Dear Friend of Freedom,
If you’re a radical for liberty like me then you’ll want to read this letter and help.
We here at The Future of Freedom Foundation don’t compromise — and sometimes we have to pay a price for our uncompromising moral defense of freedom. Sometimes we walk away from donations because the money or the idea would sacrifice principle at the expense of liberty.
In our early years, for example, a donor told us that his continued $1,000 per year support depended on our publishing an article in favor of a position that compromised liberty. That $1,000 donation was a lot of money for us then, and it still is.
We chose to not to publish the article. We chose not to compromise our principles. We don’t sacrifice liberty for anything. And we’re not going to start compromising to attract additional support.
We’re going to remain true to our uncompromising principles and radical moral defense of the principles of liberty — no matter what.
But that means I am counting on YOU!
I am hoping you will help us with a contribution now because that is the only way we can sustain our mission to present the uncompromising case for individual liberty and the free society.
I had to walk away from money in the past, and it wasn’t easy. I had to say no because it would associate The Future of Freedom Foundation with a position that sounded practical but really was a compromise.
And I don’t compromise with liberty.
I don’t think you compromise with liberty either — otherwise you wouldn’t have given us your generous support in the past.
You don’t compromise and neither do I.
I am writing you now because I really need your help. This is the 25th anniversary of our founding in 1989, and we’ve been working on exciting projects for this summer and the next school year.
We have completely run out of copies of our popular booklet Economic Liberty and the Constitution, which we distribute to college students. We need 10,000 copies to give out to college students next year and beyond, and we need your help to pay for a new print run.
As you know, the mission of The Future of Freedom Foundation is to advance freedom by providing an uncompromising moral, philosophical, and economic case for the libertarian philosophy.
Do you know why I founded FFF 25 years ago?
Because I looked around and saw compromise.
Compromise that was actually surrender.
You probably know that for the first one hundred years after the founding of our nation, the American people resisted large-scale governmental interventions, such as government welfare, economic regulations, and foreign adventures. Except for the horrible tragedy of slavery, the result was widespread prosperity and the healthiest, most literate, and most compassionate society in history.
Then what happened?
In the 20th century, America moved in the opposite direction — the direction towards socialism, interventionism, and imperialism.
America compromised. Our nation abandoned its founding principles. We gave up liberty we actually had in exchange for theories that sounded good. We surrendered our freedom for what looked like security. We ended up with neither liberty nor security.
The result of a whole series of compromises — as predictable as it was tragic — has been massive infringements on our economic liberty, the destruction of our civil liberties, and gross intrusions into our privacy. Not to mention out-of-control federal spending, out-of-control debt, out-of-control inflation.
These compromises have reduced prosperity, damaged family values, and weakened our sense of morality, our self-reliance, our individual consciences, and our devotion to voluntary charity.
These reductions in freedom and prosperity are the aggregate consequence of incremental surrender.
We compromised and we lost. And the more we continue to compromise, the more we will continue to lose.
We at The Future of Freedom Foundation believe that the achievement of liberty requires an uncompromising opposition to all encroachments on liberty.
And by “all,” I mean ALL!
We strongly believe in the power of ideas to shift the course of society. For 25 years, we have published our flagship publication, Future of Freedom, our monthly journal of ideas on liberty, now edited by FFF vice-president Sheldon Richman.
And for the past 15 years, we have published our FFF Daily, which is sent out to more than 5,000 subscribers six days a week. In the past year, our website has received almost 600,000 unique visitors, where people can read our uncompromising perspectives on liberty, carefully selected libertarian commentaries on other websites, and my daily blog.
We offer YouTube videos of our weekly Libertarian Angle Internet show, featuring Sheldon and me. Sheldon also produces a monthly webinar, writes a weekly op-ed, and publishes his popular TGIF weekly column. During the academic school year and together with the George Mason University Economics Society, we host the monthly Economic Liberty Lecture Series.
These on-going projects are funded mainly by the generosity of our donors at our year-end appeal. I am deeply grateful to you for all the great help you have given us to share our uncompromising perspectives on liberty with others.
But let me tell you what we have planned for this summer and beyond.
My first priority is to reprint our Economic Liberty and the Constitution booklet, which college students really love. It details the history of Supreme Court cases through the decades in which the federal judiciary initially embraced and then abandoned the principles of economic liberty. The students are happy to get it, not only because they are interested in the topic but also because it helps them with their school work! We are completely out of the booklet and we need to print 10,000 more as soon as possible.
Another urgent need right now is to repair and upgrade our website. It might not be an “exciting project” but our website is the most important medium these days through which college students and everyone else are able to easily access our uncompromising articles on liberty. But the site is showing its seams and is in desperate need for an urgent upgrade.
We are also looking to continue our tours of college campuses, where Sheldon and I share our uncompromising perspectives on liberty with students and engage them in a spirited discussion of libertarian principles.
But these projects depend on you. We do what we need to do to keep true to our principles and never, ever compromise. I hope you will help us by providing the financial support that will make these projects a reality.
Thank you very much for your time and consideration, and I look forward to working with you in our uncompromising future.
Yours in liberty,
Jacob G. Hornberger
President
P.S. People who donate $250 or more become a member of our FFF Freedom Club and receive a video update from me every month on the principles of liberty.
