The shortcomings of Sean Hannity as a cable news host and interviewer are widely known, yet he deserves some credit for interviewing Dennis Michael Lynch, despite his network’s seeming embargo of any information critical of its CEO’s dogmatic open borders agenda, on the day America celebrated its independence from its colonial master, Great Britain. You can view part of this interview, and read a rush transcript, on the FNC website.

I urge you to pay particular attention to the discussion of the well-organized campaign by Soros-bankrolled, La Raza affiliates like Casa de Maryland to impute racism to the dissent expressed by patriotic American citizens. This tactic will be employed with increasing frequency as the cheap labor lobby and its allies redouble their efforts to push the Gang of Eight monstrosity over the finish line in the House of Representatives. Kudos to Sean Hannity for bringing this issue to the attention of a national audience, however belatedly.

Let’s hope this is the beginning of  a trend.

The Cornyn fig leaf has just been voted down by the full Senate. AllahPundit has all the details.

One of the most frustrating aspects of the immigration monologue that’s unfolded over the past few years is the inability of one side-representing those who are committed to open borders and an uninterrupted stream of mass immigration-to acknowledge the legitimacy of the concerns expressed by their opponents, despite the fact that they constitute a significant majority of the American public. Perhaps the lack of a powerful, eloquent advocate for American interests who is a minority-yet is also liberal and has access to influential media and political circles within Washington D.C.-is responsible for this disconnect between reality as experienced by most Americans and the straitjacket of elite consensus on this topic. 

However, I think there are larger forces at work which serve to prevent open borders enthusiasts and beneficiaries from accepting the concept that there is a very large segment of the population that fundamentally disagrees with their political philosophy-and who do so not out of any ignoble or reactionary impulse. The cleavage between how these forces view themselves and their ideology and how the rest of America views them was nowhere more evident than at the screening of Two Americans, an anti-enforcement documentary critical of Joe Arpaio which was screened at New York Law School last month.

While we focused extensively on the film itself in my last post on this subject, we didn’t sufficiently address the post-film question and answer session, which included a panel filled with ACLU and AILA spokesmen that spent most of the allotted time advocating some form of legislative amnesty along the lines of what the Gang of Eight proposes. While I don’t object to the imbalanced nature of the discussion-the event was hosted by the ACLU-I was disappointed by the disingenuous-and at times, inaccurate-way in which the issues under discussion were framed.

Notwithstanding the meandering statement/jeremiad by the Puerto Rican gentleman seen in the photo above, there were several very incisive questions asked by audience members which were not addressed, or answered in a circumlocutory-if not misleading-manner. The evasive and/or misleading responses ranged from the answer of a representative of Bronx  Defenders who implied that illegal aliens living outside of New York City limits were being routinely detained and/or deported-neglecting to mention Governor Cuomo’s vitiation of Secure Communities-to the accusation by the filmmakers that Joe Arpaio was some sort of crypto-white supremacist-a slander that comes with the territory, unfortunately-because of a chapter in his latest book. Perhaps even more alarming  was the implication that the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform & Immigrant Responsibility Act and the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of the same year were calamitous laws, even though the former vested immigration enforcement powers in the same local and state authorities that open borders advocates claim are not legally allowed to execute enforcement and detention procedures. 

The most irritating part of the immigration panel though was the way the participants constructed a meta-narrative that studiously ignored any facts that might have weakened the argument for the elimination of immigration enforcement. The most prominent example of this tendency was the intense focus on how much money the private prison industry has spent lobbying Congress, a meme that has been given prominent play throughout the media since discussion of the latest amnesty plan began in earnest. The not so subtle implication being that avaricious contractors for the prison industrial complex are attempting to increase punitive sanctions against future, non-amnestied illegal aliens. The fact that over a billion dollars has been spent lobbying Congress on immigration reform-almost all of it by actors intent upon enacting amnesty or carving out large subsidies for their industry in the form of cheap, imported labor, was completely overlooked by all members of the panel.

What’s more, when confronted with a relatively simple question, i.e. “do you favor abolishing any restrictions upon immigration into the United States,” they were completely unable to formulate a definitive response. Andre Segura-an ACLU attorney charged with monitoring domestic immigration laws-spent nearly five minutes filibustering this seemingly binary question. Of course, we’re under no illusions as to what the answer to that question is. However, we also know that responding forthrightly would not be politically advantageous to the supporters of mass immigration and amnesty, which is why they feel compelled to engage in immigration kabuki. After all, arranging summits featuring Potemkin conservatives and sacrificial lambs, demonizing a heretofore obscure scholar, and bankrolling a multimillion dollar advertising campaign confusing private profits with public good is much easier than engaging in an honest, substantive debate over this nation’s immigration policies.

One of the more admirable qualities of open borders libertarians is honesty about their intentions and  beliefs. They come right out and enunciate the principles they adhere to, sometimes in editorials published in national newspapers which are read by scores of Americans. Occasionally, they’ll write entire books expostulating their theory of why abolishing immigration controls is a swell idea. Regardless of the medium they use to disseminate their views-and however incompatible their solutions are with certain libertarian principles-they do not contour their message in order to deceive a public that vehemently disagrees with their perspective. The same can’t be said for open borders leftists-and their allies in the corporatist blob-who refuse to be held accountable for their actual  beliefs, just as the architect of the bill that irreparably altered the United States of America refused to be held accountable for the deception he and his allies in the press corps employed in order to enact it into law.

In the end, that is the most bewildering aspect of this “debate.” Instead of actually engaging in an honest intellectual exercise involving what the United States wants and needs out of an immigration system-and allowing each side’s arguments to stand or fall on their relative merits-we are forced into Chinese finger traps of race which are not only based upon false premises-like most of the left’s racial narratives-but are wholly irrelevant to the subject under discussion. The issue isn’t that Americans who support political leaders like Russell Pearce and laws like SB 1070 are hard-hearted xenophobes or crass political opportunities-as films like Two Americans would lead you to believe-but that illegal aliens-such as the ones profiled in this film-present unique problems that open borders enthusiast do not wish to address.

It turns out that it’s much easier to create cinematic bogeymen and craft sympathetic human interest stories involving undocumented migrants than it is to tackle a complex area of public policy that has been left to fester for decades. There are two sides to every story, even if only one enjoys the favor of our social betters. That’s the true lesson to be gleaned from the tale of Two Americans.

As the Gang of Eight proceeds to railroad its scheme through Congress, aided by two of the worst Republicans to sit in the United States, and Speaker Boehner repeats bald-faced lies in order to enact the agenda of radical open borders advocates and partisan Democrats, it increasingly looks like it’ll be up to us to derail amnesty, as we did the last time. One of the keys to succeeding in this endeavor is exerting public pressure upon congressmen and senators who need the votes of conservative-inclined, patriotic, independent voters in order to remain in office. 

To that end, I strongly urge you to follow the advice of Numbers USA, and demand to know where Senator Begich stands on this issue. It’s time that the voices of Americans were heard. 

The problems in Europe will eventually become the problems of the United States, open borders sophistry notwithstanding, the only question is when they will manifest.   Whether we will ever see critics of Islam imprisoned expressly for their views, in effect, a reinstitution of the crime known as blasphemy, is  still to be determined. However, the fact that this administration-including outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton-has done everything in its capacity to apologize for the values embedded in our 1st Amendment and exercised by American citizens is a disturbing indication of where we are headed politically.

If current immigration trends continue-and there’s no reason to expect they won’t-expect similar behavior by future administrations, especially if our leaders are politically rewarded for such pandering. France is a cautionary tale in this regard, as the election of Francois Hollande was constructed in large part from the votes of millions of (Muslim) North African and Asian immigrants, as well as their children.

Today’s immigrants are tomorrow’s rulers.

With the unfortunate news that Eric Holder is going to remain in his position as head of the Department of Justice for the second Obama term-at least for the foreseeable future-it’s only fitting that we take a cursory glance at the defining moment of his tenure as Attorney General. I refer, of course, to Operation Fast and Furious, which let high powered arms-of the sort demonized by anti-2nd Amendment demagogues and Holder apologists Chuck Schumer and Dianne Feinstein-walk into the hands of ruthless Mexican drug cartels with the encouragement and under the leadership of Obama appointees in the ATF and Justice Department. 

One of those individuals is former Phoenix ATF Assistant Special Agent in Charge George T. Gillett, Jr., a man who was entrusted with overseeing Fast and Furious for over half a year, beginning in late 2009. It’s now been confirmed that a gun from this lethally stupid operation has been traced back to Mr. Gillett personally. Anyone who’s followed the fallout from perhaps the single most outrageous abuse of power by the Obama administration is familiar with the casualties which have resulted from this scheme, which are spread across the entire hemisphere.

The lack of accountability throughout this administration for those officials responsible for its implementation-including Mr. Gillette and others who have been promoted in spite of their criminality-should be astonishing, but is in fact reflective of the habitual blame-shifting and hypocrisy at the heart of Barack Obama’s presidency. What’s more, it reflects the inherent double standards that animate our government, which seeks to deny innocent American citizens their constitutional rights even as its leaders promulgate illegal policies that lead to the deaths of hundreds of innocent civilians abroad.

The same Capitol Hill gasbags eager to erode the 2nd Amendment in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre, a campaign based upon non-existent facts, are the first to defend Eric Holder and Justice Department officials under whose purview Fast and Furious unfolded, and who have done everything in their power to obstruct congressional investigations into their actions.

Whether we will make any progress in achieving justice during the President’s second term is debatable. Will the media-with a few commendable exceptions-continue to cover up for the malicious actions of government officials? Will the senators who installed Eric Holder into his lofty position begin to question their unfailing loyalty to an Attorney General who has lost the confidence of the American public and, to a great degree, Congress?

We shall see. Something that this latest revelation confirms is that elections do have consequences, some of them fatal.

To live in New York is to be surrounded by people suffering from various pathologies, many of whom you encounter on a daily basis if-like most of us-you use public transportation. Living here also means being surrounded by Marxists of varying hues, including Maoists, Trotskyites, and-as the photograph above illustrates, supporters of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Most of the time, international supporters of the only communist hereditary dictatorship fly under the radar. Outside of the faltering consortium of ethnic Koreans living in Japan-whose own stability has been imperiled for obvious reasons-there are not many people willing to support a regime which has killed enough of its subjects to rank comfortably between Pol Pot and Mengistu Haile Mariam in the annals of historical, third world despotism.

The event which occasioned these paeans to The Great Leader was the opening night of Red Dawn, a 1984 action-adventure thriller involving a Soviet invasion of the mainland United States that-much to the chagrin of the director of the original film-is being remade into a would-be blockbuster where the main antagonists are North Korean shock troops. Being a state-barely-where an economy  doesn’t exist and ICBMs are too poorly designed to reach the shores of the United States appears to have its advantages, at least from the perspective of a Hollywood film producer.

However, those going out of their way to avoid controversy usually have it thrust upon them, whether it be in the form of racially insensitive tweets, or a counter-protest staged by a bedraggled band of true believers led by an SDS spokesman who resembles a more unkempt version of Eric Stoltz, ca. The Butterfly Effect.

You thought SDS had disappeared with the departure of the last Americans from the U.S. embassy in Saigon, South Vietnam? Alas, it’s still extant, as is the Workers World, which peddles old ideas from the new left slightly repackaged-emphasis on slightly-for the Internet Age. The bilingual edition of the latter no doubt aimed to appeal to emigres from that vast swathe of Latin America which is infatuated with socialism, notwithstanding its rather obvious shortcomings.

Whether the proclivity of newcomers to favor government management of the economy will translate into increased support for The Great, Dear, Omniscient Leader is a matter for future generations to decide, but the spirited crowd of approximately half a dozen devoted communists seemed to be solidly in the corner of Kim Jong-Un and opposed to the shameless political dwarfs behind the cinematic reincarnation of this motion picture.

One of the scheduled speakers was the man wearing the jaunty keffiyeh seen above, who hails from the workers’ paradise that is post-Batista Cuba. Apparently, Raul Castro’s tropical paradise is, like the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, another victim of malicious, patently false Western propaganda. You might be asking yourself why, if that’s the case, he is in New York City right now instead of Havana. Oh, you vile, imperialist cur.

There was also an unofficial spokesperson from Occupy Wall Street whose purpose I wasn’t able to readily discern, although perhaps it was intended to add ballast to a movement that has seen better days. Most recently, when the Soviet Union existed as more than a whimsical advertising campaign from Hershey’s.

In fact, one of the points emphasized by our Alexi Lalas look-alike was that North Korea had a thriving economy during the untainted, benevolent reign of the Soviet Empire. Aside from the fact that this is wholly inaccurate, this assertion is 100 percent true. Still, you wonder why a regime that prides itself on its rigid autarky would rely upon its two largest neighbors in order to survive.

One of my hopes for the anti-Red Dawn/pro-deranged, overtly racist, vaguely Confucian Communist junta demonstration was that its small number of participants would be dwarfed by a slightly larger group of trolls, a la Communists for Kerry or Bureaucrash during its heyday.

Alas, no such hilarity ensued. I did get the chance to capture an amusing confrontation between comrade Maupin and a friend of mine who was also there to record this historic event. I don’t recall what was said verbatim, but I’m sure it involved a denunciation of capitalist lickspittles and/or running dogs of imperialism. For those of you who are interested in watching this tete-a-tete for yourselves, you can view it in its entirety on Youtube, which I’m certain would have been created by North Korean engineers if their nation hadn’t been bombarded by Western disinformation campaigns.

Sarcasm aside, one of the most disturbing aspects of this rally was a brief speech delivered by an envoy from the America-Democratic Republic of Korea Friendship Committee, who parroted the same lies you find published regularly by North Korea’s official news service.

Like the useful idiots who traveled back from Moscow with nothing but praise for Joseph Stalin-even as he was in the process of liquidating class enemies within the Soviet state-this loathsome creature returned from Pyongyang in order to stand upon a soapbox-quite literally-and laud the achievements of  a state which is synonymous with indifference to human life and the ruthless suppression of anyone who dares to exercise his natural rights.

It’s sickening to think that such a creature walks among us, but like ignorance, disease, and hatred, he is a pestilence which has yet to be eradicated in a world where knowledge is at the fingertips of most of humanity. A sad yet ineluctable truth that we’ll have confront as plunge ahead into an era just as turbulent as the one which occasioned a cinematic classic of the Cold War.

Update: Breitbart coverage here.  Also, a write-up from North Korea News. Watch Adrian Hong’s speech Escape from North Korea. A much longer speech by a survivor of a North Korean concentration camp can be viewed here. Hat Tip: Todd Seavey.

Although the official, i.e. federal, observance will take place tomorrow, today is Veterans Day. It is the holiday established to honor those Americans who have served in our nation’s Armed Forces. The lack of leadership and unclear missions that characterize some of our current overseas military engagements-describing them as wars would be too inconvenient for some people-don’t diminish the sacrifices made by the men and women who have enlisted in the United States military. Sacrifices that that go overlooked by too many-including the hive of scum and villainy which nests inside of Capitol Hill-but not by the Patriot Guard Riders, as Robert Glisson reminds us in his guest-blog for Ilana Mercer’s website.

For those of you who want to assist those veterans that are returning home a little less than whole, I would like to recommend the Wounded Warrior Project, which seeks to help wounded veterans reintegrate into civilian life. I’ve donated to the WWP in the past, and will hopefully do so in the future. They do good work, and deserve to be recognized on this solemn occasion.

Understand that America is God’s Crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming! Here you stand, good folk, think I, when I see them at Ellis Island, here you stand in your fifty groups, your fifty languages, and histories, and your fifty blood hatreds and rivalries.

But you won’t be long like that, brothers, for these are the fires of God you’ve come to – these are fires of God. A fig for your feuds and vendettas! Germans and Frenchmen, Irishmen and Englishmen, Jews and Russians—into the Crucible with you all! God is making the American.

-The Melting Pot (1908)

The aftermath of Hurricane Sandy continues to inflict damage upon the Northeast, particularly the Tri-State Area. The communities of Breezy Point, and the Rockaways, as well as the coastal communities of the Jersey Shore bore the brunt of Sandy’s wrath-as we’ve detailed throughout this past week.. However, the devastation from this natural disaster, including the tragic deaths of nearly two dozen Staten Islanders and destruction of large parts of the barrier islands, has impacted the entire states of New York and New Jersey. Needless to say, our thoughts and prayers continue to be with those who suffered, and continue to suffer, as a result of this unprecedented natural disaster.

One of the sights and sounds we’ve become inured to over the past week is the routine press conferences held by local public officials. Particularly, the current mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, who has used the platform of his office to do everything from dispense information about power outages, to order NBA Commissioner David Stern to call off the inaugural game of the Barclays Center, home to the Brooklyn Nets.

Mayor Bloomberg has also dispensed Spanish-language synopses of each address before the customary Q&A session with members of New York City’s press corps. While there has been much mockery of his stilted attempts at bilingualism, including a trenchant parody of the Mayor written by someone who goes by the online pseudonym El Bloombito, I think there is a much more substantive issue at stake than the Michael Bloomberg’s fluency en Espanol. Namely, the sort of ethno-linguistic fracturing and polarization that today’s modern species of politician excels at.

Undoubtedly, some see Mayor Bloomberg’s nasally stabs at communicating with monolingual, Hispanic New Yorkers as a commendable form of outreach to this city’s burgeoning Latino community. As an overture of friendship to disenfranchised citizens, legal permanent residents, or illegal aliens-of whom he’s so fond-who cannot comprehend this nation’s lingua franca. However, the truth is much more unsavory, and reflects the real priorities of Michael Bloomberg’s mayoralty.

This is a man whose primary political ambitions have not been eliminating public graft, political corruption, or blatant cronyism, nor improving the efficacy of public services, nor addressing our city’s dismal public education system, and certainly not relieving the burden upon middle class taxpayers. Rather, his focus has been on suppressing Americans’ right to keep and bear arms-while some of his own police officers smuggle stolen weapons-as well as crusading for the complete abolition of any immigration controls which still exist, in spite of the crimes, often heinous-sometimes lethal-illegal aliens inflict upon ordinary New Yorkers, and other Americans, each and every day.

Minimizing our common language  is simply of a piece with Mayor Bloomberg’s campaign to negate the essential characteristics we once shared as Americans. Communicating in Spanish is a transparently political ploy, not a sincere attempt to transmit vital information. There are already many Spanish-language television networks and radio stations which broadcast each address the mayor delivers, in its entirety, in Spanish.

Furthermore, this city has had a large Spanish-speaking population for the better part of a century-from the Dominican immigrants who came here at the turn of the last century  to the Puerto Rican transplants who came here after  Operation Bootstrap-yet despite this linguistic diversity, and the well known tendency of New York politicians to pander to various ethnic constituencies, no previous occupant of Gracie Mansion felt compelled to provide real-time translations of his press conferences in any other language.

What’s even more intriguing is that he doesn’t provide a precis of his speeches in languages other than Spanish, despite the fact that-as multiculturalists who oppose assimilation never tire of telling us-this city is a beautiful mosaic-some would liken it to the Tower of Babel-of foreign languages. There is no summary delivered in Korean, or Tagalog, Hebrew or Russian, although the way things are going, that might soon change. No press conference is interrupted in order to deliver remarks in Creole or Russian, despite the fact that many New Yorkers communicate in those tongues.

This lays bare the hypocrisy at the heart of the multicultural mindset and open borders dogma, which does not seek diversity so much as conformity. The tortured Spanish transliterations of Mike Bloomberg, like the Spanish stump speeches of Mit Romney’s son Craig, are calculated to appeal to a target demographic which the mainstream media, ethnic grievance industry, as well as its benefactors in office, have extolled as the only important slice of the American nation, whether it be in entertainment, employment, or political spoils.

Even though our dissatisfaction with Mayor Bloomberg’s mangled Spanish might seem like a petty quibble at a time like this, the persistent failure of bilingual education, which has squandered millions of dollars in New York City since its inception, demonstrates that there are consequences to this misguided policy, the worst born of them born by its intended beneficiaries.

Something to consider the next time El Bloombito decides to address the city’s press corps.

As we’ve discussed in previous posts, the main draw for LibertyFest was not personalities. Although Ron Paul, ironically, has become an icon for many in the libertarian movement within the United States, that movement is a cult of ideas more than anything. In fact, one of the recurring themes throughout the day was the repeated emphasis upon how this was a leaderless movement. In a speech that was one part performance art, one part Jonathan Edwards spiritual jeremiad, and wholly Kokesh, Adam Kokesh, of  Adam vs. The Man, inveighed against the mentality which insists that there is a single person, or even a group of people, who are fit to “lead” other individuals.

Although made in typically histrionic fashion, his point about the logical inconsistency of fighting against the state by relinquishing your identity-or letting it be subsumed by someone else running for office under the liberty banner-resonated with the audience. Contra Dan Halloran, he declared that the Ron Paul campaign was the “compromise” made by sincere anarcho-capitalists. The fact that an elected official, however heterodox, is able to inspire people who believe voting to be an act of aggression is testament to the soundness of his ideas, almost all of which revolve around the simple principle of self-ownership.

This concept is never so explicit as during an encounter with an agent of the Transportation Security Administration, an horrific experience with which anyone who travels by air is intimately familiar. That’s why I was pleased to run into James Baab, of We Won’t Fly, while milling about the Libertyfest grounds. The campaign to eradicate an agency that is detested by large segments of the public, and whose abuses-unlike other government bodies-are in full view of the citizenry, has been led by individuals, not politicians, nor even political activists. To the contrary, the political heat generated by the TSA’s outrages-however evanescent-has been a direct result of individual travelers exposing the obscenely subservient nature of our relationship to the state which this arm of the government crystallizes for airline travelers every single day.

This sort of citizen-driven opposition is just one avenue libertarians can take when contemplating how best to disseminate their message to a broader swath of the American public, because you don’t have to be an agorist  or minarchist in order to grasp the violative nature of a TSA agent groping an elderly woman who simply wants to see her grandchildren.

One speaker who managed to capture the essence of this diversity of action was Chris Lawless, otherwise known as Ron Paul’s giant, who delivered a fantastic speech exploring how each person can contribute something useful to the battle for a freer civilization. One of his contributions, in addition to his work on the Paul campaign, was moving to the state of New Hampshire as part of the Free State Project, a nationwide endeavor to create an enclave of libertarian thinking and autonomous, decentralized decision-making within the United States.

Lawless emphasized that his choices would not necessarily be the choice of others, and perhaps shouldn’t be, and that the multitude of talents and ambitions within this movement ensured that each person had a role to play in advancing the cause of liberty. Historians and economists are two vocations that are amply represented within libertarianism, which I was reminded of when I saw Austrian Economist Robert Murphy chatting with some of my friends.

Murphy is perhaps best known as the hungry challenger in the ever-elusive Robert Murphy-Paul Krugman debate, a contest which-despite its seeming win-win outcome-is just as likely to occur as the much-hyped Floyd Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao boxing match. Although Krugman has postulated some interesting theories about why he’s thus far rejected Robert Murphy’s generous offer, some libertarians have given more convincing explanations as to why Krugman is wise to dodge this confrontation.

Tom Woods of Liberty Classroom discussed the Krugman-Murphy debate during his speech, which served as the capstone to Libertyfest. He also touched upon a lot of pressing issues facing the liberty movement as it tries to build upon the momentum of the Paul campaign. Ron Paul’s presidential campaign was unique in the sense that it was not about winning primaries or accumulating power. Rather, it served as a platform to educate the electorate on the principles of self-governance and interacting with others by means other than the coercion of state agents. He correctly pointed out that the supporters of Ron Paul’s primary opponents, e.g. Herman Cain, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, among others, had disappeared once their campaigns had run their course, whereas the Ron Paul revolution continues to thrive, despite the fact that he is not the Republican presidential nominee.

The truth is that the more the Paul campaign veered away from its principles-often at the behest of political strategists such as Jesse Benton-the less support it attracted among the Republican electorate. This dedication to core values was highlighted by an anecdote involving an appearance Tom Woods made on Dennis Prager’s nationally syndicated radio program earlier this year. After agreeing for much of their conversation, which focused primarily on domestic economic and fiscal matters, the discussion shifted to foreign policy; there’s the rub. The upshot is that Tom Woods is no longer welcome on Mr. Prager’s show.

Although he would, theoretically, be able to reach more people if he had elided the issue-or obscured his true beliefs regarding national security/foreign policy-it would have been at the expense of maintaining his integrity. The tradeoff, in his view, was not worth making this sacrifice. This was perhaps the most important part of his speech that day, because it illustrated what the liberty movement should keep in mind when it’s marketing itself to the broader public.

While some believe that downplaying the essential tenets of this philosophy will spread its popularity, that belief is mistaken. Tom Woods’s own experience during the 2012 Paul campaign-where he was exposed to different strands of libertarianism he had never heard of, and forged lasting friendships with people he didn’t know existed a year ago-demonstrates that liberty brings people together.