For that I, and we, apologize.

We are not professional bloggers; rather we are blogging professionals. All of the contributors here have other obligations to attend to out there in the world of “real life”. It’s common at times for some of us to be more ready to write while others are occupied — it seems that we’ve hit a spell where just about all of us are slammed. Whether it be personal or professional, positive or negative, persistent or transient — and it’s been any combination of the above, depending on the author* — it’s gotten in the way of spending time writing for The Liberty Papers.

The good news is that I think things will be improving moving forward. Some of the issues being faced have definite end points in time, and others seem to have peaked and should allow more attention to the blog. I expect and hope things to start picking back up this month and return to a more consistent form from there.

In the meantime, we hope you hang in there with us, as the forces of collectivism take no respite from their cause. For as C.S. Lewis pointed out, they believe they’re working for our benefit:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

* I do not presume to discuss the situation others are under, but I am faced with escalating pressures in my career (which is a positive and productive thing) and the demands of a toddler and infant at home. From morning to night I’m consumed by one or the other, and get to the end of the day with a brain in shutdown — and the prospect of a night that might include wakings from either young’un. The kids are starting to consistently make it entirely or almost entirely through the night, and I’ve started a workout regimen to put my body and my mind right, and I’m already sensing a return of normal brain function. Well, as “normal” as it ever was, anyway.

They (Jason and UL Assistant Editor Brett Bittner) recently honored me be asking that I join them as a guest on their podcast, which you can find here or on iTunes.

Topics ranged from the Federal Reserve and Ben Bernanke, to health care, to home weatherization (a topic where I nearly defect from doctrinaire libertarianism), immigration and Copenhagen. All in all, I had a lot of fun and hopefully some of you may enjoy the listen.

Well, today marks four years since the site began, and it’s been quite a ride since then. Some contributors have moved on, due to life intruding on blogging. We’ve expanded our rolls to replace them and try to expand our ideological coverage as well. And Eric, our founder, was put into the choice of taking a new job that would be wonderful for his family and career, but would mean he had to stop blogging. He turned the reins of the site over to me, and I’ve tried not to muck it up too badly.

In four years, we’ve written over 3500 posts, received over 31,000 comments, and we’re well on our way to 1.5M unique visits. We’ve had our successes, with Stephen Gordon breaking the DHS “domestic terrorist” report, attracting attention from Fox News and Rush Limbaugh.

All in all, I think we fit into a very nice space in the libertarian blogosphere. We hail from a wide range of disciplines, with nearly none of us in a position to call “political operative” an occupation rather than a hobby. We hail from such diverse fields as technology, law, and even music. We all share, though, a common fight — for the increase of liberty.

We’ve come a long way in four years, and I’m proud of the contributors who work to make this site great and thankful for all our readers who regularly comment here and make The Liberty Papers more than a broadsheet, but a conversation. I’m very happy with what this site has become — but I’m not sure I’m satisfied. My hope is that one year from today, we can mark our fifth year as a site bigger, stronger, and more active than its ever been.

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.

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

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.

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.

PSA – The Liberty Papers, nor any of its contributors, subsidiaries, employers, friends, relatives, or pets will not be held responsible for any ill effects to your health resulting from over-consumption — or just consumption — of any of these recipes. I said your stomach will thank you; your arteries are a different matter entirely!

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.

Here’s the video:

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.