The following entry is by guest bloggers Brandon Cestrone and Steve Strausbaugh of Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania. 

Slippery Rock University Young Americans for Liberty wanted to host an event this semester to show our disapproval of the decade-long War on Terror in Afghanistan and Iraq. Many of the members of our group are very concerned with US foreign policy.

SRU YAL's A Decade of War Event Flyer

Early in the semester our group members came up with the idea of having a visual representation that showcased US fatalities in Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. We decided that filling the quad with 3,000 small US flags would be an excellent visual representation. Each flag represented two American fatalities in the last decade of war. To fund the event, we applied for and received a protest grant from Students for Liberty.

In addition to the flags planted on the quad, we reconstructed our free speech wall from a previous event in the fall which encouraged students to exercise their First Amendment rights during Constitution Week. This time the wall was dubbed the “Was it Worth it?” wall, where students could write their opinions of the war. Most comments showed disapproval toward our acts of aggression abroad, though there were  many pro-war opinions as well, and many ROTC members and war veterans became actively engaged. This brought about interesting dialogue, since many students don’t understand the difference between being anti-war and anti-soldier.

SRU YAL's "Was it worth it?" Wall

Overall, the event was a huge success. It enabled our group to open up discussion with fellow students about the implications of the wars and the corrupt government policy of sustaining the overseas occupations. We tabled in front of the wall for an entire week during common hour and had our usual swag and flyers available for students to learn more about liberty. Thousands of students walked by the display each day. Brandon Cestrone documented the event with a inexpensive HD flip cam, and the event was covered in numerous local newspapers, including the Butler Eagle and Grove City Allied News.

Organizing events like our Decade of War event is vitally important. Most students don’t understand that we’ve been at war for over ten years. Students unfortunately can be blissfully ignorant of the consequences of our military adventurism. Many probably don’t know there are 900 US military bases scattered across 140 nations. Shielded from reality, the majority of American college students are clueless about the political situation in the Middle East, let alone the long history of US meddling. Education is the key to awakening our generation.

Most students don’t know that we have lost over 6,000 US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, and according to The Lancet, over 650,000 Iraqi lives have been lost as a consequence of the war, which is about 2-5% of the population in the study area.

Most students don’t know that the Iraq war alone has cost US taxpayers over $800 billion dollars.

Most students don’t know that more US soldiers have died from suicide than combat over the past two years.

Candidate Obama ran for President as the “peace candidate,” but this couldn’t be further from the truth. He declared the war’s end, stating “the final work of leaving Iraq has been done,” but  we are still spending $3.5 billion on our occupation there alone. Taxpayers are now provide funding for 14,000 to 16,000 contractors in Iraq. Most students don’t know that the Iraq War is not over.

SRU YAL leadership

Over 6,000 soldiers will never see their families again and we have also lost our most sacred civil liberties during the past decade, all because the State declared it in our best interest. This state of war will continue until the Americans realize that preemptive war is not the answer, and that the longer we occupy other countries, the less safe we will continue to be. Teaching students that preemptive war is not only a danger to our liberty, but also to our lives, is one of the most important conversations we as liberty lovers can have, and Young Americans for Liberty at Slippery Rock University are proud to have brought the discussion to our campus.

The following is guest submission by Matthew La Corte, a student of Hofstra University.

“Resistance to illegal and unconstitutional usurpation of our rights is required.” - Ron Paul

Matthew La Corte proudly posing with his Ron Paul yard sign.

At the most basic level, libertarianism is defined by property rights. Property extends from your body to the physical property of your home to even your front lawn. Last June, as a proud supporter of the Ron Paul Revolution, I bought two Ron Paul 2012 lawn signs. Upon arrival, I stabbed the legs of the sign in the ground and smiled as I just turned my front lawn into a Ron Paul advertisement on a busy road in Woodland Park, New Jersey. Fast forward a few weeks later, I woke up to find a summons warning from the local Code Enforcement Office in my town. According to Woodland Park ordinance #95-8, residents are not allowed to display political signs on property until 30 days before an election. Since the New Jersey primary is in June 2012, and this was June of 2011, I had to wait 335 days to display my signs. I was not ready to bend at the will of the town. So, I took the warning to Town Hall. I approached the Code Enforcement Office, where I was told I could not display any signs at all. I told the office’s secretary that if I received the summons I would be willing to take the town to court. This was a simple First Amendment case that was taken to court numerous other times in New Jersey towns where the resident won.  I was threatened with a $100 dollar fine for every day I kept the signs up. Until the last court date, I would have owed about $25,000.

I received a second warning a few weeks later and then finally the actual summons a few weeks after that. I was to appear in court in September for violating the ordinance at a cost of $100 a day. I immediately reached out to Brian Aitken, the ex-New Jersey resident who was jailed for his legal moving of firearms in his car in New Jersey.  He realized the importance of the story and forwarded me to his lawyer as well as posting the story on his website. The lawsuit appeared in local news, Reason.com, and FreedomWatch. The town was flooded with phone calls to the point they disconnected their phones because they were bombarded with so many liberty-loving callers supporting property rights.  Those Ron Paul 2012 signs stayed up throughout the whole winter even when snow was on the ground. They are effective, albeit faded and rusting.  After numerous court dates and cancelled court dates over the next eight months, we received the news we all thought was obvious.

Last Wednesday, March 21, the town prosecutor decided to drop the case, and the town has agreed to rewrite the law. After eight months, my weathered Ron Paul signs are still standing  legally in Woodland Park. We all have the ability to fight for liberty and little cases like this yield big results. No government, whether federal, state, or local, should at any time think they can get away with curbing private property rights. If there is anything liberty lovers should fight for, it’s our property and our body. If Woodland Park could tell me how to decorate my front lawn, what is stopping them from passing legislation regarding bumper stickers on cars or shirts on people? Woodland Park has a population of 11,000. It’s another little town in northern New Jersey that most people have never heard of.  Because I fought for my rights, the town’s unconstitional ordinance will now be overturned.  It’s very easy to rollover and let the government win. After all, they were only two signs on one lawn in one town— what’s the big deal, right? Wrong. The state must know we are not to stand for awful laws and ordinances meant to micromanage our lives. So, I implore everyone in SFL to fight for liberty on fronts like this, on college campuses, and in all their daily dealings.

The following is a guest submission by Steve Pemberton, a law student at the University of Oxford:

Jokes have rules. But, who decides these rules?

Jokes have rules. We’re all aware of certain rules about the topic and timing of jokes. If you don’t follow these rules, you’ll likely receive some negative feedback from your listeners and you certainly won’t be getting any laughs. But no single person wrote these rules; no one made you memorize them as a child. But they exist and almost everyone is aware of them. These rules emerged spontaneously.

Adam Smith loved to point out this curious aspect of human existence. In fact, he used it to illustrate that much of human life has effective rules emerge without a central planner. This exists not only in joke telling but also in other large scale systems such as language, morality, and economics. These are what James R. Otteson referred to as “unintended orders” in his recent webinar on the Scottish Enlightenment.

Otteson points out that the Scots at this time were developing an appreciation of markets and how micro motivations can have macro, orderly consequences. Smith in particular thought that these micro motivations were the source of both the order you find in morality and economics. But how do these micro motivations actually result in stable, ordered systems?

Adam Smith

Smith starts with a simple premise that humans are self-interested, both economically and morally. As babies, we have no moral system and just engage in self indulgence. As we grow up, we encounter other children who have had the same upbringing. This is when we run into an abrupt reality that we are not the center of everyone’s life. For the first time, we realize that others judge us and can ignore our desires or just ignore us altogether.

Smith introduces a second premise at this point that humans need social bonds. Now we can see why functional, ordered moral, social, and economic systems emerge. If we are to fulfill this desire for bonds we’ll have to seek a harmony with other people. So we’ll compromise and cooperate with one another. This is largely a process of trial and error, but as time goes on people find customs and traditions of behavior that work well and those are transmitted through institutions like parents, friends, schools, churches, etc. So an overall order and regulation for behavior emerges, not from any individual’s design, but from a process of negotiation between individuals in society.

The unique thing about Smith’s account is that everyone plays the role of creator in these systems, but they are not exactly subjective systems. They are subjective in the sense that there is no particular reason that a society needs to develop a certain set of customs. This accounts for the diversity of the world’s cultures; there were different sets of negotiations that lead to different outcomes. But even though they are subjective from a broad perspective, they are objective to any individual. The rules cannot be changed single handedly. Only if you can convince others of a change and that change is replicated enough will the system be modified. This is how the macro systems stay stable; it takes time for changes to filter throughout a society. And these changes will only come about if others are convinced they should be replicated.

Overall, Smith’s account is reasonable. It derives from two premises many people would accept without too much quibbling. It reaches conclusions about macro systems that account for their emergence, evolution, and stability. And it explains society’s seemingly trivial rules about joking and laughing and their importance.

Otteson’s account of the Scottish Enlightenment and Adam Smith, in particular, helps explain the logical underpinnings of many of the ideas behind liberty. Maybe knowing these foundations can help us convince others that orderly and desirable systems can emerge naturally and that central planners that force change only corrupt these systems.

The following guest submission was written by James Maier, a student at Ivy Tech Community College:

I learned so much at the Fifth Annual International Students for Liberty Conference! Perhaps the most educational breakout session for me was Ivan Eland’s “Breaking with the Founders’ Traditions: Warfare to Welfare State,” where The Independent Institute scholar argued that the welfare state was directly borne out of the warfare state.

Ivan Eland

As someone who is still trying to recover from the public school narrative of U.S. History (in which Lincoln freed the slaves, Roosevelt ended the Great Depression, and terrorists “hate us for our freedom”), Eland’s perspective was fresh to me. I had thought that the welfare state grew out of the failed attempts to stymie the effects of the Depression, a phenomena that Murray Rothbard pointed out was caused by centralized banking. Eland opened my eyes to the truth that the welfare state, in fact, has been growing since the founding of the country through warfare.

The income tax was born out of war, beginning with the Quasi-War with France at the end of the 18th century. It dredged up again in the Civil War,  only to be retired again until its reappearance in 1913 alongside the Federal Reserve and the popular election of senators. These three events have had a huge effect on the liberties of Americans and the destiny of the country, as it has grown from a sufficient superpower to a world policeman.

Almost every welfare program one can point to was born out of conflict. Child care  came out of the Second World War, for example, and social security pensions have origins dating back to the Revolution.

Conflicts create a group of people who are deserving of benefits and payments for their service. However, the benefits have grown to include everyone and everything under the sun. Thus, the base for the benefits for everyone and everything under the sun begins to shrink, creating unfunded liabilities. As drastic as the current $15 trillion debt seems, the United States owes over $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities— the money that is owed to all of those on government pension plans including government workers as well as service members and their families.

The interesting thing about all of this is that as much as the left claims to disdain warfare and savor welfare, the wars have certainly helped them create their welfare state… and vice versa for the right! This frightening fact certainly elucidates to the supposed difference between the left and right: both want larger government; they just go about it through different means which eventually end with the same results.

By the end of the breakout, Eland’s historical revisionism reinforced my belief that there is only one philosophically and logically consistent political belief— that in liberty.

The following is a  guest submission by Charlie Deist, a former leader of Students for Liberty, UC Berkeley and current employee of The Seasteading Institute:

Seasteading Ambassador Matt Pritchard is not out to depress his fellow libertarian activists. However, he may have disappointed some students in the audience of Wednesday’s Webinar, “Building a New Frontier: How Ocean Cities Can Revolutionize Politics,” when he flatly proclaimed that traditional activism has failed, lamenting that libertarians spend a lot of time learning economics and arguing about philosophy, but rarely seem to make progress towards actually creating a free society. Channeling Patri Friedman’s theory of “folk activism,” Pritchard used the online lecture to argue that human brains evolved to cope with life in small bands, where one person could significantly impact political outcomes in the tribe by winning arguments and allies. That world is long gone; in 2012, when a single vote has virtually no chance of swaying an election, it has become rational for people to skip the debate and remain ignorant of politics.

Although the “gospel” of free-market economics has brought many to the cause of liberty in recent years, in large part through the high-profile campaign of Ron Paul, the low-hanging fruit have probably already been recruited to the movement. Educating the remaining people about the perils of interventionism is an uphill battle against rational ignorance. Let’s face it— statists are gonna state. But rather than give up and get depressed if Paul’s presidential bid soon comes to an end, libertarians should instead refocus their efforts on alternative methods of achieving liberty made possible by emerging technologies.

The Seasteading Institute is conducting research into one such set of technologies that aims to enable the establishment of permanent, autonomous communities on the ocean–seasteads–to experiment with freer, more innovative governments. If economics teaches us anything, it is that markets create the best products when consumers are allowed to choose freely between competing options. Pritchard cited Murray Rothbard in comparing competing systems of rules provided by governments to competing goods and services offered in markets, telling libertarians to stop arguing about politics and go shopping for better governance on the high seas.

However, before the platforms for new countries can be created, problems must solved in fields ranging from remote data transmission and alternative ocean energy, to international and maritime law and the development of viable business models. Right now, students with a background or interest in any of these areas can conduct practical research on near-term seasteading challenges, i.e. create the hardware that will eventually run the software of free societies. The Seasteading Institute has posted numerous broad areas of suggested research on its new volunteer webpage, along with a general guide to structuring projects and straightforward volunteer application.

Colonizing the oceans with archipelagos of free, floating cities is an audacious goal. It is also an urgent goal, and one that will require the help of dedicated problem-solvers and future seasteading pioneers and entrepreneurs. As Peter Thiel once said, describing the urgency of the vision of seasteading, “The fate of our world may depend on the effort of a single person who builds or propagates the machinery of freedom that makes the world safe for capitalism.” That person could be you.

If you’re curious about the philosophical underpinnings for competitive government, check out the blog Let A Thousand Nations Bloom, and learn why groups like The Seasteading Institute are working towards a Cambrian explosion in government. Also be sure to watch Pritchard’s other awesome videos on seasteading and more.