Entries by Tom Gilgut

I was one of some 300 tax activists from around the country attending the recent taxpayer conference held in Washington last weekend June 11-13, 2009. The program was excellent, the speakers outstanding. The Libertarian Party was one of about a dozen exhibitors.

Fittingly, one speaker presented the depths of despair, another gave hope. Former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker, now CEO of the Peterson Foundation, lamented a Federal deficit of $1.8 trillion and, longer-term, unfunded obligations for Medicare and Social Security of $56.4 trillion. At the state level, 42 of the 50 have “major fiscal challenges.” Because political reform will be needed to tackle the Federal structural imbalances, he urges reforms in the areas of redistricting, campaign finance reform, and term limits. Then, “we’ve got to renegotiate the social contract.”

The optimist was writer John Fund, opinionjournal.com (whose message, however, conflated responsible government with Republican rule, a debatable point). He said the GOP was even more ‘minority’ at times during the Carter and Clinton presidencies, yet their failures led to huge rebounds for the Republicans. If Obama’s program does not prove successful, the GOP can make big gains in 2010, so don’t despair.

The most helpful sessions for me, however, were the practical ones, including:
- Building effective e-mail lists
- New media resources
- Building an effective grassroots organization
All three were run by the Leadership Institute, whose mission is to train leaders for conservative causes (www.leadershipinstitute.org).

Key points: Your group’s web site should use lots of forms (to involve readers); also polls and petitions. Add value to your e-mails, e.g. a link to a late-breaking news item. Use the many new social networking tools: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, UTube, Flickr, Blogger, WordPress. Local blogs can easily become sources to search engines. It’s no longer just the written word; everything is going to video. And by 2012, everything will be on mobile.

An excellent session on fundraising for political causes and campaigns was led by three experienced consultants. To raise money, start with your Christmas card list (if your grandmother can’t be persuaded to contribute, how will anyone else?). Especially important: research your prospects before you approach them, and always ask for a specific donation. Two books recommended were “Forces for Good,” and (I love this title) “Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty: The Only Networking Book You’ll Ever Need.”

There were four general sessions and nine breakout sessions on Friday and one general and nine breakouts on Saturday morning. An awesome program for the $129 registration fee. This annual conference is run by the National Taxpayers Union (NTU), www.ntu.org.

A longtime favorite libertarian think tank of mine is the Cato Institute. I was happy to be able to attend Cato’s 2009 Public Policy conference, held at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, New York City on April 30.   About 300 attended.   Let me share this summary.

Keynote speaker was civil libertarian author Nat Hentoff , who argued that proposed ‘hate crimes' legislation is a dangerous violation of our First Amendment.  He also billed himself as a ‘pro-life atheist’ and spent several minutes explaining that position. Next, Patrick Michaels, a climatologist who has published several books criticizing the errors of the global warming crowd, exposed a few more errors, explaining that Greenland as recently as the 1950s had higher temperatures than today, and that the recently hyped ‘warming island’ 'revealed’ to be an island due to a melted ice bridge is nothing new - it was known to be an island early this century.  

Investment manager and author Peter Schiff criticized the government bailout as the wrong solution, one that involves printing so much money it will likely cause an inflationary depression.   The luncheon address was given by Princeton scholar Freeman Dyson, who urged us to make faster progress in dismantling nuclear weapons because the dangers of even keeping them in storage exceed the dangers of doing without them.  Dyson also took questions on global warming; he's recently become a prominent skeptic, and both he and Michaels have insisted that long-range climate models are unreliable (and got a laugh by comparing them to the computer models Wall Street used to price derivatives).   All four speakers were outstanding. 

Cato publishes a huge number of policy papers from its headquarters in Washington, DC. Its website is www.cato.org, where you can sign up to receive a free weekly dispatch.

“The Revolution,” by Ron Paul, has just been published and you ought to consider buying extra copies to give/lend to your friends. Although the published price is $21, Amazon.com is selling it at $11.50 and Barnesandnoble.com at $14.70. Buy as many as you can afford - and start putting them to work. “The Revolution” is the best libertarian educational tool I have seen.

OK, now I must defend that ‘over-the-top’ claim. I say it is the best because (a) it is very readable - even the portions dealing with economics are written clearly; (b) it is brief enough at 167 pages to not intimidate those who aren’t avid readers, and (c) it uses readily observable facts and commonsense logic to great persuasive effect. This is the book your friends will thank you for, for years to come.

The book’s seven chapters cover the main areas Dr. Paul stresses in his campaign for the Presidency. Chapter 1, “The False Choices of American Politics,” argues that the two parties and the media are limiting debate on most issues to a very narrow range of positions. Example: “The supposedly conservative candidate tells us about ‘waste’ in government, and ticks off $10 million in frivolous pork-barrel projects that outrage him” while ignoring the folly of the other 99.99955 percent of the federal budget; that’s not to be discussed.

Chapter 2, “The Foreign Policy of the Founding Fathers,” explains why our greatest leaders, from George Washington on, have warned against foreign entanglements. “A policy of overthrowing or destabilizing every regime our government dislikes is no strategy at all, unless our goal is international chaos and domestic impoverishment.”

“The Constitution” is at the heart of everything Dr. Paul stands for and is the subject of Chapter 3. His citations run the gamut: Jefferson, Rob’t Taft, Daniel Webster, Russell Kirk, Louis Fisher, others. It is in this chapter that Paul stresses the importance of returning to the states the powers they have been losing, incrementally, in violation of the Constitution.

Frederic Bastiat called the state “the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.” You won’t find anywhere a stronger case for getting government out of our economic lives than Chapter 4, “Economic Freedom.”

Chapter 5 covers “Civil Liberties and Personal Freedom” and takes on the Patriot Act as well as other encroachments on the rights of free citizens. The sixth chapter, “Money: The Forbidden Issue in Politics,” denounces the Federal Reserve and funny money and explains clearly how it caused the NASDAQ bubble, the housing bubble, and undoubtedly will continue creating bubbles until we stop it. Finally, Chapter 7 “The Revolution,” demands change: “Our present course, in short, is not sustainable.” The concluding Reading List cites 48 classics; Ron Paul’s choices are excellent.

“Revolution” is eloquent, moving, persuasive. The best thing you can do this month is to see that it gets distributed widely.

Many libertarians feel the differences they have with conservatives are unbridgeable. They don’t see conservatives as defenders of personal freedom - on the contrary, they think of them as censors, often from a religious background, who wish to restrict what everyone is allowed to do.

I would argue that the gap is not unbridgeable, and, excepting neo-cons (who don’t strike me as conservative at all) and some evangelicals, conservatives differ from libertarians only in degree, not in principal. This difference centers on the qualifications necessary to live a successfully free life.

Not everyone is fit to safely exercise all freedoms - even libertarians accept this. They admit that minors and some with mental or emotional deficiencies cannot survive without some protections, limiting their exercise of freedom. Some few should not allowed to operate cars or use guns or enter into valid contracts. Why? Because they lack that sense of maturity or responsibility that would protect them - and others - from harm.

Beyond this general acknowledgment, however, libertarians rarely give sufficient attention to the question of where to draw the line. They almost offhandedly thrust the full, awesome burden of personal responsibility on everyone who is over the age of, say, 18, and not a raving lunatic.

Would that life were so simple. In fact, degrees of maturity -- and the ability to handle responsibility -- exist on a continuum. We’ve recently seen this dilemma work itself out with regards to public attitudes towards the age of retirement, with good results. We now concede how arbitrary and unwise it was for employers to force employees to retire at 65 - as if one age fits all. Yet libertarians would be making a similar mistake if they do not acknowledge that the question of maturity and responsibility is complex and has many answers.

To say, gambling at a casino is forbidden to 12 year olds, but that everyone who is 21 will handle the allure and glitter with ease - may be unrealistic. To prudently restrict minors’ access to certain movies may make sense, but clearly the same restrictions may be warranted for some emotionally unstable adults.

At this point, the reader is probably beside himself asking, How can government and its laws possibly make such delicate decisions on an individual basis? And of course it can’t.

But my point is not to argue that it can, but rather to point out that the crude line that society uses to categorize persons is not divinely revealed. Maturity may be conceded to 18 year olds - or postponed until age 21. The capacity to make important decisions may be presumed of persons of 85 I.Q. but not of 70 I.Q. And what about the emotionally troubled?

Here is where we return to our differences with conservatives. The major difference I have observed between my libertarian friends and my conservative friends is that the conservatives slide the cutoff higher up the scale. In their judgments concerning real people in real life situations, conservatives think someone should be slightly older, compared to where libertarians would draw the line, and conservatives are probably more protective of the mentally or emotionally challenged.

You may disagree with where conservatives draw the line, but don’t banish them to the enemy camp. Conservatives are basically freedom lovers (again, excepting neo-cons and many evangelicals); it’s just that they are more protective of those likely to suffer harm in a state of full freedom. This issue is worthy of serious debate, and I welcome rejoinders.

Brian Doherty’s exhaustively researched book tells the story, spanning more than a century, of the development of libertarian thought and the people responsible, as well as their passions, friendships and frequent clashes.

Overall, the book is heavy lifting. The major intellectual forces of the libertarian movement are covered in detail, especially economists Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Milton Friedman and Murray Rothbard, with descriptions of their economic and philosophical thinking, Also extensively covered are such other libertarian pioneers as novelist Ayn Rand, Leonard Read (Foundation for Economic Education), Robert Poole (Reason Foundation), Ed Crane (Cato Institute) and Roger MacBride (Libertarian Party activist). As history, the book is wonderfully complete and thorough. (A few major players may deserve more attention than they were given, e.g. Lew Rockwell, lewrockwell.com, and Virginia Postrel, author and columnist.)

The financiers of libertarianism also get their due, including the Volker Fund, led by Harold Luhnow, starting in the 1940s, and Charles and David Koch from the 1970s onwards. Their money fueled much of the growth of the movement. There have also been exotic characters less well known today: spiritualist Gerald Heard, who exerted much influence on important early patrons of the movement, and Andrew Galamos, whose students had to agree not to share his ideas with anyone else. (Presidential candidate Harry Browne was a student.)

But in many ways more important than the history, author Doherty, in dealing with the movement’s issues, delineates major areas of conflict that continue to cause problems for libertarians:
(a) whether libertarianism is best promoted because it is morally right or because it ‘works’ or a combination of these;
(b) whether it is most effectively pursued through the political process - electing candidates - or separately by winning hearts and heads - or both; and
(c) to the extent that the political course is chosen, whether to keep to pure libertarian principles or to enter into compromises that, nevertheless, can be thought to advance the cause of freedom. Specifically, can alliances be forged with (traditional) conservatives?

On the lighter side, the author cites an old movement joke: “You libertarians are the types that would allow fornication in public parks!” “What do you mean, public parks?”

Besides deserving praise for the depth of his research (including many exclusive interviews and an awesome 93 pages of footnotes), Doherty should be commended for his fairness when discussing the often bitter conflicts that have characterized the movement: Rand vs. Rothbard, Rothbard vs. Cato Institute, and factions within the Party. Doherty, a “Reason” senior editor, downplays his personal preferences.

“Radicals for Capitalism” covers the highs and lows of the movement, and while not ignoring the severe disappointment that is the current administration, ends on an optimistic note, quoting Rothbard, “The eventual victory of liberty is inevitable, because only liberty is functional for modern man... Reality, and therefore history, is on our side.”