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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 11, 1990)
The Battalion OPINION 2 The I S Thur Thursday, October 11,1990 Opinion Page Editor Ellen Hobbs 845-331 Pi St Libertarians offer alternative to partisan baloney As election time rolls around, we are once again treated to the age-old saga of the repocrats and the demopublicans, arguing over each other’s make-up and personal lives; this time to a background symphony of deception, delay and denial over the budget crisis. The public wearily awaits another opportunity to stand in line at the polling booth and choose between people who mainly differ on which ridiculous program gets your (future) tax dollars. In the modern world, we have come to view government action as the solution to all of the problems we face. Slipping into a mire of irresponsibility, we find our political conflicts reduced to one group of people trying to get the government to force something on another group, asking a third group to pay for it. If you feel like you don’t have a real choice, read on. There’s a party that offers a serious, considered alternative to business as usual. The Libertarians favor a different approach. Instead of being a conglomeration of special interest groups, this party bases its positions on a €>WO THE RECCpP NEW consistent philosophical approach. The starting point could be stated simply; government 6/the people means, if anything, that government should not be in the business of forcing people to do things; rather, it s'.o’ild protect their lives, liberty and property. If I don’t have a right to barge into my neighbor’s house with a gun to stop him from having oral sex with his wife (or anyone else), then neither does the state of Georgia. If I don’t have a right to take my neighbor’s property just because I think he makes too much then neither does the government. The point is that you and I are the government. If we misuse its power against our fellow citizens we hurt ourselves as well. idea, but freedom has become extremely unpopular in the United States, among both “liberals” and “conservatives.” Many people have forgotten that there is no magic genie in Washington who hands out money. That money comes from you and me. When we authorize our government to take so much from us, it is virtually guaranteed that we will soon be fighting over how much to take from each other. Economics. Government may requiti business to operate honestly, and enforce liability (each person is responsible for their actions), but it should not tell businesses how to operate, and may not set wages or prices. Secret Police Forces. The CIA, FBI counterintelligence operations, and NSA should be abolished. They haven; place in a free society. Citizens should be able to live without their governme® spying on them; f urthermore the CIA and NSA presently operate completek outside the law. No one is outside the law. “National security” (read “government security”) does notjustifi violating citizens’ rights. Enough political philosophy. Where do libertarians stand on issues? Foreign policy. While the two major parties are falling over each other to send American young people to Saudi Arabia (where we can be almost sure that many of them will die), libertarians beleive we should just say no. If the major oil companies want to fight a war over oil, let them pay for it themselves. Personal choices. The government has no business telling people what they may eat, drink, smoke, ingest, inject or own, what drugs or medical procedures they choose, what kind of sexual relations they may have, what to think, read, hear or watch, what clubs they may belong to, what they say or believe, or how they worship or teach their children. Period. This is a very simple These are but a few of the issues where the major parties are in partialor complete agreement; the Libertarians offer a real alternative. They believe that excessive government fosters irresponsibility, lethargy, and (eventually) poverty from dedining economic power. They support the rights of everyone to choose how to list their life, as long as each respects the rights of others in turn. Jeff Daiell is the Libertarian candidate for governor this November 1 don’t know Mr. Daiell, but I don’t need to — since he’s a Libertarian, 1 know what he stands for. If youaresid of the same old song and dance, andart thinking of staying home on the 6th, please don’t. Check out the Libertarians. Vote for some peoplewho mean what they say. For once. Jeff Farmer is a graduate student ii\ mathematics. Steps must be taken to end rape of environment Mother is being raped and plundered. Her name is Earth and her children (the animals, the plants, the humans) are dying at a sinister rate. The children feed off the Mother, and the Mother is being poisoned. The killing of her children even seems to be accelerating. The situation is sickly; the details are gross and alarming. There is an ozone hole over Antarctica the size of the United States, and it’s growing every day. Even if the production of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs — the main culprit in the destruction of the ozone) stopped today, the disintegration of the ozone would continue for several years. The Earth is becoming hotter everyday as the result of air pollution and forest and plant destruction. This is called global warming or the greenhouse effect. George Bush, on the campaign stump, vowed that the greenhouse effect would meet the “White-House effect,” but that phrase seems to have met the same fate as “no new taxes.” The rainforests are being mowed down as if they were some obnoxious, overgrown global lawn, not the cornucopia of life that they really are. As rainforests are turning into deserts, 1,000 species are becoming extinct every year, and the indigenous peoples that live in the rainforests are systematically being killed. Our food, drinking water, rivers, lakes, oceans, air, ground, our unborn babies and our bodies are being filled with toxic chemicals and radioactive substances. T he problems of the environment intensify upon entering the big cities Irwin Tang , <v j| jm Columnist and the inner cities. In fact, 75 percent of all toxic dumping in America occurs in minority and poor neighborhoods (which are predominantly located in large cities). But we must not simply dwell on the diren^ss of the situation. We, the humans, must look for solutions to clean up the mess we’ve made. The fight for an inhabitable earth must occur in all theaters of possible change: at home, at the voting booth, at the supermarket, everywhere. Here is a list of what can be done. First, we can live our everyday lives in an environmental manner. Some of the less obvious things we can do are becoming vegetarian, stop using styrofoam, conserving energy in all ways possible, and so on. For more information, read a book or ask your friendly neighborhood environmentalist. Mindless American consumerism helped to create the environmental catastrophe, but conscious and caring American purchasing can help solve the problem. The boycott is the most powerful consumer tool. The United Farm Workers is currently calling for a boycott of grapes. The people who work in the grape vineyards of California are exposed to toxic pesticides. The workers and the people living around the vineyards suffer a cancer rate several times that of the American population as a whole. Just taking a fraction of the profits away from the vineyard owners will cause them to quit the use of toxic pesticides. Then there are protests, demonstrations and educating the public. These are all regularly used by activists. But simply living green and doing green activism is not enough. We must restructure the way our democracy and our society works. In the most basic terms, Big Business has too much control over our lives. Big Business owns our politicians. It takes a lot of money to win an election these days, and that money is available from political action committees (PAC’s). Big Business uses PAC’s to buy off our politicians. It’s time to abolish PAG funding of political races and limit the amount that can be spent on a race. Non-millionaires should be able to afford to run for office. Big Business controls our media and our entertainment. Only a handful of corporations control most of the important newspapers, magazines, books, broadcast stations, movies, recordings and videocassettes. Our children are being raised by the big corporations with the pop culture that they manufacture and sell through controlling America’s TV screens. And if the same corporation that owns your local newspaper owns huge amounts of Exxon stock, how will they report the Valdez disaster? We must pay attention to our media sources and support alternative news sources that do not have conflicting interests or are trying to “sell” news. Finally, Big Business controls our resources and our capital. Not only do they dump and spew their toxic waste in American cities and countrysides, they also export toxic waste to the Third World, dumping it on unsuspecting peasants. You can’t trust Big Business. Let’s keep government on their backs. Regulate. Enforce. Make them pay for their messes. Send the corporate killer to prison just like you send the Ted Bundy’s to prison. Building a plant lb causes the neighborhood kids to gel cancer and die is murder. T he Earth has not become a corapte wasteland yet. Not everything is extremely poisonous yet. There aresti a f ew trees and some ozone left. Lets get Big Business off our backs and wc for a brave, green world. Irwin Tang is a junior political scm major. Mail Call Slocum says come to Houston, 12th Man EDITOR: First of all, I would like to thank the T exas A&M student body — the Man, for the outstanding support they have shown over the years at games. We have won 21 of the last 22 Southwest Gonference games played at Field, thanks in a large part to the 12th Man. Included in this streak was alt- 13 victory over the Houston Cougars last season. The crowd noise added pressure to the Cougars' of fense and really pumped our players up. This Saturday we face the Houston Cougars again, but this time in theAs' trodome. We have a large group of former students in the Houston area, and they should turn out for the game; but we really need the help of the student body, the true 12th Man, to help make the game Saturday another “home game for the Texas A&M Aggies. The Houston athletic department gave us 10,000 tickets for the game The 12th Man Foundation used 4,200 tickets, which leaves more than 5,000 tickets for the Aggies at our athletic ticket office. T he Astrodome seats and I would like to think we can outnumber the Houston fans. T here is no live television for this game, which will have a major bearing on the race in the Sout hwest Conf erence and who will play in Dallas on Year’s Day in the Cotton Bowl. It’s been two years since the Aggies have played in Dallas, and I think it’s time to make a return trip. It all starts week in Houston. I hope to see you all there. R.C. Slocum Head football coach The Battalion (USPS 045 360) Member of Texas Press Association Southwest Journalism Conference The Battalion Editorial Board Cindy McMillian, Editor Timm Doolen, Managing Editor Ellen Hobbs, Opinion Page Editor Holly Becka, City Editor Kathy Cox, Kristin North, News Editors Nadja Sabawala, Sports Editor Eric Roalson, Art Director Lisa Ann Robertson, Lifestyles Editor Editorial Policy The Battalion is a non-profit, self-sup porting newspaper operated as a commu nity service to Texas A&M and Bryan- College Station. Opinions expressed in The Battalion are those of the editorial board or the au thor, and do not necessarily represent the opinions of Texas A&M administrators, faculty or the Board of Regents. The Battalion is published Monday through Friday during Texas A&M regu lar semesters, except for holiday and ex amination periods. Newsroom: 845-3313. Mail subscriptions are $20 per semes ter, $40 per school year and $50 per full year: 845-2611. 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