From: rcollins@encore.com (Roger Collins)
Subject: MacNeil/Lehrer Marrou interview transcript (partial)
Organization: Encore Computer Corporation
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 15:08:29 GMT

Here are some excerpts from the Marrou interview on MacNeil/Lehrer News
Hour, September 30, 1992.  Excuse the typos, omissions, etc.  But
you got what you paid for. :)
	-Roger Collins


Q:
... Tell us once again the philosophy of the Libertarian Party.

A:
It's the philosophy of the founders of this country and we believe in
The Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence.
And that is, in order to maximize individual liberty we need to minimize
governmental power.  Individual liberty is the control of your time,
your body and your money.  In order to maximize that we must minimize
government regulations, government bureaucracies, government taxes.
We're the only party that clearly thinks this way.  We think that the
founders of this country were all Libertarians.  Thomas Jefferson and
others were fond of saying, "that government is best which governs
least." And that's what we support.

...
[Question and answer about whether the platform as changed?
Marrou basically answers, no, the party platform hasn't changed
in 20 years, it's evolved.]
...

Q:
In 1980, your candidate got over 900,000 votes which is the best
performance yet.  And I've seen that you say that you are going to do
better this year.  What is it in the 1992 political climate that you
think favors the Libertarians.

A:
For one thing it's very mechanistic, [talks about how TV ads work] ...
The other thing is that the American people are simply fed up with the
Democrats and Republicans.  We've got the worst recession in 50 years,
we have the highest poverty level in 80 years, the weakest dollar since
World War II.  ...In our second largest city for goodness sakes, we've
had the worst riots in this country since the Civil War.  All of these
things add together to get people to wondering that maybe the Democrats
and Republicans are not doing the job that they should be doing.

Q:
...  Would you say that you share some of the same frustration out there
in the electorate that got excited with Ross Perot.

A:
[talks about Perot deserving credit for motivating people, especially
old people]

...  On the other hand, the man wants to increase power of the IRS; he
wants to increase the power of the government; he wants to increase the
power of the police; he wants to increase taxes.  All of these things
are bad.  They would make the situation worse.  In that sense, he's very
similar to Bill Clinton and George Bush.  They all want to increase
taxes, increase regulation, increase bureaucracy.  We want to do the
exact opposite.

Q:
...  How would you differentiate a Perot supporter from a Libertarian
supporter, demographically?

A:
Our supporters tend to be people in their 30s, 40s, and 50s, lower 50s.
...  They're upper middle class people, they're professional people,
they are people that used to be called yuppies.  We used to have a lot
of computer people in the party, computer programmers, designers,
manufacturers.  We're now mainstreaming the party.  We're moving toward
the mainstream, toward the middle class mainstream.  That is being done
this year.  It may not be complete, but we are moving to that point.  I
frankly look forward to the day when the average libertarian will be a
truck driver or a waitress because that will mean that we will have
mainstreamed the party and we will at that time be a majority party.

...  [Question and answer about fund raising and success of television
advertising.] ...

Q:
Your plan for education sounds a lot to me like George Bush's plan:
vouchers for school choice.  Who thought of it first?

A:
We did, and it's not just vouchers for school choice.  We want to
privatize the entire school system.

If you really want high quality low cost schools, the only way to get it
is with private schools.  We need to move the entire educational
function out of the government and into the private sector in order to
get high quality low cost education.  It is clear.  Certainly, private
schools cost less than public schools.  They provide higher quality.

One of the things we can do to transfer this function is to use vouchers
and we can also have tax credits or tax abatements for companies or
organizations that would prefer to send children to school than send
their money to Washington to support the bureaucracy.  We support all of
that.

We call for complete separation of education and state the same the way
that we have separation of religion and state we feel that education
like religion is far to personal and far too important to be left to a
bunch of bureaucrats.

Q:
Do you see it a sign of mainstreaming, if that's the word, [that the
Republicans have stolen some of your ideas like vouchers for school
choice.]

A:
They are trying to do that...  George Bush said read my lips, no new
taxes in 1988.  He lied; he broke his word.  He said no new restrictions
on guns.  Once again, he lied; he broke his word.  So did Reagan; he
spoke like a Libertarian.  So did Nixon.  And as a matter of fact, guess
who said this, "if you elect me President, I'm going to cut taxes 25
percent, I'm going to cut government 25 percent." ...  Franklin
Roosevelt, 1932, 60 years ago.

These people talk like Libertarians because that's what people want to
hear.  The people do want less taxes, less government, less regulation.
So the Democrats and Republicans talk about it but they don't do it
because that's not the philosophy they want to put into place.
...they're essentially putting into effect the philosophy of socialism.

Q:
... If you eliminated [income tax], wouldn't you then saddle poorer
people with a disproportionate share of whatever government
you still want to run because they would have to pay through
consumption taxes or sales taxes.

A:
No, because we're not going to replace the income tax; we're going to
get rid of the income tax.  The income tax only accounts for about a
third of federal revenue.  If you get rid of that, that leaves two
thirds to operate the government on.  And that two thirds of the budget
this year, believe it or not, is equal to the entire budget just 7 years
ago.  All we have to do is bring back the budget of 1985 which is
already too big, and we can easily get rid of the income tax.

The average American, believe me, is strongly in favor of doing away
with the income tax and strongly fears the IRS.  They want to do away
with income tax and the IRS.  We can do it.

With regard to it being fair, the income tax is not, because the richer
you are, the more money you have to hire tax accountants and tax
attorneys to advise you how to not pay taxes.  The poor people are
exempt.  The people in the middle are the ones who are hurt.  It's the
middle class in this country that are hurting.  A lot of people
understand this and yet the Democrats and Republicans are doing nothing
about it.

Q:
[Question about legalizing drugs]

A:
If you want to get rid of drug crime there's only one way to do it and
that's take the profit motive out of it.  Prior to 1914 there were no
drug laws in this country and there was no drug crime; there was no drug
problem.  A few people could and did use drugs.  No one cared.  It was
considered a vice, not a crime.

When we relegalized alcohol in 1933 after 13 years of Prohibition, two
things happened. First, drug crime or gangsterism ceased almost
immediately.  Secondly, the consumption per capita of that drug has been
decreasing ever since.

Fifteen years ago when I was a liquor wholesaler in Alaska ...
[interviewer interrupts and they talk about Marrou's having been a
liquor wholesaler] ...  Fifteen years ago light beer was not even known,
and yet today that's the largest selling type of beer.  The last three
years, you can buy non-alcoholic beer in bars which was unknown three
years ago.  The consumption of that drug has gone down.  The same thing
will happen in the future if we relegalize, take your pick, any of these
drugs or all of these drugs, [interviewer offers a few: cocaine, heroin]
... yes, drug crime will disappear immediately and the usage of the drug
will decline.

You cannot -- sooner or later we must understand -- ...  you cannot get
rid of drug usage.  This you cannot do.  What you can do is get rid of
drug crime.  You need to separate the two.  You cannot get rid of drug
usage, which is what George Bush is trying to do, but you can get rid of
drug crime and the only way to do that is to take the profit motive out
of it.

Q:
[Just as a practical issue, what would you do with all those in jail for
drug use?]

A:
I would pardon them.  ...  We have three times as many people in prison
today as we did ten years ago.  This doesn't mean that Americans are
three times as bad as they were ten years ago.  It means that we have
too many regulations, too many rules, too many bureaucrats enforcing all
these regulations and writing more regulations.

Not only that, the United States now has more people incarcerated per
capita that any other country in the world, including the former USSR,
including the Union of South Africa, and including the Communist
countries of North Korea, Vietnam, China, Albania, and Cuba.  It doesn't
mean that Americans are worse than those other people.  It means we have
too many rules, too many regulations, and too many people trying to
enforce those regulations.

[Marrou goes on to talk about health care, being from Texas,
Perot, but my fingers are too tired to go on.]
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian,alt.politics.marrou