Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk, Virginia

 Dear Editor:

A recent V-P editorial lamented the times for having political candidates that offer to spend, spend and spend, but talk very little about collecting the taxes to pay for what they spend.   Your editorial staff (incredibly) endorsed the idea that few, if any, American citizens should be reliant on government for their everyday needs.  As the editorial seems to acknowledge, spending tax money to cure just about any social ill is usually ineffective and always overpriced.  The practice of paying for the citizens’ needs also feeds the dependent mentality so essential to how things are right now.

But the remedy suggested by the editorial could hardly have been more 20th Century American liberal in its fundamental assumptions.  All the country needs are political leaders with enough shame over the hypocrisy and fraud inherent in what their pollsters advise them to compel them, instead, to confess the truth.  We just have been electing the wrong people: read conservatives.  If our nation could just raise the selfless band of Rooseveltian seers that our political system requires in its leadership we could then have effective, fairly priced government services. 

When prophets do begin to rule in Washington and Richmond I suppose the nation will not mind the tyranny that is democratic socialism.  There will be no confusion when it happens because prophets will always be easily identified by just about everyone.  Until then, it is prudent to assume we will have to make do with the present band of political leaders with their self-interest and power-mongering hypocrisy.  Indeed, are these not the very people drawn to socialist political office?  Did not such people play hard and dirty to get to the top in the first place?Dorothy, there is no Santa Claus.  Instead, vote to diminish fraud and hypocrisy in government: elect the Libertarian Party of Virginia.  It is the only political party in this Commonwealth that stands for the freedom that America used to enjoy.

Stephen Merrill, LIBERTARIAN PARTY OF VIRGINIA