Vision for Nebraska
About us:
Our immediate mission is to maximize liberty for the residents of Lancaster County, Nebraska. Being an affiliate of the Libertarian Party of Nebraska, we also put our efforts into maximizing liberty more broadly for the residents of Nebraska.
Politics being downstream from ideology, our most important goal is a long-term one---the spreading of libertarian philosophy, as we consider it to be both the most moral *and* the most practically effective system for the well-being of everyone. The first aspect has been made abundantly clear to us by various philosophical works such as those by Murray Rothbard, Friedrich Hayek, Thomas Jefferson, John Locke, and Lysander Spooner, just to name a few. The second aspect has been made evident by various economic works by the Austrian economists such as, (again) Murray Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises, Eugen von Boehm-Bawerk, and Carl Menger.
That said, our immediate short-term goals are just as important: expanding liberty and reducing the encroachment of the government through political action. Because contemporary politics adapts itself to the already prevailing political ideologies---the latter being only alterable over time---we must “get our hands dirty” as they say, in order to maximize liberty in the short term. To this end, we use all the tools at our disposal, electoral politics, pressuring senators and local politicians, informing the public, and collaborating with groups and legislators with whom we have common objectives.
We emphasize that our party, the Lancaster Country Libertarian Party, does not exist solely for its own sake or even for just winning elections. It is simply a vehicle to carry out the most important objective to us as libertarians---to advance individual liberty in our locality, our state, our country, and our planet, in that order.
Libertarian Philosophy:
At the core of a libertarian’s beliefs is what is commonly referred to as the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP), which states that nobody may commit an act of aggression against another or their property. Implied in the statement is that all other acts are permitted, including responding in self-defense against acts of aggression. From the NAP all the other beliefs of libertarians, such as those mentioned above, can be deduced.
As it may have been evident from above, the government is the biggest violator of the NAP, especially at the federal level in the United States. Thus every libertarian always wants the government, at every level, to be smaller than it currently is. The desired degree of minimization will vary from one individual libertarian to another, but broadly speaking there are two categories of libertarians, the minarchist and the anarcho-capitalist.
The minarchist believes in a very small government only relegated to protecting the core rights of every individual, and thus what set of roles and to what extent such a government should play will differ between individual minarchists. Typically, the list of roles includes the following: military defense, law enforcement, and a court system to enforce contracts.
An anarcho-capitalist (first coined by Murray Rothbard) takes the NAP to its logical conclusion and considers the ideal size of government to be zero. The existence of government itself is considered a violation of the NAP, as it cannot exist without aggression. Thus an anarcho-capitalist advocates for a purely voluntary society, wherein nobody is forced to act on anybody else’s behalf, truly maximizing individual liberty. Contrary to popular belief, this does not imply a complete lack of order (chaos), as much order in society already spontaneously occurs in various forms through voluntary interactions, such as church communities, companies, sports organizations, industrial standardization, and even entertainment activities such as concerts, sporting events, and production of films, etc., just to name a few examples. An anarcho-capitalist believes that the government roles a minarchist desires will be provided by private companies, for as long as there is a demand for a service and a way to make a living providing such a service, it will happen naturally.
Whether you’re a minarchist or an anarcho-capitalist, we have still have this in common. The government at all levels is far too big, we need to make it smaller for everyone’s well-being.
