On behalf of all of us who post here, I’d like to thank you, our audience, for your feedback, arguments, discussions, and explanations.

You, our readers, are why we write.

Thanks for reading.

I’m planning on being more active on our twitter feed, which currently only feeds updates to our post. I say “planning”, because I’m still trying to decide which BlackBerry app will best do Twitter… Any suggestions would be welcome.

Our Kindle version price was recently reduced from $1.99 to $0.99. As I’ve said before, I’d prefer it come free, but Amazon sets the prices. I suspect nobody was signing up, so they reduced it. But if TLP-Kindle Edition wasn’t worth it to you at $1.99 and is worth it at $0.99, feel free to sign up. This isn’t a for-profit blog, but a little bit to offset hosting costs wouldn’t hurt.

Now is where I’d usually give you all the stories about how amazing the Kindle is, and how incredible it makes my life — but I don’t have one yet. I’m still waffling on whether to drop nearly $500 on a Kindle DX, so if there are any Kindle users out there, feel free to tell me about how incredibly awesome and life-changing it is in the comments section.

Finally, there’s one aspect that I know will bring up questions — the price. Before you get on my case about it, this is set by Amazon. If you don’t think the TLP Kindle version, considering that you can get this content here for free, is worth $1.99, I won’t be offended if you don’t purchase it. If it had been my decision, I would have set the price at “free” or “tiny”. But this is Amazon’s call, and I hope over time they’ll drop it down to a more reasonable level. But if you do decide to pay the $1.99, I thank you, as this blog is not free for us to operate, and it will help to offset some of our hosting costs.

The Liberty Papers was started in November 2005, just over three years ago. In the interim, we’ve written almost 3,000 posts, had nearly 27,000 comments, and the blog has grown from a little outpost on the libertarian frontier to at least a midsized suburb around the libertarian center of action.

I’d like to thank the contributors of this blog, both past and present, for everything they’ve done to make this site what it is today. I’d also like to thank the regular readers and commenters for helping to make this a conversation. Finally, of course, I’d like to thank the founder of the site, Eric, for having the thought to create The Liberty Papers in the first place.

Where are we headed in the future? I’m not sure that the roadmap is clear, but I do know that we’re kicking around ideas. We’d like to see The Liberty Papers ascend to become a more regular stop for those who appreciate liberty, as well as a site where our political opponents are welcomed for cordial debate. We’ll continue to work hard at what we do, and to try to expand the scope with new ideas and new contributors over time, and hope that one day The Liberty Papers will move out of the ‘burbs and into a mid-town high-rise.

1. I’ve changed the “Contributors” blogroll to make a distinction between currently active contributors, and those who (for whatever reason) no longer have the time or inclination to post on a regular basis. This is part of a wider effort, to become a little bit more consistent in our output… Which brings me to:

2. Welcome Stephen Gordon, the newest contributor to The Liberty Papers. Stephen has a long history with the libertarian movement, but I’ll let him speak for himself when he puts an introductory post up in the next few days.

We’re working internally on finding ways to improve The Liberty Papers in a more general sense, and we hope to become a bigger force for liberty in the future. As always, if you have suggestions, I’m happy to take them.

That didn’t sit well with me either, so I decided to put any thoughts of going into politics on hold until I’d actually had a life and possibly a real career, and I spent the next couple of years drifting between a series of random yet educational jobs (debt collector, deliveryman, computer salesman, repo man, dairy worker) that taught me the value of hard work, personal responsibility and the financial benefits of dining at Taco John’s on Tuesday nights (2 tacos for a buck) when money got tight.

After awhile, however, the desire to see the world (and the need for a more consistent and slightly larger paycheck) convinced me to join the Army, where I spent ten years traveling around the world on the government dime working as an intelligence analyst. I generally enjoyed my time in the military, despite the aforementioned problem with authority (which wasn’t as much of an issue in the military as many people might think it would be), and I got to see that the decisions our political leaders make were sometimes frivolous, often ill-informed, and always had unforeseen repercussions down the road…especially on the soldiers tasked with implementing those decisions. I was fortunate enough to spend most of my 10 years in the military doing jobs I enjoyed, traveling to countries that I always wanted to see (Scotland is the greatest place in the world to hang out, Afghanistan is very underrated) and working with people I liked and respected, until I finally decided that at 35 it was time to move into a job where I didn’t have the threat of relocation lying over my head every two or three years, where I didn’t have to worry about my friends being blown up, and where I didn’t have to work in any capacity for George W. Bush.

I work now for a trust company in Kansas where I’m responsible for overseeing, pricing and maintaining farms, commercial and residential properties, mineral assets, insurance policies, annuities, etc. In my spare time I like to read books on economics, history, and politics (I’m preparing to tackle Murray Rothbard’s “Man, Economy & State” and Von Mises’ “Human Action”…should take me about a year at the rate I’m currently finishing books), watch movies, and destroy posers on “Halo 3″ (where I’m signed in under “UCrawford” for anyone interested in taking a shot at me some time). I used to play rugby until age, inconsistent conditioning, and a string of gradually worsening injuries finally convinced me to quit. I’m a rabid fan of the Kansas Jayhawks in general and their basketball and football programs in particular and I’m also a devoted fan of the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals. I’m also fond of going online and debating/picking fights with people on the merits of the philosophy of individual freedom…sometimes to the point of being an asshole (but hopefully a reasonably well-informed asshole). I’ve been a big fan of The Liberty Papers ever since finding it online, I respect the body of work they’ve put out, and I’m honored that Brad Warbiany invited me to join his jolly band of freedom fighters. So cheers, Brad, and to everyone else I look forward to reaching consensus or locking horns with you in the near future.

As the site has expanded, we have realized that we’d like to offer content from the full spectrum of the pro-liberty movement. On the upper bound, this would be the libertarians who simply believe that our federal government is too large and want to return to a Constitutional, federalist system. There are several contributors here who head up to the upper bound of that spectrum. On the absolute lowest bound is anarcho-capitalism, and we have had no contributor that officially takes that title. Tarran is a self-described anarcho-capitalist, and will offer that point of view.

When the time comes that we start really getting into the Point/Counterpoint debates, and in general, this could lead to some rather interesting discussions. So say welcome to our newest contributor, tarran, who will be putting up his introductory post shortly.

While many of us want to abstract this situation into something political, as a way to not have to deal with the human cost of such a tragedy, we must remember that these were real people who were affected. Nothing that we do will replace what was lost yesterday, but if you can spare anything to help, please do so.

Unfortunately at this point, this appears to be more alumni-related, and does not provide any electronic way to donate. If anyone knows of a fund which does allow electronic submission of donations, please email me (address on left sidebar). Otherwise, for those of you who use online bill pay, you should be able to send a donation through your bank system rather easily, if you prefer (as I do) not to send a physical check on your own.

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While our contributors generally agree on most issues, there are always issues where we don’t. We all share a love of liberty, but the contributors run the gamut from those who are nearly anarchists to those who would feel at home amongst small-government conservatives. Thus, Point/Counterpoint will be an opportunity for one contributor to offer a topic for debate, and be rebutted by another contributor a day or two later.

If nothing else, I think we contributors will enjoy this. In addition, I hope that it will be entertaining for you. In the future, we will make sure that every post in this series is tagged as part of the category “Point/Counterpoint”, and will try to keep titles on-topic so that readers scrolling through the category itself can keep up with who is responding to who.

We’ve got a couple other things in the works as well, so stay tuned!

The one thing I attribute that to is the great group of contributors that we’ve got here, and the great job they’ve all done in posting things that people want to read, even when it causes no small degree of controversy.

We’ve been having some discussions about where to take The Liberty Papers next, so keep an eye out for what will hopefully be some exciting additions. The great writing will still be here, of course, but we’re hoping to bring some new things that will keep all you new readers coming back for more.

And that, is where I’d like to end this little bit of self-congratulation. If you’ve found this site thanks to a link from Reddit, or Google News, or anyplace else for that matter. Stick around and read what else we’ve got here, and come back often because there’s more to come.

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