My libertarian soul was hooked immediately. Yours will be as well. From the very first pages of The Immune, a libertarian-infused, science fiction thriller from Doc Lucky Meisenheimer you will crave something. Something that all authors wish their readers would crave–to see what is on the next page, and the one after, and the one after that, and so on.
The Immune reads like a movie that keeps you guessing until the very end. It could easily be a huge blockbuster big screen thriller someday. Of course, that is if those in Hollywood are able to overlook the anti-government and decidedly libertarian message of the story. The great thing about Doc Lucky’s story is that it remains true to the liberty message without being overly preachy. In other words, this is not an Ayn Rand novel. I do love reading Ayn Rand, but this is much more mainstream and accessible. In fact it could be used as a gentle introduction to the libertarian ideology for those just starting down that path.
The book explores privacy, gun rights, civil liberties, foreign policy, government health care, global governance, and more. There’s even an evil character that I can only guess was patterned after Nancy Pelosi.
The story follows physician John Long in the not so-distant future when bio-genetically manufactured organisms that resemble flying “man-o-wars” (called airwars) begin emerging all over the world and killing humans randomly. Long is an ordinary physician who is lucky enough to be immune to the stings of the airwars. This makes him supremely useful to the propaganda machine of an international governing body that uses the airwar crisis as an excuse to continually strip individual freedoms from the world’s citizens. Hmm… doesn’t that sound all-too-familiar? And that’s not all they try to strip away as you’ll find out when you read the book.
This is truly a wonderful first novel for Doc Lucky Meisenheimer. The Immune succeeds on several levels. It is both heavy and light. It works equally as a “beach book” page-turner, and as an intellectual pursuit of individual liberty. Perhaps some of those that utilize it as the former will morph into using it as the latter by the time the last page is read.
If you are going to pursue liberty you might as well have fun doing it. That’s what reading The Immune is all about. I can’t recommend it enough. Add it to your reading list now. You’ll thank me later.
————————————–
The Immune by Doc Lucky Meisenheimer goes on sale May 13th, 2011. To order and find out more, see http://www.theimmune.com/
Recently, one of my classes took time to discuss John Stuart Mill’s “On Liberty”. It was a nice deviation from the week spent on the joys and frustrations of Communism. It didn’t take long before one of the most prominent issues in the writing, victimless crimes, or the right to do things that may affect you but not others, was brought up.
“I don’t think my friend should be able to kill herself,” pontificated a fellow classmate. “Because then I will be sad and this will affect me negatively.”
For whatever reason, the concept that one can do something to themselves but not others was ungraspable for many of my fellow students. Mill argued that people must have control of their own lives and be free to do whatever they wish with it as long as it does not hinder the rights of others to do whatever it is they wish with their lives. In a society that is becoming increasingly collectivist, it may be surprising to some people that victimless crimes actually exist. They include prostitution, smoking marijuana, not wearing a seat belt among others.
In his address to 2008’s Campaign for Liberty, former New Mexico Governor Gary E. Johnson joked, “When I go out on my motorcycle, I wear protection from head to toe. However, if someone doesn’t want to wear a helmet when riding their motorcycle, that should be their choice. There is a donor shortage in this country.”
The idea behind victimless crimes is simple. You have a right to your life. You have a right to make decisions, and yes even obviously stupid ones, because it is your life and yours alone. The idea that government intervenes on your behalf even with the best of intentions is a tragic and corrupting suggestion and one that should be abandoned. Only when you do something that would hinder the rights of others should the law involve itself.
The most important figure in the libertarian movement is the individual. If collectivists are allowed to control aspects related only to the individual, even in an effort to good on the part of the individual, than libertarianism has no chance at surviving and flourishing. Mr. Mill understood the benefits of individual liberty and warned in his timeless manuscript that if victimless acts are allowed to be crimes, than the individual, for all other factors of liberty, cannot be free.
There are cerebral strategists and balls-to-the-wall activists in the tent of Ron Paul. Both were evident at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) today. Prior to Rand Paul’s stellar speech the surprise speaker was Donald Trump. Many of us in the audience had come to get our seats to see The Rand instead of The Donald, and things got a bit ugly.
During Trump’s speech there were some vocal activists shouting out Ron Paul’s name, among other things. At one point when Trump mentioned there were no good GOP candidates the shouts of Ron Paul became too much for him. The video below shows what happened:
Yes, the out-of-touch celebrity with lots of money reacts by telling the crowd that Ron Paul has zero chance of winning. I immediately said something that was later echoed by Rand Paul, “Trump has an even less of a chance of winning than Ron Paul”. That was only the beginning.
Some naysayers, even libertarian naysayers, firmly believe there is simply no hope of a true libertarian society taking hold in America. Then there are those that are trying to making it actually happen. I learned of the Free State Project shortly after it began. Now, years later, the concept has become reality for many liberty-lovers.
If you’ve not heard of the Free State Project, I strongly encourage you to check it out. Now there’s even a movie about it.Libertopia is an upcoming documentary about the project and its people. From the Libertopia movie web site:
It could be your neighbor. Your boss. Your brother, sister, or perhaps a spouse. Right now thousands of Americans, passionate in the ultimate pursuit of liberty, are planning to converge in a single state…
Permanently.
Hundreds have already moved, and their plan is simple:
First, find a state with limited government, a small population, and a vibrant economy.
Second, find 20,000 freedom activists willing to move there and vow to further reduce the size of its government.
By their accounts, that state is New Hampshire. And if their project works, the “Live Free or Die” state just may become a libertarian-utopia.
Libertopia is a documentary that examines the people of the Free State Project– ordinary citizens attempting to reclaim a voice against a government which they believe shares neither their priorities nor their interests. Primarily libertarian leaning, and often considered radicals in their home towns, these people have begun a modern-day pilgrimage to the Granite State.
Here is the trailer for the documentary, set to be released on DVD in 2011:
Once again Rand Paul was kind enough to agree to be interviewed by Liberty Maven as the latest and perhaps greatest money bomb of his campaign approaches.
LM: With the overblown “Aqua Buddha” story spreading around the media like wildfire, it’s obvious your opponent’s attack machine is in full gear. How beneficial is it to respond to attacks of this kind? If your campaign staff find any “dirt” about Jack Conway’s past, will you respond in kind?
Rand Paul: No matter how the drive by media tries to distract from the issues in this race – the real issues facing Americans every day – we are committed to running a campaign of substance and real issues, and we will not engage in the politics of character assassination.
LM: When you become the next U.S. Senator from Kentucky what specific legislation would you introduce in your first year in office? How will that legislation benefit Kentuckians?
Rand Paul: There are a few things I want to do, for one I will propose and force a vote on an Enumerated Powers Act, to force Congress to point to the part of the Constitution that justifies their bills. That would benefit not only Kentuckians but everyone who has been affected by this out-of-control government forcing unconstitutional laws on us like Obamacare. Another will be a Balanced Budget Amendment with strict tax and spending limits.
My father taught me the golden rule at a very young age. It seemed so simple and reasonable to my young mind: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Today it seems so very libertarian to me. Back then it just seemed like common sense. Perhaps my life-long moderate Democrat father didn’t intend to plant libertarian seedlings in his eldest son’s mind at a young age, but he did just that.
I expect he may whisper to himself considering how I ended up politically, “My god, what have I created?”
I took the golden rule and ran with it.
A few years after I learned of the golden rule, I received an inflatable boat for my birthday. We lived in a community with a beach on one of the inlets of the Chesapeake Bay. A friend and I grabbed my new boat, ran down to the beach, put it in the water, and hopped in. It was a very windy day.
What if there was a third choice for reality-seekers? Something other than the red pill or the blue pill. What if there was a purple pill? The purple pill is the gateway drug to liberty for those that aren’t quite ready to have an ice-cold-water-on-the-face wake-up call. It is a soothing alarm clock that gradually opens eyes to the truth. Rand Paul is the purple pill.
He already has his foot in the libertarian door thanks to his father, Ron Paul. This gives him legitimacy and support from many of his father’s more libertarian-minded supporters. Yet he softens what many Hannity, Beck, and Limbaugh conservatives would call the crazy edges of his father. Ron Paul is a true red pill. There is no doubt about that.
Rand represents someone conservatives, Republicans, and even neo-conservatives can be comfortable supporting without wounding their own interventionist-minded pride. This becomes a problem for the more steadfast libertarians among the Ron Paul faithful who demand an A+ on the libertarian purity test.
There’s so much to say about the recent Rand Paul and Rachel Maddow event that it’s difficult to know where to begin. By now every reader of this site has probably seen Rand Paul’s appearance on Maddow’s show last week when he answered Maddow’s questions about the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with philosophy instead of soundbites. He answered like a libertarian academic rather than a Republican politician. I find this to be refreshing rather than flawed unlike most of the surface-dwelling progressives castigating and misrepresenting Paul following his remarks.
The question, as it pertains to the Civil Rights Act is, should the government make it illegal for a private business owner to discriminate or should consumers in the marketplace determine whether a private business owner stays in business due to his discriminatory practices?
Market forces, if they are truly free from regulation, produce equality far more pure than any government can create through force of law. Unfortunately, it is human nature to intervene and humans run the government so it is unlikely this assertion will ever become provable beyond doubt.
There are many people better than I am at arguing these points and defending Rand Paul on this issue.
Ron Paul appeared on Hardball last night with Chris Matthews. Matthews is an unrepentant socialist. Paul did his best to explain why the libertarian position is the only consistent position.
My only regret is that Paul didn’t say to Matthews:
“Chris, you know I always get this tingling feeling down my leg when I think about freedom.”
I feel like I’ve become a bit of a collector, so to speak, of attacks on Ron Paul. There really haven’t been any new attacks on Ron Paul since 2007. The attackers all parrot one another while flapping around in a self-congratulatory, moronic bubble of intellectual laziness.
Let’s dig a little deeper and attempt to un-attack Ron Paul. Here is my collection.
The “guilt by association” attack:
This is probably the most commonly-used attack on Ron Paul. Paul was criticized for “accepting” a $500 donation during his campaign from a white supremacist. Of course, the Paul campaign didn’t find out about the donor until it came to light after the donation was made. He refused to return the donation. Instead he argued that it would be better to spend the money wisely in the name of freedom for all rather than returning $500 to a known white supremacist. Some see this as a cop-out. It could also be argued that it was Paul upholding freedom of speech found in the First Amendment. Yes, unfortunately for some, the First Amendment does protect all speech, not just agreeable speech.
People choose to support any given candidate for all kinds of odd reasons. It’s quite common for people to vote for the most likable candidate regardless of the candidate’s political views. I can’t fathom this reasoning (or lack thereof). There are probably some really “scum of the earth” type of people who voted for and supported Barack Obama and John McCain. The reality is that candidates cannot choose their supporters; therefore, they should not be condemned through them.
Liberty Maven
Loading ...
