Never has the need been greater for an organization that advances the consistent moral, philosophical, and economic case for individual liberty, free markets, and constitutional government. Thats what The Future of Freedom Foundation is all about. We need your generous end-of-year support to help us continue working for the restoration of a genuinely free society to our nation. The stakes have never been higher, for ourselves, our families, and our country.
Domestic Policy and Foreign Policy
What a disaster the welfare state has been for America. Everywhere you look, the welfare state is an absolute mess. The economy. The financial system. Fiscal policy. Monetary policy. Health care. Education. Social Security. The drug war. It all goes to show that we live in a consistent universe, one in which immoral means beget bad ends, a universe in which bad trees produce rotten fruit.
Our country is not only suffering the grip of socialism. Americans are now being squeezed by the welfare-warfare vise. Interventionism and empire building abroad are not only contributing to the out-of-control federal spending that is threatening the nation with bankruptcy, they are also subjecting Americans to the perpetual threat of terrorist blowback. As we have learned, that threat inevitably leads in the direction of losing our civil liberties suspension of habeas corpus, denial of due process, warrantless searches and seizures, domestic spying, denial of trial by jury, indefinite incarcerations, torture, kidnapping, and rendition.
Freedom and the Constitution
In 1787, the Framers brought into existence the U.S. federal government, a government whose powers were expressly restricted by the Constitution. Our ancestors understood what all too many Americans today fail to appreciate that the biggest threat to peoples lives, liberties, and fortunes lies with their own government, which is precisely why they used the Constitution to severely constrain the governments powers.
Our ancestors brought into existence the freest society in history, slavery notwithstanding. No income tax. No Federal Reserve. No welfare. No Social Security. No Medicare or Medicaid. No public schooling. No paper money. No gun control. No immigration controls. No trade protectionism. No drug war. No military-industrial complex. No foreign empire. No foreign wars. Minuscule government spending and borrowing. Sound money. Unlimited accumulation of wealth. Free markets. Liberty of contract. Private enterprise free of government control or regulation.
That is what our American ancestors called freedom. That is the freedom that they celebrated every Fourth of July. Those are the genuine principles of liberty that distinguish our country and our heritage. Those principles brought into existence the greatest, freest, most prosperous, and most charitable nation in history. Those are the principles of freedom to which The Future of Freedom Foundation has been dedicated since our inception.
FFF Conferences and Lectures
We have taken a leading role in the defense of civil liberties and in the opposition to an interventionist foreign policy. In 2007 and 2008, we held two of the most important conferences in the history of the libertarian movement on foreign policy and civil liberties. Thanks to the generosity of our donors, forty-five of the greatest speeches ever delivered on these burning issues of our day have now been posted on our Internet Classroom, free for the world to view. Those online videos have now been viewed 139,569 times; two excerpts from Ron Pauls 2008 conference speech, which were posted on YouTube, have drawn 488,637 views.
We have also taken a leading role in the defense of economic liberty and in the opposition to socialism. We have just implemented a new program that focuses on the damage that socialist programs have brought our nation and on the virtues and benefits of economic liberty. The program is our monthly Economic Liberty Lecture Series, which we are holding at George Mason University in partnership with the GMU Econ Society, a student-run group interested in the libertarian, free-market, Austrian economics philosophy. Our first two meetings have been a smashing success, with students interacting with FFF supporters in the Northern Virginia area, eating pizza, watching a movie, and listening to two great lectures by GMU professor Peter J. Boettke and FFF policy advisor James Bovard.
FFF Email Update, Freedom Daily, and FFF Op-Eds
Every morning at 6 a.m., we are at work at FFF to bring you our free FFF Email Update, which we have now been publishing daily for six years. With links to carefully selected libertarian commentaries and to blog posts by FFF writers, we continue striving to make our Email Update the finest libertarian page on the Internet.
Every week, we target thousands of small and mid-sized newspapers all across the country with our uncompromising and hard-hitting libertarian op-eds. In the past year, our op-eds have been reprinted more than 400 times in newspapers and posted on numerous sites on the Internet.
Every month since our inception, we have faithfully published our uncompromising journal of libertarian ideas, Freedom Daily. Here is where we provide people with the long-term moral, philosophical, and economic case for the free society.
All issues of our FFF Email Update and Freedom Daily, along with all our articles, op-eds, and blog entries, are posted and indexed on our website www.fff.org for the entire world to research and read. In the last twelve months, 379,434 unique visitors (i.e., different computers) have visited our website.
The Power of Ideas on Liberty
Why does all this matter? Because what is true and right matters. And because being free matters. And because a life of peace, prosperity, and harmony matters. It is only ideas on freedom that can move our nation in a better and freer direction. One can never predict when freedom ideas will ignite the hearts, minds, and passions of a people, motivating them to demand that their government officials leave them alone, so that people will be free to sustain their lives through labor and economic exchanges, to accumulate unlimited amounts of wealth, to decide for themselves what to do with their own money, to live in peace, and to pursue happiness in their own way.
There is only one way out of the morass in which our nation finds itself and that is through the restoration of liberty to our land. For almost 20 years, The Future of Freedom Foundation has stood firmly and without compromise for the freedom philosophy. We believe that liberty is not only the moral foundation of a society, it also produces prosperity, harmony, and charity. It is the key to the future well-being of ourselves, our families, and our nation.
The Importance of Your Support
We need your end-of-year support here at The Future of Freedom Foundation to build on the success we are achieving in spreading the word. Our work depends on your donations and your bequests. I hope we have earned your confidence. We shall certainly continue doing our best to do so.
Yours for liberty,
Jacob G. Hornberger
P.S. Another way to support our work is with an automatic monthly credit-card donation. We also hope that you will keep The Future of Freedom Foundation in mind in your estate planning.
P.P.S. Please note our Christmas specials:
1. Renew your subscription to Freedom Daily for one year by December 31 and receive an extra bonus of 3 months onto your subscription. Or an extra 6 months for a two-year renewal.
2. Send one-year gift subscriptions to Freedom Daily to your family members and friends for only $10 each (regular price $15).
