The Little Black Book of Bills is a community project with purpose, and is designed for several reasons. This document is a short guide to understanding the overall scope of this Wiki, and will help anyone who chooses to someday contribute to it.
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This Wiki is designed to outline and discuss general Libertarian ideas, create a series of platforms from them, and eventually draft the appropriate legislation to enact them through proper Congressional procedure. The ultimate goal of this project is to allow a large community of people interested in the ideas of liberty a place to work out their various ideas into a practicable platform, or series of platforms. The eventual result is to someday have real legislation that is community-driven passed through Congress into law.
Once a sufficient moderation base has been established, anyone will be able to join to edit this Wiki. Until then, participation guidelines are outlined in the How to Participate page.
"Many Ways, One Vision" is the motto of this Wiki. The community of Libertarians who support a movement towards limited, responsible government is vast and is not limited to any one socio-economic class or creed. It is compromised of the politically active and inactive, people who may align themselves with the Democratic and Republican parties, and those who align themselves with independent candidates or the official Libertarian party. Some hold these ideas as a part of a worldview (such as Objectivists), some may be led to Libertarianism because they are interested in a particular field sympathetic to its ideas of individual liberty (such as members of the Austrian School of Economics) while yet more are just hard working people who are tired of a vastly expansive and oppressive centralized government, and want to do something about it. Thus, here all people can help provide guidance to one another towards a single vision of liberty.
Regardless of your motivations for being here, respect and honor those who get here via other ways by understanding there are many personal agendas that lead to support of liberty. In fact, the list of motives for being a supporter of liberty is astoundingly vast to a point of nearly being incapable of being documented. It is one of society's most advanced cultural movements, and has been ever since the age of the Enlightenment.
As such, all parts of the platform, any drafts of actual bills, and summaries of Libertarian ideas in this Wiki will be grouped into several different sections. These sections will help the casual reader to determine how the said section applies to the fundamentals of Libertarian action.
Core Measures represents a very limited subset of Libertarian ideas that most broadly encompass the movement. It is reflected on several basic ideas, such as reduction of taxes, downsizing of government offices, and elimination of domestic and economic regulations. It is strongly tied to the role of the United States Constitution in limiting our federal government's activities.
Section One must address topics related to reform of existing institutions. Therefore, if a document on this Wiki is in the Core Measures sector, you will know it is fundamental to Libertarianism as it is advocated by modern-day advocates, and will be agreed upon by most everyone who supports the movement as an appropriate step for reform.
There are many casual supporters of Libertarian ideas who feel alienated from the central movement because the core values they share are set aside for alterior issues. These alterior issues are less important and not as relevant to the current crisis in government. The more casual supporters that turn to liberty as an answer to their problems, the more likely an advanced Libertarian platform will gain enough support to be put into full effect.
Examples of Core Measures include:
Consequentialists, state's rights libertarians, rights theorists, and casual supporters should all be able to discuss and agree upon most of these ideas. Those with more specific viewpoints should support these ideas, however may not feel they go "far enough".
The second section, Transitional Measures, covers topics that involve replacement or removal of existing governmental institutions, but do not affect the role of government as outlined in the United States Constitution. That means items in this section must operate in a government of three branches (Executive/Judicial/Legislative), operated as a Democratic Republic, with Federal and State governments that have differing responsibilities.
Examples of Transitional Measures include:
Free market theorists, classical liberals, minarchists, Objectivists are just a few types of groups in the libertarian movement that all agree that transitional measures are necessary, but not all parts of the movement necessarily agree on which ones or how to go about making these reforms. Given that these ideas are thus more controversial, they are kept distinctly seperate from Core Measures.
Just as it was in the time of the American Founding Fathers, we may be caught in a moment where we must dissolve our political bonds to pursue a "more perfect union". However unlikely or distant from today, these moments are important in forging the overall structure of one's political ideas, and have frequently affected the course of governments throughout history.
Revolutionary Measures addressed in this Wiki will involve topics that are indifferent to the design of the current government and involve massive, sweeping changes to it.
Examples of Revolutionary Measures include:
These ideas are on the fringe of libertarian thought but are nonetheless fundamental to some libertarian philosophies. Anarcho-capitalists and other groups may advocate these positions, however in the context of the current government, such reform is far away from anything currently achievable in a legislative context even given ideal conditions. Given that these things require the adoption of not only Core Measures but most Transitional Measures to succeed in our society - unless of course violent revolt causes them to be put into place - they are kept in their own seperate category. Some may call these ideas "fantasy", however discussion of these ideas is an important calling to people who really believe in liberty-based philosophy.
Once these ideas are effectively classified and catalogued, we will begin to see clear paths for the success of our movement. Core Measures bring in the support of the general public and help set the stage for change, Transitional Measures begin to change our government to allow for a new more free society, and then Revolutionary Measures give people new ideas that may someday breed a healthier, more perfect union for us all.
There are very few formatting rules, most of them follow the Wikipedia.org guidelines except given the politically biased nature of this project, we do not preserve Neutral Point of View. However the tone of articles should still be focused on matter-of-fact wording and less on expressions that boast or demean a particular viewpoint be it for or against Libertarian ideals. Please use existing articles as guidelines for formatting when possible, and preserve the original punctuation and indentation of bills when adding them to the Wiki using the <pre> tag when necessary. Also, since this Wiki discusses abstract political ideas, it will not be citation heavy (although there will be several people brought on to the project for the sole purpose of generating locating valid citations for existing claims in articles and correcting factual inaccuracies)... if you feel for any reason that the research that goes into this Wiki is inadequate, please go and research more yourself on the various issues pertaining to Libertarianism and come to your own opinion. More specific guidelines will be created if these general guidelines are not followed.
The terms of service for this Wiki is currently fairly open, however this Mediawiki is privately operated and hosted by administrator Phoebus Apollo. As such, there are limitations on the acceptable content.
Please remember, this is a private website paid and maintained by private parties, therefore these rules are not open to debate. Free speech rulings do not apply here. These rules are eligible to change whenever necessary, however I hope that the behavior of participants here is mature enough that I never need to update them.
