Why I Run
click here to hear me My campaign for the U.S. Senate will raise questions that other candidates dare not raise, wedded as they are to the status quo and to the advice of pollsters. My chief opponent could not risk the perquisites of his incumbency even if he wanted to, which he does not. He, more than most, symbolizes what is wrong with our nation. He espouses the wildly escalating use of Federal power, the wholesale addition of new laws and regulations, endless taxes, subsidies, and bureaucracy.
I am a different sort. I don't need to be in the Senate. My family gives me joy. I enjoy my teaching, and i delight in my writing both of mathematics and of fiction. I am not in this campaign out of self-interest.
So, to what end do I expend five months of my seventy-fifth year? What do I hope to accomplish in my run for the United States Senate?
I want to ask as many questions as a senatorial candidate should ask. For instance:
Why does the United States incarcerate a larger
percentage, and a larger number, of its citizens than does any
other nation on earth?
Why does no other candidate ask questions like this one?
After all, a U.S. Senator has hired into the law-making trade. His job is to lay down rules for other people.
In forcing other people to live by rules he enacts, he should
the people on whom those rules come to weigh, often heavily and destructively.
He should be representing the people on issues like the Drug War. This is a war in which police invade the homes of harmless citizens. It is a war that currently has half a million inoffensive individuals rotting for decades behind the bars of federal prisons, a war in which uniformed officials fish for informers in school classrooms.
The drug war is a prime example of Federal excess. It elevates victimles crimes to a status similar to that of witchcraft in early Salem Massachusetts. Sentences for drug make-believe crimes often exceed sentences for actual crimes where there is armed bodily harm against real victims. Incarcerating people on the basis of moralistic phony "crimes" protects no one. The cost of the drug war is high, in dollars and in lives wrecked and wasted by official action.
We as a nation must oppose the Drug War.
- It is a major source of corruption and mayhem in our republic.
- It violates ouir rights an d liberties.
- It threatens our property and our families.
- It creates a class of violent criminal entrepreneurs.
Profits of the drug underground are enormously inflated by the illegal status of the drugs. Those providing these overvlaued commodities have no courts in which they can peacefully settle their disagreements and conflicts. Therefore they solve their business problems with gunfire.
My campaign will emphasize aspects of the Drug War which have mostly escaped attention over the ninety years since the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914 was stuffed down the throats of the unwary American public:
- The Drug War is deeply at odds with the United States Constitution.
- It bagan by violating Amendments one, nine and ten of our Bill of Rights. It has come to vioate all except the third among those Amendments.
- The Drug War is a war against America's Underclasses. It attacks mainly Afro-Americans and Latinos.
- It herds a huge percentage of black males into prison, decimating the urban Afo-American community, disenfranchising people and destroying their families.
- It directly promotes the spread of AIDS and Hepatitis.
The war on drugs is a continuing disaster promoted by our elected representatives and officials. It is supported by official myths and propaganda. The actual effects of drugs are not considered or are the subject of lies and manipulation. Nor does reputable science support the crusade.
The destructive effects of drugs are
a minor problem compared with the effects of the Drug War itself.
Citizens who are wise enough to vote and thus to control the fate
of the nation, are wise enough also to make individual decisions
about what they do in their own lives. To the extent that drugs,
used unwisely, may be dangerous, the facts can be scientifically
demonstrated to the satisfaction of each informed voter. We have
learned the dangers of tobacco, and tobacco use is way down. We
know the dangers of alcohol, and only a small percentage of drinkers
get into serious dependency. We do not prohibit drinking household
chemicals; warning labels suffice. The number of deaths from overdoses
or poisonings from illegal drugs woudl be greatly reduced if those
same drugs were legal, and this quality controlled and properly labeled.
Even as it is, the number of deaths from banned drugs is far behind tobacco,
alcohol, and a long list of diseases.
We are, and should be, free to make our own choices and our own
mistakes.
I suggest that the alcohol-control methods that followed the repeal of Prohibition in 1933 be adopted for all of the other currently prohibited drugs. We should stop using every new drug as a pretext for constructing, staffing and stuffing new prisons in an American Gulag.
We need to turn our police to useful work and to stop persecuting harmless people.
The Drug Enforcement Administration never had any usefulness to outlive. It was born both dead and deadly. Let us encourage its agents to find pleasant and productive work.in the private sector.
I oppose the drug war and every other manifestation of excessive or oppressive government. The Federal government is now the prime repository of excessive government. This Senate race gives you the opportunity to register your dissatisfaction with the status quo.
You can express yourself and help your children's
future by voting for me.
Your voice, speaking loudly from the privacy of the voting booth, can lend force to the libertarian challenge.
Why waste your vote on a sure winner, or on
some other "major party" hack, when instead you could
Your help to my campaign will amplify our conjoined voices.
Vote to end the drug war, and the related wars on our people, by voting for me:
Donald Silberger
New York Libertarian
for the United States Senate