The LP platform is easy to read or listen to as audio in 30 minutes. Infiltrators suggest adding planks to pander to Republicans, but never mention which planks ought to be deleted to make room for the new ones. Since we advocate balancing the budget, we ought to omit needless words and balance our own platform to set an example.
Here are some suggestions.
Republicans like to depict the LP as inviting lepers, ebola victims, terrorists, spies, murderers and undesirables in general into These States. Their tools busily attempting to influence the platform committee suggest cutting the relevant portion of plank 3.4 and leaving the vague and silly intro. Republicans want us to delete:
However, we support control over the entry into our country of foreign nationals who pose a credible threat to security, health or property.
The intro to plank 3.4 should be cut instead. This eliminates 47 words that merely belabor what is already in the Preamble and Statement of Principles. Plank 3.4 would then cut to the chase:
We support control over the entry into our country of foreign nationals who pose a credible threat to security, health or property.
This counters the Republican whispering campaign alleging that the LP seeks to endanger freedom by inviting terrorists, violent criminals and plague vectors into the country. Furthermore, if we are to ever get rid of the communist manifesto income tax added by Republicans and Democrats, it is better to have an inspecting Coast Guard, Navy and Customs financed by a revenue-only tariff as a fallback position until something better can be devised.
The 47 words thus saved could then allow the addition of 19 words to plank 1.0, to wit: “Libertarians reject the notion that groups have inherent rights. We support the rights of the smallest minority, the individual.” Both planks are thereby improved with room left over for another 28 words. Adding “, regardless of the number of participants” to plank 1.4 (Personal Relationships) uses up 6 of those words without unbalancing the tight and tidy wordcount that is the LP platform’s biggest advantage over the competition. The change might add us some votes from Robert Heinlein, Robert Rimmer, Grace Slick and David Crosby fans.
This leaves 22 vacated words that can be still added regarding, for instance, sex work, without upsetting the total word count. But there is nothing wrong with actually shortening the platform. This we can do by deleting the entire 1.5 Abortion plank to free up another 38 words. That embarrassing fossil only serves to attract rights-violating male antiabortion infiltrators. Every such infiltrator can be counted on to repel from 6 to 4000 females who might otherwise join and support the LP and vote for our candidates!
After the 1972 Libertarian plank on Overpopulation became the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, that battle was won and Canada organized its Libertarian Party the same year Roe v. Wade enforced individual rights Stateside. Canada promptly went a step further to repeal ALL laws denying individual rights to pregnant women and the Canadian Libertarian Party platform thus has NO ABORTION PLANK whatsoever. We ought to follow that example. After all, once the Liberal Party platform of 1931 prompted the Democrats to repeal laws against beer and many of the Comstock Law provisions, that battle was won as of 1933. We no more need a “good faith” abortion plank than we need a plank urging the repeal of the 18th Amendment.
Here is the 2016 LP Platform tersely recorded in Brazilian Portuguese:
If you ever need a simultaneous interpreter with legal and political experience, get in touch.
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