Strong co-founded FLOW with Whole Foods CEO John Mackey. The FLOW Movement combines freedom, voluntary exchange and enterprise from the classical liberal tradition with love, compassion, social and environmental consciousness to create an inspiring and integrated vision.

One project of FLOW is Conscious Capitalism, in which they are working to create an alliance of C-level executives with aligned visions with regard to capitalism.

“At its core, Capitalism is about voluntary association and collaboration, which is one of the reasons Capitalism works, why it won the battle with Socialism in the 20th Century, and why it continues to persist and flourish. But the abuses of the early 21st century (e.g. Tyco, Worlcom, Enron), the recent financial “meltdown,” and ongoing issues including the social costs of externalities, the extreme and widening gap between executive and worker compensation, among others, have undermined trust in business and confidence in Capitalism.”

Register today for one of SFL’s Regional Conferences and the chance to hear from the visionary entrepreneur Michael Strong.

October 9 – Drexel University in Philadelphia
October 23 – Columbia University in New York
November 6 – Harvard University in Boston

GOProud sponsor Lisa DePasquale, who organizes the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, the largest gathering of conservatives in the country, told TheDC that she has seen a general shift in attitudes toward gays among conservatives.

“The movement in general has been supportive of lots of different groups,” she said, adding that she was not speaking on behalf of her organization. “Part of it has to do with younger generations of people now running the other [conservative] groups and I think that probably helps. Most people seem to be okay with it.”

Could it be that Ms. DePasquale is referring to the group of young people below?  (And if so, can we start saying that SFL and the student movement for liberty is starting to change conservative minds?)

Read the full Daily Caller article here.

Generally speaking, both the left and the right are guilty of some level of hypocrisy. Conservatives, who often lament over expanded government spending and new federal programs, are content to spend billions (or even trillions) expanding federal programs overseas through wars, nation building and increasing foreign aid to politically favorable countries, all while encroaching on individual liberties through legislation like the Federal Defense of Marriage Act, the PATRIOT Act and countless others.

Liberals tout their support for civil liberties yet constantly seek ways to increase government control in every individual decision, from healthcare to education and even down to organic food choices, all while increasing taxes and business regulations, thereby stripping individuals of their economic freedom.

The “new Republican” must see the inherent hypocrisy in both the left and the right, and reject it. If Republicans are to be against expanding federal programs domestically, they should also oppose expanding them abroad.

If Republicans respect individual liberties, privacy and property rights as they claim they do, they should also seek to lessen government involvement in personal matters such as marriage. Freedom cannot come piece by piece. It is a single concept and must be defended at all times. Young people recognize this, and the GOP is following suit.

You can read the full article here: http://www.themaneater.com/stories/2010/8/31/future-gop/

It is definitely worth a read.

Photo by Scott Stuk

In an event co-sponsored with National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, Arizona State University Students For Liberty brought in defense attorney Marc Victor for a “Know Your Rights” event.  The event was covered in the university’s newspaper, The State Press:

Victor said that police officers can take advantage of people’s lack of knowledge of the law. Being aware of your basic rights can be the difference between a conviction and an acquittal, he said.

ASU students picked up valuable advice from defense attorney Marc Victor, and many are excited for the Southwest Students For Liberty Regional Conference being held at ASU on October 16th.

The theme of “knowing your rights” will be continued at the conference with Jay Fleming, a former undercover narcotics officer who is now part of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.  Fleming has experience the War on Drugs from an officer’s standpoint, and attests, “The drug war I fought was not about ending drug use—it was about money and power.”

Fleming has made it his mission to speak out and expose the problems he‟s seen in the futile US policy of a “War on Drugs.”  Register today for what will surely be an interesting and exciting conference!

Learn more here: http://politicalconferences.org/2009/10/phoenix-conference-asu/

RSVP to the Facebook event and invite your friends!

Watch the video and see how you match up!

Learn more about the Federal Reserve at Silver Circle’s blog.

And get excited for the Silver Circle Movie, coming spring 2011!

The Regional Conferences serve as a local forum of support for students and non-students interested in the ideas of liberty.  They are free to attend, all you have to do is get yourself there. Three free meals and an evening social with hard and soft drinks will be provided at each conference.  These conferences are a great opportunity to meet your fellow pro-liberty students, make new connections to pro-liberty organizations, receive resources, listen to great speakers, and leave with a revitalized vision for the future of the freedom movement.

Here is the full list of conference dates and locations.  They are all one day events held on Saturdays.

• October 9 – Drexel University – Philadelphia, PA
• October 16 – University of Chicago – Chicago, IL
• October 16 – Arizona State University – Tempe, AZ
• October 23 – Columbia University – New York, NY
• October 23 – Kennesaw State University – Atlanta, GA
• October 23 – Pepperdine Univdersity – Malibu, CA
• November 6 – Harvard University – Boston, MA
• November 6 – University of California – Berkeley, CA
• November 6 – Univesity of Texas – Austin, TX

Registration is free, but space is limited.  Register today to reserve your seat, then invite your friends.

Click here to find the conference closest to you and register!

RSVP and invite your friends to the Facebook event!

The last day was entirely dedicated to discussing the possibility of a unified European student movement under the name of European Students For Liberty. The European Liberty Conference in Milan (11-12th October) will be another important step in making this real.

This is the document that came out from the conference held August 25-28:

EUROPEAN STUDENTS FOR LIBERTY

We are a number of European libertarian student associations around Europe. We share a set of values that include a free and open society, individual liberty and responsibility and a free and open market economy.

The EU was first started exactly for the purpose of promoting a free and open European society but we feel that the Union progressively moved away from such values. We think that Europe needs to rediscover and embrace these values and make them the founding values of our society.

We acknowledge that in order for us to more effectively pursue such goals we need to act in a coordinated way across Europe, for example to share ideas, contacts, networks, etc.

We think the most effective way to pursue such goals is to create a pan-European network called “European Students For Liberty” (ESFL), made up of all national libertarian student association in Europe. This would enable us to more easily share information and it would also be an effective way to raise funds for Europe-wide initiatives.

Drawing inspiration from the great success of Students For Liberty in US, we think ESFL should be structured as follows:

1) Every country should have its national Students For Liberty movement/coordinator. (one correspondent for Germany, one for Belgium, etc.). If in a country there are more than one libertarian associations, we think they should team up as soon as possible and produce a national coordinator.

2) There should also be an ESFL network of campus coordinators (one correspondent for HEC, one correspondent for Antwerp University, one correspondent for Berlin University, etc.).

3) Every year, all national coordinators meet for an Executive Board retreat where coordination issues will be discussed: strategies, battles, fundraising, etc.

4) Every year, all national coordinators and campus coordinators meet to discuss more details, etc.

5) We will organize a European Liberty Conference (2 days) every year with academic purposes. We will invite professors, thinkers, philosophers, etc. to discuss the modern challenges of Liberty in Europe. We may be talking about the debt crisis, about libertarian laws, etc.

We think the next things we should do AS SOON AS POSSIBLE are:
nominate the first temporary national coordinators for each represented nation;
nominate the first temporary campus coordinators for each represented University;
Facebook group;
write proper Articles of Associations that will eventually lead to the creation of a legal private entity called “European Students For Liberty”;
create ESFL website with mission, members, a blog, contacts, etc.;

Students For Liberty has a motto: “A free academy, a free society”. We will make our best efforts to render Europe freer.

Brussels, 28th August 2010

The libertarian revolution in Europe is starting now!

States Don’t Have Rights, People Do

In the wake of recent events such as the passage of Obamacare and the federal ruling that Prop 8 is unconstitutional, to name a couple, there has been much discussion about states’ rights recently. Touting the importance of allowing states to enact their own laws and reject subservience to the federal government, states’ rights proponents hold that the more local nature of state governments gives them wider power than the federal government. While I agree with the sentiment that individuals have more of a say at the state level than the federal level, I have to challenge the notion that states have the right to enact laws that violate basic rights.

I believe this for a very simple, but important reason: States don’t have rights. People do.

Most states’ rights supporters invoke the 10^th Amendment to legitimate and concretize their beliefs.  However, the 10^th Amendment has very specific wording:

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

The 10^th Amendment nowhere provides for any rights of the states.  Rather, it recognizes that states have certain powers, an ability to do particular things.  And there are two conditions on the possession of any powers by the states: that they are not articulated in the Constitution to the federal government and that they are not reserved by the people themselves.  What’s more, the 10^thAmendment comes after the 9^th Amendment, which also has very specific, and noticeably distinct wording:

“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

So not only are the powers of the states qualified by the authority of the people, but the Constitution explicitly says that the rights of the people shall not be denied, even if not enumerated in the Constitution. With the incorporation doctrine of the 14^th Amendment (that all rights protected by the federal Constitution may not be infringed upon by the states), this means there is a Constitutional guarantee that individual rights will not be denied by any government, state or federal, within the United States.

States do not have a carte blanche right to enact any law they want, even if done democratically. Their decisions are not irrevocable or immune from oversight. The use of state power is limited by the rights of the individuals within the state. If states violate the rights of those individuals, then there is just cause for intervention whether by the people or the federal government.

Federalism does not mean that the federal government has restricted power and states have unlimited power.  The purpose of federalism is to provide multi-lateral checks on government to protect individuals from the excessive growth of any particular layer of government. The value in this decentralization of authority is that each layer is meant to stop the other when it is abusing its legitimate authority. For the very same reasons that we need to check abuses of federal power, we need to check abuses of state power.  Those checks don’t just come from the people and local governments below, but from the federal government above as well.

Yes, we need to restrict the federal government’s power. Yes, we ought to delegate authority to the states when we can. But no, don’t think that states can do whatever they want or are somehow an inherently better type of government than the federal layer.  The power of any government, federal or state, is derived from the people and accountable to protecting their liberties.  Individual rights trump state power every time. Speaking about “states’ rights” confuses the point. Governments have legitimate powers. Individuals have legitimate rights. Powers and rights are very different things.

The “States’ Rights” cause is a misnomer. It should be a “States’ Powers” movement, focused on the authority of the states to check the decisions of the federal government to protect the rights of its citizens from inappropriate government intervention in their lives.

Once this delineation is made, the appropriate justification for states challenging federal decisions can be more clearly articulated and utilized. However, it may also highlight the inconsistencies of those who wrongly advocate a “right” of state government to abuse any of the rights of individuals.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/Examiner-Opinion-Zone/States-do-not-have-rights-People-do-101667933.html#ixzz0xqRrbHjk

“I’ve been to my share of tea party events. Let me tell you about these events. Yep, there are some disaffected Republicans there. There are always some Democrats there. Always a couple of anarchists who want to kill all of us in public office.”

Ross goes on to rebut the claim that anarchism is violent or in contradiction to the values of liberty.  It is truly amazing that a pro-liberty student is published in the Christian Science Monitor, and our cause is lucky to have an advocate that writes so eloquently:

Market anarchism is such a basic and consistent idea, an idea so in tune with the values professed by many tea partiers, that it’s only natural for anarchists to show up and challenge fellow freedom-lovers to adopt it.

I agree that a consistent philosophy that values and respects the peaceful choices of the tea partiers and their neighbors is indeed a threat to Boehner and his ilk, but not a threat of the type he claims. It’s not a death threat, it’s the threat of a pink slip.

Congratulations, Ross!

During one of our Q&A sessions, the two following statements were made by summit attendees.  Both were middle age or older.  These are rough paraphrases, but they accurately capture the tone and meaning of the exchange.

Paraphrased statement #1: “What do you mean when you say liberty?  You use that word a lot but have not defined it.  That is the problem with students; they don’t know what liberty means.  You need to define it and tell them.”

Paraphrased statement #2: “Kids today are so narcissistic.  All they care about is themselves and their smart phones.  They won’t listen to anyone, their parents or anyone else.  How can we break through that and get them to do what we need them to do.”

These quotes are very insightful for why most tea party organizers have trouble attracting students.   Many of them take a top down approach to working with young people.  They want to tell students what liberty should mean for them. They want to tell students how they should run their group, what issues they should focus on, and what policies to discuss.  They see it as a paternalistic relationship, where the old people need to tell the kids what to do.

This is completely the wrong approach for organizing and motivating students.  To borrow a line from the Fresh Prince, tea partiers just don’t understand.

The key to successful student organizing is to empower students.  Find out what they want to do, what they are passionate about, and help them do it.  This is our philosophy at Students For Liberty.

We were founded by students to provide a forum of support for their fellow students and student groups dedicated to liberty.  The full time staff works for the student Executive Board.  The student board sets the agenda based on what they know students want and then we (the staff) help them execute it.  We also take the same empowerment approach towards supporting student groups on campus and the results have been outstanding.  It is amazing how much students can accomplish when given the resources and opportunities to be leaders of liberty.

This is why you see so much growth in the student movement for liberty today.  Students across the world are standing up and taking control of their own futures.

The  New Left and anti-war movements of the 1960’s accomplished so much precisely because they were run by students.  It was students fighting back against the government to take control of their own lives that made that movement so strong.  Real movements like this have to be based on bottom up, empowered leadership.

This is what many (not all) of the tea party organizers simply do not grasp.  To them it is all about getting students (those youngins) to get on board with their (the old people’s) plan.  I say this with no malice, simply as an observation.  I have many friends involved in tea party organizations that are doing great work fighting against the government.  More power to them.

I say this only as advice to anyone who wants to work with students to fight for a free society.  Trust the students.  Treat them like the young adults they are.  Be a support mechanism; give them the resources they need to be effective.  Give them ownership over their own projects and their own lives.  That is the way movements grow.  That is the way real, lasting change happens.