Libertarian Candidate For US Senate: John Clifton

I am running for U.S. Senate against Gillibrand to restore true peace and freedom to new York and the rest of America. That certainly begins, first and foremost, with opposing the war making and empire building foreign intervention machine. I propose to fight ceaselessly to bring all the troops home NOW. This mean full withdrawal, not “redeployments” of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, all the “contractors” and shutting down the empire of bases in those countries, or turning the keys over to the sovereign people of those countries. Give these native people back their sovereignty and self determination, instead of making them a perpetual co-opted puppet state of the US empire.

This candidate, and as I remember, millions more were protesting on the streets in major cities around the world on 2/15/2003 in opposition to the coming Iraq war. What happened to all those people? There is a shortsightedness here that transcends the partisan opposition to Bush, and now Obama. Bluntly, it appears most of the public has been willing to drop the subject as a pressing concern so long as no one related to them, or who lives around the block is dying over it. Most disappointing of all have been the Obama supporters whose opposition to war, occupation, torture etc. appears to have been “Bush deep”—as soon as the President changed, their protests went silent.

We have to acknowledge this is a long war both on the propaganda side and the military side, by design. The mess that has been made in Iraq and Afghanistan was deliberate, not a “government blunders again” scenario. The interventionists have used every trick from emotional rhetoric, lies about WMDs, to false flag operations to stoke the public into a mood that sustains war. The Empire and its corporate profiteers want our conflicts to be perpetual along the lines of the Korean model, with no actual withdrawals. The ‘mess’ gives them pretext to require our ongoing intervention in each area.

The corporate-military industrial complex was upset that their momentum for never ending war was derailed in the ’70’s by opposition to Vietnam, the ending of the draft, and scandals that exposed its machinations (Pentagon papers, the Church committee hearings, etc). It took them a generation, but they have finally got their perpetual war machine rolling again. The anti-war movement must be prepared to fight the long war to reverse the concrete political infrastructure that has been resurrected to perpetually justify intervention, not just win a pretty argument over the issue in the abstract.

In short, this Libertarian candidate stands for ending government meddling abroad, as well as in the market, and in our personal lives. I will work ceaselessly to end the Federal Reserve, the IRS, and the insane war on drugs. I pledge to fight globalism, aka the New World Order, and all movements institutions that would further Big Brother on an international scale. I will fight to reverse the Patriot Act in its entirety, as well as the National ID (in whatever disguised new form it takes). I will vote to repeal heath care reform and restore true choice in medical care.

I fully support the state sovereignty and nullification movements, as well as the efforts to expand our Second Amendment freedoms, including the right to keep and bear arms embodied in “right to carry” laws, that should be extended this state. I join Warren Redlich, the LP candidate for Governor, in pledging to work to get Albany and Washington to ‘Stop Wasting Money” at the expense of the taxpayers or our country’s fiscal health. Let’s all get to work, to bring freedom back to New York.

Manhattan Libertarian Party