Posts tagged libertarianism
Judd Weiss interviewed by Jan Helfeld
Feb 19th
While at the International Students For Liberty Conference in DC last weekend, I sat down for an interview with the famous Jan Helfeld, notorious for tripping up famous politicians and media figures with difficult ideological questions. He employs a type of Socratic questioning to get their fundamental principles, which always exposes their contradictions and humiliates them on camera for being inconsistent at best, or hypocritical and lacking integrity at worst. Press secretaries usually pull the plug and motion to abruptly end the interview. His major media figure guests are not expecting his line of questioning, most of the time they get violently hostile when they end the interview, and I’m amazed that Jan is still able to successfully get these interviews with major figures after over 2 decades of this.
So when Jan asked to interview me, I told him to do his worst, dial it up to 10, and find a chink in my armor. I think I was the first person he’s ever interviewed to come out unscathed! I don’t know what all the other interviewees are a complaining so much about. Next time he needs to ramp it up a bit and try harder! I guess my background in philosophy paid off. To be honest, after the fact I realize I could definitely answer the questions more succinctly and articulately, but considering that I was completely put on the spot and I had no talking points ready at all, I think I did ok.
Enjoy ;)
[Another Jan Helfeld interview with me, and more hilarious interviews with Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and others after the break!]
An Open Letter to all Republicans to drop Mitt Romney for Gary Johnson
Nov 2nd
So, you’re a Republican? That’s your team. You would like a smaller less intrusive government that costs a lot less, right? Great! I’m with you there. That’s why you need to realize that Mitt Romney is NOT on your team, you need to vote AGAINST him and make sure you do what you can to deny Mitt Romney the presidency. Even if it means that Obama stays in office. Why?? Well let’s back up a few years.
Election Day, November 4, 2008. That day the Republican party was officially pronounced dead. Not even on life support. The party was over. Dead. It was embarrassing to say you were a Republican. Obama won in a landslide victory. Democrats increased their control of the House of Representatives and Senate, and became an unstoppable force able to ram through just about any legislation they like. And that they did. Welcome ObamaCare.
Republicans desperately needed to completely re-imagine themselves if they had any hope of continuing forward.
Election Day, November 2, 2010. Republicans swept up, taking control of local office, state office, the House of Representatives, and nearly took back the Senate, removing Democrats’ filibuster proof majority, leaving Democrats sweating it with a razor slim majority. WHAT THE HELL CHANGED?!
Principles. Principles were discovered and defended at a time when the importance of principles became obvious. These principles weren’t handed down by someone’s god, they’re principles of reality. For instance, you spent all your money? No more party. Very simple.
Despite a desperate smear campaign from much of the media, the Tea Party movement that came into prominence had nothing to do with racism towards a black president or the pocketbooks of greedy wealthy elites. The Tea Party sprung up as a mass of Libertarians and Republicans that stood up for their common principles. They hadn’t found religion. To the contrary, they abandoned religion, for the most part, at least politically. They focused solely on economics. They focused on problems of the enormous growing national debt. They focused on reducing our spending and the cost of government and thus reducing our tax burden. They focused on limiting government’s scope and involvement in our lives.
Because of those principles, even as an atheist libertarian, I was as passionate a Tea Party supporter as anyone else; happy to find common cause with any religious supporter on board with these limited government principles.
One of the greatest things that we were all excited about with the Tea Party is their credibility and their unwillingness to compromise it. They knocked out viable Republicans from office if they violated their limited government principles. Because who needs them? Right? What good are Republicans that push for costly bigger government in our lives?
Armed with principles, the Tea Party brought excitement back into the dead lifeless corpse of the Republican Party. The wave of excitement culminated into a sledgehammer of force that overwhelmingly knocked Democrats out of local office, out of State Governor positions, out of the House of Representatives, and almost even cost Democrats the Senate. Nothing could stop the principled Tea Party movement.
Photos: Libertarian National Convention – May 2012
Oct 23rd
It’s October in an election year, so you know what that means.
It’s Politics Time!
Embrace it my friends, don’t fight it. It’s good for us once in a while to think about what the fuck the government is doing with our money. Yeah, thinking about this stuff can get aggravating very fast, there’s certainly no shortage of negative energy in the realm of politics. So I actively try to mix in some positive energy into an often very negative world. One of my tools is my camera, which has become pretty much biologically attached to my arm for the last 2 years:
My Sony NEX.
This was my first time at the Libertarian Party National Convention, and I WAS SHOCKED!! Imagine what would happen if a car company fired all its salesmen and stuck all the car engineers in a room and said “You’ve all helped engineer a truly exceptional car, now we want you guys to work together and agree on this year’s comprehensive marketing and sales strategy for the company within 3 days.” Yeah that’s what the Libertarian Party National Convention was like. All out brutal warfare! Nastier because it’s nerd warfare, and they sharpen their arguments to hit as hard as possible, with no account for the damage and fallout.
Continue Reading >>
Memories from Freedom Fest 2012
Aug 15th
[Photo Album at the end of article]
This is the most epic set of photos I’ve ever taken, not because they are my best shots, but because I’ve never captured so many living giants in one photo album. Just about every person in every photo in this album below has had significant impact, or clearly will have some significant impact, with many people in our culture. These are the incredibles. And I was struggling like hell to try to capture some human element from them. Which is challenging because they are often so guarded, and usually when they see some guy with a camera they tell him to fuck off. So like the bastard that I am, I made it my task to find a crack in their armor and capture that human moment. Not some awkward defensive goofball reaction, but something true and authentic.
Here you go my friends, if you’re a fan of anyone in this album, you can see that the legend is a human, like you. Reach out, pull up, join them.
[more info and MANY PHOTOS after the break]
My First Experience at Freedom Fest 2011 (with Photos!)
Aug 19th
A Behind The Scenes Exposé of the Personalities behind the Liberty Movement
(There is A LOT here, so take your time. Each day of the conference easily warrants its own separate blog article, but I hate splitting these things up. Each person here is significant and warrants his or her own blog article, so this is actually concise. Consider this a crash course in many of the leading figures of the current liberty movement, with photos and links.)
I’ve never been secretive about my thoughts and outlook. I’ve actively been a part of the pro-liberty movement since high school, when I first discovered Ayn Rand, the world’s most controversial philosopher. Before I got to college I read everything I could find that she ever wrote. My mind was racing then, her material got me thinking about everything in new ways. I started to train my mind to approach every situation by searching for the fundamentals. I tried to find the core of every issue, and I’d consider its philosophical implications. In time this in-depth philosophical background became so damn powerful for me. I could analyze and understand issues with more clarity. I began writing more confidently. I even began making bolder serious life and business decisions much more quickly. The world is more intelligible the better you understand its matrix.
Very few of my friends gave a shit.
I’m So Relieved, The Atlas Shrugged Movie is Fantastic
Feb 28th
A couple nights ago, at a private screening for Atlas Shrugged Part 1, I took my seat, closed my eyes, dropped my head, and for the first time in my life, I said a prayer. “Please don’t be cheese ball. Please don’t be cheese ball. Please don’t be cheese ball.” A vision flashed in my mind of John Travolta, on the cover of a Battlefield Earth poster. Petrified, my fingers hardened into a grip around my arm rests. “No!! Please don’t be cheese ball. Please don’t be cheese ball…”
No doubt, the excitement in the room was mixed with fear. The producers of this film had the balls to make a motion picture out of one of the most thought provoking and controversial novels of all time. A Library of Congress reader’s poll ranked Atlas Shrugged as the second most influential book of all time next to the Bible. Other prominent reader polls of Best Novels ever written have listed Atlas Shrugged as #1. It’s a 1000+ page classic epic packed with action, philosophy, adventure, politics, romance, mystery, and a whole lot of attitude. Back in the 1500s, Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses on the door of a prominent Catholic church, sparking The Reformation. Ayn Rand nailed these 1000+ pages on the door of the world’s churches and state capital buildings, sparking what history might record as the beginning of the next renaissance. The next cultural movement to bring a focus on reality and reason and freedom and productivity back to the world.
This novel isn’t about running a railroad. It’s about society crumbling. And what causes that. It is so ambitious and controversial because it dramatizes the different fundamental values of our culture, and how that plays out through people in a society in crisis. When times get tough, more is demanded and taken from the achievers and high earners. So they work harder, they try harder, but the chains pile on, until they strike. Yes, the business leaders strike, not the employees. The title references the Greek god Atlas, who strains to hold the weight of the world over his shoulders. The load gets heavier and he struggles through blood and sweat to keep the world up. Until he changes his mind, shrugs, and drops the world. Let it fall. Let the world burn. Let all the ungrateful leeches and apes have it to themselves and enjoy it. Atlas is done.
Continue Reading >>
Video of the Day – Matt Ridley: When Ideas Have Sex
Jul 20th
Phenomenal! I’ve never heard a stronger case made for Libertarianism and Free Trade from an Anthropological point of view. The opening statement subtly helps put Global Warming Alarmism in perspective. He even quoted the famous libertiarian piece I Pencil. Matt Ridley just gave this presentation several days ago at TED. This is up there with the quality of Richard Dawkins’ Growing Up in the Universe.
