Government's Folly » Activism http://www.governmentsfolly.com A libertarian discussion on the alternatives to the government's solutions. Sat, 20 Mar 2010 21:42:08 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 Why I Don’t Support Bureaucrash Anymore http://www.governmentsfolly.com/2009/08/27/support-bureaucrash-anymore/ http://www.governmentsfolly.com/2009/08/27/support-bureaucrash-anymore/#comments Fri, 28 Aug 2009 00:36:13 +0000 Scott http://www.governmentsfolly.com/?p=409 Why do I not support Bureaucrash Anymore? As I sit here in my favorite t-shirt, the Bureaucrash “Enjoy Capitalism” t-shirt, I will tell you why I do not support Bureaucrash anymore.  If you have been paying attention, and judging by the number of readers I get, you haven’t, I have recently replaced the Bureaucrash link with a Fr33Agents.com link. There is a good reason for that. First, let’s have a little background on what Bureaucrash is. Bureaucrash was started by the now defunct Henry Hazlitt Foundation as an on-the-ground, hip, liberty activist organization. I first learned about this organization way back when it was part of the foundation and it’s whole Free-Market.com/.net group of websites and organizations. It was basically a place to come to find other people in your area to do new and innovative and cool activism and protesting and “crashing.” I suppose the term crashing came from the idea that groups wouldn’t have big large protests and marches and things, but would go in places that that other groups had organized like meetings, protests, groups and then do their type of thing. It also had great t-shirts, fliers, electronic pictures. I remember one of the early ideas for crashing was to go to a computer lab at your school and change the background on some or all of the computers to one of the Bueracrash pictures. After the Foundation went under, Bueracrash survived and became part of the International Society for Individual Liberty. It kind of started dying, until Jason Talley and after him Peter Eyre took over as Crasher-In-Chef and really revamped the organization with the new ownership of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

All was going well until Peter Eyre decided that he was going to take on a different project called the Motor Home Diaries, where he and a few other people go around the country looking for freedom. Now I had stopped paying attention to Buereaucrash (and liberty activism in general) for awhile until I heard on Free Talk Live, Ian talking about how Bureaucrash has really lost it’s way and how he along with many others had left Bureaucrash Social (the networking portion of Bureaucrash) and joined a group called Fr33 Agents started by former members of Bureaucrash including former Crasher-In-Chief Jason Talley.

Now I needed to figure out what had happened to what was quit honestly my favorite liberty organization. I searched the internet and found disturbing information and by accident listened to an archive of Free Talk Live that told me what I needed to know. Apparently the Competitive Enterprise Institute had hired one Lee Doren, a conservative blogger and Youtube News Guy. A self-described libertarian-conservative or as he sometimes puts it part of the “traditional wing” of the liberty movement. It did not look good. What he said on Free Talk Live in that archive, and what can be found on the internet of what he supports is not very libertarian at all.

As Norman from Libertarian Longhorns writes about Lee:

* He supports the FairTax Plan and the FlatTax plan. (Any reader of LCC should know that the FlatTax is not flat and the FairTax is not fair.)
* He supports “school choice” programs. (The only school choice a true libertarian can support is disassembling the public school system.)
* He supports the Iraq War and other wars of aggression.
* He openly admits that he voted for Mitt Romney in the last presidential primary rather than consider the principled Ron Paul.
* He does not consistently hold to the Non-Aggression principle, as admitted on Free Talk Live.

The first four are horrible, but of course all you need to know is that last one, because if you don’t hold to the Non-Agression principle you are simply not a Libertarian.  And of course, the first four would be a violation of that principle anyway.

To put it simply, Lee Doren along with the Competitive Enterprise Institute has killed Bureaucrash, turning it the way of the Libertarian Party. Where they sacrifice principle in order to try and reach a larger audience. Too many have left the organization to form other organizations such as Fr33Agents.com or ABC Action (After Bureaucrash) that even if a new Crash-In-Chief was hired right away, it would never be the same.

]]> http://www.governmentsfolly.com/2009/08/27/support-bureaucrash-anymore/feed/ 1