Sept. 9, 2006 12:00 AM I find it both encouraging and worthy of appreciation that The Arizona Republic would see clear to provide the Libertarian Party some equal copy ("Party aim: To recruit members," Valley & State, Aug. 29.

When the Republicans were founded in Ripon, Wis., in 1854, no one believed they would amount to anything. Six years later, they put Abraham Lincoln in the executive mansion. The rest, as they say, is history.

However, today, paraphrasing the old TV car ad, "It's not your father's Republican Party."

Thirty-five years ago, in 1971, many of the nation's registered Democrats and Republicans had grown disheartened and cynical, feeling that the major parties had not only gone astray, but were actually merging with one another. In the kindling of this conjecture, a new political party, based upon the fundamental principles of both the Founding Fathers and their new constitutional republic, was established and came to life: the Libertarian Party.

We are now in a national crisis and find our time-honored codes and standards all but thrust aside in America: the Constitution effectively suspended, free speech suppressed, habeas corpus nullified, the right to keep and bear arms abrogated, and due process of law all but abolished. These are absolute facts and are not the only outrages that have been committed in the name of "national security" since 9/11.

Enough is enough. It is now time for a regime change in Washington, for a new political party - the Libertarian Party - to raise America from of the dregs of 152 years of Demopublican repression, tyranny, war, mediocrity and perpetual debt.

It is time to put both Washington and its officious minions under new management and re-establish our genuinely libertarian pedigree before our splendid, noble nation becomes as "obliviated" as ancient Rome. - William N. Gaillard, Prescott

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