Libertarian Party HQ message this past Monday:
Dear Friend of Liberty,
The Libertarian Party hosted a booth at the 2011 International Students For Liberty Conference over the weekend. You can view a brief video of the event here.
Students For Liberty (SFL) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization whose mission is to provide a unified, student-driven forum of support for students and student organizations dedicated to liberty. More information here.
The 2011 conference featured a filming of John Stossel’s show, which covers events from a libertarian perspective. We’ll try to let you know when the SFL edition of Stossel runs.
SFL is not affiliated with the Libertarian Party or any political party, but some Libertarian Party leaders also work with SFL. For example, LNC Regional Representative (and former national chairman of the Libertarian Party) Dr. James W. Lark, III serves on the Board of Advisors of SFL, and has conducted several educational webinars for SFL.
Dr. Lark is also the campus coordinator for the Libertarian Party. Look here for a list of Libertarian campus organizations, as well as more information about starting up a campus Libertarian group.
Sincerely,
Wes Benedict
Executive Director
Libertarian National Committee
P.S. If you have not already done so, please join the Libertarian Party. We are the only political party dedicated to free markets, civil liberties, and peace. You can also renew your membership. Or, you can make a contribution separate from membership.
“recruiting people to work do Libertarian office work”
Should read, “recruiting people to do Libertarian office work…”
We are going to have a robust presence at the upcoming conference, with breakout sessions and awesome swag.
Is there going to be any Libertarian Party job recruiting done at the Students for Liberty Conference? This is the type of place where you should be recruiting people to work do Libertarian office work, to do Libertarian web design, and to work as field recruiters and for ballot access work (petition and voter registration drives, both of which should be combined with outreach and field recruitment).
That can’t be stressed enough.
The next generation, that’s where it’s all at.
Pass the torch on or watch the flame die.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/2011/02/young-libertarian-activists-point-way-freedoms-future
By: Gene Healy 02/21/11 8:05 PM
Examiner Columnist
Two weeks ago, trend-spotting journalists descended on the Conservative Political Action Conference to cover the controversy over the inclusion of a homosexual group, GOProud, and speculate about what it all meant for the future of the American Right.
Last weekend, there was another important gathering here in D.C. that most of them missed: the 2011 Students for Liberty conference. Founded in 2008, SFL is a nationwide network of student groups dedicated to reducing state power and promoting freedom.
This year’s conference brought over 500 college-age libertarian activists to George Washington University, and SFL had to turn away scores more for lack of space.
I attended both CPAC and the SFL conference, and what I saw suggests that the future of the limited government movement will be libertarian, not conservative.
The rap on this year’s CPAC, according to social conservatives — many of whom stayed home for fear of catching gay cooties — is that Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, spoiled the party by crashing it with nearly 1,000 freedom-loving young people.
“They should have their own conference and let all the pot smokers and gay marriage supporters come and complain about how the U.S. shouldn’t be fighting terrorists, while they slander public servants,” conservative talk-radio host Kevin McCullough wailed in an unintentionally hilarious FoxNews.com column, “Disrespectful Libertarians Hijack CPAC.”
Yet there was plenty of Old Guard ideology on display, as evidenced by CPAC’s decision to give former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld the “Defender of the Constitution” award.
Kids today tend to forget that back in 2003, Saddam Hussein had the U.S. Constitution completely surrounded before Rummy sent in 150,000 American troops to break the siege. That’s probably why the brats booed when Dick Cheney took the stage to introduce Rumsfeld, and, why, ignoring the advice of their elders, they gave Paul his second CPAC straw-poll victory in a row.
Conservatives complained that the Paul camp subsidized student attendance at the conference — but since when has getting organized counted as cheating in politics? (Is there something stopping theocons from funding the Huckabee Youth?)
“I’m not a Ron Paul supporter, but he energized kids,” CPAC organizer David Keene observed.
Energized kids turned out en masse for last weekend’s SFL conference as well, where they heard from former New Mexico governor and likely presidential candidate Gary Johnson, among others, and got to participate in a taping of John Stossel’s Fox Business show.
During that show, my colleague David Boaz noted that “This is the largest libertarian student conference I have ever seen in my 30-plus years of activism.” (Full disclosure: my employer, the Cato Institute, sponsored a reception at the conference, and we allow SFL the use of a small office, where you can usually find three eager tykes crammed in among stacks of pizza boxes and subversive literature.)
I’m not as old as David Boaz, but I started my own campus libertarian group in the early ’90s, before Al Gore’s “information superhighway” had come online. Back then, we considered ourselves lucky when we could get a couple of dozen socially awkward malcontents together to grumble about the government.
Maybe that’s why I found the crowd at GW so impressive. The students at the SFL conference were extraordinarily well-read, highly motivated–and shockingly normal.
Like most in their generation, they had little use for bloody foreign entanglements or the culture-war battles of the past. They’re focused instead on the bloated entitlement state that threatens to consume their future. It’s a challenge they greet with a spirit of optimism, determined not to let the crisis go to waste.
As SFL founder Alexander McCobin put it in his speech: “It’s a great time to be young libertarian.”
Examiner Columnist Gene Healy is a vice president at the Cato Institute and the author of “The Cult of the Presidency.”