The Humble Libertarian original

As the U.S. moves closer to military action against Syria for alleged use of chemical weapons against civilians, a photo has emerged of Secretary of State John Kerry having a swanky dinner with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his wife, Asma, a scant two years ago. Kerry now condemns Assad as a "thug and murderer." Awkward? Yes. Surprising? Hardly. As seen in my latest article , Washington politicians have often been caught on camera associating with the world's worst bad guys.

By NASSER al-AWLAKI The New York Times SANA, Yemen — I LEARNED that my 16-year-old grandson, Abdulrahman — a United States citizen — had been killed by an American drone strike from news reports the morning after he died. The missile killed him, his teenage cousin and at least five other civilians on Oct. 14, 2011, while the boys were eating dinner at an open-air restaurant in southern Yemen. I visited the site later, once I was able to bear the pain of seeing where he sat in his final moments. Local residents told me his body was blown to pieces. They showed me the grave where they buried his remains. I stood over it, asking why my grandchild was dead. Nearly two years later, I still have no answers. The United States government has refused to explain why Abdulrahman was killed. It was not until May of this year that the Obama administration, in a supposed effort to be more transparent, publicly acknowledged what the world already knew — that it was responsible for his death....

A former libertarian abandons his dream of a voluntary world and explains the potential worse case scenario after the overnight disappearance of government. The ending will SHOCK you! Via: School Sucks Project . Fist bump: Anthony Gregory .

For several decades the Republican Party has posed as a beacon of conservatism and constitutional government while in reality being the largest obstacle to those very ideas. If we want smaller government and more liberty, we must first defeat frauds running the GOP before we attack the Dems. After RNC Chairman Reince Priebus unveiled the Republican Party’s  Growth and Opportunity Project  last month, conservatives were hopeful this marked a fundamental change in the direction of the party. The 100-page document’s emphasis on engaging the grassroots and broadening party appeal seemed to indicate GOP leaders were looking to make amends with their base. Less than a month later however, the RNC renounced these claims and once again revealed the greatest hindrance to the GOP’s success: the party itself.  Read the full article here at United Liberty.

Today being Earth Day, I wanted to share some libertarian perspectives and resources on the environment. You might be likely to encounter conversations about Earth Day and the environment at the workplace, around the dinner table, or when you're out and about today and for the rest of this week. Don't be caught unprepared with libertarian arguments : 1. Remind people first of all, that the worst polluter in the world is the United States government . Even if every last U.S. citizen aggressively reduced their use of energy and water, started recycling and reusing, and became just the most hardcore environmentalist in their personal lives that they possible could, it wouldn't make a dent in the amount of pollution in our world because state and county governments, and the federal government ( especially the Department of Defense), pollute so much. Any earnest, intelligent, and effective effort to reduce pollution and environmental impacts MUST begin with rolling back t...

"But there's a way out of hell. The truth is, after pondering for many long hours, I just don't believe the story in Atlas Shrugged. I believe the one in The Fountainhead. And in a following post soon, I will explain why." -Me in January " They Burn Heretics at the Stake The image of the stake is hard to forget. It touches us in a way that's almost primal. But it's also obsolete. Marketing has made sure of that. The same forces that taught us to drink Coke for breakfast and spend $800 on a handbag are now at work on the status quo. Heretics are too numerous to burn at the stake. So we celebrate them." -Seth Godin, Tribes: We Need You To Lead Us [ Spoiler Alert - Atlas Shrugged & The Fountainhead] In January, I wrote about the inverted stories of Ayn Rand's Dominique Francon and Dagny Taggert, noting: "Dominique learns not to run from the world, but to live in it and ignore it. To keep her eyes focused on that ...

Hat tip to The Independent Institute's David Theroux for passing this on to me: Gregory's thoughts reminded me a lot of Justin Raimondo's take (h/t Jack Hunter ): 'Part of what made this a signal event was that this was no pro forma type filibuster of the modern school, in which the Senator merely has to make known his or her intention to filibuster, but not actually get up there and speak. This was the real thing, and it was substantive. The Senate actually debated an important policy matter in the old style, with references to Shakespeare, and rhetorical flourishes the like of which we haven’t seen in many years. It was, in short, a paleo moment – and, politically, it was the Libertarian Moment, i.e. that moment in which a substantial body of Americans was rooting for a champion of liberty against the puffed-up conceit and criminal depredations of an overweening federal government... What we are seeing is a seismic shift in the two parties’ approach to civi...

By: Eric Sharp A Memphis College of Art student recently requested a libertarian view on the American Dream for a project. He asked, "What is your idea of the American Dream? Are you living/pursuing your American Dream? Do you believe in the American Dream? Please make it a few sentences long and be detailed and elaborate." And I answered: A libertarian conception of the American Dream isn't simply to "pull oneself up by one's own bootstraps" but rather is what ever makes a person content without harming others. That could be owning a business, living on a commune, DJing at a goth club, being a professional golfer, etc. My personal American Dream is to simply live in peace and be an artist. I'm not after fame and money, I just want to get by and be happy. Am I living or pursuing my Dream? No, and sort of. I am a libertarian activist precisely because living my peaceful American Dream is not possible as our society is structured. I sp...

By Eric Sharp: In the final episodes of Gurren Lagann the anti-spirals activate a humanity-destruction sequence that causes the moon to start to fall to earth. They do this because too many humans now populate the planet. Their will to evolve will eventually threaten the Universe . Previously the anti-spirals had forced all humans to live in underground chambers with very close population control. All this talk of the dangers of humanity and the need to control our growth and potential  for the good of the Universe is not unlike what some of the Left and State-Corporate Elite say about the planet. Prince What'shisface  (it's not important to remember the titles of royalty, we're classical liberals!) is reported as saying that he'd like to return to earth as a deadly virus in a next life so that he could help with over population. The Anti-Spiral forces that seek to supress or destroy humanity and other Spiral races are like the State and its...

By Eric Sharp: As the 2012 Presidential Election cycle draws to a close lets take a look back to see the way forward. Back during 2008 there was a prevalent and funny meme going around comparing John McCain, "The Maverick" to Sigma, the leader of the Maverick robots in Megaman X , and comparing Barack Obama to Megaman X, the Maverick Hunter.     VS    According to the metaphor, the Mega Man X plotline followed and Sigma was defeated. But to what end? To continue this metaphor we will need to flash forward to the future in the Megaman Zero timeline . "Copy" X In this timeline Zero, Megaman X's friend and partner, awakens from a long slumber to find that Neo Arcadia is ruled by a tyrant - a tyrant named X, his former partner . X has been trying to eradicate other robots because of "energy shortages", passing draconian measures and even eliminating "terrorists" via the Four Guardians that enforce X's commands. Zero e...

By: Wes Messamore In last week’s Money Monday feature , I shared my first experience buying gold and silver bullion coins for the purpose of protecting my savings from inflation and the risk of a major run on the global banking system, which many sound money advocates believe is imminent. I also promised to cover bullion coins in more detail for this week’s Money Monday feature. Here’s what I said about them last week: “Here was my strategy: I did a bunch of research the day before on all the world’s most well-known bullion coins, that is, coins minted after the year 1800 out of 90% or more of a precious metal, and are or were a legal tender in their country of origin. I prefer these to junk metal because they are in a form that people are comfortable viewing and using as money, and they are more-readily recognizable as trusted pieces of metal bullion with metal content in amounts that are already well-established and known. They have a reputation.” When buying b...

By: Wes Messamore "Who says political protests have to be confrontational? Supporters of the global hacker group known as Anonymous recently protested a new law in Japan by cleaning up a public park in Tokyo, AFP reported Sunday. The group of 80 protesters donning the Anonymous group’s trademark Guy Fawkes masks gathered under light rain to clean the park and sidewalks of the shopping and entertainment district of Shibuya." Read the rest of my article at The Independent Voter Network . Wes Messamore , Editor in Chief, T H L Articles | Author's Page

By: Wes Messamore There’s nothing tinfoil about the Agenda 21 conspiracy, and it’s not a conspiracy theory, it’s a conspiracy fact. This is happening. As a matter record. Out in the public. For all to see. They’re just brazenly, unabashedly going forward with their plan to control all human action on the entire planet. It’s not a conspiracy theory, because they’re not even trying to hide it. So what is Agenda 21? Initially, nothing I heard in news headlines and super long Facebook comments written in all capital letters intrigued me enough to look any further into Agenda 21. I shouldn’t have judge a book by its cover. Enough liberty lubbers talking about this should at least warrant clicking a couple links, doing a couple Google queries, finding what all this is about. But frankly, I’m just now starting to break my habit of tuning out anything that smacks of Alex Jones as background noise. I think I’ve misjudged Alex Jones and I think that even if I don’t agree with 5% of what he b...

By: Wes Messamore Earlier today, I linked to my article at The Silver Underground entitled, " My Experience Buying Gold and Silver Bullion Coins Last Week " and published this morning as this week's "Money Monday" feature. But thinking it over, I think I left the wrong excerpt for you. Instead of the first two paragraphs, I should have shared the last two paragraphs, which have the most thought provoking idea and the part of the experience that I found most interesting: I just found the coin shop by Googling for coin shops in my city online. They were super helpful and answered all the questions I had during our appointment. Storing the surplus value of your hard work in the form of inflation-proof metal rather than Bernanke’s funny money isn’t hard, intimidating, or cumbersome. At least it wasn’t in my experience. And I got more of a shopping “thrill” (I think I’ve heard it referred to as “retail therapy” in an episode of Gossip Girl) from saving m...

Suiting action to words last week, I finally made a trip to a local coin store in my city to start my run on the global fiat banking system by letting their bad money drive the good money (gold and silver) into my new hoard of inflation proof value. I’m hoping that when the fiat money system crashes, everything will be so cheap for people who have gold and silver to spend that I can take a year off and ride motorcycles across South America. Or something awesome like that. So on the big day, I rolled into this coin shop with a collection of numismatic coins (coins that have collector’s value because they are rare, or have interesting stories behind them) that I used to collect as a(n extremely nerdy) child. I wanted them to appraise the collector’s value of the coins, and then trade them in along with a stack of Federal Reserve notes for some gold and silver. I was happily surprised to learn what a couple of my coin sets were worth. I definitely got more for them than I hoped to expec...

No worries everybody. Our movement's beloved newspaper, The Daily Paul , has been offline for a few hours here Monday, but it's simply for site maintenance, not a coordinated attack by the Bilderbergers! Several of you have taken to The Daily Paul's Facebook page to ask what's wrong and speculate; thankfully one commenter, Angela D, shared a link to the IP address of an alternate server for The Daily Paul, where the first visible post is entitled, "Site Maintenance," and the text underneath says: "Just a FYI, the site was running real slow tonight, so we had to take it off line to run a few maintenance commands. Sorry for the downtime. It should be stable within a few more minutes. -marc" Aaand, as I'm hitting publish on this, the site's back up! Now you know what happened. The speculation can end. Unless "marc" is an agent of the Bilderberg Group... Edit (a few minutes later) - Aaand, it's back down again. But this ...

Just how obtuse can you get? In a misguided effort to combat rising obesity, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is seriously proceeding with a sweeping policy proposal to enact a city-wide ban on the sale of large soft drinks and other sugary drinks at restaurants, movie theaters and street carts… The Grey Lady reports : “The proposed ban would affect virtually the entire menu of popular sugary drinks found in delis, fast-food franchises and even sports arenas, from energy drinks to pre-sweetened iced teas. The sale of any cup or bottle of sweetened drink larger than 16 fluid ounces — about the size of a medium coffee, and smaller than a common soda bottle — would be prohibited under the first-in-the-nation plan, which could take effect as soon as next March.” Think about that. If this ban goes into effect, then here in the United States of America, land of the free and home of the brave, the country where oppressed people everywhere have fled to for centuries now to enjoy libe...

At university Roberts was taught neo-classical economics, but he believes that Austrian economics provides the best lessons in how the economy really works. He is attracted to the idea that money can only last, when it's chosen by the people -- a sentiment that he hopes the Silver Circle promotes. He believes that competing currencies could be a good way to transition towards a better monetary system. This podcast was recorded on May16 2012 at the Hard Assets Investment Conference in New York: Wes Messamore , Editor in Chief, T H L Articles | Author's Page

By: Wes Messamore The difference between independent films and Hollywood films is essentially the same as the difference between the products created by any big, publicly-traded corporation and any upstart, risk-taking, entrepreneurial small business. A publicly-traded corporation (like the ones Hollywood film studios are all owned by) ultimately exists for one purpose, and that is to maximize profits for shareholders– not only that, but all of the rumor and innuendo that drives stock prices creates incentives for fast profits now. And while generating those fast profits, big corporations are also averse to major risks that will lose their shareholders’ investment (unless of course, you’re JPMorgan Chase & Co., in which case the taxpayer will always bail you out). If profit’s your primary motive, you’re going to produce a different kind of product than a small upstart business. The small business needs to make a profit as well in order to be viable and sustainable, but the prof...