Libertarians rediscover their principles, on eBay

Libertarian Party rescues its original founding document from eBay - Washington Times - Jennifer Harper:

May 22, 2018 - "[T]he national Libertarian Party ... has reclaimed its most important founding document.

"Libertarian National chairman Nicholas Sarwark reports that the original 'Statement of Principles' — typewritten on plain paper by early member John Hospers at the party’s first convention — has surfaced in an unlikely place.

"'The existence of this original document was unknown until it turned up on an eBay listing, was purchased by a Libertarian Party member, and then donated to the Party,' Mr. Sarwark said.

"The seller said that her parents were early activists in the California Libertarian Party, and as she was disposing of their estate she found this document hidden behind a framed, photocopy picture of Ayn Rand, where it has likely been for decades,' he explained.

"The simple document has since been properly framed and will be on display at the 2018 Libertarian National Convention in New Orleans next month, then returned to the party’s headquarters just outside the nation’s capital."

Read more: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/may/22/libertarian-party-rescues-its-original-founding-do/
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Liberty magazine marks its 30th year

We’re Here! | Liberty Unbound - Stephen Cox:

August 28, 2017 - "Thirty years ago, the first issue of Liberty appeared. It was dated August 1987, and it emerged from an old house high on a hill in the little town of Port Townsend, Washington, overlooking the Puget Sound.

"Liberty was born at the moment when technology was making it possible to create a national magazine in one’s own home — if you were willing to perform the backbreaking effort necessary to get it to other people’s homes. R.W. Bradford and Kathy Bradford, who lived in the house on the hill, were willing to do that. Timothy Virkkala was their learned assistant in the project. And this, I suppose, is where I come into the story. I was Bill Bradford’s old friend from Michigan, our home state, who was privileged to become an editor-at-long-distance.... One of Liberty’s first gifts to me was a svelte little plastic fax machine into which I could feed my handwritten copy (or copy embodied in a bad, bad computer printout), so it could be transmitted to Liberty HQ and retyped for publication....

"Within a few years, all copy became digital, human and financial costs-per-word decreased, and Liberty was being mailed to thousands of readers, all over the world. We started at six big issues a year, then went to 11 or 12 big issues. From the start, we had attracted most of the great names in the libertarian movement, and we continued to attract them, from Murray Rothbard to John Hospers to Milton Friedman.... .

"In December 2005, Bill died in his house on the hill, after a long and heroic struggle with cancer. One of his last concerns was the future of Liberty. We talked on the phone, a couple of weeks before his death, and I agreed to take the job as editor in chief. The good thing about me was that I had been an editor from the start and had been the only person, besides Bill himself, who had written something for every issue. The bad thing was that I lacked Bill’s gargantuan energy, his intimate knowledge of everything libertarian, and his . . . just everything that distinguished him as a great human being. For me, the good thing about my new job was that I got to collaborate with the amazing people who did the real work: Kathy Bradford, Mark Rand, Patrick Quealy, and Drew Ferguson....

"In 2010, Liberty passed into its third technological era. Print journalism was on its way out. Fewer people wanted to wait for Liberty to arrive by mail. Bill had once been proud that we had subscribers in virtually every real country in the world, but changes in postal rates had nearly eliminated our worldwide audience. We needed to make a change, and we did: in late 2010, we became an online journal....

"Substantial writing is writing that endures, and I think you’ll find that the great majority of the writing we’ve published retains its interest in a way that journal writing ordinarily does not."

Read more: http://www.libertyunbound.com/node/1751
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Laura Ingalls Wilder as 'libertarian matriarch'

The Legacy of Laura Ingalls Wilder, One of America’s First Libertarians | TIME - David Boaz:

May 9, 2015 - "Laura Ingalls Wilder is a bestselling author again, 83 years after she began publishing her Little House on the Prairie books and 58 years after her death at age 90. Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography is a 472-page edition of Wilder’s original memoir, for which she couldn’t find a publisher in 1930....

"Wilder was born just after the Civil War in the Big Woods region of Wisconsin. Life was hard on the frontier, and with her parents and then her husband she moved to Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa, South Dakota, Florida, and eventually Mansfield, Missouri. She also became, unexpectedly, a sort of libertarian matriarch.

"Laura’s only child was Rose Wilder Lane. Lane was born in DeSmet, South Dakota, and grew up on her parents’ Rocky Ridge Farm in Missouri. After high school she drifted to San Francisco, married briefly, and began a career as a writer.... [B]y the 1930s ... she was a staunch libertarian. In 1935 she wrote in the Saturday Evening Post:

I am now a fundamentalist American; give me time and I will tell you why individualism, laissez faire and the slightly restrained anarchy of capitalism offer the best opportunities for the development of the human spirit. Also I will tell you why the relative freedom of human spirit is better — and more productive, even in material ways — than the communist, Fascist, or any other rigidity organized for material ends.

"Those ideas can be found in the Little House books, which Lane is said to have helped edit or ghostwrite. In Little House on the Prairie, young Laura hears the Declaration of Independence read and thinks, 'Americans won’t obey any king on earth. Americans are free. That means they have to obey their own consciences. … When I am a little older, Pa and Ma will stop telling me what to do, and there isn’t anyone else who has a right to give me orders. I will have to make myself be good'....

"Lane wrote two novels of her own about her family’s homestead, Let the Hurricane Roar (later retitled Young Pioneers) and Free Land, which made her a bestselling, well-paid writer. But her interests turned more to politics, and she became a vociferous adversary of President Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal, which she saw as 'creeping socialism'....

"In the dark year of 1943, during World War II, Lane and two other remarkable women published books that could be said to have given birth to the modern Libertarian movement. Lane published a passionate historical book called The Discovery of Freedom....

"Also in 1943 Lane met Roger MacBride, the 14-year-old son of her editor at Reader’s Digest. MacBride was fascinated by her ideas, visited her frequently at her Connecticut home, and came to think of himself as her ''dopted grandson.'

"[MacBride] was made a Republican elector in Virginia in 1972.... He cast his electoral vote for the new Libertarian Party ticket of philosopher John Hospers and journalist Tonie Nathan, the first woman to receive an electoral vote. He became the 1976 Libertarian presidential candidate and put the party on the map with ballot status in 32 states, a widely distributed campaign book, and a distant third-place finish....

"As Lane’s heir, he published another of Wilder’s manuscripts, The First Four Years, arranged for the popular 1970s television series, and wrote eight novels of his own about Rose’s early life, continuing in the vein of Little House."

Read more: http://time.com/3848967/laura-ingalls-wilder-is-back/
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Tonie Nathan, first woman to receive an electoral vote, dead at 91

Libertarian Tonie Nathan dies - Jeff Wright, Eugene Register-Guard:

March 21, 2014 - "Tonie Nathan of Eugene, the first woman to win an electoral vote in a presidential election, died early Thursday at age 91, family members confirmed....

"Tonie Nathan had lived in Eugene since 1968. She was a University of Oregon graduate with a degree in journalism, and she produced and occasionally hosted a talk show on KVAL TV.

"Paul Nathan, who lives in Palm Springs, Calif., recalled that he was 21 when he gave his mother some writings by Ayn Rand, the noted philosopher and novelist. That helped spur his mother’s political views of freedom, free markets and individuality, and prompted her to switch her political allegiance from the Democratic to Libertarian party, he said.

"Tonie Nathan attended the first national Libertarian Party convention in 1972 in Colorado as an interested observer and freelance writer, Paul Nathan said. Much to her astonishment, she ultimately was asked to join the party’s national ticket as presidential candidate John Hospers’ running mate.

"Hospers and Nathan each received the electoral vote of Roger MacBride, a renegade elector from Virginia."

Read more: http://www.registerguard.com/rg/news/local/31321715-75/nathan-paul-tonie-party-died.html.csp