
so long as they do not forcibly interfere with the equal right of others
to do the same. To this end, Libertarians want to reduce the size of government
(eliminating many of its current functions entirely), and cut taxes.
Libertarians reject the commonly held "right vs. left" description of
political positions. Instead, Libertarians refer people to the Nolan chart to communicate their perception of political
orientation (see below).
Within the larger framework of libertarian politics, the Libertarian Party's
platform falls roughly in the realm of free market minarchism. The party advocates limiting the government
as much as possible, within the framework of the United States Constitution.
As in any political party, there is some internal disagreement about the
platform, and not all the party's supporters advocate its complete implementation,
but most think that the USA would benefit from most of the Libertarian Party's
proposed changes. However, a few Libertarians are actually anarcho-capitalists who
view minarchy as a first step towards the abolition of government.
The Libertarian Party is the third largest party in the United States by most objective measures, including
the following:
- The Libertarian Party is the only third party organized in all fifty
states.
- In the 2002 elections, Libertarian candidates for state House of Representatives
received more than a million votes -- more than twice the votes received
by all other minor parties combined.
- In the 2000 elections, the party ran about 1,430 candidates at the
local, state, and federal level. More than 1,600 Libertarians ran for office
in the 2002 mid-term election. Both numbers are more candidates
than all other third parties combined ran in these elections.
- Following the 2002 elections, more than 300 Libertarians hold elected
state and local offices. This is more than twice that of all other third
parties combined.
- In 2000, 256 candidates ran for seats in the House of
Representatives. In 2002, 219 candidates ran for House seats. These
are the only two times in over 80 years that any third party has contested
a majority of House seats.
- In 2000, Libertarian candidates for U.S. House
won 1.73 million votes. This count is more than any other third party in
U.S. history by raw vote totals, although not by proportion
of the electorate.
- In 2000, Massachusetts U.S. Senate candidate
Carla Howell won a record 11.9%
of the vote. Then in 2002, Michael Cloud won 19% of the vote for the other
Massachusetts seat in the U.S. Senate. (In the latter
case, the Republican candidate failed to meet ballot access requirements.)
- In 2002, Ed Thompson won 11% of the vote
for governor of Wisconsin despite being excluded
from the debates. As a result, one of the eight members of the Wisconsin
Election Board is a Libertarian. No other third party holds a seat on the
Election Board of any state.
- The Libertarian Party has run in all 50 states in four elections:
1980, 1992, 1996, and
2000. No
other third party in U.S. history has managed to run a presidential
candidate in all 50 states more than once. 50 state ballot access is so difficult that only the Democrats,
Libertarians, and Republicans are even attempting it in 2004.
- Libertarian candidates have finished third in a presidential election
twice, in 1984 and 1988. No
other current third party has ever finished third in a presidential election
more than once.
Evidence opposing the view that the Libertarian Party is the third largest
include:
- As of October 2002,
the Libertarians ranked fifth in voter registration nationally. The Constitution Party
ranked third with 317,926 registrants, next to the Greens' 274,740 and
the Libertarians' 208,456. However, most observers believe that of the 299,231
California voters affiliated with the Constitution Party, who are actually
registrants of California's American Independent
Party, nearly all registered in the belief that they were registering
as independents i.e. not associating with any political party. Also, excluding
New York (where Libertarians are not counted) and California (where the American Independent Party
skews the results), Libertarians rank third in voter registration. The Libertarians
ranked third in eleven states, the Greens ranked third in eight states, the
Constitution Party ranked third in two states, Reform ranked third in one
state, and Natural Law didn't rank third anywhere. (The total is twenty-two
because most states don't allow voters to register with third parties.)
Members of third parties often complain that the U.S. electoral system
is biased against third parties by first-past-the-post
voting and, in many states, by onerous ballot access laws. Despite their difficulties
winning elections to high offices, however, Libertarians have been credited
with helping to defeat both Democrat and Republican candidates, a charge
they do not dispute. For example, Libertarian U.S. Senate candidates
polled 3, 21, 29, and 6 times the margin of victory in Georgia (1992),
Nevada (1998), Washington (2000),
and South Dakota (2002), respectively. In these elections,
one Democrat (in Georgia) and three Republicans (in the other states) were
defeated. Critics contend, however, that to credit the Libertarians with
this outcome, one must believe that Libertarian voters would probably have
turned the election over to the loser, rather than staying home or increasing
the margin of victory. Since Libertarians are drawn from both the left and
the right and many would never vote for a Republican or a Democrat, it is
difficult to be sure how an election would have proceeded without a Libertarian
candidate. In fact, a Libertarian Party press release of January 2003 admitted
that "in the past, the LP's use of the 'spoiler effect' has been essentially
random, and often unintentional", and that only in 2002 did they make a concerted
effort to play "spoiler" in elections. This led to the defeat of the Libertarian
Party's number one target: Republican Bob Barr.
Libertarians often assert that their political positions transcend the
left or right taxonomy. In fact,
the stated platform of the Libertarian Party does differ from positions held
by both traditional "left" and "right" movements in the United States and
elsewhere. Unlike traditional "left" parties, Libertarians favor minimally
regulated, laissez-faire markets; unlike traditional "right" parties,
Libertarians favor social freedom including legalization of drugs and strong
civil liberties. Furthermore, Libertarians disagree substantially with both
the Democratic and
Republican parties,
which respectively purport to represent the center-left and center-right
in U.S. politics.
However, the party has historically had more influence on and closer ties
with the Republican Party. For example, former Republican Speaker of
the House Newt Gingrich claimed to be influenced
by Libertarian principles, and was praised by many Libertarians for attempting
to shrink government. The tendency of the American right to co-opt the language
and social critiques of Libertarians with regard to market deregulation (for
example, the frequent citing of studies by the Cato Institute) contributes to a perception of
Libertarians as right-wingers. One critic also contends that Libertarian
campaigns against Democrats tend to be more frequent and more energetic than
their campaigns against Republicans. In a 2002 South Dakota election for Senate, for example,
Libertarian candidate Kurt Evans suspended his campaign a week
before Election Day and urged voters to support Republican candidate John Thune.
On the other hand, Democrats come closer than Republicans to the Libertarian
position on civil rights. For example, the Republicans installed John Ashcroft as Attorney General
in 2001; Ashcroft was widely held to advocate massive curtailments
of civil liberties, a view that only gained currency with his actions following
the USA PATRIOT Act's passage.
The Libertarian Party has sharply attacked these curtailments of civil liberties.
The party has also made the repeal of drug prohibition laws its number one priority,
a position that puts them at odds with the Republican Party.
Conservative and liberal pundits cannot seem to agree how to place the
Libertarian Party, either. Prominent conservative Ann Coulter has accused the Libertarians of being
a single-issue party because she disagrees with them on the Drug War, while others accuse Libertarians of focusing
predominantly on issues of market regulation. Whether the Libertarian defense
of social freedom makes them more a left-wing party or their defense of economic
freedom makes them more a right-wing party or whether, as Libertarians say,
their comprehensive defense of freedom transcends the right/left taxomony,
depends on the observer's point of view.
See also: List
of political parties in the United States
University of Michigan
.
The University of Michigan was established in 1817
by the Michigan legislature, by way of a land grant that the Michigan Territory's Native Americans signed away. It has provided
a diverse student population with a diverse set of educational opportunities,
including academic and professional programs, intramural and NCAA
sports programs, and more cultural activities than most residents of Ann Arbor can exploit.
The University of Michigan is often called "The Harvard of the Midwest", a title also claimed by the
University of Chicago,
Truman State University,
and Macalaster College, among
others. In response to the comparison, Harvard is often called "The Michigan
of the East" by University students, alumni, and staff.
A condition of the treaty that forms the basis for most of the land grant
schools in Michigan was that the education of
all of the state's Native Americans would be guaranteed in perpetuity. Whether
the state's obligation has been met is a topic for debate.
The university in 2003 has 51,000 students and 5,600 faculty
in three campuses. The University of Michigan system includes the main Ann
Arbor campus as well as two others, the University of Michigan,
Dearborn and the University of Michigan,
Flint. The university claims to be the largest pre-medicine and pre-law
university in the country and to have the largest yearly research expenditure
of any university in the United States. It is one of two colleges to have
both engineering and medical schools ranked in the U.S.'s top ten. In the
1990s the University of Michigan claimed to have the largest
assemblage of Apple Macintosh computers outside
of the main factory. Michigan also has the highest tuition of any American
state school.
In 2003 a lawsuit involving the school's affirmative action admissions
policy reached the U.S. Supreme Court. President
George W. Bush took the unusual step of publicly
opposing the policy before the court issued a ruling, though the eventual
ruling was in its favor.
Famous alumni of the University of Michigan include:
- Ann Coulter, conservative author
and attorney, graduated from Michigan Law School in 1988.
- George Crumb, composer, completed his doctorate in music there in 1959
- Gerald R. Ford, 38th U.S. president,
studied economics and political science. He played center on two
national-championship American football teams and was the team's
most valuable player in 1934. He received his B. A. degree in 1935.
- Richard Gephardt, United States House
Minority Leader, graduate of UM Law School.
- David Allen Grier, actor
- James Earl Jones, actor
- Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems.
- Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber)
earned a Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of Michigan in 1967
- Lawrence Kasdan studied creative
writing and won four Hopwood Awards
- Jack Kevorkian received a medical
degree with a specialty in pathology in 1952
- Christine Lahti, actress
- Lucy Liu, actress
- Madonna won a scholarship
while in high school to study dance at the University of Michigan; she left
the university in the late 1970s
- William Mayo, co-founder of the
Mayo Clinic
- Arthur Miller, playwright, author
of Death of a Salesman,
The Crucible
- Larry Page, co-founder of Google
- Iggy Pop, rock star
- Gilda Radner, actress / comedian
- Claude E. Shannon, "father
of information theory"
- Mike Wallace, TV Journalist
- Chris Webber, NBA
star, currently with the Sacramento Kings
- Thomas and John Knoll, Co-Creators
of Adobe Photoshop
Michigan's sports teams are called the Wolverines. They participate
in the NCAA's Division I-A and in the Big Ten Conference; its
hockey program competes in the Central Collegiate
Hockey Association. The Michigan football team won the first Rose Bowl game in 1902.
The University of Michigan Health System includes three hospitals: C.S.
Mott Children's Hospital, University Hospital, and Women's Hospital, as well
as nearly 150 clinics and MCare, an HMO.
The university opened the first university-owned hospital in the United States
in 1869. The EKG, gastroscope, and Jonas Salk's polio vaccine were invented at the university.
The University of Michigan is often referred to simply as UM
and U of M. The latter term is
also used to refer to the University of Minnesota,
the University of Montana, the
University of
Missouri and the University
of Maryland. (Note, however, that Missouri is more often referred to
as UMC or Mizzou.) University of Michigan students, faculty,
and alumni are often heard to assert that only the University of Michigan
is "really" the "U of M", or that it has a better claim to that appellation
than the others have. The claim has no justification.
Cornell University
.
Cornell University, located in Ithaca, New York, is a major
research university and a member of the Ivy League. Cornell was founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell, a businessman and a pioneer in the
telegraph industry, and Andrew Dickson White,
a respected scholar. It is the land grant university of the
state of New York.
Cornell is among the most selective universities in the country, and
counts twenty-seven Nobel laureates among its affiliated faculty members and
students. In 1872, Cornell became the first major eastern institution to
admit women along with men. The campus is situated on 740 rolling acres overlooking
Lake Cayuga, and the central portion is bounded on both sides by limestone
gorges and spectacular waterfalls.
The university's 13,300 undergraduates and 6,200 graduate students come
from more than a hundred countries and all fifty states. Cornell offers graduate
degrees in approximately 100 academic and professional fields. Cornell's
professional offerings include schools of law, management (business), medicine,
and veterinary medicine.
Cornell's medical school, The Weil Medical College, and the Graduate
School of Medical Sciences are located in New York City.
The Johnson Art Museum at Cornell
was designed by I. M. Pei. Former professors include
Carl Sagan, Norman Malcolm, Vladimir Nabokov, Hans Bethe, and Richard Feynman.
The sports teams are all called "Big Red". They participate in the Ivy League and the ECAC.
January 2, 2004 -- DOWNTOWN artist James Tully is heartbroken after his holiday fling with former Details magazine sex columnist Anka Radakovich went bust. They were introduced by Radar editor Maer Roshan at Bret Easton Ellis' Christmas party and subsequently had an intense four-day affair. But when Tully mentioned that he might run into conservative commentator Ann Coulter - whom he briefly dated when she was a young lawyer at a Manhattan firm - while visiting his parents in Colorado, Radakovich's hot blood turned icy. "She just coldly decided to blow me off," Tully told us. "She hasn't returned any of my calls. I really feel kind of betrayed."
The "convert them to Christianity" comment has become one of Coulter's
most infamous statements, and is widely cited by her critics. However, her
supporters maintain that it was largely a tounge-in-cheek statement and intentionally
overzealous. "Liberals love to pretend they don't understand 
Islamophobia
