District 26 Libertarians, The Citizen's Coalition for Responsible Government is hosting a U.S. House of Representatives District 26 candidate forum today at 6:30 PM at the Grapevine Convention Center. All four candidates for Congress including myself will be participating. * Each candidate will be allowed to make a 3 minute opening speech. * This will be followed by 45 minutes of questions from a pre-selected panel in which each candidate will have 1 minute to answer each question. * 15 minute break. * Questions from the audience will be randomly selected and for 35 minutes each candidate will have 30 seconds to respond to each. * Candidates will then end with a 3 minute closing speech. I encourage you to attend and to bring your Libertarian questions. The answers to your Libertarian questions will be transmitted by radio and rebroadcast via public television. I would appreciate advance notice of the questions you intend to pose to the candidates as well as your feedback on my planned opening and closing remarks included below. Please direct your questions and feedback to me via the public discussion mailing list at lptx-denton@egroups.com. Thank you. Time.......: 2002 Oct 23 Wed 18:30 Location...: Grapevine Convention Center Address....: 1209 South Main, Grapevine, Texas Driving directions: http://maps.yahoo.com/py/maps.py?BFCat=&Pyt=Tmap&newFL=Use+Address+Below&addr=12\ 09+South+Main&csz=Grapevine%2C+TX&Country=us&Get%A0Map=Get+Map === Opening Speech (3 minutes) === My name is David Wallace Croft. I am 34-years-old. I have three children, Ada, Benjamin, and Thomas, who attend preschool and public elementary. My wife Shannon is a homemaker and the President of the Carrollton Early Childhood P.T.A. My parents live nearby in Abilene, Texas where I was raised. My family has lived in Texas since just after the Civil War. I am an independent technology consultant by trade, an Internet Software Architect. I have a degrees in engineering from the United States Air Force Academy and the California Institute of Technology. I formerly served as a United States Air Force officer, just as my father and grandfather did before me. I am proud to be a descendant of a hero who fought and died for liberty during the birth of our nation. I am also the Libertarian Party candidate. The Libertarian Party is for those folks who are too liberal to be a Conservative and too conservative to be a Liberal. We are conservative when it comes to the economic issues yet liberal when it comes to our civil liberties and personal freedoms. As a Libertarian, I hold the conservative belief that government should not intrude when it comes to economic issues. I am opposed to socialized medicine and farm subsidies. I am in favor of the use of school choice vouchers, the privatization of Social Security, and a flat tax of 10%. I am an economic self-governor. As a Libertarian, I hold the liberal belief that government should not intrude when it comes to our personal freedoms. I want to repeal the prohibition on marijuana for adults and I am opposed to Internet censorship. I am pro choice and I am a defender of the right to bear arms. I am a personal self-governor. As a self-governor, I believe that the only legitimate purpose of government is to protect the rights of individuals from infringement by others through force and fraud. As such, I believe that the only legitimate functions of government are the military, the police, and the courts. If elected, I would seek to increase funding to our defense, law enforcement, and intelligence agencies to fight the War on Terrorism. This would include a well-deserved pay raise to all personnel. I plan to pay for the War on Terrorism while defending our economy from excessive taxation by removing from the budget all funding for government programs that do nothing to defend the rights of Americans from force and fraud. I believe that government spending is out of control because our Congressional Representatives cater to the special interests in order to get reelected. I pledge to you that if I am elected to Congress I will never vote to raise your taxes or your tax rates and I will not run for reelection as an incumbent. I ask for your vote. === Closing Speech (3 minutes) === The founders of the Libertarian Party recognized that there should be a political home for those who do not fit within the traditional left-right political definitions of liberal and conservative. These early Libertarians did not feel comfortable associating themselves with the liberals because they believed in a market economy free from government intrusion. On the other hand, they did not fit in with the conservatives because of their opposition to laws restricting personal private activities of no business to the state. In 1971, they officially created the Libertarian Party which today is the largest political party in the United States after the Republicans and the Democrats. Tonight we have four candidates from four parties. This is a good analogy of the way libertarians view the political spectrum. We believe that there are four species of political animal: the Liberals, the Conservatives, the Authoritarians, and the Libertarians. The Authoritarians believe, like the Liberals, that government should control the economy. They reject free market economics and embrace Socialism. The Authoritarians believe, like the Conservatives, that government should control what we do with our own bodies. They reject the concept of self-ownership and instead pass laws against these so-called victimless crimes. The Authoritarians promise to give you everything you need just as long as you are willing to give them the authority to control your lives. The Libertarians believe that the only legitimate purpose of government is to protect the rights of its people, not to protect them from themselves, but from others who would infringe upon those rights through force or fraud. We want a minimum government that does not do good, but simply prevents harm. Government beyond this is excessive and almost always involves using the force of law to take from some to give to others or to impose the lifestyle choices preferred by the majority. Because of our firm belief in the superior rights of the individual over that of the state and from hearing our consistent call to dramatically reduce the size and scope of intrusive government, some might mistakenly confuse us with anarchists, those who advocate no government. A better description of libertarians would be minarchists, those who advocate minimum government. If you would like to know more about my campaign or the Libertarian Party, please visit my web site at www.minarchist.org. I end with this quote from Thomas Jefferson: "A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicity." -- David Wallace Croft http://www.lptx.org/croft/