Hello, I'm speaking with Nicholas who is the chairman of the American Libertarian Party.
Could you present yourself, what is your name, how old are you and what are you
doing for a living?
- My name is Nicholas Sarwark, I'm 37 years old, I'm turning 38
in couple of weeks.
For living our family owns a used car dealership in Phoenix Arizona, so we
sell used cars to people, finance them, give them loans to buy cars and then in my
spare time I'm also Chairman of the Libertarian National Committee.
Can you tell me something about the history of the Libertarian Party?
When was it founded and how big is it?
The Libertarian Party in the United States
was founded in 1971 by David Nolan and some of his friends.
They were very
frustrated with Nixon and the Republican Party.
They felt the Republicans had
moved away from the free-market principles, that had been part of the
party and so they founded a new National Committee.
In the last 46 years
the party has grown an incredible amount.
We're now organized in all 50 states in
the United States.
We've run presidential candidates in every presidential
election since 1970, because 1972 was our first.
And we just
crossed half a million registered voters in the United States with identified as
libertarian.
We're on track to continue to grow and become a bigger part of American politics.
How many parliament members do you have?
We have no members of the Federal Congress, not
Senate or House (of the Representatives) and we haven't elected
the president yet.
We have about 150 various elected office holders in the different
states around the country and we have goals in 2018 to run over 2000
candidates nationwide, at all levels of government from Senate and Congress, down
to local city council races and mayors.
What is the main goal of the Libertarian Party?
The main goal of the Libertarian Party is to return American
politics to what it used to be, which is the idea that every American has a right
to pursue happiness any way they choose as long as they don't hurt other people
and they don't take their stuff.
So the basic principle of libertarianism?
Exactly.
You know, the libertarian government,
if it is going to exist, should only exist to protect maybe you
from hurting me or vice versa, but it shouldn't protect us from ourselves.
Adults have to grow up and make their own choices,
make their own mistakes and learn from them.
How do you achieve your goals?
I mean what the kind of work are you doing?
Are you just making advertisements, writing
articles or maybe you are doing some other activities as well?
So I do pretty much everything I can.
I try and recruit candidates.
I give speeches and presentations to train
candidates on how to speak.
I present at conferences like this one in Puerto Rico.
I meet with donors to get funding for the party.
We engage in lawsuits and I'm a witness some time in lawsuits to
fight the government.
So we do everything we can to try and build a freer country
for our children.
- Do you prepare your candidates, the people who will
be destinated to run in elections?
Do you think about this one month before,
or one year before?
We think about it years before, so the day after the
2016 election when Gary Johnson and Bill Weld
got a record number of votes in the history of the Libertarian Party.
For the first time we got more votes
than the difference between the winner and the loser.
From that very day the day after we started planning on how to run
candidates in 2018, two years hence and
how to start building the party up for
the presidential election in 2020.
You know our work starts the day after
everyone thinks the campaign is over.
Can you explain to the
Polish audience how the political parties are financed in
the United States?
In the United States there's a federal law that requires that
political parties can only get money from individuals.
Political parties
cannot be financed by companies or corporations, although people who work
for corporations sometimes give campaign contributions, and there are maximums on
how much someone can give.
One person can give approximately thirty four thousand
American dollars in any given year.
So it prevents say one or two very wealthy
individuals from kind of owning a political party and encourages broader
participation.
It's probably not constitutional, but that's the rules that
we have to live under.
- And it works? because we heard at the conference
how big companies bribe politicians in Peru and in Brazil.
It works probably better than in Peru and Brazil.
There's a lot of ways to influence politicians and what libertarians
realize is that politicians are going to try to be influenced by companies, who
want special favors and they'll figure out ways around any set of rules.
So even
though only individuals can contribute in the United States oftentimes people
that work for a large bank or a large pharmaceutical company are all
encouraged to make individual contributions to the same politician,
which then turns into legislation being passed for the benefit of that company.
So that instinct is kind of a natural human instinct and that's why
libertarians instead of trying to manage that process we're trying to minimize
how much power government has.
So it's not so much that we work on
the demand side because people always want special favors, we try to work
on the supply side, so that there's less things for the government to get out.
What is your role in the Libertarian Party?
You are
Chairman, so you are not the President, but chairman is also a very important person.
A chairman is equivalent to president in some organizations.
Basically I'm the leader for the party nationally.
So our party is organized as 50
state affiliates in the District of Columbia.
There are individuals of Libertarian
Parties like the Libertarian Party of Arizona or the Libertarian Party of
Colorado.
And then nationally we have a National Committee that kind of
organizes and sits on top of all of those
individual state parties, that manages the presidential election and also works
to move resources around.
So if we have to file a lawsuit in Ohio or if we have to
hire petitioners to get ballot access for our candidates in Virginia that's
what the National Party does and I also act as a kind of a spokesman or a CEO
for the Party.
- Could you say something about your grandfather, because
I think that it will be a very interesting message for the Polish audience.
Absolutely, my grandfather was Roman Sarwark.
He founded the oldest
used car dealership in Phoenix in 1942.
And his father was Franciszek Sarwark,
who came over to the United States in April of 1902 with eight dollars
in his in his pocket.
He had eight dollars total and he was brought into this
country at the age of 19, single, no real job prospects and ended up working as a
machinist in Indiana.
His three sons went on, two of them served in the
military, one of them started a major business and you know that sort of it's
the American dream for somebody from Poland with only eight dollars to come over here
and end up having their family become kind of pillars of the community.
And the great possibilities.
In the third generation his ancestor became the
president of the United States.
It could happen.
I wish you became the President.
Can you tell me something on how you see
the cooperation between politicians from the United States and
for example Poland?
I think that there's a lot that we can learn from each other.
Poland has a lot to teach us about the experiences with socialism.
You know like a child can learn from touching a stove not to burn themselves,
but sometimes if you watch someone else burn themselves and they tell you
about it, you can avoid getting the burns yourself.
So I think that we can share
some ideas with Polish politicians.
Polish politicians can share some ideas
with us.
Everything is better through mutual sharing and cooperation.
When people talk to each other share experiences and share ideas I think both
sides benefit.
Great, I hope that the next conference will be in Poland and I
will invite you and I expect that you will come and we have we will have some
more space to exchange our minds and maybe influence the societies in both countries.
I look forward to it.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
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