Editing About the Party

==144 Character or less Summaries ==
The only moral use of force by any individual or group, [[including the government]], is to protect life, liberty and property. 

==One Sentence Show Stoppers==
*No other party in Ontario will reduce government spending and taxes faster than the Ontario Libertarian Party.
*Every financial bubble ever created in North America has been government sponsored.
*We know '''some''' corporations are corrupt, do you think politicians aren't?
*We just think more problems could be solved by entrepreneurs than by government.
*Government is the problem - competition is the solution.
*Swat politicians, not mosquitoes - mosquitoes only want a little blood.

==100 Word Summary of Party Objectives==
Libertarians believe you are the owner of your life and should be free to do with it and your property as you see fit provided you respect the same rights for the lives and property of others.  They also believe the state, or government, has no legitimate right to aggress against those who have not harmed anybody else, even when the state apparatus is controlled by democratically elected rulers.  Libertarians want to end all impositions of the state violating these principles of self-ownership and non-aggression.  

Fundamentally, the state is an institution which has a monopoly on the exercise of legal force or violence within a specific territory.  As such, libertarians believe it must be limited to self defence functions on behalf of individuals and restrained against its inherent tendency to extend the exercise of its power beyond that.  They view the state as an inherently dangerous and mostly unnecessary institution.

==500 Word Summary of Party Objectives==
===The Issues===
Political parties are expected to have platforms about important issues at election time.  Typically they will embrace any popular fashion in their unprincipled eagerness for political power.  Their platforms shift and must be entirely rewritten from election to election.  The Libertarian Party differs from the others in its continuous adherence to a defined statement of principles supporting individual liberty for both moral and practical reasons.   Its supporters steadfastly assert the state has no role to play in the resolution of almost any issue without its intervention making matters worse.  Generally speaking, the most important issues would not have become problems in the first place if it were not for the involvement of the incompetent bullying state.

===Health Care===
Notwithstanding high taxes, enormous expenditures, and many promises, the standard of health care services provided by successive Ontario governments has continued to deteriorate.  Medicare cannot be continued without changes from the current form of unrestrained demand for “free” services coupled with central bureaucratic planning and government mandated supply restrictions.  Growing private sector involvement will help, but competitively priced, widely accessible, high quality health care will only be available for everyone to the extent state involvement is eliminated.  Since this cannot be accomplished overnight without some short term hardship, transition measures will be needed.  However, ultimately everyone will be personally responsible for their own health care in a libertarian free market system.

===Education===
A libertarian government will create the necessary conditions for excellence in education in Ontario by ending all state participation in the provision of educational services.  Since parents are responsible for raising their own children, a libertarian government will return to them the right to individually choose how to educate them.

The existing education model is a regimented bureaucratic one.  By contrast, free market education will allow choice.  There will be an end to the never ending political arguments about such matters as academic goals and standards, teacher credentialing, school accreditation, financing, curriculum, religious school support, or whatever else happens to be in dispute.  Exciting innovations and advances will be the norm instead of the exception.

===Environment===
The failure of successive Ontario governments to respect private property rights has hindered what should have been a progressive and natural development of common law legal principles applicable to environmental matters.  In the past the state overrode individual property rights to permit harmful air and water pollution by industrial and state concerns.  Now the pendulum has swung and, for political gain, the Ontario government arbitrarily enacts laws violating property rights in favour of remote unsubstantiated claims of environmental harm.

The Libertarian Party unequivocally supports individual property rights and free market wealth creation, the prerequisites for environmental protection.  Where there are no private property rights, there is no economic incentive for preservation or the careful and efficient use of resources.  Poor people are less likely than the wealthy to leave nature in its pristine state, as they must use whatever is on hand for their survival.

===What About The Poor?===
Many people conclude libertarians have no sympathy for the underprivileged because they oppose government run health care, education, welfare and other state services.  The hidden assumption is that the present system does help the poor.  In fact it is the current system that helps create the poor through such coercions as taxation, legal hurdles to getting ahead such as licensing laws, and many other burdens and barriers raised by the state which reduce opportunities for them.  Add to that the general culture of irresponsibility and hopeless dependency encouraged by the welfare state.

It is normal for people, when able, to want to help others who are in difficult circumstances.  That natural trait will flourish when libertarian ideas concerning the proper role of government prevail and result in the election of libertarian governments.  Respect for liberty encourages benevolence and wealth creation.  Under such conditions there will certainly be more spontaneous voluntary help for a much smaller number of needy people than we have today.

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