Daily ® Trojan
vol. Ixv
no. 3
University of Southern California
los angeles, California
Wednesday, September 20, 1972
DT photo by Craig Bolotin
USC’s own presidential candidate
By Andrew Erskine
associate editor
John Hospers is definitely not your run-of-the-mill presidential candidate. First, he is a dyed-in-the-wool academic, the head of USC’s School of Philosophy. And practical politics is a singularly unacademic profession.
Secondly, he readily admits that he hasn’t any aDDetite for practical politics.
But a candidate he is; Hospers is running as the Libertarian Party’s choice for President.
As one might expect, the desire to make political hay is not among his motivations for running. He views his candidacy as a means for communicating the ideas of his party to the general public.
I’ve been an academic too long to change habits in the middle of the stream,” he said. “What I do best is think things out logically from premises, and present them through speeches.”
Definitive work
Previous to his candidacy, Hospers was known chiefly as the author of a number of books on philosophy. One of his books, Libertarianism: A Political Philosophy for Tomorrow, is considered to be the definitive work on libertarian philosophy.
When the Libertarian Party held its first national convention in Denver last June, Hospers attended as a delegate and a member of the platform committee. After the platform was finished, he turned his energies toward writing the party’s statement of principles. Much to his surprise, he was nominated on the first ballot, with Tonie Nathan of Eugene, Ore., a television producer, as his vice-presidential running mate. He decided to accept.
Soapbox candidacy
“There was no chance of my being elected anyway, and my candidacy could provide a soap-
box for our ideas,” he said.
At first glance, the Libertarian Party’s platform on which Hospers is running looks like a hodgepodge of liberal and conservative causes. In the area of civil and political rights it is usually somewhat to the left of McGovern, but with regards to governmental spending and interference in the economy, the platform sounds quite conservative. Incongruous as its planks may seem, upon closer examination the platform seems quite coherent.
“The libertarian view is that each person should have dominion over his and not anybody else’s life,” Hospers explained. “Nobody has the right to use force to change other peoples’ decisions unless that person has first used force.”
No governmental force
A very important corollary to this view, Hospers said, is that government, too, has no right to use force on any individual that
had not first used force. Libertarian Party members feel that the only legitimate function of government is to provide for the defense of its citizens—in other words, to protect them from violence or coercion from fellow citizens or other nations.
Unfortunately, Hospers said, the government does not confine its activities to this area. In fact, he said, government is by far the most frequent transgressor of the libertarian ideal.
Libertarians feel that laissez-faire capitalism is the only economic system compatible with complete individual freedom, because it is the only system that safeguards the right of each person to offer his goods and services to others on the free market. Consequently they oppose any government interference in the economy.
Libertarian platform
Their platform calls for: 1) reduction of both taxes and government spending; 2) an end to
deficit budgets; 3) the removal ofall governmental obstructions to free trade: and 4) the repeal of all controls on wages, prices, rents, profits, production and interest rates. In addition, subsidies, tariffs and other governmental provisions that favor one individual over another should be repealed, the platform said.
When asked if unfettered big business would become a threat to the well being of the individual, Hospers replied, “The only monopoly to be afraid of is one in which the government is in collusion. In cases like that every taxpayer is forced to pay for somebody else’s mistakes.”
Hospers and the Libertarian Party are also set against federal programs like welfare and social security. Aid to the poor, they feel, should come from private, voluntary sources.
Hospers added that govern-
(Coniinued on page 2)