I wanted to give a shout out to co-blogger Jason Pye, who is currently editor of UnitedLiberty.org, a [fairly] new libertarian group blog.

United Liberty is, much like The Liberty Papers, a “big-tent” libertarian site. They’ll run the gamut from anarcho-capitalists to Ron Paul Republibertarians. They include portions of their site for “headlines” and other news-related items, and I’m sure they’ll have great analysis, as Jason will be posting somewhat over there, and I’ve seen a few posts from Chris Moody of Cato and our own Doug Mataconis. As Jason says, “We want to be inclusive, not exclusive. If you believe in liberty, you have a home at UL.”

When you get a chance, head over and check it out. In addition, they do have some openings for contributors, so if you’re spilling over with things to say in support of liberty but don’t have a venue, let him know.

Re: Mancow gets waterboarded

It’s always a treat to hear from Eric, the founder of The Liberty Papers. Its comments like this one which make me miss his “grumbles.” This comment was in response to a discussion sparked by Stephen Gordon’s post concerning waterboarding:

Interesting discussion. Chris has a very valid point about altering the meaning of the language. He also points out that waterboarding is a form of coercion and that coercion should not be used on prisoners. But, in the heated and traumatic rejection of his assertions about what torture is, the more important point he makes is lost.

The point is, coercive interrogation is wrong to do to someone who we hold prisoner. Chris said that loud and clear, but folks are so incensed that he might not agree that something is torture that they miss the fundamentally more important point. Another fundamentally important issue, if you believe in The Rule of Law, is that we don’t have clear laws on what to do with terrorist combatants and that poses a problem. One of the keys to solving the problems of piracy in the 17th and 18th centuries was to promulgate clear, consistent, logically and legally sound laws and regulations for dealing with pirates.

We don’t have that for terrorists today, and that’s a problem.

P.S. adding to the point about use of language. We used to know that torture meant causing permanent injury to someone. When we talked about the police giving someone the “third degree”, it meant physically injuring someone to coerce them to do something. The reason we said “third degree” is that there were three levels of Inquisition used during the Catholic Inquisition.

1st Degree – Discussing the crimes someone is accused of and informing them that stronger methods of inquisition can be used if they don’t cooperate

2nd Degree – Showing the accused person the methods that can be used, like racks, knives, flails and other implements of torture

3rd Degree – Actually using those implements on the accused person, i.e. the Third Degree of Inquisition.

So, the very tortured definitions of torture that folks are trying to come up are actually changing the meanings of the language in ways that support the individual’s position. This is something that Orwell argued strenuously against and that most “libertarians” argue against, as well. Except, it seems, when being for it supports their personal beliefs.

Causing PTSD does not automatically make something torture. PTSD can be caused by a car accident, by seeing your sibling die, by participating in violent combat and many other things. None of which are “torture”. I suggest that we should return to the traditional definition that doing things which would be considered “the third degree” is torture. Let’s use the language right. AND we can still agree that things which are not torture, but are inhumane or coercive, or both, are wrong for US interrogators to do to our prisoners.

Comment by Eric — June 5, 2009 @ 8:24 am

Despite all of the hullabaloo over #tcot (Top Conservatives on Twitter), there seems to a be a bit of a scrap brewing between TCOT co-founders Rob Neppell and Michael Patrick Leahy.  To date, the argument sounds more like a quarrel between gay lovers than one between some of the God-fearing, pro-torture fag-bashing Republicans who frequently tweet with the #tcot hashtag.  Here’s the first description of the spat I’ve found online:

This morning teabagger-in-chief and “Top Conservatives on Twitter” (TCOT) co-founder Rob Neppell posted this message on TopConservativesOnTwitter.org (which has since been removed) outlining his decision to shut down the site and encouraging fellow TCOT co-founder and notorious douchenozzle Michael Patrick Leahy to, essentially, eat a bag of dicks.

According to the note, Leahy also “was recently asked to leave the leadership team of Tea Party Patriots” “due to his inability to work in a group decision-making environment.” Oh, snap.

Revolution is never easy.

While their front page says it’s under construction, the message is still online and one can peek at it though the back door here. I haven’t seen any sort of response from Leahy, yet.

Over at 7mesh.com, thespaghetticat asks::

I wonder how this will affect #tcot frequent tweeter Karl “Turd Blossom” Rove (@Karl_rove)?

In the meantime, there is also Top Libertarians on Twitter (#tlot), where folks feel that even conservative homosexuals deserve equal treatment under the law.  If you are a libertarian on Twitter, be sure to sign up here.

While we are on the topic of social networking, feel free to follow The Liberty Papers on Facebook here and on Twitter here. Here’s where you can follow or friend some of the individuals at The Liberty Papers:

Chris Byrne

Twitter

Eric Cowperthwaite

Facebook Twitter

Stephen Gordon

Facebook Twitter

Doug Mataconis

Facebook Twitter

Jason Pye

Facebook Twitter

Brad Warbiany

Facebook

Feel free to leave your social networking links in the comment section if you’d like to expand your social networking with other like-minded people.

UPDATE: The old TCOT format and data seem to have survived and are available here.

Quincy’s open letter to Jan Schakowsky, the dear lady who called tea party protestors “despicable” and “shameful” has been picked up on NewsBlaze. Check it out here. Congrats!

All,

Co-blogger Chris just announced a new cookbook that he and his wife are putting together, heavily based upon a number of recipes that he’s posted on his blog. I still haven’t managed to go and enjoy any of said cooking on my trips into the Phoenix area, but I can say that based on the recipes I’ve seen him post — I’m looking forward to it.

Since the book hasn’t been released yet, I can’t offer any definitive comments. But I can tell you that I’m not expecting The French Chef; rather something more along the lines of 1,001 Ways to Cook Large Dead Animals. Either way, I expect to see a lot of tasty offerings.

Chris mentions that since it will be a limited print run, the best option is to pre-order for a book that will be officially available sometime in the next month or so. You might want to jump on this one quickly. Head on over and take a look.
(more…)

In comments I have been asked to explain further my philosophies of liberty, government etc…

I’ve written extensively on the subject before, both here, and on my personal blog; and when I say extensively I’m talking tens of thousands of words; so I thought I just post some of the more comprehensive and important links here:

My Philosophy:

1. What the Heck is a Muscular Minarchist?
2. The Politics of Liberty
3. Rights Penumbras and Emanation
4. Citizen or Subject?
5. No Philosophy?
6. The Fundamental Problem with Involuntary Collectivists
7. Authoritarian, Libertarian, Anarchist?
8. -isms Part One
9. A Couple of Sad Truths
10. To Amy, and Others who Believe that Government can do Good
11. I Can’t Bleieve I haven’t Explicitly Stated this Here Before
12. Differing First Principles

Read them all and you’ll get a pretty solid idea of the philosophical, moral, and practical underpinnings for the ideas I present here.

As Jason noted last night, our own Stephen Gordon appeared on Rachel Maddow’s show last night discussing the rift between conservatives and libertarians over the Tea Party’s.

Here’s the video:

UPDATE: Huffpo on Gordon’s appearance here. HotAir here. Raw Story here. Maddow fan site here.

A lot of digital ink has been spilled on these pages over the tax day “Tea Party” protests. Not all of it has been supportive, but I think there’s to some extent a need to clear the air and explain our position. Granted, this is a group blog and I can’t quite speak for everyone here, but we’ve had some backroom discussions so hopefully I’ll give a general enough overview.

The Liberty Papers has signed up to be a part of the Tax Day Coalition.

There are a lot of conflicting thoughts about this. There is some concern over whether the Tea Party has been co-opted by the type of folks who had no problem with the big spending of the Republicans over the last 8 years, and only seem to have that “come to Jesus” moment when they realize that it’s the opponents who are holding the purse strings. To some extent, of course, the levels of spending we’re seeing are a pretty significant expansion on those of the Bush administration, and many of those on the Right applauded his big war spending and national security spending, and forgave the NCLB and Medicare Part D spending as politically necessary to keep “the agenda” moving forward.

Either way, we see a large group of people opposed to high taxes and high spending. And that’s a good thing. The art of politics is knowing where coalitions can be formed, and making use of them. We see the populist appeal of this movement, and we see this as the tangible reaction of a group of people who have been betrayed by their own party but were too internally conflicted to organize resistance until they were out of power. They’ve come back to the correct side of the debate now, so it’s a good idea to work together rather than fight them out of a libertarian purity purge.

The Liberty Papers has been fighting against this taxation and spending since we formed this blog in 2005. We’re not joining the Tax Day Coalition, we’re excited that the Tax Day Coalition is joining US.

Congrats to my fellow blogger Jason Pye, who was selected for a roundtable discussion on Neal Cavuto’s show on Fox News. Jason was one of the “Tea Party” protesters in Atlanta. Good job!

Cavuto was somewhat flippant about the limited nature of these protests. I sincerely hope that future protests grow, because this is an issue too important to be dismissed as a “tiny minority” viewpoint.

Early this morning, The Liberty Papers recorded our millionth unique visitor. A visitor from Terre Haute, Indiana. I’ve got fond memories of Terre Haute; from a mardi gras party at Rose-Hulman [I attended Purdue, but visited a friend there] and a visiting Indiana State coed… But that’s a story for another time.

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.

Thanks to Brad and the rest of the folks here for affording me the honor of writing at a website which I’ve read nearly daily for years. Hopefully, I’ll be able to make some contributions to what I consider a really good blog.

As I am frequently involved in a wide range of political activities, my hope is to be able to provide a bit of inside scoop about the people, events, legislation, organizations, etc. with which I’m involved.  In the meantime, I’ll try to provide my two cents about current events and how they relate to the freedom movement.

My political philosophy:  I’m as opposed to bailouts of the automobile industry today as I would have been to a bailout of the buggy and carriage industry some 110 years ago.  I’m a military veteran opposed to any form of involuntary national service.  I’m a sports fan opposed to government-funded sports stadiums and arenas , or any federal meddling with the NCAA Bowl Championship Series.  I enjoy a fine cigar and feel restaurant owners should have the right to determine smoking practices within their own business premises.   Of course, I’d feel the same way even if I didn’t enjoy cigars.

The law should apply equally to all, but we would certainly benefit if we eliminated a significant portion of current laws from the books.

In other words, I don’t want the government in my wallet, my bedroom…   …or my holster.

While I write at several other websites about other topics, my goal is to help fan the flames of freedom at The Liberty Papers.  I hope you’ll enjoy the ride as much as I probably will.

You can also find me on Facebook and Twitter.

Two main things:

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.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be on the receiving end of a personal attack ad? I have. During the 2006 campaign, I thought it would be fun to write my own personal attack ad…against myself! Like many attack ads, everything I wrote about myself was (is) technically true but lacked context (the full context of each charge can be found by following the links).

I found the exercise to be very cathartic and enjoyable. I highly recommend you try it sometime! Feel free to write your own personal attack ad against yourself or write your own against me in the comments section of this post.

Now, cue the unflattering grainy black and white video with dreary music and enjoy my personal attack ad:

Who is Stephen Littau and why can’t we trust him?

For starters, he often advocates ending the war on drugs, suspending drug raids on suspected dealers, and repealing mandatory minimum sentencing laws for drug offenders. He has even gone as far as to defend a man who shot and killed a police officer who was simply serving a lawful search warrant.

But that’s not all…

Stephen Littau once wrote “Go ahead and call me an infidel, I will readily embrace this label” and that “an end of faith is way overdue.” Do we really want to put our trust in such a Godless heathen?

Not if you want to defend marriage, the flag, and traditional family values. Stephen Littau opposed the Defense of Marriage Amendment and the Flag Desecration Amendment. He also wants to take God off our currency, out of the Pledge of Allegiance, and remove religious monuments such as the Ten Commandments from government property using the tired old “wall of church and state” argument.

Stephen Littau is so morally depraved that he considers selfishness a “virtue” and wants to eliminate social welfare and entitlement programs leaving Americans to fend for themselves. Stephen Littau wants us to believe that such selfish attitudes are actually compassionate by allowing people to suffer from their poor choices.

Let’s be sure not to suffer from this bad choice. This November, send Stephen Littau a clear message:

Yes to the war on drugs!
Yes to religion in government!
Yes to defending marriage, the flag, and the Ten Commandments!
Yes to a compassionate government!
And No to the secular philosophy and dangerous ideas of Stephen Littau!

Hey, folks, as most of you know (or can tell), there are no ads on this site. It’s not something that we as contributors are expecting to make income from, and in all honesty, I want it to remain as non-commercial as possible.

However, my wife and her sister have just launched a brand new business, and I wanted to give them some publicity. They sell nationwide, and I know we have a decent readership from all across the nation. I’m posting it here and hope you enjoy it, but rest assured, this is not going to become a regular occurrence here. Without further ado, I give you:

Krispy Dips!

I’ll let their description cover it for you:

A Krispy Dip is the grown-up version of the crispy marshmallow treat you loved as a kid.

We start with our signature recipe for the original “Krispy” square made from real imported Madagascar vanilla, creamery butter and the gooiest marshmallows we could find. Each hand-crafted square is then dipped in the finest chocolate and topped with an array of decadent toppings including rich caramel, real espresso beans, sweet coconut and roasted nuts.

Customer satisfaction is of the utmost importance to us. Every order is dipped then shipped to ensure quality and freshness. We are dedicated to providing a superior product that you will come back to again and again. So come dip into delicious!

They’ve worked very hard to create a truly unique and elegant product. For those of you looking for new gift ideas for friends and family over the holidays, you won’t be disappointed. And for anyone who either owns a small business or sends out corporate gifts to thank important clients, they can customize the packaging to give it the personal touch. They’ve already been involved in a wedding, a baby shower, have provided Dips for an LA Dodgers function, and will be doing a major function later this month with another SoCal sports team. For SoCal residents, they’re working towards entry into local gourmet markets.

And last, but most certainly not least, they taste great. If anyone happens to be a fan of dark chocolate and espresso, the espresso bean flavor is my favorite. I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, and that one blows me away!

So head on over and give it a look. It truly is a new and refined twist on a familiar treat, and it’s sure to please!

And now, back to your regularly-scheduled programming…

The Libertarian Convention of course! Which convention did you think I was talking about? The Libertarian National Convention will run this Memorial Day weekend beginning on Thursday, May 22nd and ending on Monday, May 26th. I plan on attending the convention representing The Liberty Papers as a citizen journalist on Saturday, Sunday, and possibly Monday.

My press pass will give me the same access as the MSM outlets (though some events will be reserved for “invited media only”). The events which I believe I will be able to get into include the platform debate, the presidential debate, national chairs debate, presidential nominating speeches, presidential election roll call with acceptance speech, the first press conference with the LP Presidential Nominee, and much, much more.

Fellow Liberty Papers contributor Jason Pye will also be attending the convention as a delegate.

Usually, The Liberty Papers does not have a great deal of activity on the weekends as far as posts are concerned but this weekend will be much different. Expect periodic reporting from the convention beginning Saturday. I’m going to try to score some high profile interviews, will post lots of photos, and possibly post some video for your consumption.

It’s my goal to bring the convention to The Liberty Papers’ reader. Any suggestions for what you would like me to cover, who I interview, and what questions you would like me to ask would be greatly appreciated!

**UPDATE** Jason Pye will also be adding content to The Liberty Papers throughout the weekend:

I am taking a video camera and a laptop and will be updating daily both here and The Liberty Papers. You may even see a post or two over at Red State.

There will be a few battles between moderates and anarchists, mainly over the platform and Bob Barr. Over a beer not too long ago, I told Daniel Adams, chairman of the Libertarian Party of Georgia, that I expected a walkout of different factions at some point during the convention.

Pye has much more insight to the inner workings of the Libertarian Party than I do, so I think his take on the event will be very interesting. Between the two of us, I think we will have the convention covered quite well.

Back in the early days of The Liberty Papers, one of the founding contributors was Quincy. Life interceded into his desire to blog, and he eventually took an unspecified hiatus from the blogosphere.

Thankfully, he’s back!

Head on over and see what he’s up to.

Life should be slightly quiet here over the next few days, as a couple of us may be attending to familial obligations. In the interim, we wish you and yours a happy holiday, and we’ll get back to battling the evil forces of government after the turkey hangover subsides!

Fellow Liberty Papers Contributor Jason Pye is featured in a report from WSB-TV in Atlanta on the fight against pork in the Peach State:

Way to go Jason !

Doug recently posted a “Libertarian Hard Cases” thread about how to deal with issues related to children. Libertarianism is one of the few political systems that treats adults like adults and holds them responsible for their actions; it assumes that people are rational actors who are capable of making decisions in their own life and deserve rights commensurate with that ability. But it has difficulty answering questions regarding people who are not capable of making those decisions and cannot be trusted with the rights to do so, such as children and the mentally disabled.

Undoubtedly, there are many other libertarian hard cases. So this thread is a call to the readers here to give us ideas. What libertarian “hard cases” would you like to see addressed?

For example, I’ll be writing a post soon regarding the rights of parents to choose to vaccinate or not vaccinate children. There are two clear questions that arise:

1) As a parent, do I have the right to not vaccinate, which is a choice that some would consider tantamount to abuse or neglect of a child, if I believe that the potential harm of a vaccine is worse than the disease it is preventing against (such as chicken pox)?
2) Does society as a whole have a legitimate claim to supersede my right to choose not to vaccinate, as it creates an externality that increases the likelihood that we see an outbreak of vaccine-preventable diseases?

These are difficult questions, and ones that I think may result in disagreements within the contributors here, so it could lead to some interesting fireworks. If you have any suggested topics, let us know.

I suppose the best way to describe myself would be to say that I have a problem with authority. I’ve always disliked when people told me what to do, even as a young child, and I’ve always preferred to find my own path through life and make my own decisions, even if it occasionally went against the conventional wisdom and sometimes worked to my short-term disadvantage. My dad said I inherited it from him, but that I’ve taken it to a whole new level. When I was young I wanted to be a journalist, until I got to college and realized that journalism was less about the search for objective truth than it was about writing the stories that best suited your employer’s interests, whether they were true or not (which didn’t sit well with me at all). So I drifted aimlessly through a couple of years of college as an indifferent (often drunk) student, unsure of what to do with myself until one of my fraternity brothers gave me a copy of “The Fountainhead” and I got hooked on the ideas that success and a refusal to conform to societal standards were not mutally exclusive, and that the greatest evil in the world was society and government’s failure to recognize or accept individuality and individual freedom as a strength, not a weakness. So I threw myself into studying politics and history, worked in a few political campaigns after college, had some success, and thought about doing a career in politics until I realized that most of the people I knew who had never had a career outside of politics had no comprehension of how the real world actually worked and tended to make a lot of bad, self-absorbed decisions that rarely helped the people they claimed to be representing.

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.