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THOUGHT OF THE MOMENT:

 

Freedom,  Prosperity and Peace...

FOREVER.

 

 

 

ANTI-WAR LIBERTARIAN IN DC - 10/4/05

Observations from September 24th

 

Dear fellow anti-war people I recently met,

 

Please allow me to humbly introduce myself, my name is Mark, I am a Libertarian, and I believe that you and I have a lot more in common than you may think.

Now I know some of you on the Left look at us Libertarians as being to the right of those right-wing, nasty-ass, conservative Republican monsters.  Thus, you may be inadvertently hostile to us or unfamiliar with our positions on various issues; we do not hold this against you.  How can I say this so confidently?  Well, I have spent time with a great many of you in 'left field' and that is what you have said.  

 

Most recently, I spoke with hundreds of you at the anti-war rally held in Washington, D.C. on September the 24th.  Last year, I spoke with a lot of you at the annual protest at Fort Benning's School of the Americas in Columbus, GA; I'll do so again at this Fall's protest.  In fact, a bunch of you at both of these events have told me you were fairly surprised that Libertarians were there supporting the anti-war movement shoulder to shoulder with you.  

 

Yes, that's right my Liberal brother and sister, there are many, many of us Libertarians who are opposed to the bloody war in Iraq.  There are many of us Libertarians, like you on the Left, who support our troops so much that we would like to see them come home alive. We would rather they come back to their families vertically rather than horizontally; we would rather they not get killed needlessly in some far off desert hell, for dubious reasons that have shifted as much as the sands over which many of these same troops travel (or sadly, traveled).    

 Libertarians, like many of you, favor a foreign policy where we don't screw around in the business of other countries and their people.  Libertarians, like many of you, don't think that having our troops in over 100 countries across the world is such a good way of treating other people on the planet.  'Do unto others as you would have others do unto you' is not just a clever cliche to us, it is a truism and just plain common sense.  To many of you that I spoke with, we could not agree more on this.  

As I made my way from last weekend's anti-war rally, I could not help but think how much, in fact, Libertarians and many Liberals have in common:

 

Does the phrase "War on Terrorism" make you as sick as the phrase "War on Drugs"? Do you think the War on Drugs is absurd, costly, ineffective, and causing the exact problems it claims to stop?  Is it humane that the two parties currently in charge prohibit your sick family member or friend access to medical marijuana?  This is not Liberal or Conservative, this is cruel, wrong, and unconscionable for both parties.  Might our government's latest War on Terrorism have similar negative results making the problem of terrorism worse for us?  Will the War on Terrorism become an even larger government failure than the obvious failure on the War on Drugs?  

 

My dear Liberal, anti-war friends, as I hope you can see from my thoughts above, you and many Libertarians have far more in common than we have differences.  Like you, we agree that freedom of speech exists wherever we are standing.  Like you, we do not support a draft.  Like you, we believe that anyone should be able to marry, regardless of sex, as who you marry is your choice. Like you, we feel that abortion is an individual choice.  On so many issues, we can't agree more with all of you.  Ultimately, like you, we do not believe that the use of force or the threat of it to solve any political or social goal is justified, no matter how many reasons we are given.

 

How interesting that Ron Paul, our incognito Libertarian in Congress, and Dennis Kucinich have recently joined forces to sponsor a bill (H.J. Res. 55) calling for an official Iraq Exit Strategy.  

 

With much love and respect.  

 

Mark Augustyn

  

Mark Augustyn is a 36-year old living in Atlanta, Georgia. He is the founder of www.thinkLIBERTARIAN.com , the Libertarian Yellow Pages, and Hatchet Man Presents a grassroots-oriented marketing company.  Valedictorian of the 1993 University of Connecticut School Of Business, he has spent over a decade capitalizing on his academic success by being a musician, along with working in and around the music and entertainment industries. His passions, in no particular order, include golf, his motorcycle, cooking, political activism, and beautiful women.  

 

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