“Dear MPP candidate Alan Mercer:

“We are trying to help a group of Canadian Chinese voters who would like to find out about your personal stand as well as your party’s stand on pro-life and traditional family issues, and on the proposal on funding of faith-based schools.
Could you kindly take 1 minute to mark your answers to the following short questions?”

1.  Is your party

PRO-CHOICE?                           
SEE BELOW

The Libertarian Party does not take a position right now on this question, because  individual members will have different philosophical beliefs on the question of when life starts.  We believe in individual rights, in the right to life and liberty of each person, so the question comes down to whether a libertarian believes
that the State has an obligation to protect the life of the unborn or not.  There are pro-choice libertarians and pro-life libertarians.

We do not believe in government subsidizing or promoting abortion.

In general on most issues, we are “pro-choice” and believe in choice and do not believe in state interference in peoples’ lives.   We do not believe that the state should interfere in family life and in churches and in schools etc.

I can quote a statement from the LP of Canada (of which I’m president, a separate organization but related to the Ontario LP ) that helps to summarize:
“The Libertarian view, generally, is one of skepticism towards government interference in our lives. Perhaps the majority view among Libertarians is that the government should not interfere in a woman’s choice concerning abortion, but there are also Libertarians who believe that the unborn should be protected by law.

“It is possible to be a Libertarian and hold either view. Some believe the foetus is not a person, some believe that it is a person, and some believe that the woman’s control over her own body should be the deciding factor in any case.

“The fact is that people do not agree on this issue and many libertarians believe that it will not be settled by political means. In fact, politicizing the issue may very well be getting in the way of people finding alternatives to abortion. Government has proven itself ineffective at solving problems, and it can be argued that abortion is a moral, philosophical and religious problem that people will almost certainly be able to handle better without government interference.

“Libertarians oppose tax support for abortion so that nobody who believes that abortion is immoral should have to pay for it. In a libertarian society, because of greater freedoms in adoption laws, or increased wealth and technological advances, abortion may very well be seen as less necessary over time and even become obsolete.”

More on my own views below.

FOR Same-Sex
Marriage?                   
SEE BELOW

Libertarians are for letting people do what they want.   The Ontario LP has no specific statement on this yet I think.  Libertarians believe that the government should not be involved in marriage, licensing it or interfering in it.

Let me quote a policy from the Libertarian Party of Canada:
“With respect to same-sex marriage, we recommend that the government removes itself from the issue of marriage altogether. Individuals and groups in society decide their own spiritual and social beliefs and do not need the government to determine whether they are married or not.”

So in some cases, libertarians may see a vote on same-sex marriage as a positive thing in that it may allow people more choice.  In other cases, it may be an effort by the government to promote an agenda of social engineering and promoting interference in how families and churches conduct their own business.

So a political position of saying that the government should allow this kind of marriage – such as “same-sex” or polygamous marriage – does not mean that all libertarians promote these lifestyles, so I can’t say I’m “for” same-sex marriage.  I’m for more choice to let people do what they want.  It means that the government should get out of the marriage business and let people do what they want as long as they are not hurting others.

More on my own views below.

FOR public funding of faith-based schools?   NO

The Ontario Libertarian Party platform says the following:
“…, the policy of the Ontario Libertarian Party is to create conditions in which quality education can develop by completely ending all government participation and allowing education to be a matter of individual choice.”

Answering “no” to your question could be misleading because the status quo of forcing everyone to fund the public school system is unacceptable to us – and I believe parents should be able to direct their money to the school of their choice.  However, there are problems with the Tory proposal.

We do not believe people should be forced to pay for education through tax, or that the government should be taking control over more schools in addition to the ones they already run.  See more of my views below where I advocate for separation of school and state.

2.  If elected, would you vote in Parliament PRO-CHOICE (Not Pro-Life) on related issues relating to abortion on demand?            DEPENDS

I have a similar attitude to abortion as Congressman Ron Paul, who is running for president in the U.S..  He believes that abortion is wrong, that there is a human being before pregnancy and a human being after pregnancy.    But I do not believe he is correct in saying that the U.S. states should regulate abortion.

I think that it is a moral issue and that those who oppose abortion should spend more time arguing their position and less time using politics.  The political solution to problems – the use of force by the government – would probably lead to a greater intrusion and terrible interference by the government in personal lives. 
There would not be any gain from it or success from this strategy.

On the other hand, I oppose government funding of these procedures – that obviously many taxpayers disagree with –  and I oppose government or U.N. or Chinese government propaganda in favor of abortion or one-child policies or population control.

I’m agnostic or deistic, but I feel that Christians are fooling themselves when they believe they are going to use the government to help end abortion or promote Christian values.  The government has been used to undermine the independence of individuals, families and churches through the welfare state and the education system – and through warfare –  and will continue to do so.
The government promotes abortion.

3.  If elected, would you vote in Parliament FOR Same-Sex Marriage in related bills and regulatory issues?     DEPENDS

I tend towards YES.   If same-sex marriage legislation reduces the role of government in peoples’ personal decisions, then I would favor it.  If it’s just used as propaganda to undermine peoples’ beliefs and continues to preserve the role of government, then I would examine such legislation carefully.   I don’t believe in “same-sex marriage”.  I recommend traditional marriage and this is my personal belief.   I just believe people should be free to do what they want.  Government should allow people to do what they want.  And it has no place regulating or defining marriage.   I think the government is only interested in how much tax it can steal from families.

Libertarianism deals with the political sphere and what should be allowed in politics and says that government is only for protecting individual rights.  I’ve also mentioned my personal beliefs in these answers, but in terms of politics, government should be restricted to a very narrow sphere of influence.

4.  If elected, would you vote in Parliament FOR the proposal to publicly fund faith-based schools?           NO

No, I wouldn’t vote in the legislature for this.   This Tory policy will clearly undermine the independence of religious schools and bring them under more government control.   Is this really what religious groups want? 
Government domination of their own schools?!   I hope not.    Government promotes dependency on itself, tax enslavement and mindless obedience.

Property tax should be reformed to allow taxpayers to keep the money that goes to the school system and use it for the education of their own children as they see fit, religious or otherwise, home-schooling or formal education.

I believe in the Separation of School and State.  See my statement here (http://www.honestedu.org/view/display.php?state=ON).

“Alan Mercer…
“Why I Signed: Public education is funded by force, by forcing parents and others to pay for it through taxation. The effect of public education – intended or not – is to manipulate children into conformity to our valueless culture, so that as many as possible have no clue how to live happily and think independently. The beliefs and authority of
parents are undermined by the curriculum and the social engineering….”

I have more comments here on this subject.

October 6th, 2007

18 comments to Faith, Family, Life Questions

• Gölök

October 8th, 2007 at 5:43 pm

I might add that there is a group called Libertarians for Life (www.l4l.org) and complimentary Libertarians for Peace (www.libertarians4peace.net).
Not playing God does go so many ways; by not banning it you let someone and say it’s okay for man to decide the life and death of the human life (even not a full person yet, and unable to concent) and if you do, you decide no one man can decide to take the life of human life not offending your life. Such as gun rights, even there, try for the knees.
Now at this point enabling such a God complex does not exist.
It can start as a condemnation or act preventing any funding or enabling of clinic operations. Also the question of a rapist driving a woman out of her mind, temporary insanity being used to defraud someone into an abortion and a rapist is also part of the murder of the child. The mother, if at all, is the least culpable. I have trouble with the
death penalty, I do not trust a mob or state to kill someone, you’d need to know more than 99% that someone is guilty and that may be fine for prison but it is impossible to be 100% certain.

Secular or non-secular, it’s wrong to do his duty, give him who created the miscarriage decide.

Best

Gölök Zoltán Leenderdt Franco Buday
“The first destroyer of the liberties of a people
is he who first gave them bounties and largess.”
— Plutarch (c.45-125 A.D.) Priest of the Delphic
Oracle

• Gölök

October 8th, 2007 at 5:50 pm

Hmm is the Tory bill not a Voucher thing?
I’m okay with that, since the parent takes that to a school, at least more so, especially if it’s a interest free program with a 10% added to tuition price. This includes secular schools and can cause and lead to the destruction of government school administration and boards. The Canadian constitution says a right to education but not state run education.

Best

Gölök Zoltán Leenderdt Franco Buday
“Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant — society collectively over the separate individuals who compose it — its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates; and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny
more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development and, if possible, prevent the formation of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own. There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence; and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human
affairs as protection against political despotism.” — On Liberty, The Library of Liberal Arts edition, p.7.

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