Libertarians at work in over 100 Countries

August 15th 2005

Orlando, Fl—Shortly after a meeting of community leaders in Florida that Libertarians were asked to facilitate, the results were shared in an internet chat with Libertarian organizers for or in Mongolia, Spain, Iraq, Iran, and Communist China. Each was interested in using Libertarian consensus skills to develop community groups and alliances to promote freedom. Some were simply happy for the inspiration. Others had complex plans underway and asked detailed how-to questions.

That’s all in a day’s work for the Libertarian International Organization, whose activists generated the series of chats. This month activists and those interested in Libertarian tools and ideas can go to the Libertarian International Organization (www.libertarian-international.org) --or LIO --website. The site, with links to an impressive web of Libertarian efforts across the globe, was designed by activists to cover over 10,000 useful links and items they use, was updated after 2 years of input, said Dr Ralph Swanson, the LIO advisory board chair, to activists in Orlando and Pinellas County Florida, who met in person or electronically to unveil the site.

International Libertarians have been quietly advancing their cause of civil liberties, free enterprise, limited government and non-government classical anarchist communities—all as part of a larger movement for social tolerance and self-liberation.

For many Libertarian activists, for whom the LIO site news page is their first morning stop, the site is all the more useful as it followed a tradition, since it first opened, of aggressively incorporating suggestions to make it an evolving “working site.”

The simple-looking site is certainly shock therapy to those who think of Libertarianism as a modest local movement. Libertarians walk the Earth, and they mean business. Links reveal that Libertarian-oriented leaders head Mongolia, the Czech Republic, and 10% of the Costa Rican legislature, where they derail Communist takeovers, right-wing plots and plain vanilla gangsters. Users quickly connect to Libertarian and Libertarian-friendly think tanks, groups and parties in over 100 countries. People who deride Libertarianism as a middle-class white man’s movement are greeted by pro-Libertarian figures ranging from a blonde Costa Rican rights attorney to a matronly mayor of Paris, and a variety of activists of every racial description, including a Central American consumer’s union led by Libertarians.

A growing number of Libertarian groups use it as a training tool and borrow from it liberally. For them, not only is the overview encouraging to new members, but it’s the only place where they can actually find out what Libertarians are achieving or how to carry out a Libertarian concept. Where some Libertarian sites seem confused or prone to water down or discount their views and achievements—the US Libertarian Party site carried a nervous article from its news editor saying Libertarians had accomplished little—LIO, with many of its lead activists descended from families that fought for freedom in Dark Age Europe or the American Revolution, has a website that communicates that it’s inclusive, implacable, and self-confident. It sees Libertarians as a social continuum that has over the centuries smashed slavery, monarchies, theocracies of every description, and instituted liberal democracies, and is pressing forward as the oldest social and political movement in the world, born among the Iberian and Grecian anarchist communes and republics of pre-Roman times.

LIO activists describe Libertarianism as a broad social movement, providing the stabilizing, non-governmental center desperately needed by deteriorating democracies undermined by rising taxes, backfiring government regulations and monopolies, and spreading intolerance—and of Libertarians as no-nonsense, enlightened community leaders who intend to, and do, crush tyranny or corruption in all its forms while encouraging voluntary creativity.

The site news link page connects to hundreds of news stories, magazine articles and learned papers discussing Libertarianism, including such news flashes as Libertarians organizing a party in India. Selections seem unusually thoughtful for organizations of this type: a selection of noteworthy Libertarian sites for inspiration includes the CandidList, the wildly popular site that chronicles politician’s contradictory rhetoric in the UK, certainly a good idea for any local activist group. Another page, being updated, lists an impressive array of Libertarian achievements, as part of a project to document what Libertarians have done. Many of the links no longer are active as LIO re-documents and archives the information separately so they can be better studied by scholars and repeated by activists. .

Activists, students, journalists and others looking for links for paper ideas, resources or tidbits have a ready resource. News stories are updated hourly. There is a blog where armchair activists can daily write outraged letters to the US Congress or the UN. Free E-Books on the front page include introductory materials from the Libertarian Manifesto, Ayn Rand’s novel Anthem, books on Libertarian solutions to waste disposal, a treatise on Libertarian economics and even Orwell’s 1984.

One can tune in via the website to 24-hour Libertarian courses or Libertarian radio shows every day of the week, and listen to these as one downloads a growing array of hard to find manuals and papers. One link leads to a vast array of Libertarian e-groups from South Carolina to South Africa. An upcoming E-Magazine promises intriguing stories on the Libertarian proclivities of Shogun author James Clavell, and little-known attacks by Hitler on Libertarians.

“We redesign it every few years as the needs change. People see something someone did, say, boy, I’d like to do that in my hometown, and we give a little advice and lots of emotional and mental support. It’s Libertarian Central, which for people who think individual-rights based anarchism is a perfectly acceptable alternative, is thought-provoking. Actually, it’s more Libertarian De-Central,” Dr. Swanson laughs.

Swanson, a Colonel Sanders look-a-like with a background in military intelligence, was also a Libertarian Party State Chair and is retired as a director of a religious society. On a typical day he says he helps route numerous e-mails from budding Libertarians around the world, and organizes training seminars for activists in Florida.

“Anyone wishing to speak intelligently about Libertarianism had better troll the site first. LIO doesn’t direct but shows best practices, and combined with the Libertarian approach people then self-direct. Much of what we do is either mentor or just ’yenta’—get people interested in something together with others also interested or who can help.”

The Libertarian approach of self-responsibility and bottom-up management—combined with brutal and sophisticated internal policy discussions where new movement members get accustomed to debates studying Deming techniques, self-esteem psychology, and the influence of Kant on welfare economics—certainly make for people who know how to organize independently.

Venezuela? Seminars in stricken areas discuss how inflation destroys wage purchasing power. Ukraine? Libertarians have a youth camp that teaches English with free market classics. Viet-Nam? As the US pulled out in defeat, young Libertarians in the Communist party began to move the government towards openness, so Hanoi has a ‘better business climate than many parts of the US’ according to expatriates there. Russia? Turned out Gorbachev had a Libertarian-oriented adviser all along, and Latin Libertarians were on the phone urging General Lebed to not support the Communist counter-coup even as the Bush Administration dithered. . The US? As Libertarians win their 35 year war on ballot and election restrictions, Libertarians are popping up in local government everywhere; and more importantly, forming coalitions that are changing the political landscape. Social Entrepreneurship? Pay it Forward? Open-Source? Restorative Justice? Libertarians originated the concept and often the phrase, in which LIO activists often play a lead part.

“Whatever it is, you’re likely to hear it first in our colloquia or phone round-robins,” says Swanson. “Chances are, if you wondering if the Libertarians shouldn’t be looking into something good for freedom, the truth is they’re quietly driving a good part of it.”

LIO also has an array of mentoring projects that are, says Dr. Swanson, “Designed to basically bring diverse people together and insert ideas and concepts at the tipping point.” Activists desiring to start a group get web resources and hand-holding. LIO advisors and lead activists have initiated major internal management improvement projects in the US Libertarian Party and State affiliates with dramatic results. A new project, Libertarian Citizen, puts aspiring Libertarian candidates and public servants through a grueling 200 hour course from ideological complexities to where to stand when giving presentations to what, exactly, to do to “Assure Libertarian solutions that work, instead of the silly and incompetent privatizations conservatives are supporting, for example,” said Dr. Swanson.

LIO is certainly different as International Political Organizations go. It accepts no money, suggesting people donate to specific projects such as its bookstore or a project by a different Libertarian group to bring foreign students to the US—though it is contemplating a separate institute for certain donations, especially a research library to contain the growing number of requests for a Libertarian archive. Above all, it focuses on connecting rank and file activists and community leaders with counterparts across the globe—or often, across their own area-- in line with the Libertarian themes of bottom-up initiatives and local self-organization.

Its volunteers range from students who troll the internet for articles and websites—on one occasion linking a Libertarian website before it was officially inaugurated—and monitor links, to a high-powered resource board of retired leaders. Many are sympathetic but not Libertarians per se, but use their contacts to present LIO ideas to policymakers or simply use the network to learn of world problems ‘from the ground.’ Most important, says Dr. Swanson, each new contact is grounds for further contacts. Unlike most Libertarian or indeed many political groups, LIO speaks regularly to Red Cross workers, UN officials, Communist Party leaders, and students in numerous countries giving them unusual access to information and alliances on common matters.

The Libertarian International Organization, which derives from groups such as the old Libertarian League and the Individualist Society movement for universal suffrage of the early 1800’s, is a non-partisan support organization for Libertarian activists, and listed as the trans-national or mother world Libertarian group in a variety of reference sources such as ElectionWorld.
 

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By Mike Davis
Mike is a freelance writer
 

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Keywords and Misspellings:  Libartarian enternational