Brian’s Column: Leaving the Sandbox Ch. 5

Posted on June 29, 2014 by Brian Wright

Raising the Torch
As Libertarians we stand for something. The organization becomes informed on all major issues of the day, testifies, resolves, and educates. We never shut up!

Back in the old days of the LP of Michigan, we may not have been successful in the general candidate-running business, but at our central committee meetings we always made a point of issuing a resolution about some public issue or affair and getting it to the media. Such as:

“We oppose the recent sales tax increase as a violation of fundamental property rights; taxation is theft, all government funding needs to be voluntary.”
“A draft registration system amounts to slavery of young men for the (often nefarious and covert) military purposes of the Leviathan State; end the recently imposed federal draft registration system now.”

Continue reading →

Brian’s Column: Context for Leaving the Sandbox

Posted on June 8, 2014 by Brian Wright

A passionate appeal to fellow Libertarians

This is from the front matter to my book on Libertarian grand strategy Leaving the Sandbox, scheduled for completion June 21, 2014.

Roughly 2005 while I was embarked on the Free State journey in New Hampshire[1] an agorist disciple/leader and international philosophical man of intrigue, Jack Shimek, commented to me, “The Libertarian Party has set the cause of liberty back decades.” Actually, I think he said generations.

Naturally, being a longtime, if occasionally backslid, Libertarian, I resisted his assertion. Continue reading →

Article: The 2004 Libertarian Party National Convention

Posted on March 17, 2014 by Brian Wright

Four Days in May
an insider’s look at the Party of Principle, from Atlanta
by Brian Wright

Here in spring of 2014, roughly a decade later, I’m reassembling my impressions from diaries I kept of the key event in 2004, which I was disappointed in the result of. Reviewing the text, I see that I was not all worked out spiritually—who ever is, even a man into his 50s at the time?—and may have stated harsh or overly judgmental impressions of people. I apologize for this, but like my advocating to vote for (yes, believe it or not) John Kerry in 2004, I have to own my past mistakes and personal shortcomings. (Heck, in 2004 I still pretty much accepted the Official Story of the 9/11 Attacks!) Many regrets to any and all I may have offended; chances are strong I have favorable views toward you today. Continue reading →

Brian’s Column: Rethinking Libertarian Party Strategy:2

Posted on February 9, 2014 by Brian Wright

From Part 1, I hope that I effectively made several points that warrant an effective grand strategy for Libertarians and libertarians. Before I summarize these points, let me first stipulate the larger community that the strategy is intended to serve:

World Citizenship Alliance

The community of service is composed of you or I or any of a vast number of what I’ll call free men.[1] I mean free in the Jeffersonian or Lockeian sense of persons living—achieving their material, real existence—in a natural condition of purely voluntary relationships with others, free to choose what to do with their lives without the initiation of force (aggression) by any of the others, and asserting this condition as fundamentally right. In other words asserting what historically is called the Rights of Man. Continue reading →

Brian’s Column: Rethinking Libertarian Party Strategy:1

Posted on February 2, 2014 by Brian Wright

… in an Era of Federal Government Torture, War Crimes, and Gross Treason

Just watched the Frank Capra classic 1939 movie, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington—nominated for 12 Oscars, starring Jimmy Stewart and Jean Arthur—and I’m thinking, “Boy, the writers sure nailed this baby, nothing’s changed in 75 years but the hair styles!” The movie depicts a boys’ organization leader (Stewart) who by fluke is selected by a governor to fill the vacancy in the US Senate due to the death of the elected senator. The whole state, including the governor, the other senator, and all major businesses and news outlets are run by a Mafia-like political boss ‘Taylor’ played by Edward Arnold. Continue reading →

Book Review: Libertarianism in One Lesson (2005)

Posted on July 5, 2013 by Brian Wright

Why libertarianism is best hope for the future
by David Bergland
Reviewed by Brian Wright

Mr. Bergland’s concise, logical, and benevolent book—first edition published in 1984—on the nature of liberty, libertarianism, and the modern libertarian movement has become a classic. Properly so. Like most classics in the field, it is well worth consulting repeatedly by liberty activists—as well as being placed in easy reach on our bookshelves for handing to those yet innocent of the principles of freedom.