To use an example completely irrelevant to my campaign for Secretary of State, imagine two candidates who oppose a Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. This alone would be enough for many conservatives to oppose these candidates. But what if one candidate opposed the amendment because he believed that America must “champion and encourage diversity”, while the other expressed an opinion that “a dangerous, big-government precedent would be set by allowing the federal government to intervene in something that would otherwise be handled by the states”. Clearly, the reasoning used to arrive at these two positions tells us far more about how these candidates would govern than their mere yes/no position on the issue. I believe that it’s time for voters to give serious consideration to the political philosophies their candidates endorse.

For me, any proper governmental action rests on the assumption that legitimate authority is derived from the consent of the governed. If government can only do those things that the people have given consent for it to do, that implies that government can only do those things that the people have the authority to consent to. I have the authority to defend myself against coercion, and therefore I can consent for the government to carry out that task on my behalf. I don’t have the authority to steal from my neighbor in order to help the poor, so I cannot give consent for the government to take money or property from my neighbor, even if it’s for a noble cause. I don’t have the authority to use force to control the (otherwise peaceful) immoral behavior of my neighbors, so I cannot give consent for the government to use the force of law to control the (otherwise peaceful) immoral behavior of individuals.

While it’s certainly easier to use individual positions as litmus tests in determining whether a particular candidate is deserving of support, I encourage everyone to really get to know their candidates. Learn what criteria each candidate uses to decide which policy he or she will support. When the decision that candidate makes doesn’t line up with their stated philosophy, call them out on it. If we want our politicians to start putting principle above politics, we’re going to have to start paying attention to their principles.

If you ask me why I want to be Illinois’ next Secretary of State, the simple answer is that I don’t. It doesn’t bring me any joy to picture myself as a bureaucrat, making life difficult for millions of people while earning an enormous paycheck, courtesy of the taxpayers. It certainly isn’t easy. I don’t have the luxury of taking a leave of absence from my career to run a campaign the way my opponents do. I don’t have a paid staff to do research for me; all of the drudging through the Illinois Vehicle Code is my task and mine alone. So why did I decide that this was a good use of my time?

The best answer I can come up with is that I believe in something. Politics, for me, is not a game. It’s not an opportunity to pad my resume or to make a name for myself. On the contrary, the maintenance of a free society requires sacrifice. How great a world this would be if liberty could be protected without effort, but the accelerating loss of freedom in this world should put that notion to rest once and for all. I believe that every individual in society is responsible for the continuing success of that society, and it would be hypocritical of me to hold that belief while expecting someone else to do my work for me.

So why am I running? I’m running because voting is only half of the battle. I’m running because my momentary happiness and comfort are far less important than the happiness and comfort of the next generation. I believe that I was put here on this earth to be a good steward of it, and with God’s help, that’s what I’ll do.

I am reprinting the text of this chapter below for the benefit of anyone who would like to learn from one of the greatest thinkers in the 20th century.

Capitalism, the Rich and the Poor

It is a very popular assumption, criticized only very rarely by people, that the capitalistic system brings about satisfactory conditions for a minority of profiteers, while the masses become more and more impoverished. Of all the enormous problems connected with the monetary crisis, I want to deal with this problem especially because the most popular, or one of the most popular, ideas of Marxism is that the system of capitalism brings about the progressive impoverishment, the progressive deterioration of the economic state of affairs of the masses, for the benefit of a shrinking number of people who become richer and richer from year to year.

People believe that what is going on with these monetary problems today concern the well-to-do and that simple people are not so much interested. I want to show you how erroneous this idea is. It is thought that when the government inflates and as a result lowers the purchasing power of the monetary unit, this is of advantage to the masses, to the great majority of the people, and that only the rich are suffering. If you don’t want to use the term “suffer,” let us say have to pay higher prices for things. Now this idea, that the interested people are not the masses, not the majority of the people, but only the wealthy people and that it is only the wealthier and richer people that are concerned, is based on an ancient doctrine.

This doctrine was perfectly correct in the days of Solon (c. 638-559 BC) of Athens, or in the days of ancient Rome, of the Gracchi brothers (d. 121 and 133 BC), or in the Middle Ages. In the pre-capitalistic ages the rich people owned land and were, therefore, wealthy. They could save, increase their possessions by investing in real property, houses, businesses, landed property. Or they could increase their fortunes by dealing in a more conservative way with the forests which they owned. On the other hand there were people who were poor, very poor, people who had nothing, who might occasionally earn a small piece of money but who really had no opportunity to accumulate anything to improve their conditions. Under ancient conditions, the masses had no opportunity to save; the poor man had only the possibility of earning a few coins perhaps and of hiding these coins somewhere, perhaps in a dark corner of their premises, but this was all. He would always be under the temptation to spend them. Or he could lose them. Or somebody could steal them. The poor were not in a position to make their savings grow by lending them against interest. Even in England, the most advanced capitalistic country in the eighteenth century, it was not possible, for a poor man to save except by hoarding a few coins in an old stocking hidden somewhere in his house. Such savings bore no interest. Only the rich could invest money at interest, perhaps in mortgages, and so on.

At that time when people talked about creditors and debtors, they had in mind a state of affairs in which the wealthier a man was the more of a creditor he was, and the poorer a man was the more of a debtor he was. The whole idea was based on the assumption that the government ought to help the poor people who have heavy debts, while the rich who have claims are rich enough. Therefore, the method by which the government lowers the purchasing power of the monetary unit helps the debtors, because their debts are shrinking, and at the same time it goes against the creditors because their claims also are shrinking.

We are inclined to think that the situation today is similar, that the rich people today are creditors, certainly that they have no debts and are not debtors. But we no longer live under the conditions in which the authors dealt with these problems in the pre-capitalistic ages. The situation is very different today. It is very different because we have a very different organization of business, of business claims, and of the adjustment of business to the various individuals. Capitalism has enriched the masses, not all of them, of course, because capitalism has still to fight the hostility of the governments. But under capitalistic conditions it is no longer true that the creditors are the rich and the debtors are the poor. Capitalism has developed a great system making it possible for the masses of the poorest strata of the population, the people who have less—I don’t want to say that they are poor in the sense in which one uses the term, only that they are poorer, less wealthy, than the rich people, than the entrepreneurs, and so on—to save and to invest their savings indirectly in the operation of business. The rich people are owners, for instance, of the common stock of a corporation. But the corporations owe money, either because they have issued bonds, corporate bonds, or because they have some current connection with a bank, employing money lent to them by the banks in the conduct of their affairs. Thus the great millionaires, the owners of real estate, the owners of common stock, and so on, are in this regard debtors. The masses, the people whom we call less wealthy than the richer people, have invested their savings in savings deposits, in bonds, in insurance policies, and so on. And the banks have money from the savings accounts of simple citizens who, therefore, are creditors. And if you do something, as practically all the governments do, against the purchasing power of the monetary unit today under present conditions, you are hurting not the rich, but the middle classes and the masses of people who are saving all their lives in order to enjoy a better old age and in order to make it possible for them to educate their children and so on.

The fact that government bonds are to some extent tax free means the government gives special privileges to the rich in order to attract them to the market for government bonds and so to become creditors. It is a very complicated system; one could call the system simply privileges in the way of lower taxes in order to make the wealthier strata of the population also interested in buying government bonds and in this way to make it possible for the government to spend more. But by and large we have to say that the great, the much greater part, of the privileges, of the “benefits”—“ benefits” in quotations marks—which the people derive from the government’s inflationary policy does not go to the masses but to those who are better off. And so the “benefits” of the inflation are paid for by the masses.

Not so long ago, there was the very powerful Nazi movement in Germany. Whatever you may say about Germany, you cannot say that it was an illiterate country. You couldn’t say that the population of Germany was inexperienced in problems of capitalism and modern industrialism. In that country, Germany, one of the main slogans, a very popular slogan which brought millions of votes to the Nazi Party was: “Do away with interest slavery. You are slaves in paying interest to the rich people and we shall do away with interest slavery.” Now what was this “interest slavery”? This was a fantastic idea, you know, for it was really to the masses, the poorer people, to whom the big corporations and other such institutions made interest payments. Yet practically nobody objected to this slogan. One eminent German newspaper, perhaps the best informed German newspaper with regard to economic problems, the FRANKFURTER ZEITUNG, published an article in which it said: “You people who accept this program of the Nazi Party of doing away with interest slavery, do you know that you are creditors and not debtors?” And they were, but they didn’t know it. On the day when the FRANKFURTER ZEITUNG published this article on its first page, I was on the way to London traveling in the express train from one end of Germany to the other, from the Austrian frontier of Germany to the Dutch frontier. I could observe people reading this article and I told myself, “They don’t understand these things, and so they are bound to suffer the consequences.” And did they suffer the consequences? Of course! The mark became zero. This meant that all the assets, all the savings of the people, the creditors, disappeared, to the benefit of the debtors.

People in a country like the United States are saving in the years when they are in full vigor and can earn money. They are saving not only to meet unexpected conditions which could develop one day; they are saving systematically to enjoy income without working any longer in their old age. For instance, people are taking out life insurance policies; they are accumulating savings deposits; and they are making agreements with their employers according to which their employers are bound to pay them definite amounts as pension rights later; and so on. Now when there is an inflation going on, all these people are suffering, suffering because they are continually losing with the progress of inflation, because the progress of inflation means that the purchasing power of the monetary unit decreases. If we want to have a system in which the individual can plan for his own life and for the life of his family, if we want to have a system in which people can say: “If I have the opportunity to work and to save I will improve my own conditions and the conditions of my family.” Then you must have a regular system of what one used to call “bourgeois security.” But if the governments destroy the savings of their citizens again and again by inflating they bring about a situation in which the people do what these people in various European communist countries did and in which you hear again and again of violence and actions of destruction.

The example of Germany may help you realize that there are still many things to be learned about economic problems by everybody, not only by the managers of big banks, professional editors of journals of business, and so on. It is for this reason that I think everybody should be interested in these problems, not because they are more important than other things, nor on account of the fact that one should increase one’s theoretical knowledge, but on account of the fact that one should know, in one’s capacity as a voter and as a citizen, how to cooperate in the formation of one’s own country, nation and the whole world’s economic system. This is one of the reasons why one ought to deal with these problems. They are not very interesting to many people; they are not easy to study; but there is some reason to say they are fundamental for the preservation of one’s own economic safety. We have to change the opinion of the people who believe that the monetary problem is something that concerns only groups of business, small groups of people, and so on.

[bold formatting added]

The author conceals the fact that a lack of state funding for public libraries will not eliminate the money and resources needed to run public libraries. If the state were to cut non-essential services (including those that are essential but better provided in a decentralized manner), and relieve the public of the burden of supporting them, these resources would remain in the hands of the people, where they would be available to the local communities that actually use these libraries. The idea that only a distant, corrupt bureaucracy can provide library services is absurd. In fact, it is about as absurd as the idea that only a union electrician is qualified to insert a plug into an electrical outlet.

The time has come for us to accept that the state of Illinois has failed in its basic mission of public service. It is past time to return wealth and responsibility to the people. The principle of self-reliance is what built America, and the same principle will help rebuild the state of Illinois today.

It seems to me that the person charged with administering agencies and keeping records should be the person who is best qualified to do so, not the person who has the most money to spend, the best tumbling team, or the greatest ability to make the voters feel warm and fuzzy.  How many truly qualified individuals are kept out of this position by making it cost millions of dollars to obtain?

I’m running for Secretary of State because the laws of Illinois require all political parties to fill the position in order to run candidates for the real political positions.  But if it were up to me, no one would “run” for Secretary of State, because doing so only rewards politicians with a post few politicians should ever hold.

Released on January 29, 2010, this study compares vehicle collision data in New York, California, District of Columbia, and Connecticut from before and after cell phone bans, and then compares the results to areas in which there is no such ban. The result? Cell phone bans don’t result in safer roads.

The current Secretary of State seems very proud of his role in limiting the use of cell phones by drivers. I can’t fault him for the good intentions, but as Senator Daniel Webster once said:

Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.

Maybe it’s time to elect a Secretary of State who understands that freedom works.

To ensure that I am not misunderstood, I do not believe that it is a good idea to text while driving.  I do believe that anyone who causes damage or injury due to texting behind the wheel should be subject to harsher penalties than someone who causes damage or injury in a mere “accident”.  That said, I can also see that for all their attempts to make the roads safer, Governor Quinn and Secretary of State White may have placed us all at greater risk.

In a recent Reuters article published on PCmag.com, we find a statement by California Highway Patrol spokeswoman Fran Clader:

But with the texting it’s a little bit more of a challenge to catch them in the act, because we have to see it and if they are holding it down in their lap, it’s going to be harder for us to see.

This statement illustrates the real issue here.  Despite all of the attempts to crack down on texting while driving, we still see it everywhere.  Even police officers are routinely seen operating their cell phones while behind the wheel.  The difference is that in the past, most rational people would hold their cell phone near their steering wheel so that they could text and still keep an eye on the road.  Now, to attempt to hide the action, people are holding their cell phones in their laps where they have a better view of the floorboards than of the road.  We have taken a dangerous behavior and motivated people to make it even more dangerous, putting more lives at risk.

It is of the utmost importance that the people keep their elected officials aware of the fact that attempting to manipulate society from the top often leads to consequences completely opposite from what was intended.  I encourage everyone to exercise safe driving practices, and to be careful out there with all the drivers who are busy looking at their laps.

It will not shock anyone to hear that government is inefficient and a poor manager of resources.  We only need to visit our local DMV or Post Office to confirm this (and then there’s always the example of FEMA’s response to Hurricane Katrina).  When politicians make management decisions, they will nearly always make decisions that do more for their reelection campaign than for the public benefit.  With so many examples of government failure where there is private competition, it surprises me that we have not seriously addressed the problem of government failure in the management of roads.

This article by Loyola University economist Walter Block does just that.  The article is an open letter to Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) making the case that the problem of highway safety stems mainly from the inability of politicians to effectively manage roads.  Rather than asking politicians to do a better job (something we’ve yet to see done successfully), Block argues that private ownership of roads, with all of its attending emphasis on customer satisfaction, would do more for public safety than a government monopoly ever will.

It’s time for Illinois’ public servants to put aside their reelection efforts, and start working for real change that will provide real benefits for the people of Illinois.

Note: For those interested in a more in-depth treatment of this issue, Dr. Block has written a 494-page book on the topic: The Privatization of Roads and Highways.

We began our busy day with a candidate forum in Schaumburg before making our way to Naperville, and wrapping it up by having a meal with voters in Aurora.  While I certainly would have liked to see turnout comparable to our larger, more well-funded competitors, the Libertarian Party has always been a party of the people, and we were just at home speaking to voters one-on-one and hearing their ideas directly.

I want to thank everyone who was able to attend, especially for the great questions asked of the candidates to keep us on our toes.  Keep an eye out for the next event in your area, and I’ll be looking forward to seeing you there!

I’m not interested in painting shutters or replacing curtains to make things look pleasant to the people out in the cold.  I’m interested in cleaning up the mess, letting the people back in, and giving them something to be proud of.