This past year has been our most productive yet in terms of spreading ideas on liberty. It has also been one of our most difficult in terms of the financial resources that are necessary to sustain our endeavors. Thus, I hope you will give this letter your very careful consideration.
A few years ago, our supporters entrusted us with the funds to construct a first-class website that would enable us to spread the philosophy of freedom to people all over the
world, especially here in the United States. That financial support — and the website it brought
into existence — has paid off in ways that we could not even imagine when we began the
project. Consider our website statistics in the last year alone:
Alexa.com ranking:
September 2002 - 47,749 December 2003 - 9,365
Total website hits:
September 2002 - 5,354,561 December 2003 - 39,154,487 (Increase of 631%)
Average hits per day:
September 2002 - 12,688 December 2003 - 47,691 (Increase of 276%)
Unique Visitors:
September 2002 - 135,920 December 2003 - 839,377 (Increase of 518%)
Attempting to harness as much of the power of the Internet as possible, one year ago we created
what has turned out to be one of the libertarian movement's most dynamic and popular online
publications — our FFF Email Update. Each and every morning six days a week, we carefully
select articles, editorials, and editorial cartoons that apply libertarian principles to the burning issues of the day, with the objective of providing people with the highest-quality libertarian “editorial page” in the world. We not only post it on our website but also send it to our constantly growing list of email subscribers (41% increase in the past year).
Several months ago, we added a special Saturday Biography Bonus to our FFF Email Update,
which features biographical sketches of such libertarian luminaries as Ludwig von Mises,
Leonard E. Read, Friedrich von Hayek, Murray Rothbard, and Frédéric Bastiat.
We also added the FFF Blog, which has enabled us to provide rapid-fire daily capsule
commentaries in response to the events of the day.
Most recently, we added a News Section to our FFF Email Update, which provides carefully
culled breaking news on such important subjects as the economy, the drug war, law,
immigration, and gun control to our subscribers.
And the articles and commentaries are all there in our website archives — a giant libertarian
resource bank for anyone to access anywhere in the world!
It seems like a lot, doesn’t it? But it isn’t! If your discovery of the freedom philosophy goes back
a long way, think back to those first few years of your intellectual journey. You were hungry —
hungry for everything you could get your hands on to read! There weren’t enough articles or
books to satiate your demand.
That’s the way it is with many people who are discovering the truth today — the truth that our
nation has strayed from its founding principles, with disastrous consequences. A man who
recently discovered libertarianism wrote me, “There’s no such thing as having too much
information, is there, Mr. Hornberger?” I couldn’t help but smile because I remembered that
same feeling when I discovered libertarianism some 25 years ago, voraciously reading Rand,
Read, Mises, Bastiat, Hayek, and Rothbard, as well as the articles and commentaries that were
being published by the growing number of libertarian foundations and think tanks.
For decades, we advocates of liberty have worked laboriously to advance our cause. We’ve had
up times and we’ve had down times. But our objective has never wavered: We want to change
the world — that’s what we’re all about. We want to make it a better place — a freer, more
prosperous, peaceful, harmonious, compassionate, and charitable place.
We have never underestimated the magnitude of our task. While others have sought merely to
reform the socialistic welfare state and the regulated society, our objective has been to persuade
our fellow Americans to abandon the old, failed paternalistic paradigm in favor of one based on
individual liberty, free markets, self-reliance, voluntary charity, and constitutionally limited
government.
Given the political climate in the country today, especially with respect to the overarching and
dominant role that the federal government now plays in our lives, it might be tempting to simply
accept the new order that has settled upon our nation and resign ourselves to merely trying to
reform it. We must resist that temptation with every fiber of our being! We are about liberty, not
about reforming government control of our lives and fortunes. We must never lose sight of what
we have dedicated our lives to for so long — the restoration of American liberty!
Having taken control over our income and savings through the federal income tax and the
Federal Reserve System, the federal government is now engaged in an uncontrolled spending
binge that threatens the economic and monetary security of the American people. With its
myriad of socialist welfare-state programs, all too many Americans unfortunately now live as
dependents of the federal government, desperately fearful of losing their subsidy. With their
regulated society, especially their immoral, deadly, destructive, and racist war on drugs, the feds
continue to destroy lives and tear apart the fabric of our society. With their morally bankrupt
foreign policy, they have made both Americans and the world less safe.
Our nation needs libertarian ideas more than ever because those ideas provide the way out of the
morass into which the statists have led us. And that’s why all too many of the feds would love
nothing more than to shut down people such as us. Throughout history, public officials have
understood that if they could suppress dissent and criticism of government, they could more
easily cow people into falsely believing that tyranny and oppression are actually freedom.
As you may know, ever since September 11 The Future of Freedom Foundation has taken a
leading role in the defense of civil liberties, not only in our publication Freedom Daily but
especially in our FFF Email Update. In the early days, we were inundated with hate mail taking
us to task for defending the rights of such accused terrorists as Zacarias Moussaoui, Jose Padilla,
and Yaser Hamdi. But today, the situation is exactly the opposite: Every week, we receive emails
of gratitude and support for our uncompromising stand in favor of civil liberties and
constitutional guarantees of due process, because more and more people are coming to
understand that if the feds can grab, incarcerate, and execute anyone they accuse of being a
terrorist without due process of law, the exposition of truth and ideas becomes a dead letter.
It was the same prior to the invasion of Iraq. We’d never been so inundated with hate email from
people questioning our patriotism. Today, the situation is the exact opposite — virtually all the
email we receive expresses gratitude for our speaking the truth about the adverse consequences
that such an invasion would produce and has produced. The following comments are
representative of the feedback we are now receiving on a regular basis:
“You are doing marvelous work spreading the ideals of liberty around the world. I just
recently found your blog on the FFF website and have enjoyed every entry, each one
timely and lively. In all of your publications you make the discovery and understanding of
a new freedom exciting and invigorating.”
“Since the beginning of this year, I have frequented your website and often passed along
the commentaries posted there about the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the deteriorating
condition of our domestic liberties. My thanks to you and other authors at your site for
providing an intelligent alternative to the mindless jingoism that surrounds us.”
“Keep up the good work. I read quite a bit of most daily e-mails from FFF. They are very
well done. I get more out of them than any of the other publications I receive. I often
forward links to contacts. I am archiving the weekend biography profiles for that day,
sometime in the distant future, when I can do some serious studying.”
“My 87th birthday is approaching, I still read Freedom Daily from cover to cover, and I
appreciate very much the email messages FFF sends: both the ones written by your staff
members and the ones you glean from the general media. I especially enjoy the
biographical sketches on the outstanding writers of the past and present.”
Today, there are more Americans than ever who are thinking about and reflecting on the proper
role of government in our lives. An increasing number of them are discovering the deep moral
foundations of libertarian principles and realizing that those principles hold the key to achieving
the type of society for which they yearn — prosperous, harmonious, peaceful, caring, and
compassionate, a society that would once again be the envy of the world.
Unfortunately, however, all too many Americans fail to recognize the perilous times in which we
live. These are not the ordinary times that advocates of liberty have enjoyed in the past. Another
major terrorist attack or a severe economic crisis — or a combination of the two — could easily
produce another massive assault on civil liberties, including the passage of a sedition law that
suppresses criticism of government policies, such as the one enacted during World War I. If that
were to happen, there’s a good chance that organizations such as FFF wouldn’t be around for
very long.
Thus, we’ve redoubled our efforts not only to try to reverse the statist tide but also to provide
people with a “freedom insurance policy” consisting of a bank of libertarian resources on which
they could draw in the event the worst were to happen — one that could help people extricate
themselves from the crisis and then rebuild a society based on our heritage of liberty.
We also recently passed a milestone in advancing liberty with our op-ed program — our op-eds have now been published more than 4,000 times in more than 800 newspapers and websites. Moreover, our three appearances on Fox News during the past year have enabled us to bring FFF’s freedom ideas to millions more.
That brings me back to the Internet, the phenomenon that has enabled The Future of Freedom
Foundation to spread ideas on liberty to people in ways unimaginable in pre-Internet days. If you
needed even more proof that we’re achieving tremendous success doing this, here’s a bit more:
The Future of Freedom Foundation’s website (www.fff.org) has just been selected as the outstanding
freedom website on the Internet by Congressman Ron Paul’s Media Awards for 2002!
Never in my wildest dreams when I founded FFF 14 years ago did I think that we’d get an award
from a member of Congress, but given the utmost respect that I have for Ron Paul and the
courage and dedication to liberty he has exemplified in his life, this is the biggest and most
meaningful award we have received in the 14-year history of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Our success is your success because your support made it happen!
We understand that times are tough for everyone, and we also understand that when it comes to
supporting libertarian organizations, you have a lot of choices. All we ask is that when deciding
on how to make your end-of-year charitable (and tax-deductible) contributions this year, you
give The Future of Freedom Foundation your very careful consideration. Like many other
nonprofit organizations, we have suffered a big shortfall in financial support this past year not
only because of the economy but also because of the unpopular stands we have been taking. In
order to continue building on the success that you have helped us achieve, we need your
generous support this year more than we have in the past.
If you would like to support our work with a subscription to Freedom Daily ($25 per year for print version; $15 for email version) or a tax-deductible donation to The Future of Freedom Foundation, or both, you can do so online at our “Subscribe and Support" section or by mailing or faxing your support to our offices.
Thank you for your consideration and your dedication to the principles of liberty.
Sincerely,
Jacob G. Hornberger
P.S. During tough times, I’m reminded of the story of the two frogs that fell into a big barrel of
liquid and started to drown. They kicked and kicked until one of them finally said, “Oh, what’s
the use?” and gave up. The other frog, having a bit more faith that things would turn out for the
good, just kept on kicking, until his kicking turned all that cream into butter, enabling him to
jump out. So, when you see us here at FFF pumping out articles, commentaries, and analyses,
just know that we’re still kicking, but in the hope that your generous financial support will make
the barrel full of cream instead of water! Thanks again!
Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The
Future of Freedom Foundation. Send him email.
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