The Libertarian Party's national Platform is updated at national conventions, held every two years. The current version was adopted at the convention held in Sparks, Nevada in May 2022.
National Platform
PREAMBLE
As Libertarians, we seek a world of liberty: a world in which all individuals are sovereign over their own lives and are not forced to sacrifice their values for the benefit of others.
We believe that respect for individual rights is the essential precondition for a free and prosperous world, that force and fraud must be banished from human relationships, and that only through freedom can peace and prosperity be realized.
Consequently, we defend each person’s right to engage in any activity that is peaceful and honest, and welcome the diversity that freedom brings. The world we seek to build is one where individuals are free to follow their own dreams in their own ways, without interference from government or any authoritarian power.
In the following pages we set forth our basic principles and enumerate various policy stands derived from those principles.
These specific policies are not our goal, however. Our goal is nothing more nor less than a world set free in our lifetime, and it is to this end that we take these stands.
STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES
We, the members of the Libertarian Party, challenge the cult of the omnipotent state and defend the rights of the individual.
We hold that all individuals have the right to exercise sole dominion over their own lives, and have the right to live in whatever manner they choose, so long as they do not forcibly interfere with the equal right of others to live in whatever manner they choose.
Governments throughout history have regularly operated on the opposite principle, that the State has the right to dispose of the lives of individuals and the fruits of their labor. Even within the United States, all political parties other than our own grant to government the right to regulate the lives of individuals and seize the fruits of their labor without their consent.
We, on the contrary, deny the right of any government to do these things, and hold that where governments exist, they must not violate the rights of any individual: namely, (1) the right to life — accordingly we support the prohibition of the initiation of physical force against others; (2) the right to liberty of speech and action — accordingly we oppose all attempts by government to abridge the freedom of speech and press, as well as government censorship in any form; and (3) the right to property — accordingly we oppose all government interference with private property, such as confiscation, nationalization, and eminent domain, and support the prohibition of robbery, trespass, fraud, and misrepresentation.
Since governments, when instituted, must not violate individual rights, we oppose all interference by government in the areas of voluntary and contractual relations among individuals. People should not be forced to sacrifice their lives and property for the benefit of others. They should be left free by government to deal with one another as free traders; and the resultant economic system, the only one compatible with the protection of individual rights, is the free market.
The table of contents that follows contains links to pages with the text of the individual planks, along with other material on related subjects. The complete text of the entire platform is also available in several other formats:
1.0 Personal Liberty
1.1 Self-Ownership
1.2 Expression and Communication
1.3 Privacy
1.4 Personal Relationships
1.5 Parental Rights
1.6 Adult Rights and Responsibilities
1.7 Crime and Justice
1.8 Death Penalty
1.9 Self-Defense
2.0 Economic Liberty
2.1 Aggression, Property, and Contract
2.2 Environment
2.3 Energy and Resources
2.4 Government Finance and Spending
2.5 Government Debt
2.6 Government Employees
2.7 Money and Financial Markets
2.8 Marketplace Freedom
2.9 Licensing
2.10 Sex Work
2.11 Labor Markets
2.12 Education
2.13 Health Care
2.14 Retirement and Income Security
3.0 Securing Liberty
3.1 National Defense
3.2 Internal Security and Individual Rights
3.3 International Affairs
3.4 Free Trade and Migration
3.5 Rights and Discrimination
3.6 Representative Government
3.7 Self-Determination
4.0 OMISSIONS
In every matter, we advocate the consistent application of the principle of the non-initiation of coercion, physical force, or fraud. Our silence about any other particular government law, regulation, ordinance, directive, edict, control, regulatory agency, activity, or machination should not be construed to imply approval.