First Interview With the Local Newspaper Today

Statement

First interview with the local newspaper today. Among the topics I remember discussing:

Immigration Policy

We cannot have one until we secure our borders. We do that in Korea, we did it during the cold war in Europe, we're doing that in Iraq, so why not here? I don't know how we do that, but it's clear we can when we really want to.

The War

It's making us far less secure, bankrupting our economy, and whatever good is coming from it has not been proven to be worth the cost; we have other needs. The government cannot do everything it wants to do, and does very little, if anything, well or efficiently at all. There are better ways to spend the estimated $3,000,000,000,000.00 ($3 trillion) dollars that would leave us far more secure and economically stable.

Don't Libertarians believe in the elimination of all laws?

Absolutely not! The primary role of the Federal Government is to pass and enforce laws that serve to protect individual liberty, to secure individual rights over mob rule, to provide courts and a national defense. The Bill of Rights is a great example of the kind of laws Libertarians wholeheartedly support.

Why are you running?

To increase the awareness of Libertarian ideals. I was especially inspired by Dr. Ron Paul's campaign in the Republican Party. Last week I met with a couple of Democrats in the state party here in Utah, one of whom, like me, had voted for Ed Clark when he ran as a Libertarian for President in 1980. Thanks to the thousands of Libertarian candidates who have run since the founding of the LP in 1971, Libertarian ideals have found their way into the mainstream political debate.

The Second Amendment

As a full-time, tenured college professor for over 20 years, I wish even one law abiding student or faculty member at any of the universities where recent mass killings have occurred had taken out the murderer immediately. The ideal of a gun free zone is certainly appealing, but why do we assume government can make these kinds of laws real? especially in the face of even a single determined criminal? The illusion that a law alone can create a weapon-free, gun-free, crime-free zone, is fantasy, puts more people at risk, and has tragically been shown time and again does more harm than good.

NASA

One of the least-objectionable federal spending projects, returns some technological value, but it would have been far better to have gone to the moon based on education, persuasion and voluntary contributions.

Disclosure

If we all could see ourselves as one people, on one planet -- the way any ET visitor would surely see us, the way Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William Anders in Apollo 8 first saw us, it would transform everything, especially the way we treat each other. If we knew we were being watched by a far more advanced intelligence, if we knew there was a greater community out there waiting for us to grow up enough to join it, how would that change our politics?

I've put up a website to encourage this way of thinking: www.thepeopleofearthapologize.com, and I'll be attending the exopolitics conference in Washington, DC next month.

I believe there is incontrovertible evidence that we are not alone in the Universe. Like Barry Goldwater, Jimmy Carter, Bill Richardson, and Dr. Ed Mitchell, I call on our Government to open its ET files now. I believe I'm in rather good company on this issue.

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