The basic tenet of the Libertarian Party is that no organization or person is entitled to initiate or to threaten force in order to interfere with the rights of the individual. Government itself cannot legitimately interfere with your rights as an individual.
The basic libertarian tenet underlies the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution as well as the Declaration of Independence. The political philosophy espoused by the majority of the signatories to these fundamental documents of our nation was libertarianism.
Libertarians are the live-and-let-live political party. We believe that you and you alone have the right to make the choices, both about what you will do with your own wealth and property, and also concerning how you will conduct your personal life and deal with your own body.
Donald Silberger's views are representative of those of his running mate, Chris Garvey, a patent attorney and engineer from Suffolk County, who is the Libertarian candidate for Governor of New York.
The principal purpose of his campaign is to redefine in the public mind the idea of individual liberty. He attempts this by a silhouetting method: He defines liberty by spotlighting where it is most egregiously absent.
The Drug War is the most obvious abrogation of liberty in our country. It directly infringes our constitutional rights. But it is furthermore conducive to additional violations of the Bill of Rights. Impractical, dishonest, and destructive in its effects, it fails in its alleged aim.
Drug abuse and the harm caused by drugs in our community have increased in tandem with, and in consequence of, every escalation of the Drug War.
A dangerous offshoot of the War on Drugs is the quite recent barrage of propaganda and proposed bills aimed at curbing firearms ownership by civilians. One linkage resides in the predictable gun battles over sales turf for banned drugs in America's impoverished urban areas.
It is vital for the citizen of a free nation to retain the individual Right to Keep and Bear Arms, for the defense of self and family.
This RKBA is a foundation stone, and a sine qua non, of liberty in our American republic. Every potential tyrant begins the insinuation of his tyranny with an attempt to disarm the populace. Thus, every official who acts so as to disarm our citizenry is suspect and should be spurned.
The New York State Constitution, like the United States Constitution, does not offer a formal procedure for initiative and referendum, whereby citizens can give their direct opinion about an *issue*. We elect representatives who often fail to represent our true views. The popularity or opinion polls are under the control of the agencies which promote them and which publicize or conceal their results.
At no time in the 84 years since the passage of America's first drug law, the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914, have Americans ever been empowered to express their views about the so-called "anti-drug" laws.
It is high time that we citizens stage a referendum on this question, whether the machinery for putting a referendum on the ballot exists or whether this machinery fails to exist. Accordingly, Donald Silberger asks all readers to take note that his candidacy is a single-issue one:
DONALD SILBERGER'S CANDIDACY FOR
LT. GOVERNOR IS A REFERENDUM
AGAINST THE WAR ON DRUGS.
There are, of course, many other issues. If there were a significant probability of his election to the office of Lieutenant Governor, he would touch upon such other issues as campaign reform, taxation, and the buying of votes by saddling our descendants with today's mounting debt.
But there is insufficient money backing his candidacy to enable him to make a broad sweep of such issues. Therefore, he confines himself to the cry he makes, repeatedly, for the restoration of liberty in New York State.
If you share our opposition to the emergence in our land of a prison state within a police state, then please do not waste your vote. THE ONLY PARTY WHICH CONSISTENTLY SUPPORTS INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY IS THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY.
The National Libertarian Party can be contacted via each of these two telephone numbers: 1-800-682-1776 and 1-800-ELECT-US
Checks in support of his campaign should be made out to Silberger for LtGovernor98, and sent to the campaign treasurer, Dave Harnett, 234 Cream Street, Poughkeepsie, NY 12601.
Donald Silberger can be contacted by phoning his home at 914-255-8819, or by email at <donsilbs@mhv.net>, or by writing him at P.O.Box 1080, New Paltz, NY 12561-1080.
Donald Silberger, Ph.D., is a 68-year-old mathematics professor at SUNY New Paltz, where he directs the graduate program in mathematics. He writes mathematics, poetry, fiction, and political philosophy.
Although his present candidacy is his first campaign for election, he has been a lifelong radical: a heterosexual proponent of homosexual rights and of personal freedom from the age of 18; a lifelong antagonist of racism and sexism; a proponent of legalized abortion from the age of 20; an activist in civil rights, free speech, and anti-war efforts of the '60s and '70s; an outspoken critic of the US Government's action related to the Waco Massacre of 1993; and a critic of all those who would censor the internet, or intrude upon privacy, for whatever reason.
A member for ten years of the Libertarian Party, he has devoted eight years to endeavors to unify the movements against drug prohibitionism and for RKBA. His candidacy is aimed at advancing that natural synthesis.