I am writing to seek your financial support to help us continue the battle for liberty in the year ahead.
The advocates of the welfare-warfare state say that paternalism is freedom, compulsory charity is a virtue, federal spending and debt will bring prosperity, and perpetual war will bring peace. Their world is built on lies and deception, which is why we continue to live in a society wracked by endless crises, conflict, hostility, recession, war, and chaos.
On the other hand, there are those of us who stand for the principles of economic liberty, free markets, private property, voluntary charity, and a limited-government constitutional republic. Those principles are the keys to restoring a society characterized by peace, prosperity, harmony, and freedom.
The welfare-warfare statists rely on mass propaganda and indoctrination to advance their cause. Our methodology entails speaking the truth and sharing ideas on liberty with others on a person-to-person basis.
Consider the tremendous progress that libertarians have made toward ending one of the most destructive wars ever waged by a government against its own people — the war on drugs. In 1989, when I started The Future of Freedom Foundation, calling for an end to the drug war was a shocking notion. Peoples’ minds had been molded by government officials and the mass media into believing that drug prohibition was a legitimate function of government and that drug laws were consistent with the principles of a free society.
Today, owing to the ever-growing support for ending the war on drugs, the days of this cruel and vicious war are clearly numbered. The success we have attained in shifting public opinion with our person-to-person methodology gives us an idea of what can be accomplished if we continue speaking truth to power and spreading ideas on liberty.
FFF recently held one of the most meaningful conferences in our 26-year history. It was held at Morgan State University, which U.S. News has ranked among the nation’s top historically black universities in America. The theme of the conference was “The Drug War Against Black America.” Our co-sponsor was the Pre-Law Association on campus, whose members truly understand the importance of ending this modern-day Jim Crow. The conference attracted around 100 students. The video of the conference is now online, and here is a link to my report of the conference.
Last spring we held a tremendously successful conference at the University of Texas. Its theme was “End the Wars on Drugs and Terrorism,” and it featured Ron Paul, Radley Balko, and Glenn Greenwald. It was an inspiring event, with libertarian ideas being shared and discussed with more than 700 people in attendance.
A personal highlight this past year was during FFF’s college tour in Florida, when a student stood up during the discussion session and said, “I came here tonight firmly believing that America needs to have an enormous standing army. Because of your talk, I no longer believe that. I am leaving this room tonight a changed person.” That was matched at a recent conference at Texas Christian University, where I was speaking for the Texas Millennial Institute, a group of young libertarians. A young man came up to me and said, “I have been reading FFF’s monthly journal since I was 16. That is why I am actively involved with the freedom movement today.”
For the first time ever, we participated in Porcfest, the big annual libertarian summer event in New Hampshire that attracts hundreds of people. My speech on the importance of not compromising libertarian principles in the advancement of liberty was well-received by the audience. We also had great time visiting with attendees at our booth, some of whom were long-time FFF supporters.
For 26 years we have published our monthly journal Future of Freedom because we believe that ideas on liberty have the power to open minds and to shift the course of public opinion. Of course, those ideas must be sound ideas, and that means hewing strictly to principle, which we have strived to do ever since our inception.
Every morning, six days a week, we prepare our other publication, FFF Daily, to send out to people via the Internet. Think of FFF Daily as your daily libertarian editorial page. We carefully select a freedom quote of the day as well as ten articles with libertarian perspectives. Every issue also contains my daily blog post, which I have now been writing for some 16 years. Our Saturday issue focuses exclusively on articles published by other libertarian educational foundations and think tanks because we want to expose people to the depth and breadth of the libertarian movement.
Among the most exciting programs during the past year for transmitting ideas on liberty has been our ebook project. Throughout most of 2015, three of our ebooks have been on Amazon’s list of best–selling books in 20th-century American history. With the financial support we received in the summer, we have published two new ebooks, one on gun control and the other on monetary policy, with more in the works. You’ll be interested to know that since sales of my ebook The Kennedy Autopsy have been so high, we are publishing a print version that should be available at Amazon by the time you read this letter. And we have also recently added an audiobook version on Amazon. Two weeks ago, in commemoration of the Kennedy assassination, we offered free copies of our three JFK ebooks on Amazon. During the two days of the offer, there were 8,500 downloads! And since then, our revenue for all three books are at a higher level than they were before we made the offer.
This past year, we have continued to share our uncompromising libertarian perspectives with newspapers across the country with our op-ed program. And we have also spread the word on a variety of Internet and radio shows on which we have been invited to be guests.
Our music video Serfdom USA, whose aim is to induce people to explore Austrian economics, revolves around Friedrich Hayek’s famous book The Road to Serfdom. That video has now garnered more than 33,000 views on YouTube. That’s not the only FFF video that has done well. Our 5-part video on the JFK assassination, Altered History by Douglas P. Horne, who served on the staff of the Assassination Records Review Board, has now received more than 140,000 views on YouTube.
I am now participating in two weekly Internet shows. One is The Libertarian Angle, which is prerecorded and usually posted on Tuesdays. It features me and co-host Richard Ebeling, who many of you will recall was vice-president of academic affairs for FFF from our inception in 1989 until he left in 2003 to become president of The Foundation for Economic Education. Richard is now the BB&T Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Free Enterprise Leadership at the Citadel. Since Richard is as uncompromising as I am when it comes to liberty, we are having a great time discussing the burning issues of the day from a libertarian perspective.
The other Internet show is one that I am doing with Scott Horton, who hosts The Scott Horton Show and who works with Antiwar.com. It’s called The Future of Freedom and it is being hosted at Liberty.me. We record live on Thursdays at 8 p.m. Eastern time. It’s a half-hour show, but because our conversations sometimes get lively, passionate, and heated, we have been known to exceed the time limit.
Someone once said that people don’t care about what you know until they know that you care. We care deeply about liberty. We care deeply about the future direction of our country. We care about speaking the truth and hewing to principle.
But we need help. We need YOUR help! The only way that we can continue sharing truth and ideas on liberty with others is if we have the financial resources to help us carry on our work. That’s where you come in. Your generous donation to FFF is what enables us to continue moving closer to the type of society we all want to live in — one in which there is freedom, prosperity, peace, and harmony. I sincerely hope we have earned your generous end-of-year (tax-deductible) donation.
Yours in liberty,
Jacob G. Hornberger
P.S. I hope you’ll join our FFF Freedom Club with a $250 (tax-deductible) donation to FFF, which will enable you to receive my monthly video message!
