Welcome to LibertarianToday.com. I hope L.T. will become a regular stop on your Internet travels for reading, participation and intellectual stimulation.

This site has several purposes. The first and foremost is to provide a gathering place for libertarian-minded people to read articles and opinions germane to the libertarian movement and to contribute their own opinions and ideas about how libertarianism might change the political landscape, both today and in the future. My hope is that this will become a forum of vigorous debate, one that ponders and attempts to answer such questions as how a libertarian movement might strategically challenge the two main American political parties; how it would attack problems differently and more effectively than the Democrats and Republicans; and why it's ascension would be beneficial to both America and the world.

As anyone vaguely familiar with libertarianism knows, it is a movement of many different motivations. For some it is a single issue, for others it is a worldview. But what all libertarians seem to have in common is love of freedom, distaste for government overreach and a fear of how far that reach, if left unchecked, may ultimately extend. In short, libertarians bristle at government control and at the arrogance and abuse that so often accompany it. And they bristle at those who enable government control as well.

It follows, then, that many libertarians resent what has become a de facto partnership between the Federal Government, the Democrats, the Republicans and a few major corporations and special interests to dominate the American political process. And worse yet, to put that process and its machinations to work for their own narrow and shortsighted self-interests, often at the expense and to the detriment of the very public they purport to represent. Which raises the second major purpose of this site: to point out the ways in which governmental policy no longer reflects the interests of the American public, but rather the interests of those influencing and formulating that policy, and the interests of the government itself. And to show how and why a libertarian form of government would different.

And it would be different, mostly because libertarianism operates under a different guiding principle than do other forms of government. Libertarianism assumes that to be happy, an individual must be free. And to stay free, he must live under an explicitly limited form of government whose primary mission is to defend that freedom. This, by extension, means relying upon non-governmental solutions to most communal problems and allowing for central government involvement only in those rare instances when local solution are impossible. Of course, this vision of government was part of the founding ideology of our nation, which also explicitly and drastically limited the reach of government. But unfortunately those restrictions have been regularly ignored and eroded by the keepers of the public trust ever since. To a true libertarian, such disregard is and would continue to be anathema. And under a truly libertarian form of government, could never take place.

As is the case with all grand ideas, libertarianism will not evolve, mature and grow into a viable entity that can challenge the leviathan status quo without organization. This site seeks to make a small contribution to that organization by providing a forum to help develop a libertarian platform and a context to debate and refine what that platform should be. The articles and writings posted on this site are done so with that goal in mind. I hope the reader submissions will take this into account as well. Thanks for dialing us in--and happy reading!

-Chris Moore, Editor