Consider this question for a moment: If you were asked to explain why a free market is a good thing, how would you do it? What would come to mind? In less than 10 minutes of watching these videos, you can understand the benefits of trade and be ready to explain it to someone else.

Video 1: Wealth Creation

Video 2: Cooperation

Video 3: Conservation

The LearnLiberty.org project is sponsored by the Institute for Humane Studies, so kudos to them for doing great work.

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Trade is Made of Win

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Remember this during the next election cycle

See more Ron Paul highlights from the debate at RonPaulFlix.

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Ron Paul on Faith and Prayer

This video is brought to you by the Foundation for a Free Society, who have done other videos featured here on LCC like their first video on liberty and the video of David Simpson’s speech from Nullify Now..

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Vikings and Legalized Plunder, oh my!

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This is not a form of brainwashing.

The second segment is on war and society. Boaz’s first statement isn’t terrible; he says war is bad for a variety of reasons. It is costly and does not accomplish anything, and he even blames American occupations as the cause of terrorism. Then Boaz completely refutes Stossel’s suggestion that surge was a good idea. Good for him, that’s correct. But then the Q&A session starts (starts at 3:40) and I just about hit the ceiling.

A students asks, “True or false: slaughtering innocent people is never justified.” Stossel, without missing a beat, says that we “had to kill innocent people to end World War 2.” Really? Regulating aspirin? Oh no! That’s an attack on liberty! Incinerating a city full of civilians whose government is trying to surrender? Fully defensible. Fire-bombing Dresden just because it’s a German city? Fully defensible. But gee whiz, if nuking a city into oblivion isn’t wrong, is there any killing in war that is not justified?

Boaz counters the original question by saying that “slaughter” is a charged term and we need to rephrase the question. Even granting that Boaz’s first counter is true, that the question is loaded, his answer that follows is horrifying. Essentially, he argues that killing innocent people probably is justified if it leads to creating freer countries. “Self-defense and national independence are basically the only reasons” that killing innocents is justified. So he is implicitly affirming exactly what Stossel said. I don’t care that he said it “should not be undertaken lightly,” trying to justify deaths of innocent people is always taking an issue too lightly.

I’m kind of a fan of a certain principle of morality, one stating that you do not get special privileges to do certain immoral things if the “circumstances” are right. Killing innocent people is one thing only: murder. You don’t get a free pass to kill innocents so long as “freedom” is in sight. So, an innocent British traveler dies in the American Revolution because an American soldier became angry? Murder. No special rights because you’re a “freedom fighter.”

And if you concede that innocents die in every war, then you have only one conclusion to draw: War is mass murder. Get it?

I’ll give Stossel some grace considering he has not been very exposed to our philosophy except in limited amounts. He is not being thoughtful toward the issue. Perhaps he would come around just as he did on free markets given a substantive and fair presentation of the information. I met him in Austin about a year ago and I think he is a good fellow, and I truly hope he can figure out this critical principle of libertarianism.

How Boaz can hold such contradictory thoughts in his head, though, is downright baffling. I would plead with him to reconsider such positions. Liberty means liberty for all.

Dear Christian reader, I hope we will not make the same mistakes in our own thinking, lest we fall prey to the next justification for mass murder.

UPDATE: This post is getting a lot of traction right now due to it being highlighted in places like LewRockwell.com and others, so I just want to make absolutely clear that I still think Students for Liberty is a fantastic organization and I am not implicating them at all in this particular breach of libertarian principle. I also hold a lot of respect for the work that Stossel and Boaz have done and I am urging them to become better by talking openly about this.

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John Stossel and David Boaz at the SFL International Conference

I am fascinated by cultural movements for a variety of reasons, and some of the most interesting cultural tidbits you find occur in the form of internet memes. The website Know Your Meme does an incredible job of documenting and explaining how these things develop and propagate, and this live presentation at a recent conference illustrates why they consider their work important to the preservation of cultural knowledge. It even has some implications to how we think about intellectual property (or the lack thereof). Best quote: “Culture isn’t just valuable when you can stuff it full of DRM and sell it.”

Also, if you haven’t heard about Amazon’s Cloud Player, check it out. It is AMAZING.

That’s all for now, enjoy your weekend!

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News of the Week: Of Memes and Clouds

Isn’t that fantastic? Share it with your friends, maybe you’ll be able to teach them about liberty soon…

By the way, the Executive Director is Jason Rink, author of Disciple of Liberty. He is a great friend of mine now and I am trying really hard to get him to start writing for LCC. Maybe some comments here would convince him?

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Who Owns You? I sure don’t…

Once again, Wikileaks is dominating the internet. Its so crazy now that it seems like a soap opera. Governments gone wild, evil business dealings, sexual misconduct allegations… what next?

Well, at least Ron Paul has some sense:

Not to mention this article from Gizmodo, which links to this LCC post.

And of course, my favorite comic of the week.

Share your news and links in the comments!

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News of the Week: Dec. 5–11, 2010

I just love Jimmy’s machete… “Oh, that’s sweet.”

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NFL vs. TSA, you make the call!