Mary Ruwart, Libertarian for President

Libertarian Party 2008: A House Divided?

Every year, thousands of young children are kidnapped and forced against their will to perform degrading sexual acts in front of a camera. "Kidde porn," as the resulting product is often called, is a profitable business run by criminals who use and abuse their unwilling underage performers.

As a three-time grandmother, I find this practice more than abhorrent; I find it personally terrifying. To think that my grandchildren might ever face such horrors is beyond my wildest nightmare.

Consequently, you can understand my shock when Mark Schreiber, "quoted" me as saying that "pedophilia is OK" in my book, Short Answers to the Tough Questions, this weekend at the Indiana LP Convention. Mr. Scribner is the campaign manager for LP presidential hopeful Wayne Allyn Root.

Next, Schreiber repeated an earlier demand made by Wayne Allyn Root that I withdraw my name from consideration for both the presidential and vice-presidential nomination, since my stand on child pornography made me unfit for consideration. My withdrawal would have conveniently eliminated one of Mr. Root's chief competitors.

Do I think that pedophilia is OK? Of course not! In my 25 plus years in the Party, I can't recall a single person who would have said such a thing. I invited Indiana convention attendees to look through the copies of Short Answers on my display table and see for themselves.

Mr. Schreiber's comments, made in an indignant and angry tone, apparently were intended to call my character into question. Evidently, truth was unimportant. Will Mr. Root show a disregard for the facts reminiscent of his campaign manager during our nationally-televised debates in Denver? Will he have some shocking lie or disinformation about other candidates that leaves the American public with the belief that Libertarians are degenerates?

These are the kinds of tactics used by the Democrats and Republicans. As the Party of Principle, we try to set a higher standard. Indeed, what sets us apart from the other parties is that we believe in doing things differently. Why? Because it does matter how you do things; it matters a lot! Hopefully, we live by our principles and reject fraud as the means to our ends.

When we join the Party, we sign the pledge as an affirmation of our intention to do just that. When we violate our principles, as the Root campaign has done, we endanger our Party and everything it stands for.

When we are willing to misrepresent a fellow libertarian's comments for our personal gain, we show our disregard for the very liberty we are trying to achieve. Instead of supporting each other against a common enemy, we wound each other and our cause.

These wounds render us unable to fight our real enemies who lay waiting to devour us when we falter. By abandoning our principles, we play right into their hands.

This incident has made me even more committed to becoming the LP's presidential nominee. This is a pivotal year for the Libertarian Party, a crossroads at which we will decide the direction of the Party for years to come. If we allow our nomination process to be dominated by fraud and divisiveness, the LP, like the house divided, will fall.