I believe the Average Joe American (non-plumber) is instinctually a libertarian. But how do you educate masses of them when the special interests have such an effective propaganda machine?

Here’s my program for the recently awakened:

Step one: believe, in your heart, that there is no difference between the D and R parties. (Helps to read Lew Rockwell)

Step two: realize that Washington is the problem and that we must return to local self-government. (Helps to learn about the Free State Project)

Step three: change your daily life in meaningful ways to resist the empire and regain your liberty. (Helps to decide to do right, even though you’ll never be thanked and often ridiculed.)

Here is the Daily Bell’s analysis of Lou Dobbs’ dismissal from CNN:

“If CNN truly wanted to offer an alternative to Fox (which wishes to use the power of the state for military and domestic intel purposes) and MSNBC (which wishes to use the power of the state for further socialist leveling purposes) it would position itself as a free-market libertarian alternative … But instead, CNN’s idea of “neutrality” is to position itself BETWEEN Fox and MSNBC … in such a way as it seems less EXTREME than either of the other networks. CNN will then characterize this position as neutrality. It is not.”

While Dobbs is no friend of liberty (especially if your skin-tone happens to be brown), the Daily Bell is correct that his dismissal is not a positive sign for CNN.

Those who have broken free from the left-right mentality do not always do so in a libertarian directions. From Mike Bloomberg to John McCain to Olympia Snowe to Joe Lieberman, we find that being neither Red nor Blue can sometimes mean turning Purple — the worst of both worlds.

(Classical) Liberalism is an ideology; it just happens to be the right one. Being bi-partisan does not a liberal make. Being opposed to coercion in all its forms does a liberal make. We don’t need a bi-partisan news channel on cable, we need a truly liberal channel. Oh, and in case you are so uninformed as to suggest MSNBC is the ‘liberal’ channel, check the dictionary — they are socialists.

So far, it seems Fox Business is the best candidate for a libertarian partisan outlet. And for actual neutrality, Bloomberg News. Kudos to them.

If my simian contemporaries cannot perceive their own chains, how can I begin to teach them to pick the lock? The voter seems satisfied with the notion that there is a healthcare “crisis” and without an Imperial intervention, there would be people dying in the streets. Will anyone ask why the governments of our sovereign states cannot handle the matter? Surely because they would not come to such a coercive conclusion! The states are in a market, competing amongst themselves. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has preempted this drive to ‘universal healthcare’ and is suffering the consequences. Costs are rising, care is suffering, and desirable residents are leaving for other states. Coercionists always seek the highest plane of power to project their edicts because they know that individuals have a natural drive to be free. The other advantage is that the citizens are more easily duped by matters ‘elevated’ to ‘national’ level. They can be convinced that the sound rules of interpersonal respect — do not hit, steal, or murder — no longer apply. They can be convinced that there are complexities to the issue that can only be understood by the likes of Nancy Pelosi.

Until you morons of the left and right figure out that “federal law” is just another way to say “no escape,” you will continue to sink into poverty and despair. And worse, you’ll drag the innocent and enlightened down with you.

I often wonder, at moments such as these, whether the classical liberal tradition was too hasty in embracing another universal — suffrage.

I found the video through ‘Austin Gun Rights Examiner’ Howard Nemerov’s article about how gun control at Fort Hood allowed Nidal Hasan to take so many lives.

America is a great case-in-point. Founded under a universalizing, Enlightenment-era liberal ideology, Americans have internalized a peculiar lack of attachment to place. (For more on this, visit the wordsmiths at Front Porch Republic). However, I have noticed in my late-night, pajama-clad research sessions, that warm States are different than cold, and coastal States different than inland.

I determined that despite my love of warm weather, the trade-offs were intolerable: high crime, corruption, dishonesty, and disease.

Meanwhile, coastal areas appear to be wealthier, more sophisticated, and to have a certain je ne sais quoi that makes their cultures widely envied and imitated.

Anyway, making such generalizations is certainly a troll-baiting exercise, but it’s just food for thought.

For the record, I admire the politics of the Mountain West, which is not coastal, and Texas, which is not cold. But we’re looking for tendencies here…

It is important reading for those of us who quickly call ourselves ‘libertarians’, accepting the pessimism and hopelessness that hangs on that label. It reminds us that we are part of a proud tradition that has proven its success and popularity worldwide since the Age of Enlightenment, and even back to antiquity: liberalism.

We are so lost since the democratic socialists cloaked themselves in our name, liberal, to mask the alien horror of their proposals as they imposed them upon the world’s most liberal people: the Americans. Now, it seems the most effective of us call ourselves ‘conservatives’, explaining that we seek to conserve the liberties of our founding generation. But those liberal ideas that we seek to conserve were then, and remain, progressive, radical, and revolutionary across time and culture. The true conservatives and reactionaries, those who wish to control and restrict the “unfettered” free market, are now called ‘liberals’.

Is it any wonder that we are fooled time and again by the rhetoric of true conservatives, who we have come to believe are our natural allies when they are truly our enemies? Is it any wonder that we find no solace with the supposed liberals, who have used our concepts of liberty, equality, and peace to further their agenda of authority, stratification, and war?

We have allowed semantics to cleave us from our identity and our noble tradition. We are liberals. Liberalism is the most successful system the world has seen. Not only did it produce the great States of America, but it is the reigning ideology in Europe, the Pacific Rim, and anywhere else people have been able to lift themselves from poverty and misery. Liberalism is about decentralization, property rights, the rule of law, republicanism, and civil society. It is the common thread the makes Norway, even with its famous “social safety net”, more similar to Virginia or Hong Kong than Cuba or Libya.

So, stop putting yourself in a little box. Stop obsessing over the intricacies of private road systems and collecting signatures for ballot access. Stop giving yourself heartburn tracking the relentless advance of tyranny. Those exercises are useful, but fruitless until we reclaim our identity. We are liberals, and every human being on the planet is desperate to live in the societies we build. Hold up your head and look around: all that is good is your legacy.

The $2 Bill

Briggs Armstrong, a student at Auburn University, came up with a great way to raise awareness about the harm done by the Federal Reserve: pay only in $2 bills.

Here’s why I prefer $2 bills:

* It makes people think about the currency they use. The Federal Reserve System, the United States’ central bank, has devalued our currency by about 97% since it was formed. Before that, your money actually gained value the longer you held it. In other words, the cost of everyday goods got cheaper over time, not more expensive. Imagine if a hot dog that was 10¢ in 1913 cost only 1¢ now, instead of $1.50? That purchasing power was stolen from you by inflation, a secret tax the federal government uses to steal from people who save. This is the main reason why we are having an economic crisis.

* Thomas Jefferson’s image on a Federal Reserve Note is ironic. Jefferson, one of the Founding Fathers, fought hard throughout his career to avoid having a central bank. He wrote: “We are undone, my dear sir, if legislation is still permitted which makes our money, much or little, real or imaginary, as the moneyed interests shall choose to make it.” The ‘money’ that we all use everyday is now imaginary, as Jefferson predicted. It used to be that the paper notes we carried were receipts for actual gold held in a bank, redeemable at any time in gold coins/bars (money). Now, the ‘dollars’ can’t be redeemed in anything, and are only still circulated because of habit and because the federal government forces people to accept them. They are just worthless currency — some with Jefferson’s face on the front.

* The Declaration of Independence on a Federal Reserve Note is doubly ironic. In 1776, thirteen fledgling colonies declared independence from the biggest empire the world had ever seen. After barely winning a hard-fought war for their freedom, a group of politicians immediately erected a similar system to the one from which they had just escaped. The Federal Government is actually an Imperial Government. Its designers, chief among them Alexander Hamilton, actually meant for it to swallow the free and sovereign States into one big commercial empire. But the States retained some of their independence. Then, the War Between The States (incorrectly called the Civil War) stripped any remaining independence away from the States and forever associated their cause with racism. When the Federal Reserve and federal income tax were instituted in 1913, the ‘states’ became little more than provinces of the fully imperial government in D.C. So, the independence we declared is now dead — memorialized on the back of a rarely circulated imperial note.

I prefer the $2 bill because many of you who have read this only did because I paid you with one. And now that I have your attention, get educated. It’s your duty as a human being to learn how the government is fleecing you. Start here:

Campaign for Liberty

Lew Rockwell

Reason Magazine

Watching the movie Traitor this afternoon, I gained new insight into the value of religion, in this case Islam. While in a Yemeni prison, the protagonist gives a fellow inmate his rations after a bully had thrown the other man’s rations onto the ground. The bully then confronts the protagonist, telling him “I decide who eats and who starves.” The protagonist fights the bully and his gang alone and, though adept at combat, is overwhelmed. However, other inmates notice his good deed and his daily prayers. The next time the gang confronts the protagonist, the other Muslim inmates come to his aid, and he is left alone.

Libertarians often feel as if they are each a lone voice shouting against the chorus of human aggression. We teach our friends about right and wrong, property rights, and human dignity, but are often unable to affect great change.

We are also generally an atheist lot, though this wasn’t always the case. The revolutionary generation were deists and freemasons. These ‘brotherhoods’ were a source of mutual support. Nowadays, there is a segment of the christian right which leans in a libertarian direction, and as Ron Paul’s Rally for the Republic showed, they are more effective at organizing (even with a less consistent program).

I don’t support the neoconservative tenet that religion is a ‘useful myth’ that should be propagated to keep stupid people in line. And I don’t see how the concept of God makes any sense. As an anthropomorphic creature, he would not be omnipotent; as an omnipotent being, he would not help answer any questions that he supposedly answers. However, I do believe there is utility in shared customs and brotherhood. I would probably join the freemasons if they didn’t require members to profess faith in a supreme beings.

Instead, I move that we treat libertarianism like a religion – a social code. It is only by religious conviction that men have risen from expediency and committed to living righteously. Islam’s success in the Arab world was due to the Koran’s ready-made legal system and principles. Muslims knew other muslims would: use gold and silver for currency, keep their word on contracts, hold 100% reserves on deposits, fight for their property, respect the honor of their wives and daughters. That sounds pretty libertarian, doesn’t it? Sharia law in practice is perhaps a perversion, a fascist overlay of subjugating women and serving the powerful interests. But like the American federation, people were drawn to Islam initially because of its offer of a system of justice that respects freedom and property. What libertarianism needs is a ‘good book’ like the Bible, meeting halls in every city, and people pledging their sacred honor to each other’s defense.

With all that, I don’t think anyone will even miss the God nonsense.

Great article.

I can see by the comments herein that most people see secession from a nationalist perspective. Nations are treated as corporate persons that can be ‘hurt’ by having pieces of their sovereign territory ‘taken’ from them.

As Von Mises explained, this is not the case. Rather, the sovereignty of states is nothing more than the pooling of individuals’ sovereignty across a particular territory. To see it any differently would cause individuals to surrender all rights to serve as cells in the corporate whole. Germany invading Lombardy is not wrong because it bugs the people in Rome, but because it bugs the people in Lombardy. We are not servants of our capital cities or our nation-states.

Most libertarians will hold firm to the principle of unilateral secession as a bedrock of liberty de jure, while recognizing the complications of secession in practice. Every secessionist movement without a set territory (like a province or historical region) prior to its independence is subject to nationalists in the mother country trying to keep as much land as possible. This is little more than a resource grab, much as colonial powers will retain bases in their former colonies, e.g. Cyprus. Another typical complication is forced or voluntary migration, or genocide, prior to the secession. This is much more relevant in the Old World – where such occurrences are more commonplace – than in a place like Quebec. I believe that most libertarians would be sympathetic to arguments about pre-secession land-grabbing, and would support pursuit of a settlement prior to the territory’s departure.

Unfortunately, the news media usually does not present the background of a secessionist movement without a heavy bias toward one of the superpowers that stakes its reputation on the outcome. I suspect, but have never seen coverage of, ethnic strife in South Ossetia and Abkhazia leading to the current conflict. If Georgians were ‘cleansed’ before the votes, that would definitely corrupt the declaration of independence. It might morally authorize Georgian military intervention. My impression, however, is that there is a certain element of nationalism – always a vice of the cyrillic world – that led Saakashvili to attempt to ‘reconquer’ these lands in the name of Georgia. If that is not the case, then I suggest Georgians get about educating the rest of us about past crimes that justify the invasion of these two statelets.

On a final note to what has become the longest comment I have ever left on a blog, my personal wish is to see the Russian Federation/Empire disintegrate into a sea of small states. These news states would be in direct competition with one another to liberalize or face mass emigration. The only way to hold together an empire the size of Russia, China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Canada or America is by coercion writ large. Though they are often cited as the great powers of the world, their achievements per capita are so often less than that of small states. They are more rigid, less likely to liberalize, and harder to escape. Moreover, they are a danger to the smaller states of the world, like Georgia. The Russian government, through its many incarnations, has held the world hostage too long, it has held its own ‘subjects’ as slaves for too long, and it is the greatest candidate for dissolution. I believe such a transformation will herald a golden age for Eurasia. I hope I will live to see it.