On the heels of our very successful online Zoom conference in April and May on “The National Security State and the Kennedy Assassination,” we now wish to do another online Zoom conference this fall on the critical importance of “Restoring Civil Liberties in America.” I am writing to see if you will help us fund this conference.
As you know, civil liberties are an essential part of a free society. Our American ancestors clearly understood this. That’s why they demanded the enactment of the Bill of Rights as a condition for accepting the Constitution.
Freedom of speech, freedom of association, due process of law, protection against illegal searches and seizures, privacy, trial by jury, and the right to keep and bear arms. They are all critically important aspects of a free society, and they have all been under constant and ever-increasing assault for decades.
Ever since our inception, FFF has been at the forefront of defending civil liberties. In the July 1990 issue of FFF’s monthly journal Future of Freedom, I wrote an article entitled, “The Forgotten Importance of Civil Liberties.”
In 2007 and 2008, we held two very exciting conferences on foreign policy and civil liberties, which included former presidential candidate Ron Paul and noted Fox News commentator Andrew Napolitano speaking on the same evening.
Several years ago, we also held a college lecture tour on civil liberties all over the nation that featured noted Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Glenn Greenwald, prominent conservative commentator and lawyer Bruce Fein, and myself as speakers.
We also held a conference on civil liberties for students that featured such noted speakers as Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone and former New York Times correspondent and U.S. foreign policy critic Stephen Kinzer.
Over the years, we have also published countless articles emphasizing the importance of civil liberties in a free society.
After the 9/11 attacks, we took a leading role in the libertarian movement against such affronts to our liberty as the USA PATRIOT Act, torture, indefinite detention, assassination, secret surveillance, and other massive assaults on civil liberties.
And for the past year, we have fought hard against the massive effort by public officials to use the Covid-19 crisis as an excuse to infringe on our freedoms even more.
We believe that the time is right for us to revisit this important area with another online conference, especially given President Biden’s plan to refocus the war on terrorism here at home as well as former CIA Director John Brennan’s recent statement to MSNBC suggesting that we libertarians are a threat to “national security.”
What Biden, Brennan, and their army of Homeland Security bureaucrats obviously do not understand is that libertarianism is the only solution to the liberty-destroying morass into which welfare-warfare statists have plunged our nation.
Our plan is to run this conference the way we have run our current one: with weekly talks in the evening by different speakers, followed by a Q&A. You will be able to join us online each evening and send in your questions live or watch the video presentations after we post them on our website.
Justice Hugo Black wrote, “I cannot agree with those who think of the Bill of Rights as an 18th-century straitjacket, unsuited for this age. It is old but not all old things are bad. The evils it guards against are not only old, they are with us now, they exist today.”
This will be another exciting and extremely important conference. Will you help us make it happen by making a generous mid-year tax-deductible contribution to FFF?
Yours for liberty,
Jacob Hornberger
P.S. Please help us defend our civil liberties. With a generous donation of $250 or more you will become a member of FFF’s Freedom Club. You’ll receive my monthly video message and our book Freedom Daily: Daily Quotations on Liberty.