Sorry, I did not intend to be vague. If you think I was vague, then you’re probably not the only one. So thank you for this response! I will try to clear things up by answering your questions. But first, please know that Liberation Day is this publication, but it is also essentially the topic of a book I’m in the process of writing, so it is not easy to sum up in one article.
You said:
So you want less government and more freedom?
Yes, I do want those two things. The first and most pressing goal of Liberation Day is to get the Federal Government back within its Constitutional limits. So I will focus on the Federal Government in these responses. By getting less Federal Government, you get one or two specific areas of more freedom. One area is personal freedom, and the other area is state government freedom, which is freedom for the fifty state governments to govern as they see fit. Here are just a few examples. The Depart of Education is unconstitutional. Liberation Day would get rid of it which would make the state governments more free to provide education how they see fit, and not according to the dictates of the central government. Also, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives under the Department of Justice is unconstitutional. Liberation Day would get rid of it which would make citizens more free to own and use alcohol, tobacco, firearms, and explosives while those items would still be regulated by the state governments as those governments see fit to regulate them. The Drug Enforcement Administration, also under the Justice Department, is also totally unconstitutional. Liberation Day would get rid of it which would free millions of Americans, in states where certain drugs are legal, to legally use certain drugs. People would be free to use the drugs, whereas before it was (unconstitutionally) illegal to use them according to the Federal Government. There are, unfortunately, dozens of additional examples. There are so many example of where there Constitutionally should be less Federal Government, and if there were less, we’d be more free. There are so many examples because the Federal Government has trespassed the limits of the Constitution more than perhaps any of the founders of this nation imagined was possible. The Federal Government is trespassing the Constitution more and more, and more relentlessly, almost on a daily basis. We got an average of 266 PAGES of Federal regulation EACH DAY in 2016. My best guess is that at least 99% of those regulations are totally unconstitutional. The insanity must stop. (in fact, any “regulation”, or anything else written by anyone other than Congress, at a Federal level, is not a law or a regulation at all, because according to the Constitution only Congress has the power to pass law, so that’s another reason why most of this stuff is unconstitutional)
Please give examples of what you envision not some broad idea of freedom.
I envision freedom from the Federal Government according to the above examples, and there are many more examples I could give. I estimate that about 21% of Federal spending, at most, is Constitutional. That’s because this chart shows that Military, Veteran’s Benefits, and International Affairs adds up to 21% of Federal spending. Essentially every other penny spent in those other categories is unconstitutional, except “Interest on Debt”. But we’d never have that debt if we didn’t get into all of these unconstitutional areas to begin with. And our unconstitutional wars, such as our undeclared wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq (twice), and Afghanistan add a lot of spending to those Military and Veteran’s Benefits categories that should have never been there. Wars undeclared by Congress are unconstitutional because according to the Constitution Congress must declare war.
All of this to say, we’d be more free because we wouldn’t be saddling our future generations with crushing debt, and we’d be more free because income taxes would be substantially lowered because our Federal Government would be strictly limited according to the Constitution, and it wouldn’t need nearly as much revenue to support its much smaller footprint. When income taxes are lower, you are more free. In particular, if you’re single and make $50,000 a year, you’d now pay $5,547 in taxes per year, just for Federal income tax. And there’s another $3,825 you’d pay for Social Security and Medicare taxes, just to be clear. Just for Federal income tax, you’re looking at over 11% of your income going to the Federal government: that goes up to 39.6% in the highest tax bracket. Significantly lowering the income tax burden would leave millions of American families free to save, invest, or spend thousands of more additional dollars, per family, each year. Liberation Day would make that happen.
Freedom can mean so many different things to different people.
True.
Tell me what does it mean to a libertarian?
To me, being a libertarian means something, and to others it might mean something else. To me libertarian means being all about freedom, especially freedom from government. Because of this, I believe that the best government is the one that governs the least. To others being a libertarian might mean more freedom and less government, but to a lesser degree. To others it might mean more freedom and less government, but to a greater degree, such as anarcho-capitalists, who I see as wanting lots of freedom and absolutely zero government. I guess a general definition of a libertarian would be as follows: “Someone who thinks freedom is a positive thing and wants to see a lot more freedom for them self, their neighbors, and the entire world; but especially, they want freedom from government, at least in certain areas.”
Start with less taxes. Than who pays for our infrastructure and our military?
Yes, please let’s have less taxes. If the Federal Government imposes less taxes, then the states would pay for our infrastructure; they would also pay for, to some extent, our military, through militias. The Federal Government is allowed to have a Navy, and it’s allowed to have an Army during wartime, according to the Constitution. So we’ll still have some Federal taxes for that. But most Federal spending is various types of welfare. Because this spending is unconstitutional, the people and/or the states would need to take care of those things. The states might even need to raise taxes somewhat. However, I would bet every penny that I own that, on average, the states alone (if we got the Federal Government completely out of these unconstitutional areas) would spend less on these Federally unconstitutional things than the states and the Federal Government combined are spending on these things right now, because the closer government is to the governed, the more efficient it tends to be. A bureaucrat in DC is much less sensitive to the price of a road or a room at a nursing home in Rhode Island than the bureaucrat in Rhode Island, who is much more sensitive to price, because she will have to answer to her next door neighbors if she overspends.
Maybe I’m not seeing the big picture here, but I’m willing to hear you out.
Hopefully you see a small slice of the big picture now. I hope the rest of the details will come soon, ultimately with my book. But for now here’s a brief overview of Libertarianism that may help somewhat: https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/key-concepts-libertarianism
Please let me know if you have any more questions, or if I can clarify anything at all. Thanks!
