Give Me Your Wallets!

 

Address by Libertarianz candidate Susan Ryder to the National Council of Women’s candidate meeting, Manukau, 6 September, 2005

 

Good evening ladies & gentlemen.

 

You know what?  Before we start I’d like you to give me your wallets please.  I want your money because you can’t be trusted with it.  Well, what do you know?  Nobody seems to want to hand over their money!

 

And you’d be dead right.  It’s your money.  You earned it.  And you’re entitled to keep every darn cent.  Isn’t it strange how we’re taught as kids, that it’s wrong to take what doesn’t belong to us … and yet as adults, we let the govt do just that. 

 

I represent the Libertarianz Party.  You may not have heard of us because we’re relatively new.  But my goodness, do we differ.

 

There are 20 parties this election.  19 of them think it’s ok to help themselves to your money.  Worse, they then use that money to do two things:

 

Firstly they keep a heap for themselves and then they play despicable games with the rest.  Let me come back to that in a minute.

 

Our philosophy is very simple:  we stand for more freedom and less govt.  In other words:  you mind your business and I’ll mind mine.

 

In a truly free society the only laws are those that rightly prohibit the use of force and fraud and respect contracts that have been made voluntarily.  You cannot act forcefully or fraudulently toward others.  That requirement should include the state and its agents.

 

To that end we recognise that tax is theft.  Because that money, YOUR money, is then used to blatantly vote-buy.  It doesn’t matter which of this lot is in power, it’s used to buy votes.  It’s a wonder Michael Cullen hasn’t buggered his wrist lately, he’s been writing so many cheques.

 

The socialists will tell you that they need to provide certain services, which is their justification for stealing all that money.  Bollocks!  Private enterprise has shown that it can run hospitals, schools and even prisons better than the state can ever hope to.  More efficiently, more effectively – and in the case of our hospitals, vastly cleaner.  Ask yourself this:  if you get sick tomorrow, short of an accident or emergency, who really believes there’s a public bed for them?  Forget it.  You’ll be dead before you get the call.  Which is probably what they want .. I guess there’s nothing like death to improve the look of the waiting lists.

 

Hospital bed or not, you’re still forced to pay for it.  That’s exactly what the govt makes you do.  Pay for services you haven’t asked for - and would possibly never get, even if you did need them.

 

 

 

In a nutshell, we will remove the state from all aspects of our lives, leaving it to do, and only do, what it was designed to do before it jumped into everything else with jackboots:  that is policing to protect the population internally;  defence, to protect the population externally and to run the justice system.

 

This might come as a shock to some of you.  If so, have a think about this.  Who really believes that central planners have been blessed with amazing powers of genius and know how to run everything?  Because if so, why have public health & education been struggling for decades?  And you want to elect more of that?

 

Just let people make up their own minds.  Give them all their money back so they can spend it where they deem best, with people who do know how to run things!  Not central or local planners who patently don’t.

 

I know what’s best for me.  The state does not.  The Libertarianz understand the balance between freedom and responsibility – because the two go hand in hand.  You can’t have one without the other.  To paraphrase PJ O’Rourke:  there is only one basic human right and that’s the right to do as you damn well please.  And with it comes the one basic duty:  to accept full responsibility for your actions!

 

So why am I here tonight doing this when I detest politics and politicians, as I do?

 

Because I own my life.  As an adult, I do not need the state to interfere in my workplace, my home, my bedroom, my body (in terms of what I choose to do with it), my business, my property, my family or my wallet.  Conversely, these buggers all want to interfere in some way, shape or form.  I’ve got news for them:  people were not born to be bossed around by bureaucrats!

 

I repeat:  It’s a simple philosophy ladies & gentlemen: you mind your business, and I’ll mind mine.  I don’t want your money and I don’t want to run your life. 

 

But there are 19 other parties who do.