The immortal words of Ludwig von Mises apply to everyone of us today:
No one can find a safe way out for himself if society is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. None can stand aside with unconcern; the interests of everyone hang on the result.
Destruction is precisely where the statists are taking us and our country. Their welfare-state programs and their warfare-state programs are destroying the freedom and prosperity of the American people. Welfare-state programs are bankrupt. Federal spending continues out of control. The Federal Reserve continues to debauch the currency. The drug war continues to ruin and destroy lives. The national-security state empire continues to stir up enemies abroad and then uses the threat as the excuse to wield extraordinary totalitarian-like powers over the citizenry, including massive secret surveillance schemes, kidnapping, torture, and military incarceration without trial.
This is what happens when a nation abandons its founding principles — the principles enunciated in our Declaration of Independence. This is what happens to a nation that embraces socialism, interventionism, and imperialism. This is what happens to a nation that travels down the road to statism.
Why is it important to fight now? Because as the situation gets worse and worse, both economically and with respect to civil liberties, the federal government’s totalitarian-like powers grow exponentially. As that happens, it becomes increasingly dangerous to try to reverse the trend, which makes the trend even more likely to grow.
This is the time to fight. This is the time for all of us to throw ourselves vigorously into the intellectual battle.
One of the most common questions I have received since FFF was founded some 23 years ago is: “What can I do to advance liberty?”
As longtime supporters of FFF know, we have a deep and abiding faith in the power of ideas on liberty. Ideas on liberty have the power to transform a society by raising people’s hearts and minds to a higher level, one that understands the nature, virtues, and benefits of freedom and that will not settle for anything less than a free society.
With that in mind, here are two suggestions as to how you can throw yourself vigorously into the intellectual battle for liberty:
1. Share perspectives on liberty, including your own, with whomever you think might be interested in receiving them. If you see an article you particularly like, share it with others. This is what we do every day with our FFF Daily, my daily blog, our Future of Freedom monthly journal, our webinars, our op-eds, our weekly Internet Show “The Libertarian Angle,” and our lectures, seminars, and conferences.
Six days a week, we carefully select the ten articles that are included in our FFF Daily. The FFF articles and videos are 100 percent libertarian. The “outside” articles and videos are at least 95 percent libertarian. Forward the ones you like to your friends and acquaintances. Our job is to find the best articles for you, in the hopes that they will be valuable to you and which you can then share with others.
That’s not to say, of course, that people will automatically agree with what you are sending them, and one must, of course, exercise discretion in how much to send other people. But the fact is that people will never consider a possible solution if they don’t hear about it or read about it first. By sharing ideas on liberty with others, you are planting seeds and also fortifying beliefs among those who already believe in libertarianism.
Remember: There is a reason that totalitarian regimes do their best to shut down the dissemination of ideas on liberty. They know the potential power that such ideas have to bring about a transformation of society, one that results in the dismantling of totalitarian measures and the restoration of a free society.
2. Send a (tax-deductible) donation to The Future of Freedom Foundation. We depend on your support. It enables us to do our job in disseminating ideas on liberty to others.
If you haven’t read our current fundraising letter and watched my short video message that accompanies it, I hope you will take the time to do so. The link is here.
We need your financial support now more than ever. The massive secret NSA surveillance scheme over the American people is just one more reflection of how out-of-control the federal government has become. That’s obviously not what the Founding Fathers and the Framers had in mind when they broke away from the British government through the Declaration of Independence and then called a federal government with extremely limited powers into existence with the Constitution. This is not what a free society is all about. This is what totalitarian regimes are all about.
Ever since FFF’s founding, we have taken a leading role in the libertarian movement in favor of both economic liberty and civil liberties. They are both essential prerequisites to a free society. When 9/11 hit, we knew that statists would use that crisis as an opportunity to seize extraordinary emergency powers over the citizenry. It’s an age-old racket, one that Benjamin Franklin referred to more than 200 years ago when he stated that those who trade their freedom for security deserve neither.
In 2007 and 2008, we held two major conferences on civil liberties, the war on terrorism, and foreign policy, with speakers all across the political spectrum warning about the dark and dangerous road that the federal government had embarked upon.
Last year, in conjunction with the Young Americans for Liberty, we hosted two College Civil Liberties tours, featuring Glenn Greenwald, Bruce Fein, Jack Hunter, and me. We also had panels on civil liberties at the annual conference of the Students for Liberty. What we noticed was the extraordinary level of interest in civil liberties among these young people.
A crisis brings both danger and opportunity. We must seize the ongoing crises facing our country, in both the welfare state and the warfare state, to raise people’s vision to a higher level—to one based on freedom, morality, and economic prosperity, one in which the statism that is sweeping our nation to destruction is dismantled, repealed, and abolished.
If you haven’t ever made a donation to FFF, this would be a great time to start, perhaps with a one-year subscription to our monthly journal Future of Freedom. If you’re already one of our supporters, I hope you’ll consider making another contribution to help us with our special student outreach program. As I stated in our current fundraising letter, these students are not only the key to the future, they are a key to the present. And the present is where our primary focus must be as we continue to strive for a free and prosperous society.
To subscribe to our monthly journal Future of Freedom, click here.
To donate to FFF online, click here.
To make a credit-card donation by telephone, call us at 703-934-6101.
To donate by check or credit card, mail a check or credit-card information and amount of donation (and telephone number) to:
The Future of Freedom Foundation
11350 Random Hills Road
Suite 800
Fairfax VA 22030
Thank you for your consideration, your commitment to freedom, your interest in our work, and your support of FFF.
Yours for liberty,
Jacob Hornberger
President
The Future of Freedom Foundation
www.fff.org
jhornberger@fff.org
