Liberty International World Conference 2024 – Texas
15-18 November 2024
So good to be with such a dedicated group of libertarians and, equally important, to renew my association with this great annual event.
I was an active participant at the very first Libertarian International World Conference in Zurich (1982), again at the second one in London (1984).
Those conferences influenced me in adding more ‘intellectual weapons’ to my early arsenal.
Again, I hope to gather more ideas from your combined wisdom here.
Something for me to take back to Australia and in return, I would like to share with you a few thoughts on what has worked for me (over the years) and even, what has not worked for me. Hopefully, this will save you time. Time being the ultimate finite resource.
Yes, we have a huge task ahead of us if we aim to ‘Libertarianise’ the entire world but let us not be overwhelmed.
If we start with ‘libertarianising’ ourselves, we can adopt strategies that even under scrutiny of ‘cost-benefit studies’, will turn us into net winners, but only if we remain focused.
It is our duty to remain optimistic. Much emphasis is made on Leadership (like everywhere you watch, read, and listen), pushing every aspect of Leadership. We cannot all be leaders.
Many of us have other things to do, so let us give equal emphasis to Leadershipon the one hand, and Followship on the other hand.
This was explained well by Sir Niall Ferguson in a recent ARC (Alliance for Responsible Citizenship) panel discussion which was in the form of an interview by Australia’s Greg Sheridan. The panel included Niall Ferguson and John Anderson, a former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia who has become one of our leading intellectuals.
Greg Sheridan, handing over to Niall Ferguson…said
Niall, looking out on the West, are we in the fight with a good shot, are we going backwards, what is your net assessment.
Niall – Well my message is that leadership is important, and John was right about that, but we also need to act at the grass roots. The most important message I have for people here at ARC is be active citizens because the threats to our freedoms don’t just come in at the top level, they come in within your school, they will turn up in your college campus, on your alma mater, and you have to be ready to fight the ground game to make sure that crazy ideas, whether it is about race or about gender, don’t become part of the schools’ educational system, that you have relied upon and you are sending your children or grandchildren to.
So, leadership yes, we need it, and it needs to be strong. But the followership is just as important and that is what ARC is all about. Each and every one of you can do more of the fighting which Jacinta Nampijinpa Price just talked about, in your own daily lives. It works too! When the ‘woke’ director of human resources decides that it is time to do a little bit of intersectionality training, say no! Just say no to that stuff. I think if we all do that, we will have followership as well as leadership.
Greg Sheridan – And John, what about your grandchildren, what do you think of the future for them?
John Anderson – I think my response to that would be to say, ….. I think in an age which is surprisingly disinterested or even hostile toward the best interests of our kids, I cannot think of a policy area that we ought not to approach with an attitude of what will this mean for our children, economic policy, environmental policy, defence policy, tax policy. Dare I say it, fiscal policy and monetary policy, and our disgusting willingness to live beyond our means and engage in intergenerational theft.
I could expand on that!
Above is an extract from an ARC YouTube. For entire YouTube go to:
So, let me echo that call to action. Be An Activist!
And, it’s much more fun than being a spectator!
Having decided to become an activist, you could select which of the ‘four roads ahead’ fit your talents and passions.
Each ‘road’ can be effective but there will be one that takes you forward in perfectly pitched harmony. Just as in music, you will know when you have made the right choice. You will have the right mix, and no-one else can guide you with this selection.
I see the four roads as follows:-
- Education (as being a precondition for any meaningful increase in freedom).
- Economic self-protection and self-preservation. How individuals can protect themselves against inflation and other government policies. Always remember that if you get ‘wiped out’ you are of little use to anyone.
- Political action and its use to roll back the power of the State and restore the rights of individuals.
- Non-violence, peaceful forms of civil disobedience (against governments and bureaucrats when they go beyond their legitimate functions). I always remember the wise words of Ayn Rand, “They can only do to you what you permit them to do.”
May I expand on these ‘four roads ahead?’
- Education has been my own choice, following a short but energetic sojourn into politics… but more on that later.
Education is important in developing the partnership of freedom and self-responsibility. These are interchangeable terms as self-responsibility is impossible unless one be free, and one cannot be free if not self-responsible.
My mentor, Leonard E. Read (the founder of FEE.org), suggested that education is a civilized alternative to ramming ideas down the throats of others. Instead, if we have a clever idea, just work on it. If it is any good, others will then borrow it from us.
This is the ‘road ahead’, for our Mannkal Foundation. The philosopher Eric Hoffer once wrote, “The central task of education is to implant a will and facility for learning; it should produce not learned but learning people.”
Mannkal Foundation’s track-record, over almost thirty years, is that we have processed over 2,500 young students through our programs, and this has given us time to evaluate how successful we have been.
I estimate that about 5% of those scholars have gone on to become activists, and that is a pretty good result when you realise all the other competing influences in this world today.
Our Mannkal’s Alumni have created their own organization – they run regular events and four of them are currently running as candidates in our upcoming elections.
So, our educational project has been successful, but it is very slow and let me assure it is really challenging work, particularly dealing with out ‘woke’ universities. I weep!
- Economic self-protection and self-preservation. It sounds simple and logical that we will always make decisions that will protect ourselves from inflation and other government policies.
But this is not the case as many of these damaging policies are ‘sold to us’ by politicians, as being to our benefit.
A short course in the vital branch of economics called ‘Public Choice Theory’ will alert you to how legislation is written in favour of those few who receive the concentrated benefits (they have much to gain so will work the hardest to lobby for this legislation). For many years Mannkal has sponsored an accredited course in Public Choice Theory which clearly demonstrated that.
The prohibitive costs of such legislation are always designed to be spread over a large number of people. These substantial number of people will carry that burden as it is not ‘life threatening’.
What is ‘life threatening’ is the multitude of such burdens. Financial Illiteracy will guarantee that your later years will not be your best years.
If you are successful with your economic self-protection and self-preservation ‘journey’ you will always have sufficient funds to defend yourself and contribute to supporting your allies on the educational and political ‘roads ahead’.
If you have chosen to go into business and run a company to achieve your end goals, may I suggest an excellent guidebook. Its author is a Canadian academic, Jaana Woiceshyn. The book’s title is How to be Profitable and Moral. It is an excellent book that illustrates how to run a company on Randian principles. Available in print or Audible.
- The third ‘road,’ political action and its use to roll back the power of the ‘state’ and restore the rights of individuals.
My own brief sojourn into politics was with nine other Australians in 1974, we formed the Workers Party / Progress Party (Murray Rothbard helped us with the platform document). That interesting experiment was covered in a chapter, ‘Our Very Own Political Party’… see Heroic Misadventures link to free eBook − https://www.mannwest.com/books/heroic-misadventures/
Was our political venture successful, did we take over Australia?
No, but we did get three libertarian politicians into parliament and ever since then there has always been several active and effective libertarians in Australia’s parliament.
We were successful in introducing a few clever ideas from the Libertarian Movement. Namely:-
- The concept of victimless crimes in the sense that if there is no victim there can be no crime.
- Sunset Clauses, limiting the life of legislation. Strangely enough it was the Labor / Socialist Party that stole both these ideas from us, and we willingly let them take possession.
Our political party virtually ended when an individual, called Malcolm Fraser, was elected as Prime Minister. He had just had his photo taken with Ayn Rand and his speech writer captured many free market libertarian concepts for his election speeches. So we relaxed!
However, as Prime Minister, he obviously did not understand these concepts and went on to become one of Australia’s worst Prime Ministers.
This does not indicate that you should stop trying the political method as circumstances are always changing. This political ‘road’ starts with a careful study of ‘just what is the legitimate role of government?’
It is not easy to answer this question, and that degree of difficulty is deliberate! For us to say that ‘we are not interested in government or politics’ would only be a satisfactory answer if government or politics would leave us alone, so there is every reason to step inside this murky mess (or as Donald Trump calls it ‘the swamp’).
Australia has its own ‘swamp’. It is called Canberra.
Way back, in 1977, when I was still drawn to the political path, I ‘booked’ what was then called a ‘long distance trunk line telephone call’ to Antony Fisher. Fisher, in the United Kingdom, had founded the Institute of Economic Affairs and later the Atlas Network. His political influence fascinated me, hence my telephone call to enthusiastically encourage Fisher to visit Australia.
Although he did say that he intended to visit, I do not think he ever managed a visit as my various personal meetings with him were always elsewhere.
Our telephone call was long (in those days interrupted every three minutes with ‘warning beeps’) and as I had several questions for him, with his permission, I recorded his responses. I then transcribed his comments about ‘bringing economic principles to politics’.
His method consisted of completing thoroughly researched studies and making the resultant information freely available to politicians; intellectuals, the media, and other avenues through which the public are normally ‘educated’.
He explained the need for these studies as follows:- “One self-imposed trouble of politicians is that they are terribly busy and have little, if any, time for research. MPs have an impossible job when government becomes involved in every detail of our lives. Laws reach the statute book without proper discussion. This result is inevitable so long as parliament is trying to do work which no parliament can ever do.
The average politician does little or no research, and without a sound understanding of principles he is unlikely to be constructive. It is easy to be negative and easiest of all for a politician in opposition to be critical when the ruling party has been in government long enough to have proved itself no better than the last. This is why politicians spend time attacking each other and the public get bored with the process.”
“Research publications issued by political parties are bound to be biased, and therefore attract little attention for the press and the intellectual world. The many political compromises in producing a ‘package deal’ will probably mean that the parties cannot resist increasing taxation and government action, thereby helping to build up the syndrome which is so harmful. Because government decision-making is not based on principles, an inevitable result is that countless ‘deals’ are made to meet the demands of pressure groups. As each group seeks to achieve privileges at the expense of others, and as all the others are doing exactly the same, the ultimate result must be a highly uneconomic system based on restraint and compulsion”, Fisher said. “Lacking fundamental principles as guides, the politician and his party organisation are like amateur explorers marching in step to an unknown destination without a map, navigational equipment of any factual knowledge of the stars.”
Inspired by his words Mannkal produced a comprehensive policy document – Project Western Australia – https://www.mannkal.org/research-publications/project-wa/
“The politician is apt to be an avid reader of the press. He wishes to gauge ‘public opinion’ as a way of winning or holding on to power, prestige and votes. Yet so long as he hopes to become a leader by being a follower, he must eventually fail. To be a leader requires an understanding of fundamental ideas and how to put them into practice.”
“The success of innovative ideas depends on at least one person not only understanding the case, but also writing it down for others to study. If the report is convincing and preferably has a good summary, and even a summary of a summary, it will be read, reviewed, and increasingly taught to others. In time, it will begin to produce consequences.”
“As politicians become less sure of themselves, and less able to offer any alternative policy which has not already been discredited, many would wrongly welcome a coalition. The fashionable fear of not wishing to ‘abdicate responsibilities to the free market’ will obstruct a move in the right direction.”
Now, you will understand why I have always regarded Antony Fisher as the ‘most successful politician, never to have entered parliament’.
No discussion of politics would be complete without reference to our Constitutions.
I often regret that, so few Australians have had sufficient exposure to our Constitution and the opportunity to compare ours with other Constitutions.
Constitutions can be judged by whether they promote liberty or violate it. My friend Sheldon Richman puts it well, in his book America’s Counter – Revolution − “What is a constitution typically thought to be? Aside from a blueprint of the government, it is thought to be a set of restraints on the conduct of government officials. Remember, Alexander Hamilton and other Federalists said the proposed Constitution was by nature a bill of rights, or a set of restraints on the government. Officials, they argued, may not do what they were not authorized to do by the Constitution.” I have noticed that there are two ways of looking at any Constitution.
Whilst the citizens look at a Constitution as a document that protects them from the politicians, the politicians themselves, look at the Constitution in the hope that it will protect them from their citizens.
A possible deterrent from pursuing the political method, right now, is that ‘politics is broken’.
We have some good examples and in Australia we are experimenting with a Trotskyite Prime Minister. Yes, he used to run the Trotskyite Society at his university and his nickname was Trot.
Also, Australia, has just released a Covid Enquiry Report on how our government seems to have managed it worse than almost every other country. The result of that report is that there is absolutely no trust in government and the next time there is a crisis there is a high chance of a Citizens Revolt, but only if we shrug off our cloak of ‘Compliant Whimpishness’.
Another sign that ‘politics is broken’ is that, here in the U.S. you have just elected a new President, mainly because he does not look like a politician or act like a politician. That is good news, and we all wish him well.
The noted Australian Commentator, Salvatore Babones, in the Quadrant Magazine, April 2022, noted that your Democrats were critical of President Trump in his first term, and they called for a ‘return to adult government’. Here is Babones comment two years ago:-
“The defeat of Donald Trump in 2020 saved American democracy. Not from Donald Trump: he never shut down websites, imprisoned protesters, or sicked the security services on his opponents. No, if anything, the 2020 election saved American democracy for Donald Trump. The four-year Trump pause that began on January 20, 2021, ‘put the grown-ups back in charge’ in Washington ― and the world. Like grown-ups everywhere, they immediately maxed out their credit cards, mortgaged the family home, stabbed their friends in the back, picked fights with the neighbours, gave stern speeches in their coronavirus masks while posing for unmasked selfies at the Superbowl, and offered nuclear weapons to Iran in exchange for promises to stop supporting terrorism and shift to nuclear blackmail instead. Thanks to the 2020 election, we all know what ‘adult democracy’ looks like.”
- And that brings us to the final and fourth ‘road ahead’ is that of non-violent, peaceful forms of civil disobedience (against government and bureaucrats when they go beyond their legitimate functions).
This is the ‘road’ requiring that delicate balance between courage and wisdom. And that is where I am going to concentrate my focus for my remaining active years.
- Courage is less about what you are not afraid of and more about what you are afraid of but are willing to face.
- Wisdom is less about what you know and more about what you know you do not know. This particular ‘road’ is by far the most interesting and deserves a more detailed treatment than this brief exploratory trip. It is one that may lead you to study the several excellent country comparisons.
- The Fraser Institute’s ‘Economic Freedom of the World’ – www.freetheworld.com
- The Heritage Foundation’s ‘Index of Economic Freedom’ − https://www.heritage.org/index/
It may lead you to obtaining E-Residency for Estonia and other countries with far more welcoming business environments than Australia or the U.S.
That tiny country, Estonia, is ten years ahead of the rest of the world in adopting a business-friendly environment.
I have e-Residency and with my Executive Assistant on a Friday afternoon, several years ago, we registered two companies online, in Estonia, and it took about 15 minutes. The ease of doing business is breathtaking and is certainly worth experimenting with.
One word of caution is that it is important to seek advice on the banking arrangements because there are various restrictions that can complicate international transactions.
Your venture into Civil Disobedience may also lead you to reading the inspirational works of Henry David Thoreau who inspired other protestors, such as Gandhi, Mandela, and Martin Luther King.
It may lead you to read the incredible literature of peaceful revolt.
I will mention only two such books, from our library:- The Rebel by Albert Camus (winner of the Noble Prize for Literature, 1957). This is a classic essay on revolution. For Camus, the urge to revolt is one of the ‘essential dimensions’ of human nature. As old regimes, throughout the world collapse, is it inevitable that revolution leads to tyranny?
The other book by Albert O. Hirschmann Exit, Voice, and Loyalty is a collection of responses to the decline in firms, organizations, and states.
If we are loyal, how much should we speak up before we exit?
Anyone who is disgusted at political or corporate antics will bond with Hirschmann, who in his introduction says, “Each society learns to live with a certain amount of such dysfunctional or mis-behaviour; but lest the misbehaviour feed on itself and lead to general decay, society must be able to marshal from within itself forces which will make as many of the faltering actors as possible revert to the behaviour required for its proper functioning.”
This ‘road’ should be navigated with great care as those less brave will envy your courage and spirit of adventure.
To conclude, let me mention my two favourite books on this topic.
Of course, there is my own book The Impatient Libertarian – https://www.mannwest.com/product/the-impatient-libertarian/
The other book, Harry Browne’s great book How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World – https://www.amazon.com.au/How-Found-Freedom-Unfree-World/dp/0965603679
I will also add a detailed reading list of twelve excellent books, as an Appendix.
As you can see, I am quite excited about pursuing this path toward Peaceful Civil Disobedience, and …
Always remember, that the occasional revolt is a particularly good thing, as Thomas Jefferson said, “When the government fears the people, there is liberty; when the people fear the government, there is tyranny.”
A P P E N D I X
‘Revolt Book’ References:
The Impatient Libertarian – (Which Road Ahead?) by Ron Manners AO
ISBN: 9781922810281
In this book, Ron presents compelling accounts of how individuals with vastly different personalities, circumstances, and strategies successfully addressed threats to liberty. One would have to work hard, indeed, to find sources of inspiration who, though committed to the common goal of liberty, differed so much from each other.
How I found Freedom in an Unfree World by Harry Browne
Macmillan Publishing Co.,, Inc .51747
Freedom is living your life the way you want to live it. This book shows how you can have that freedom now – without having to change the world or the people around you.
“A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.” – Alexander Pope
Guerrilla Capitalism by Adam Cash
ISBN: 0-915179-16-4
How to practice free enterprise in an unfree economy.
Exit, Voice and Loyalty by Albert O. Hirschman
ISBN:0-674-27660-4
Responses to decline in firms, organizations and States.
“Each society learns to live with a certain amount of such dysfunctional or mis-behavior; but lest the misbehavior feed on itself and lead to general decay, society must be able to marshal from within itself forces which will make as many of the faltering actors as possible revert to the behavior required for its proper functioning.”
The Counter-Revolution by E.C. Harwood
ISBN: 978-0-913610-71-8
“Abiding appreciation for how the American Revolution and the subsequent deliberations of the Founders and a young nation ultimately led to the Constitution and its Bill of Rights, unleashing the individual productivity of a people free to pursue their own best interests, to retain the results of their efforts, and to so build an economy previously unknown on earth.”
Obedience to Authority by Stanley Milgram
ISBN: – 0-06-090475-5
Reveals the elusive and sometimes shocking conditions under which men obey authority regardless of the morality involved.
The Rebel by Albert Camus
ISBN: 9 780679 733843
The urge to revolt is one of the ‘essential dimensions’ of human nature.
The Politics of Nonviolent Action – Part One – Power and Struggle by Gene Sharp
ISBN 0-87558-070-X
The Politics of Nonviolent Action – Part Two – The Methods of Nonviolent Action by Gene Sharp
ISBN – 0-87558-071-8
The Politics of Nonviolent Acton – Part Three – The Dynamics of Nonviolent Action by Gene Sharp
ISBN – 0-87558-072-6
He destroys the myth that nonviolence is passive … Gene Sharp has provided us all with an example of courageous alternative thinking … We need such a kiss of life.
America’s Counter-Revolution – The Constitution Revisited by Sheldon Richman
ISBN 978-0692687918
What is a constitution typically thought to be? Aside from a blueprint of the government, it is thought to be a set of ‘restraints’ on the conduct of government officials. Remember, Alexander Hamilton and other Federalists said the proposed Constitution was ‘by nature’ a bill of rights, or a set of restraints on the government. Officials, they argued, may not do what they were not authorized to do by the Constitution.
Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict by Erica Chenoweth & Maria J Stephan
(Columbia University, Press, 2011) https://www.amazon.com/Why-Civil-Resistance-Works-Nonviolent/dp/0231156839
