The Humble Libertarian original

Photo by W. E. Messamore © 2009 All Rights Reserved This is a reminder to send in your tea bags to the fiscal fools in Washington D.C. on April 1st. I'm mailing mine off today so that they get there on April 1st, but anytime between now and the 1st should be fine. I imagine they'll be getting a flood of these over the course of this week and it will send a powerful message! If you don't have the time or stamps to send Washington a physical tea bag (or you just want to overwhelm every line of communication to Washington with a pro-freedom message this April 1st), feel free to send the President , Congress , and the Fed e-mails with the following image attached: Image by André Karwath ( CC ) - Edits mine You can also send a text-only message: DONT TREAD ON ME American Tea Party 2009 []~~{ TEA ] []~~{ TEA ] []~~{ TEA ] []~~{ TEA ] []~~{ TEA ] []~~{ TEA ] []~~{ TEA ] []~~{ TEA ] []~~{ TEA ] []~~{ TEA ] []~~{ TEA ] []~~{ TEA ] []~~{ TEA ] Please return America to fiscal an

"Lights out" for freedom and the achievements of industrial civilization. Yesterday at 8:30 PM local time all around the world, demonstrators dimmed the lights of their houses and establishments for one hour as part of a global demonstration called " Earth Hour " by its originators in Sydney, Australia. Organized by the WWF ( The World Wildlife Fund or World Wide Fund for Nature outside the U.S. and Canada), Earth Hour 's website says : This year, Earth Hour has been transformed into the world’s first global election, between Earth and global warming. For the first time in history, people of all ages, nationalities, race and background have the opportunity to use their light switch as their vote – Switching off your lights is a vote for Earth, or leaving them on is a vote for global warming. But the chic marketing tag that frames this as an election between Earth and global warming is ultimately vague, meaningless, and disingenuous. It is a preposter

If you want to catch any updates about it in your newsfeed subscribe to my email list: The Top 100 Libertarian Websites, Blogs, and Podcasts. 1. Bitcoin.org - Libertarians have understood for decades now that the primary source of the government's power, even more than the sheer titanic force of its overwhelming firepower, is its coercive monopolization and manipulation of the money supply. Long have libertarians let loose the chant, "End The Fed! End The Fed!" Here we have a means of direct action that no political force can ever nullify. Free market, private currency. Open source, transparent, decentralized, peer-to-peer, anonymous, cryptographically secure, and deflationary. The end of the imperialist Washington military monetary hegemony is nigh, and libertarians are getting wealthy off of absolutely knee-capping the federal government. ★★★ 2. paul.senate.gov - Since getting elected to the United States Senate with a mandate from the people of Kentucky

As a follow up to yesterday's post, which answers the (annoying and evasive) question " Where were the conservatives when George W. Bush ran his deficits? " I am now putting the question to Democrats and so-called "progressives." Where are you and what are you doing right now ? Do you have the rational foresight and moral courage at this moment to stand up and vocally oppose the fiscal irresponsibility of the Obama Administration and its partners in Congress? Or will you deflect and evade? There's been a lot of talk in the news headlines lately about divisions on the left and strong criticisms of Obama's economic policies coming from left-wing sources. I don't know however, that I've specifically heard criticisms of Obama's deficits. Instead, the Democrats seem to be urging Obama and Congress to push full steam ahead with more and ever more spending : "MoveOn.org and Americans United for Change, the labor-backed organization t

As a sane human being who values his future, I find it particularly discouraging to watch as the Obama Administration and its accomplices in Congress run trillion dollar deficits in excess of the already ridiculous deficits left behind by the Bush Administration. My aggravation however, turns to something more like rage when I hear partisan defenders of the Democrats' agenda say "Where were you conservatives when Bush was running these deficits? I didn't hear you complaining then." To begin with, it's an evasion of the issue, which is whether or not it's a good thing for our country to run deficits (and it is decidedly not ). Secondly, it implies that Obama is somehow absolved of any responsibility for ruining our country because Bush started ruining it first. In what universe does that make any sense? Last of all, not all conservatives gave George W. Bush a free pass on deficit spending. Many did, just as many Democrats are giving Obama a free pass on f

A Don't Tread On Me T-shirt , one of the prizes courtesy of ReTeaParty.com Hey folks! This blog has been growing in leaps and bounds since I started it just six months ago and to celebrate the Humble Libertarian's 6-month anniversary (which is on April 2nd), I am running a contest to have a little fun and to attract some more regular readers to this growing community of liberty-lovers! How To Enter All you have to do to enter is subscribe to this blog via e-mail . The deadline is the end of the day on April 2nd. Subscribing is free of any cost or obligation. After you subscribe, you will get no more than one e-mail a day with updates from the Humble Libertarian so you can conveniently stay up to date on our unique analysis and commentary. Enter your email address: Delivered by FeedBurner As for all of you who are already subscribed to this blog via e-mail- don't sweat it! You're going to be entered into the competition too. As of the publication of this post, I have

Photo of AIG Lobby in NYC by: David Shankbone ( CC ) The fallout over AIG's 165 million dollar bonuses (and the Federal Government's unconstitutional response) has the American public reeling with outrage. Here's an overview: What is AIG and what does AIG do? The BBC has this answer : "AIG provides insurance and financial services in more than 130 countries. The group and its subsidiaries employ more than 100,000 people around the world, including 2,000 in the UK, and it is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, as well as stock exchanges in Ireland and Tokyo. It provides a range of insurance services to a variety of commercial, institutional and individual customers. It also provides retirement and asset management services around the world. The insurer has 30 million US policy holders and provides insurance to more than 100,000 companies and other entities." Why did AIG need a bailout? The Federal Reserve Bank announced on September 16, 2008 , that it would

Photograph of Peter Schiff ( CC ) Peter Schiff had the honor of presenting the 2009 Henry Hazlitt Memorial Lecture at the annual Austrian Scholars Conference, hosted by the Ludwig von Mises Institute on March 13, 2009. The video of it has been making its rounds in the past few days (for example: here and here -thanks for bringing it to my attention!). As a guest blogger over at Schiff2010.com, I published a post displaying the video of Schiff's speech along with another, shorter video featuring clips from the past few years of Peter Schiff predicting in eerie detail, the economic crisis we are experiencing today while other commentators scoff in disagreement (even "free-market leaning" commentators like Arthur Laffer and Ben Stein). Check it out . It's really good!

Hey folks, I have an upcoming post in the works that will consist of a "top 100" list of Libertarian blogs and websites. I think it'll be a fun and very helpful post, but- it's hard! Scouring the Internet and the recesses of my memory to come up with a list of 100 great websites and blogs that represent libertarian thought is actually pretty difficult. Listed below is the rough brainstorm I've got going so far, and I would like any help you can give toward filling in the gaps. Any important libertarian organizations, think tanks, or websites that I'm missing? Any great libertarian websites that I should recommend that no one has likely heard of? Just start spouting off ideas in the comment threads, no need to worry that a site won't pass muster. That's part of the brainstorming process. I have 34 libertarian blogs and websites so far (plus some blogs on my links page that I haven't included yet): 1. The Official Website of the Libertarian Pa

White House photo by Eric Draper A month ago, on Barack Obama's one month anniversary as president, I published an article entitled " 10 Ways Barack Obama Is Just Like George W. Bush ." It wasn't flattering. Two months ago, on the day of Obama's inauguration as President of the United States, instead of doing "my patriotic duty" to my country and joining in the festivity with a bland, obligatory ode to the greatness of our country and "the setting aside of childish things" (like political dissent) in the name of unity and compromise, I wrote a short piece criticizing the new president for his election campaign of cynicism and despair. What was especially remarkable, and utterly Orwellian, was that he marketed this cynical, fear-mongering campaign as a campaign of hope. What was especially disturbing was that Americans bought it and still buy it today. I imagine that if I made the case to most Americans that his campaign and administration

Socialism is defined in the following ways: Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy. [1] The stage in Marxist-Leninist theory intermediate between capitalism and communism, in which collective ownership of the economy under the dictatorship of the proletariat has not yet been successfully achieved. [1] A theory or system of social reform which contemplates a complete reconstruction of society, with a more just and equitable distribution of property and labor. [2] Is America socialist? Given the above definitions, and given America's present condition, it would be hard to say that America isn't socialist and it would be an ignorant falsehood to claim that America is a free market, capitalist country. In a Nov 2008 article entitled " What is Socialism? Is Barack Obama Socialist? " I wrote: I