Obviously, in order for me to be as perfectly clear as possible regarding the lens or filter through which I view "Stuff" I should try to provide some background by referring to the writings of others of like mind. In order to do so I've spent some time locating and reading articles on the World Wide Web in order to compare my view with those who profess to be Libertarians. This page is probably going to be more or less continually under construction as I find the time and inclination to add to it.

For a discourse on the various schools of libertarianism as it relates to political philosophy I've found the information at Wikipedia most enlightening. In reading this information I find that I am probably most closely aligned with those whose philosophy is identified by the term minarchism.

Prior to our War of Independence a number of flags were devised consistent with prevailing notion that we were being mistreated as individuals because we lived in "the Colonies". Rattlesnakes appeared in many of them of which the most famous was the "Gadsden flag" became the most famous as a symbol of our independence and freedom.  I suggest that its resurrection at this time of our rapidly diminishing freedoms may be appropriate.

With regard to the United States of America I believe:

1. That our "Founding Fathers" had no intention of creating a "democracy". In fact, they were quite strongly opposed to that notion. I base my belief on the following:
   • The word "democracy" does not appear either in the Declaration of Independence or The United States Constitution. Instead, Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution guarantees "to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government."  In fact, a democracy is subject to the tyranny-of-the-majority so feared by 'liberals' and Democrats. In all its parts, especially in the first ten amendments to our constitution's body, its drafters clearly indicate their fear that the government they were forming might try to usurp individual freedoms they wished individual citizens to be able to keep for themselves. They tried to protect us from that eventuality.
   • James Madison, 4th president of the United States and one of the 'framers' of its Constitution wrote "democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and conflict; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths."
   • The Founding Fathers were well aware of the inconsistency between their declarations of "inalienable rights" and our practice of slavery but they settled for the 'good' rather than to bow to the 'tyranny of the perfect' in order to remove the evil of our subservience to England. They expected to be able to remove that inconsistency in the years to come. I submit the following as evidence for my assertion:
     
     "I believe a time will come when an opportunity will be offered to abolish this lamentable evil." Patrick Henry, Jan. 18, 1773;
     
     "[The Convention] thought it wrong to admit in the Constitution the idea that there could be property in men." James Madison, Records of the Convention, Aug. 25 1787;
     
     There is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it." George Washington, Apr. 12, 1786.
      
2. That, unfortunately, the "Founding Fathers" and the ratifiers of the Constitution never foresaw the invention of the cotton gin in 1794. That seemingly innocent invention turned legalized slavery into the foundation of a society whose entire being rested on the policy that permitted legalized slavery in certain states whose entire economy depended on the existence of very cheap labor. Could legalized slavery have been eliminated by the application of technological advances? Over time, perhaps, but no longer as soon as initially envisioned by the framers of the Constitution.
3. That the War Between the States was fought not to free slaves but to settle the question of supremacy between those who wished to keep it legal in their states in order to preserve their peculiar needs and wants and those who wished to move supremacy to the federal government so as to advance their own agenda - abolition. The unfinished business of the incompatibility between our declaration of "inalienable rights" and our deplorable practice of legalized slavery was merely the emotionally charged agenda item left over from the founding of the Union that ignited the revolution that shifted supreme power from individual states to the federal government. Its result was to enable the process of change from the republic designed by our founders to the 'democracy' we have today.
4. That even after the "Civil War" was over states retained much of their self determination until the confluence of the advent of the theories of collectivism that emerged during and after WW I, the "Great Depression",  and the advent of WW II. That period of turmoil so upset our feeling of security that Americans willingly turned over much of their individual freedom to the federal government that discovered compassion as one of its obligations.
    (See Economics for Idiots and Liberty)
5. That the result of this sequence of events is the ever expanding, expensive and oppressive bureaucracy that exists in our capitol today. It is an insatiable, insular society that constantly increases its intrusion in all aspects of our daily lives aided and abetted by a vast cadre of diverse individuals and groups that work tirelessly to enlist its aid in forcing their own agendas on others thereby furthering their aims.
6. That a return to the more minarchistic libertarian society intended by our founders may no longer be possible without a major, perhaps bloody, conflict. At present I can foresee no issue so emotionally charged that it might precipitate such an event.

George Will has written "When important ideas are forgotten by a republic, the forgetting of them is the reason why the republic lists dangerously in one direction or another". It is obvious to me that since the time of the Great Depression we have listed evermore toward statism and socialism by accepting the premise that the Federal Government was intended to be or should be  "compassionate". It is my contention that the people of the United States of America have forgotten the fundamental principles of liberty and freedom that fired our ancestors to settle this land and to create a government of, by and for the people. I contend that in this time (2000) we are no longer a republic. We are governed by a political class that is almost entirely divorced from the will of the people it governs (as evidenced by the fact that it simply refuses to address issues of importance to a majority of us) and that it is operating in harmony with an oligarchy. I believe that, as Milton Friedman wrote, “(t)he most unresolved problem of the day is precisely the problem that concerned the founders of this nation: how to limit the scope and power of government. Tyranny, restrictions on human freedom, come primarily from governmental restrictions that we ourselves have [allowed to be] set up.” Much of this problem we could yet correct by effectively challenging and reversing some of the more egregious interpretations by the Supreme Court of the principles embodied in our Constitution.

I believe that we can, over time, return our country to something more related to the vision held by our founders. I believe there are three fundamental changes to current thinking and behavior that must all be made to achieve that result:

1. The political class that exists in our federal government must be dissolved. To do this some form of term limits must be passed into law, probably by an amendment to the Constitution. I believe, further, that this can only be achieved via a convention called for by the legislatures of two-thirds of the states as provided for in that Constitution. Any other route cannot succeed.
2. I believe that the currently held view of the limitless, unchecked power of the federal government to tax and spend given to it by present interpretations of the intent of the "general welfare clause", must be reigned in through a revisiting of the Supreme Court decisions that validated today's process. There must be a better definition of what constitutes an expenditure valid under that clause against which congressionally mandated expenditures must be vetted.
3. I believe that the oligarchy of the Supreme Court must be eliminated by reversing the Court's self approved role under the "substantive due process" doctrine. The Court must be held to a higher standard in deciding what issues are relevant to its role as defined in the Constitution. Again, this change may require an amendment to the Constitution and, given the political class situation that exists today such an amendment can only come about as the result of a states convention.

In summary, the 'fix' requires that state legislatures take up the question, in its broadest sense, of whether or not this country is to be a federal republic. Today it is not. The walls around the power of the federal government that our founders tried to build to limit it to activities not compatible with individual state governments have been breached in many places. Only the states can take back what has been taken away from them, if they want to.