The Humble Libertarian original

By: Wes Messamore The Humble Libertarian

Explaining Our Miraculous Flourishing By Marian L. Tupy HumanProgress.org Young Man Readin By Candle Light - Matthias Stom

This free audiobook, The Origins of War in Child Abuse -- written by Lloyd Demause and read aloud by libertarianism's greatest living orator, Stefan Molyneux-- is a uniquely incisive work of historical scholarship that examines how human history was experienced by children, and why their experiences have created a society prone to the self-destructive frenzy of war. If you are anti-war, this book delves into the root causes of war in a way that no other has, and reveals so many interesting facts about the lead up to specific wars it will make your head spin. Demause makes a compelling case that war is not primarily an economic nor political phenomenon, but a psychological one. Demause's investigation into the history of war concludes that each war is an episode of mass hysteria centered on self-destruction and human sacrifice, and that the psychological motivations for war can only make sense to a society of people who were abused as children. If this is true, the one...

The overall decline of American conservatism is evident and it is particularly so in its literature. Few books these days have titles like The Road to Serfdom , God and Man at Yale , or Suicide of the West . Now they have titles like Demonic , See I Told You So , or David Mamet’s coming out party, an article entitled "Why I Am Not Longer a Brain Dead Liberal." As a general rule, one should probably be generally skeptical about anyone who has any sort of late-term conversion experience. During the 2008 Republican primary battle, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee questioned Mitt Romney’s sincerity on abortion when he quipped how odd it was that Mitt was sixty years old before he considered the question of when life begins. Similarly, one has to wonder why David Mamet was in his late fifties before he started thinking about the nature of government. In Mamet’s case, he has today become a conservative much like the old Trotskyites became neoconservatives, which is to s...

"Perhaps most striking, however, is not the book's boldness and specificity on matters of public policy, but how much and how convincingly it defends Rand Paul's father, Ron Paul. Whether or not Paul and Hunter consciously wrote the book with this purpose in mind, it functions suspiciously well as campaign material for a potential Ron Paul presidential bid in 2012. Through anecdotes about Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater-- and the establishment Republicans who opposed them-- The Tea Party Goes to Washington draws a line in the sand between true conservatism and its counterfeit, and goes to great lengths to prove that historically, Ron Paul is the heir apparent of true conservatism, while his many potential opponents in the 2012 Republican primary-- like Newt Gingrich-- are merely stooges of the power-hungry, Republican-in-name-only establishment." Read my entire book review at CAIVN . Wes Messamore , Editor in Chief, T H L Articles | Author's Page

Under discussion: How An Economy Grows And Why It Crashes by Peter D. Schiff and Andrew J. Schiff, 233 pages, $19.95, Hardcover. In that parallel universe Peter Schiff is probably winning his race for U.S. Senate. But here in the United States of Criminals, Celebrities, and Corporations, Schiff barely has ballot access in the Connecticut race to replace retiring U.S. Senator Chris Dodd, and trails behind such Republican heroes as WWE 's First Lady, Linda McMahon and former congressman Rob Simmons before Simmons dropped out. The groundswell for a Schiff candidacy emerged in the aftermath of the 2008 financial collapse which Schiff had predicted for years, explaining that the illusion of wealth created by the housing boom could not be sustained and that the inevitable bust would spread to other sectors of the economy. A mash-up video of his appearances on various financial television shows in 2006 and 2007, where he was openly derided and actually laughed at, is entitled “Peter Schi...

You can now pre-order historian and Mises Institute scholar, Dr. Tom Woods' new book Nullification: How To Resist Federal Tyranny In The 21st Century . Tom was recently on Lew Rockwell's show giving an interview about the upcoming book. You can listen to it here . Lew Rockwell summarizes the interview: "Thanks to the internet, Americans can learn about such forbidden ideas as the Principles of 1798, when Jefferson and Madison laid out the idea that to give the central government the sole ability to interpret the constitution was the path to tyranny, and that the states have the right and the duty to oppose tyrannical actions by the feds. Regimists try to demonize the idea of nullification, as they attempt to demonize all ideas that undermine centralized power, but that is not scaring libertarians, Tea Party people, and other dissidents. Nullification, decentralization, self-government, self-determination, even secession: the time of these un-PC ideas is here, and the Woo...

Editor's note - In the following book review of No Apology: The Case for American Greatness by Mitt Romney (323 pages, $26.95), The Humble Libertarian 's Carl Wicklander takes a critical look at the deep internal contradictions and phony intellectualism of one of the GOP's unlikely darlings (the architect of RomneyCare, a universal, single-payer system which formed the model for ObamaCare). With a great deal of humor and wit, Wicklander deftly exhibits the hollowness of Romneyism in the book review below (not that Romney made it difficult for him). It’s hard to imagine a worse presidential contender than Mitt Romney. Yet, he nearly won the 2008 Republican presidential nomination and whether conservatives will admit it or not, Romney is the most likely member of the party to win the nomination in 2012. The flip-flopping, status quo defending, conventional wisdom-spouting pol is certainly viewed as “safe” and “electable” by the Republican establishment and as a “toler...

A new book will be published by the Campaign for Liberty . It's entitled " American Empire, Before the Fall " and is authored by Bruce Fein . Bruce Fein is one of the most intelligent men in America. He spoke at CFL's CPAC , Mike Church's Article V Panel Discussion , and Ron Paul's Rally for the Republic . He was President Reagan's Deputy Attorney General and was a staunch opponent of President Bush's imperial foreign policies. Here is a sample of the upcoming book: http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=836 And some more: http://www.campaignforliberty.com/blog.php?view=32006 Matt Collins , Regular Columnist, T H L Articles | Author's Page

I am thrilled to have received my first donation and a couple brief testimonials for my new e-book... " Learn About Liberty " Here is what some people are saying: "Nice work. The length was perfect, and the story was clear and concise. I'm not much of a history buff, so I enjoyed learning about libertarian roots dating back to even ancient (Sumerian) times." -A reader "A very worthy and fascinating read." - C.S.Burks ( source ) So if you haven't already, I highly recommend that you give the book a read . If you want to write a short book review or testimonial for Learn About Liberty , e-mail me so I know about it, and I'll include you in the next round-up (with link love to your website or Twitter account).

I am hereby releasing my very first libertarian e-book, which is entitled: " Learn About Liberty ," and I am proud to announce that it is absolutely free! Just click the link above or the image below to start reading it right here on T H L . You don't even have to bother with PDFs or Word Documents. While the book is available absolutely free of charge, your voluntarily payment for whatever value you get out of reading it is encouraged and welcome! (More details on the concluding page of the book .) Also please help me spread the word about it and promote it to the many people out there who are interested in learning about libertarianism. My hope is that this will be a powerful educational tool and resource for years to come, which is one reason I wanted to make it available on my website to anyone who wants to read it. In the meantime, I will be working on my next e-book, which I am very excited about! Hopefully I will be ready to take orders for it by the end...

© 2010 W. E. Messamore, The Humble Libertarian , All Rights Reserved The image above is a sneak peek at my very first e-book, "Learn About Liberty." I will be making it available here at The Humble Libertarian as early as tomorrow, or by the end of the week at the latest. People are more interested now than ever before in the philosophy of libertarianism, so I thought it was amiss not to have a general overview of some kind available from T H L . I am presently hard at work putting the finishing touches on it and I could really use all your help in promoting Learn About Liberty once it's released. If this goes over well, I'll be releasing a second e-book sometime this Spring- one that I'm very, very excited about. In the meantime, I am still working on a much more in-depth project, a book entitled Bush 2.0 that I hope to start promoting to major publishers by the Summer. The pen is mightier than the sword. A revolution in government will only occur as the resu...

I am currently working on my first book, which is an expanded and comprehensive look at the many striking similarities between the Obama Administration and the Bush Administration it was elected to replace. As it turns out, all of the biggest reasons for disliking Mr. Obama are the very same reasons Americans so strongly disapproved of George W. Bush at the time of his departure earlier this year. Or to put it conversely, if you disliked George W. Bush and you take an honest inventory of the facts, you should dislike Obama's Administration too- maybe even more. I plan to be done with my first draft of the book soon and sending queries to publishers shortly thereafter. In the meantime, here's a sneak peek at an excerpt from a rough version of my introductory chapter: "It's too early to say" and other objections: When I set out to write this book and started to share its ideas and content with others, I hit a lot of resistance from people who said "...

Why Ayn Rand Is Hot Again The unconservative Ayn Rand and her relationship to the American right Brian Doherty | October 10, 2009 Why is Rand, dead since 1982, so hot again today? Ironically, big government, one of Rand's betes noires, is stimulating her sales. Her more than 1,000-page 1957 novel, Atlas Shrugged, sold 25 percent more copies in the first half of this year than it sold in all of last year, shipping a total of 300,000 copies so far this year—tremendous success for a 52-year-old novel. Readers and pundits alike look at America and see a world scarily reminiscent of Rand's government-choked dystopia in Atlas. It's a world with a struggling economy where political pull matters more than success in the free market, where the government blithely takes over huge transportation industries. Read the full article here .

I went to see Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince this Friday, and enjoyed the film very much. While reflecting on its lessons, I thought I would write up a short piece to respond to well-meaning religious conservatives who believe that the Harry Potter franchise promotes witchcraft or lures Christian children into the occult. Not only do I believe their concern is misplaced, but in fact, I have to say that the Harry Potter books and films are one of the greatest and most crucial cultural developments of our generation. Consider first, the clear and unambiguous battle between good and evil. In a post-modern world turned upside-down by the philosophical wreckage of the previous four centuries, where "enlightened" students at our top universities will maintain with a straight face that all morals are relative and that there is no objective right and wrong, it is a breath of fresh air to see our entire society captivated by a story that so clearly portrays good and evil exac...

Given the resurgence in popularity of Ayn Rand's classic novel Atlas Shrugged , I thought I would publish this list of Atlas Shrugged characters in graphic form, comparing and contrasting them according to their ability- graphed along the x-axis and their morality- graphed along the y-axis. Men of extreme talent and unwavering moral courage are heroes in Rand's estimation. They include John Galt, Francisco D'Anconia, Ragnar Danneskjold, Ellis Wyatt, Richard Halley, Hank Rearden, Dagny Taggert, and many others. Atlas Shrugged includes however, a picture of people who lack the creative ability of these heros, but match their moral certitude and steadfastness. These include Dagny's assistant, Eddie Willers and James Taggert's temporary wife, Cheryl Brooks. On the other hand, people who lack ability and morals are moochers and looters, who live off the strength of others and consider others as means to their own meaningless, bare survival. These include James Ta...

This week I finally finished reading what has been perhaps the most formative book for me, in terms of my political philosophy, I’ve ever read. I’ve been working slowly through Human Rights: Fact or Fancy by Henry Veatch for some time now, and with my semester ended I finally had time just to sit down and finish it. And I’m so glad I did. It has been an immense pleasure. As with everything else in life, this book is imperfect and I don’t agree with every word Veatch writes, but he has continued to confirm and clarify my conviction that any ethical justification of liberty must be of a distinctly Aristotelian sort. Veatch’s argument is subtle but not terribly complicated. Veatch categorizes most attempts to justify ethics into two categories: teleological or deontological. And both of these fail. Teleological ethics pursue a goal, some desired end. The structure of such ethics makes perfect sense. There is a goal, whether the greatest good for the greatest number in the case of a utili...