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
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