THOMPSON PERFORMS WITHOUT A NET

It's hard to take a purely libertarian stand because of how far we have
come from the concept of liberty and toward the concept of the benevolent,
caring central government.

Take the helmet law, for example. For a libertarian it's a no-brainer to
oppose a law that would require a motorcyclist to strap on a helmet. Talk
about your intrusion from the nanny government ...!

But this assumes many things, first and foremost that cyclists will
exercise common sense and responsibility for their own safety. Some
obviously won't and will do severe damage to their heads and bodies.

Some of those people will be uninsured, or worse, some will have insurance
companies with more of an eye on the bottom line than actually taking care
of their clients' medical bills.

Who will care for these people? Is it the government's responsibility to
provide a "safety net"? No, it isn't, quoth we libertarians, but the
medical and charitable industries have become so accustomed to the nanny
government that the argument is over how big the taxpayer-financed safety
net should be, not whether it should exist.

It's also not the government's job to create a safety net for big
corporations or confiscate a third to a half of our income to finance the
personal and corporate safety nets.

But to suggest that the government's sole responsibility is to protect our
shores and stay out of citizens' way is to open yourself to being called a
heartless son of a troglodyte.

The thought occurs as I listen to Ed Thompson, the now-official Libertarian
Party candidate for governor, talk about the decriminalization of
marijuana, especially for medical purposes.

"I absolutely am against the use of drugs, but what people do in the
privacy of their homes is their own business," Thompson told me. "There are
people in prison for drugs who got worse sentences than robbers and burglars."

Reduce the penalties and we will need fewer cells to house people who are
hurting no one but themselves. The logic is impeccable, but ...

Then I sit in the courtroom listening to the testimony about two men who
allegedly started their day last summer by planning to hold up another man
who kept a lot of cash - supposedly from the sale of controlled substances
- - in his apartment.

By the end of the day two other men were dead of gunshot wounds. No one
deserves to die like that - but how many people, hearing the story, shrug
their shoulders and think "Well, it's only a couple of drug dealers"?

And the way politics goes, how do you support the decriminalization of
marijuana without being accused of condoning the violence and other related
crimes that tend to accompany drug abuse?

The answer, of course, is that we should focus on punishing the killers and
the robbers and burglars, not the nonviolent offenders, just as you should
punish those who commit crimes with guns rather than the law-abiding gun
owners.

Thompson's main themes are that Wisconsin's taxes are too high, the state
budget is a mess and the two major parties are so busy planning dirty
tricks on each other that they don't have the time or inclination to make
serious reforms. They are compelling arguments.

He also makes sense talking about the deregulation of personal behavior.
Freedom and liberty carry responsibility for one's own actions. The
government should neither hinder a person's right to make his own decisions
nor provide a safety net for bad decisions, while ensuring that those who
infringe on other people's rights and safety are punished.

But the concept of true liberty is so foreign in contemporary politics that
Thompson will have to work hard to drive his message home in a way people
can understand it through the white noise of routine rhetoric. So far,
though, he seems up to the task.