Libertarianism has an enormous amount to offer to people of all political persuasions, whether their main issues are defending human rights, ending poverty, upholding privacy, safeguarding the environment, helping minorities and women, promoting peace, ending terrorism, ensuring quality and affordable health care for the greatest number, curbing corruption and abuse of power, advancing science and technology, even stopping corporate shenanigans.
Most people with any political views do not hold them because they believe aggression is justified. They hold them because they believe they will be the best way to solve one or more such problems as those listed above. Hence if we are clever in our arguments, we should be able to make allies in every camp - without compromising our own views at all.
I started a blog on blogspot to write down my thoughts. It was supposed to help me with my self-education, as I don’t go to college. But anyway, it turned out a couple of my friends fount out about it and read my first two posts and wanted to hear my view more. So now there’s around 7-8 people reading my blog.
I don’t keep a schedule for when I make a new post, I just drop one off whenever I feel I’ve made my position clear enough.
Anyway, if anyone is interested, here it is: Lawsome 101
I believe that school is not the place to talk those things. Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929) said: “Not to be a socialist at twenty is proof of want of heart; to be one at thirty is proof of want of head.” Younger people simply tend to believe more just because they do not have made enogh life experience. And to be honest: Socialism sounds very good. Otherwise there would never have been efforts to establish it. And socialism even works - at least for some time (meaning as long as other peoples money run out - or those peoplet that work realize that they get bad pay).
The most important aspect to me is “Live as you teach - and talk about it and explain the reasons why”.
I´ve made the experience that most people are “Libertarians” without knowing about it. At least most of all reasonable and honest people. People are infact not so stupid that they would not realice what is happening out there. The only problem is that still quite many people have some sort of feeling that they do profitate from the socialist system. Some of the latter are infact wrong - just because they get much less than they have to give. But still there is a bunch of people who just expect to get paid for their existance.
A few months ago jtucker posted a link to a media suitable for publication. I think it was “MISES LIVES” with stylized logo and a link to the website.
I have placed that advertizement in the local newspaper a few times. It wasn’t long after that that the Mrs. said she heard a local radio personality mention Mises on his radio program. Don’t know if the had may have prompted him to mention it, but it sure was encouraging to see and hear some public recognition.
I have helped found an Austro-Libertarian study group at our university. We’re meeting once a week to discuss a pre-determined piece of writing, either dealing with economics or philosophy. The inspiration comes from the ‘Mises circle’ meetings in . There are only 6 of us right now, and I think we were all Ron Paul supporters at one point. At least two of us are now an-caps.
Right now, we’re looking entirely inward, focusing on our own education in these areas. In the future, we may look outward to the university at large and start a recruitment and proselytizing campaign. Until then, it should be fun to have someone to talk these things over with outside of the internet. Hopefully this will give us even more incentive to expand our knowledge.
I would encourage anyone else in college to use social networking tools (e.g. Facebook) to look for other people who are interested in liberty. It can be a very fulfilling endeavor. Imagine my excitement when I met someone who was in the middle of reading Hoppe’s DTGTF. It was/is extremely exciting!
This is something that everyone who’s in college should attempt IMO.
I started a local Austrian-economics meetup and had little interest. I made a new anarcho-capitalist group to see what I could get and found quiet a bit more interest. So hopefully it will go well!
MIses.org’s alexa rank is around 17,000 worldwide, which great and wonderful, but I would sure love to see it move consistently above 10,000. Any ideas?
If you frequent another site, I would suggest to put a link to mises.org in your sig anywhere and everywhere. Facebook, other forums, youtube, where ever you go to. That’s how I originally got linked to this site, it was a link in the comments of a youtube video about some gun control debate issue. When I came here, the articles on the front page spawned my interest in Austrian Economics.
It’s amazing what one simple link can do. It’s probably been suggested already, idk, I didn’t read the whole thread.
