Thursday, August 16, 2007

Liberty Summer Seminar

This weekend, my family and I will be heading off to a small burg called Orono, somewhere northeast of Toronto. It is the site of the annual Liberty Summer Seminar. I've been wanting to attend for years but things always kept getting in the way. I am looking forward to seeing friends from back in the early days of the Libertarian Party of Canada and listening to some interesting speakers, including my friend, lawyer and author Karen Selick, the Prince of Pot (Marc Emery) who I haven't seen for decades, and others. It should be a fun weekend.

One of the reasons I am finally making the trek is that I want to expose my son to libertarian thought and libertarian individuals. It is refreshing to be among people who might not agree on every single thing but who are nevertheless very much against restrictions placed on the individual by the state and very much for individual responsibility. I think it will do him a world of good. I know it will help recharge my batteries too.

We are lucky, here in North America, still to be able to meet freely and speak freely about things that we find troublesome. That is one of our natural rights, something that should be a given and never subject to abrogation by authority, but we know all too well, don't we, that the freedoms of speech and movement are all too often casualties of over-reaching governments and tyrants.

We'll have fun. If you are near there, drop in. Find out more here. It will be worth it.

8 comments:

  1. Ah, since when is Marc "Svend's My Man" Emery a Libertarian? He's a Layton pinko. Pot is really a drug of the pethetic, people rather hero worship over their self incrimination (waiving human rights) and forget the fact he supported sin taxes in 2002 with the Vancouver Mayoral Campaign and he has all the suspicious markings of a Narc. He incriminates himself and gets away with more; DEA means Drugs Emery Approves. He's really freaken uptight like he hates what he advocates and went against Campbell of the PMP in Vancouver-Centre to support the Ring Thief with a slap on the wrist, "Theft or Fraud?"
    He and a lot of LPC ancients are todays tories like the Reformers who aren't LPC now.

    Best

    Gölök Zoltán Leenderdt Franco Buday
    "We are not afraid to follow the truth where ever it may lead, nor [afraid]
    to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it." -- Thomas Jefferson

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  2. WOW. I'm not sure how to respond to this comment, but I love a challenge so here goes:

    The basic tenet of libertarianism is (and this should come as no surprise) liberty. That means the freedom to do as you wish -- as long as it does not infringe directly on someone else's rights. That means if you wish to spend all your time doped up, it is no concern of anyone else.

    Hand-in-hand with liberty comes responsibility. That means that if you do something of your own free will, you bear the consequences. If it is something that is good and profitable, you keep the proceeds. If it is something bad and deleterious, you pay the associated costs. That means that if someone spends all his life in a drug-induced haze and can't generate income to keep himself alive, he starves. It's not up to me or anyone else to support him, to pay his medical bills, or to make him feel better about himself.

    I don't dope. I think people who spend their lives getting blotto are fools, or at least behave foolishly in that particular respect. But I support their right to drink or dope or to engage in any other behaviour that appears foolish to me, because not to do so would be hypocritical and unprincipled.

    Marc Emery looks for trouble. He sees himself as a man with a mission. Would I do as he does? No. Do I support some choices he has made? No. Do I understand an alignment with the NDP? Philosophically, no. Pragmatically, maybe. The left is considerably more supportive of individual foible than is the right, and in his quest for making marijuana legal and widely available, Marc must see the NDP as allies. I find the NDP morally repugnant on so many levels, but I support Marc's right to engage in foolish behaviour. It's his life.

    I'm not sure who you are, but you appear to have a bitter streak in you and I wonder why. Marc is no threat to any of us. And he is fun to listen to. As to the content of his speech or the wider context of his behaviour and his life in general, I am a thinking man and can can choose whether to accept or reject all or part of what he represents. That too is part of freedom.

    Thanks for your comment!

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  3. I'm happy for you getting to go at last to the LIberty Seminar. We'll want a full report. Have a grand time!

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  4. It seems so strange to find a Canadian Libertarian or any Libertarian movement in Canada at all. I like it, I find it heartening and you expressed their base views wonderfully. I went to school with chubby, arrogant Jack Leyton and also with Trudeau's to-the-end mistress.

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  5. Thanks, phlegmfatale, more on that topic later today, I hope.

    Lin: you sure get around, don't you? You could write a book about your life!

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  6. No theft or fraud. Marijuanna, like tobacco smoking invades my breathing space as does public drunkenness (somewhat worse); I personally want the war aka "end justifies the means" on anything to end. Drugs, Terror, what have you. The trouble here, is not being a Emery worshipper, or DEA supporter I sometimes feel conflicted. Frankly my point is the pathetic dopers are so obsessed with it they started a party. Why not the Kegger Party or the Heroin Party? Where is that?
    1. freedom from arbitrary or despotic government or control. 2. freedom from external or foreign rule; independence. 3. freedom from control, interference, obligation, restriction, hampering conditions, etc.; power or right of doing, thinking, speaking, etc., according to choice. 4. freedom from captivity, confinement, or physical restraint: The prisoner soon regained his liberty. 5. permission granted to a sailor, esp. in the navy, to go ashore. 6. freedom or right to frequent or use a place: The visitors were given the liberty of the city. 7. unwarranted or impertinent freedom in action or speech, or a form or instance of it: to take liberties. 8. a female figure personifying freedom from despotism. —Idiom 9. at liberty, a. free from captivity or restraint. b. unemployed; out of work. c. free to do or be as specified: You are at liberty to leave at any time during the meeting.
    Libertarian: –noun 1. a person who advocates liberty, esp. with regard to thought or conduct. 2. a person who maintains the doctrine of free will (distinguished from necessitarian). –adjective 3. advocating liberty or conforming to principles of liberty. 4. maintaining the doctrine of free will.

    "That means the freedom to do as you wish -- as long as it does not infringe directly on someone else's rights." is unfortunately not quite how it works in definition, however I am fine with this attitude, but poisonous polon and second hand fumes, all be it bad but not worse than first/second hand taken by user, does infringe on my right like an ass who never changes his muffler.

    It's funny why not pragmatically join up with the KKK? They are pro-pot as well?
    Frankly the point is Marc Emery is not a Libertarian, he is a pro-pot communist.
    At least this is the most recent side he has shown.
    He is pro-stealing, pro-pride (anti-privacy gay extremism), into pro-NDP and Svend Robinson movements, What does he support the ban on trans fats that Libby Davies and Jack Layton are proud of? Especially when MSG is still allowed and causes a psychotic disorder in many.

    All the same the LPC has violated the principles of Liberty in relation to a Vancouver-Centre Challenge and according to the party leader even Toronto constituencies. I know the latter less closely, and in doing so denied voting members their rights as voting members.
    So Libertarianism is having it's trial, I am even wondering why Doug Stanhope got no help when the FEC violated his right to speak and liberty not allowing him to run and joke about and mention his campaign at all at work as his comedic alter-ego from the USA LP(.org).

    Best,


    Gölök Zoltán Leenderdt Franco Buday
    "The village atheist has the right to be heard; he has no right to be heeded. While he has a right not to have his own children indoctrinated in what he believes are false and foolish teachings, he has no right to dictate what other children may be taught." -- Patrick J. Buchanan

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  7. I like what you said about living in North America. Sounds like you had a great time at the seminar. What did you son think about it the seminar?

    I've read and agree with a lot of things you have posted. I've never really thought too much about Libertarianism. I don't want to sound... ah... simple minded or foolish, but how does it line up with God's Word?

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  8. Lady G~ -- my son liked some of the proceedings but was bored by some as well. He's at that age where he is trying to sort things out and we are exposing him to as much intellectual stimulation as we can. He has to decide what to accept or reject, and at what pace.

    I grew up in a very religious Pentecostal home. My mother, when I was quite young, sometimes would say to me something like: "That shouldn't be allowed," in reference to things that she thought might be in conflict with her religious beliefs. I remember telling her that if it was OK to enact legislation that prohibited or enshrined some things, then the precedent was there to prohibit or make mandatory other things as the majority of voters changed from one demographic to another over time.

    Libertarians believe in natural rights to life, liberty and property. These are things that can't morally be granted or taken away, they exist by virtue of the fact that we are born, and belong to us as long as we live. That means that as long as we don't impose our actions and beliefs on others, we can do as we wish. We can read what we wish, associate with whom we wish, worship as we wish, and no-one has any moral authority to change that.

    If we force others to worship only in Christian churches or prohibit them from reading 'Catcher in the Rye,' then we have set the stage for a time when the majority of voters could force us to worship only in a state-approved church (or prohibit us from worshiping at all, which is more likely) and prohibiting us from reading the bible or any Christian literature.

    There are libertarians of all types, from Christian to atheist and every other possibility in between. One thing we all agree on is that what we choose to do with our lives is no business of anyone else's, most especially not of the government.

    Libertarianism is the best possible political system for anyone who believes that Christians are being persecuted. A Libertarian government won't interfere with your natural rights. And libertarian voters want to be left alone and recognize that that means that they have to leave you alone as well.

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