The Humble Libertarian original

Capitol Switchboard: (202) 224-3121 Phone Script [Be polite, friendly, and passionate]: Capitol Operator: How may I direct your call? Patriot: Hi, I'm calling regarding CISPA. Could I please get Senator [Your Senator's Name]'s office? ( Probably Underpaid ) Intern: Hello. How can I help you? Patriot: [Say quickly, clearly, and with conviction] Hi! I'm calling about CISPA. I'm a resident of [City] and a [Occupation]. I just want to urge the Senator to vote "No" when CISPA reaches the Senate in order to protect the 1st and 4th Amendments of the Constitution, to protect the freedom of American citizens, and to send a clear message to the terrorists of the world that we will not let terror change our form of government and the liberties we enjoy. Thank you!

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 One of America’s most beloved entertainers, Andy Griffith, died earlier this week on Tuesday morning at the age of 86. Funny, moving, charming, a great singer , and with a persona as American as apple pie, his leading role as Sheriff Andy Taylor in the classic 1960s “Andy Griffith Show” made him an American pop icon. As a television program about a small town heriff, The Andy Griffith Show afforded a ton of opportunities for commentary and lessons about civics. Check out this very appropriately named YouTube video, entitled by its uploader, “Andy Griffith vs. The Patriot Act,” in which Sheriff Andy’s son, Opie, secretly records a suspect saying incriminating things and excitedly brings the audio to his “Pa,” the sheriff. Over his son’s objections, Andy refuses to listen, erases the tape, and gives his son a lecture on due process and the right of privacy: Read the rest of my commentary on this at The Silver Underground . Wes Messamore , Editor in...

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 ...

By: Wes Messamore Despite the widespread perception of Hollywood as dominated by progressive “liberals,” there are many recurring themes in Hollywood movies that are extremely anti-government and libertarian. There is certainly some truth to the characterization of Hollywood as “left wing,” insofar as many big name actors tend to be vocally active in support of the Democratic Party, its candidates, and its political platform, yet without fail, the movie capitol of the world continues to crank out movies with libertarian themes and messages, no doubt because these resonate with American movie audiences, and whatever their government may be doing, the voting habits of most Americans (who are perennially kicking out the party in power and rewarding the libertarian rhetoric of the party out of power with their votes) suggests that they have vaguely libertarian instincts and perspectives. Let’s examine some of these libertarian themes in Hollywood movies: Read the rest of my article a...

By: Wes Messamore Last week, Chen Guangcheng, a Chinese human rights activist and lawyer made a daring escape from his captors while under house arrest during a year-long illegal detention and made a video exposing the cruel treatment he and his family suffered, which included severe beatings and broken bones. The amazing thing about Guangcheng’s escape– is that he’s blind. Not only that, but in an escape that one prominent Chinese activist called “a real Chinese version of The Shawshank Redemption,” the blind Chinese lawyer managed to evade the 90 guards who have surrounded his village home for over a year and get through eight separate security checks on his way to freedom and hiding at an undisclosed location in Beijing! He says he did it by using this blindness to his advantage… Read the rest of my article at The Silver Underground . Wes Messamore , Editor in Chief, T H L Articles | Author's Page

By: Wes Messamore Over at the LA Times , David Lazarus asks “ Does organized labor have a future? ” He notes that standards of living like job security, healthcare, and retirement funds have never been so uncertain since the Great Depression. But the solution to these problems ultimately won’t be found in court battles over labor contracts or more government regulations on employers. If organized labor wants a better future and higher standards of living for workers, it should fight for less, not more government. 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 The emergence of epic, multimillion dollar, blockbuster films produced by major studios based off of comic book super heroes happened to occur just during my early teenage and high school years, and it’s an artistic and cultural trend that has endured throughout my college years and into my early adulthood. Because of my age, watching the trend unfold has been a great personal delight, and seeing super heroes on the big screen was always especially inspiring to my lost and confused adolescent mind. But what does this trend say about an entire culture of people spanning all age groups who have been similarly delighted by so many cinematic presentations of comic book super heroes and their storylines? The X-Men trilogy, Spider-Man, The Hulk, Daredevil, The Hulk again like two years later, 300, V for Vendetta, Christopher Nolan’s Batman reboot, Iron Man, X-Men First Class, Wolverine Origins, The Green Latern, Spider-Man all over again too, and plenty of others… Why i...