“How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?”
This was Samuel Johnson’s bitter rhetorical question about the American revolution, and the conflict it identifies has never been far from the surface of American political and intellectual life. Compared with the societies of 18th and 19th century Europe, the United States was unusually obsessed with the idea of liberty and unusually economically dependent on slave labor. Sometimes Americans like to tell ourselves that the revolutionary idea of liberty is what finally made abolition possible two generations later, but that sidesteps the paradox that the U.S. was one of the last countries to abolish slavery, and did so only after a decades-long expansion.
Being Libertarian, Stay Sick Recordings, and the band are teaming up to launch a campaign surrounding the pre-orders for the record. Pushing for 2,000 pre-orders, the band has a chance to debut at a respective spot on the charts.
The record has 18 tracks on it, and is as libertarian-themed as it gets. Check out this video for more details, and let's help the crew infiltrate the industry with the message of liberty.
To argue that incredibly bad ideas simply die on their own, especially if they go unopposed, and that these ideas have no potential to rise from relative obscurity to national (or even international) preeminence, is to argue in contravention of the historical record.
Ku Klux Klan members march down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. in 1928.
Outset Magazine - Some hold the view that the best way to deal with white supremacists is to ignore them. For if we shed light on the contemptibility of white supremacist ideas, the logic goes, we are merely giving them undue attention—attention that presumably produces a worse outcome for society than allowing their racist views to go unchallenged. Proponents of this view are also quick to dismiss white supremacists as “basement dwellers” who are simply “fringe elements” of the society. But there are a few critical problems with this assessment. Read more: http://outsetmagazine.com/2016/12/20/challenge-white-supremacist-ideas/
As Communications Project Manager for the Institute for Justice, Anthony “Rek” LeCounte works hard to make the public case for economic liberty, free speech, private property rights, and school choice for all Americans.
The Institute for Justice - Funeral services necessarily involve a difficult time for the consumers who need them, and the pain of loss can often be compounded by the logistical expenses involved. Unfortunately, the cost of funeral expenses is significantly higher when occupational licensing is involved. In a new study published in the June 2017 edition of the International Review of Law and Economics, Brandon Pizzola and Alexander Tabarrok use a “natural experiment” to show that occupational licensing requirements on funeral service providers increase the cost of workers and services. Conversely, the lack of such requirements decreases costs.
Colorado delicensed its funeral services industry in 1983, providing researchers an opportunity to compare the effects of the regulatory change in the state to national developments. Unsurprisingly, Pizzola and Tabarrok found that funeral costs fell in Colorado, compared with the rest of the United States, because licensing causes a “wage premium” of 11 to 12 percent due to lack of competition. This finding echoes other research that has shown licensing requirements in other industries lead to similar spikes in cost. Insiders, in funeral services and other industries, often support licensing requirements precisely for this reason: Licensing creates artificial “job protection” by making it harder for competition to drive down costs.
My commentary on a job market that isn't producing enough jobs that play a living wage, big pharma dramatically increasing the price of medications, Wikileaks email release regarding ISIS and the Saudi government.
There's no good excuse for these ridiculous gaffes that the Libertarian Party nominee has been making—and the liberty movement and the country will pay the price.
Fellow writer and buddy of my mine, Charles Peralo, recently published and article suggesting that libertarians should partner with Black Lives Matter.
L.E.A.P.'s Neill Franklin reacts to Philando Castillo and Anton Sterling shootings, the deaths of Dallas police officers, and #BlackLivesMatter.
The horrific deaths of Philando Castillo in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, give us an updated and up-close glimpse of police encounters gone bad—but they are rooted in decades of problematic policing in America. "Historically in this country, the police have never really been the friends of the black community," says Neill Franklin, a former officer with the Baltimore Police Department and current executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (L.E.A.P).
Franklin talked with Reason TV Editor-in-Chief Nick Gillespie at this year's Freedom Fest in Las Vegas, Nevada, pointing out that slavery may have ended officially in the late 1800s, but a lot of policing was born out of that era and the one that followed, when police deliberately enforced laws in ways that targeted black citizens. Even today, police are tasked with enforcing laws—from driving without a license to missing a court date—that tend to target poor communities and communities of color.
"You know a $250 fine doesn't mean much to people who have money," says Franklin. "But when you enforce these policies in poor communities, a hundred dollar fine can devastate a family."
It comes down to the need for a new model of policing in America, says Franklin, not just tweaks of the same old system. "What we have now is not like trying to fix a broken car, this car was a used car in the first place."
My commentary on 1/6 of young men being jobless or incarcerated, Hillary Clinton being approve the law, why the judges will protect Obamacare and why the average household income has not improved.
If you're a disaffected Republican voter who doesn't live in a swing state, consider voting for the Libertarian Party presidential nominee next November—especially if that nominee is former two-term New Mexico governor Gary Johnson.
Dr Elaina George is a Board Certified Otolaryngologist. She graduated from Princeton University with a degree in Biology. She received her Masters degree in Medical Microbiology from Long Island University, and received her medical degree from Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.
"Everyone can agree that this political season has been different. The candidates and their “win at all cost“ campaigns have unwittingly uncovered what has been lurking under the surface. It is what voters have known, but have been unable to put their fingers on or wrap their brains around – the feeling that there is something wrong with the direction in which the country has been moving.
The rise of the ‘outsiders’ attests to this. However, what has become increasingly confusing to wade through is the exponential rise in the rhetoric which is designed to keep the status quo in place. How else can one explain the fact that on one hand some conservatives have been advocating policies that work against the conservative principles of free market and the rule of law, while actually funding and perpetuating big government policies that centralize power at the expense of individual rights; and on the other hand liberals have been advocating policies that abrogate free speech, restrict the freedom to associate with whom and how you see fit, while championing cronyism in the form of Medicare for all, and taxing the middle class out of existence in the name of the nanny state wrapped in the guise of social justice."
In the service of a “law” that was routinely violated by those who enforced it, hundreds of thousands of lives would be changed dramatically for the worse – many of them ruined beyond repair. Thousands of people would die through violence either inflicted by agents of the state, or abetted by state policies that gave criminals a monopoly on what had previously been a competitive market.
(Pro Liberate)
“Our safety and happiness lie in obedience to law by every man, woman and child,” pontificated Attorney General Harry Micajah Daugherty in his keynote address to the 1921 annual conference of the American Bar Association in Cincinnati. His homily on the supposed virtue of submission to the state was offered in the service of the crusade to “suppress the age-long evil of the liquor traffic,” a holy errand to which the assembled legal luminaries were firmly committed, at least while they were on the clock.
Everyone in Daugherty’s audience was aware that the Attorney General was profiting handsomely from the kickbacks and other illicit emoluments that inevitably accompany prohibition. Most of them were likewise aware that Daugherty had selected Cincinnati as the site of the conference because its police and municipal court system were entirely controlled by bootlegger George Remus – who was among the Attorney General’s most generous benefactors.
In order for the “Noble Experiment” to proceed, certain “needful lies” had to be recited by people in positions of “authority” – the most significant of which was that the state’s enforcement caste was essentially incorruptible, and thus suited to the task of reforming lesser beings through the application of violence.
