Articles Clint Eastwood announces: I'm a "libertarian", Libertarian Party News, 18 Feb 1997 Related Topics: Dave Barry, Clint Eastwood, Penn Jillette, John B. Larroquette, Russell Means, Dennis Miller, P.J. O'Rourke, Camille Paglia, John Stossel Libertarian Party press release based on Eastwood's response to a Playboy interview question: "How would you characterize yourself politically?"

"Eastwood joins a growing number of individuals in the entertainment industry who have identified themselves as libertarians. Included on that list are TV star John Laroquette, humorist Dave Barry, author P.J. O'Rourke, movie actor Russell Means, magician Jillette Penn, author Camille Paglia, TV reporter John Stossell, and comedian Dennis Miller."

"... I think we have to be happy with the term libertarian, while knowing that politics tends to taint all word usage issues. What is a libertarian? It is a person who believes in the absolute right of private property ownership. All else follows from that one proposition."

"Raised as a Catholic, I could not reconcile the concept of ending tax-supported welfare with Christ's admonition to love our neighbors. In considering this dilemma, I suddenly became aware of a pivotal point: although refusing to help others might not be very loving, pointing guns at our neighbors to force them to help those in need was even less so."

"Who were the exploiters? All who lived forcibly off of the industrious classes. ... Thus political and economic history is the record of conflict between producers, no matter their station, and the parasitic political classes, both inside and outside the formal state. Or to use terms of a later subscriber to this view, John Bright, it was a clash between the tax-payers and tax-eaters."

"Left and Right did not refer merely to which side of the assembly one sat on or one's attitude toward the regime. ... The Left understood that historically the state was the most powerful engine of exploitation ... Libertarians also showed their Left colors by opposing imperialism, war, and the accompanying violations of civil liberties ..."

"... we must inquire whether libertarian concerns are really divisible into, on the one hand, a concern with duties (deontology), for example, respecting individual rights, and on the other, a concern with practical consequences. ... I'm hardly alone in my uneasiness with this separation of concerns into the moral and the practical. In my camp is no less a personage than Adam Smith."

"The libertarian insight expressed so succinctly by Randolph Bourne 'War is the health of the State' has never been more relevant, and war revisionism - that is, the revision of the 'official' (i.e. government-approved) version of events leading up to the war is essential in understanding both the methods and motives of our rulers."

"Libertarianism has a long and glorious tradition, not the least of which is the principled anti-imperialist legacy of Leonard Read, Frank Chodorov, Murray Rothbard, and a long list of others. It is due to the durability of this tradition, which Doherty celebrates in his book, that libertarians have every reason to face the future with growing confidence."

"Thus, libertarianism is a commitment to eschew aggressive force; it is not a specific lifestyle because lifestyles result from the many peaceful choices people make after eschewing force. What a peaceful person chooses to do may be of great moral importance. ... Past the point of eschewing violence, however, his behavior is irrelevant to the question of libertarianism."

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Libertarianism - Freedom Circle