Tim Bertram

SCSU Recruitment Week... Success!

Feb 21, 2012 at 6:26 PM

By Tim Bertram

For recruitment week this semester our chapter at SCSU in Minnesota decided to give Presidents Bush and Obama a little heat. We wanted to show students how similair the two Presidents are, and did so by comparing their major policy stances right next to each other.

Making the boards

We tabled in the most frequented building on campus in order to reach more students, and it was a pretty succesful day. We had 18 students sign up and have managed to add some new members to the group.

In order to attract students to the table we had a trivia game for them to play. You had to guess three of the same top campaign contributers to each of their campaigns and you won candy. Needless to say we gave away a lot of candy that day.

We were also fotunate enough to be placed next to another student group called Students for a Sensible Drug policy (SSDP). They were very talkative and we signed up for each other's email lists and made plans to do a future "Know your rights" event in the near future. One of their members has become a pretty consistent attendee of our meetings.

Saint Cloud State's YAL chapter is off to an excellent start!

Comments (1)

Bob Dylan Still Has it Right

Oct 21, 2011 at 12:06 PM

By Tim Bertram

Bob Dylan was known for his protest music in the 1960s and was very vocal about civil rights, and the Vietnam war. He sang many songs about peace but his song Masters of War really sticks out as one of his best when it comes to war.

Dylan was an icon to the youth of his time, and developed a strong following in the 60's for his folk and protest music. This song came out when the war in Vietnam was heating up more and more and is probably one of Dylan's more clear songs in terms of what the message is.

My Favorite 1960s Radical: Malcom X

Oct 7, 2011 at 5:12 PM

By Tim Bertram

Many in the liberty movement have reservations about the radical activists of the 1960s, often because of their associations with socialism. However, I have found Malcom X to be someone I really admire from this era that does not posses that stigma.

There are many things to admire about the man besides his courage to stand up for black rights, and ability to inspire and radicalize people. These are the two things that initially earned my respect for him, but when you look further, you find that he was also a believer in the right to self defense, the Constitution, and that he hated government.

Here is a clip of him speaking on the issues of education, non-violence, guns, and government:

As you can tell Malcom X was an excellent speaker, and felt strongly about how the government has harmed the lives of black people in America.

Gamers are under attack!

Sep 28, 2011 at 2:46 PM

By Tim Bertram

Senator Amy Klobuchar has introduced a bill S. 978, which would make it a criminal act to post movie clips or video of games online. This includes videos that are not downloadable and that are simply video clips of you taping what is happening on your own TV screen.

This has particularly enraged gamers as online walkthroughs or instructions to unlock achievements in a video game would become illegal. This means no more Youtubing how to defeat Nazi Zombies or how to unlock the sweetest gun in Halo.

Perhaps the worst part of the bill can be summed up from this paragraph of the story:

Critics of the bill believe that it could create extensive "gray areas" in the law, empowering prosecutors with huge amounts of discretion to target Web Sites, indiviudal internet users, or even entire video platforms like Youtube or Vimeo.

Although the story does not go as far to call this bill an assault on free speech or a shifty tactic to enforce the intellectual property racket, I will.

Meanwhile in Yemen...

Sep 23, 2011 at 12:21 PM

By Tim Bertram

As all eyes have been on Libya, there have also been large developments in another country we are bombing, Yemen. Just this week protesters took over a military base aided by military defectors, which brought along with it a death toll of over 50 people. Violence has continued to rise yet it really isn't clear to people why this concerns the United States or why it is even happening.

The reasons we have been given for the United State's drone bombings in the country is that we are targeting Al-Qaeda figures. However, a Wikileak has revealed that there is more to the story than just Al- Qaeda and national security. The Yemen government has been allowing the United States to bomb their country and claiming it as their own attacks in order to hide the US involvement. Internal problems have been brewing for a very long time and it seems that the President Saleh can no longer handle it himself as even his military is turning against him.

The turmoil that has been brewing in Yemen for quite some time now can be summed up to either a separatist movement or a civil war. The people we happen to be bombing are those that happen to belong to the separatist camp, or are "anti-government." Coincidence? Or US-backed regime maintenance? Given all the military training we have provided Yemen's military, I am going to go with the latter.

Minnesota's Gay Marriage Amendment

Sep 9, 2011 at 8:11 AM

By Tim Bertram

Currently the state of Minnesota has a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage on the ballot for next November and it has been making a lot of people very angry. Naturally, we have been hearing a lot of the GOP and GLTB talking points (and some other weird stuff), but I read this in the Pioneer Press the other day and it got me to think about why conservatives should support legalizing gay marriage:

America is about freedoms... Like you used not to be able to marry somebody of a different race, and that is just ridiculous now. So I think that its just a matter of time... People will be surprised that it was ever an issue.

This is a quote from a 19-year old resident of Minneapolis who visited the state fair this past week, and I think what she says brings up two very important parts to the gay marriage debate that conservatives need to consider.

First, "America is about freedoms." Conservatives see themselves as defenders of freedoms from the left and the government, yet this particular freedom is just a little too much for them. You cannot pick and choose what freedoms people can and cannot have -- you are either free or not. I am a firm believer that once you compromise on one part of a freedom, you compromise on 100% of that principle. The principle here is people having the liberty to free association, and this can be with your employer, organizations, or who you choose to marry.

The second point is that marriage laws have a clear history of being used to limit the rights of minorities, such as Jim Crow laws which prevented interracial marriages. Likewise, laws which outlaw gay marriage limit the right of free association of the LGBTQ minority. Conservatives do not want to be remembered 40 years from now as the people that held back the rights of those with a different sexual orientation, just like we look back with shame on those who held back the rights of those with a different skin color. Moreover, it's always important to remember that if you give the government the right to limit the freedom of a group you don't like, there's no reason to think that same power won't be used against you somewhere down the line.

Comments (3)

Wikipedia's Libertarian Founder and Philosophy

Sep 7, 2011 at 4:40 PM

By Tim Bertram

If you needed another reason to love and appreciate Wikipedia as a college student or anyone else for that matter, you now have it: Jimmy Wales, the founder, is a self-identified libertarian and objectivist.

But it gets even better -- according to Wales in his interview with Reason Magazine, F. A. Hayek's essay The Use of Knowledge in Society is a key part of the Wikipedia project. Wales said, "One can't understand my ideas about Wikipedia without understanding Hayek." Having instant access to information around the globe has without a doubt benefited our society in many ways that Hayek could not have imagined.

Another quote from his interview in Reason Magazine also helped sum up the philosophy behind Wikipedia: "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we are doing." It's a bold vision, but Wales has had a tremendous amount of success getting there.

It is also important to point out that Wikipedia is a free resource to everyone, not a for-profit encyclopedia. Libertarians often are often harassed for not caring for the poor because of their strong beliefs against government welfare, but here we have a case where this stereotype is proven to be false. Wikipedia is entirely run on donations and uses no ads for revenue, yet provides great services for millions. It's a perfect example of what charity and free services can do in a free society.

There is a lot more to learn about Wikipedia which I find to be very fascinating, but be happy to know that Hayek and Ayn Rand's ideas are being put to use by every college student in America -- even if they do not know it.

Comments (3)

Is it moral to use government funds?

Aug 29, 2011 at 2:48 PM

By Tim Bertram

The other day in my political research class the proffesor went on another rant about how much he despises libertarians and the right. After a little back and forth about libertarinism in general he made the the following statement:

If libertarians really believed in their ideas, why would you attend this school? Why would you accept Social Security or go to a public high school. If you are true to your words you should not utilize any government service what so ever.

My reply to him was: "So what am I supposed to do about the roads?"

This later got me to think about the morality of accepting government funds. I went to a public high school, drive on government roads all the time, pay taxes, and I attend a public college. I have obviously used, and have benefitted from government funds. For being so anti-state, I sure do use it a lot.

This has always made me feel ucomfortable but I accepted it because school, and roads are for the most part monopolized by the state. However, I asked myself if I were out of school working full time and had a family that needed my income, would I take unemployment benefits if I were to lose my job all the sudden? Would I apply for food stamps?

After some thinking I decided that I would take both, just as Rothbard and Walter Block have decided.

What should we expect from Tripoli?

Aug 24, 2011 at 12:09 PM

By Tim Bertram

It would seem that America's newest war in Libya is supposedly coming to an end as rebels have now entered the capitol city of Tripoli. So what should America and the rest of the world expect to see from Libya?

One thing I think we can safely assume is that, like Iraq and Afganistan, when this war is declared "over" it will not be over. Gaddafi remains at large, and the media has reported the man still has many supporters. Another thing to consider is that these rebels have just entered the capitol and could very well lose control of it to pro-Gaddafi fighters, or face a population which does not recongize their control and takes up arms against them.

In what I believe to be the United States government's hope, we may see a new, pro-American regime put in place. Our military has actively supported the rebel's cause through bombs, CIA assistance, and by spending nearly a billion dollars on the operation. Since we do not provide these things to just anyone and everyone (though it may seem like we do), I suspect the Obama Adminstration expects something in return for all of their assistance.

Mad Men's Libertarian

Aug 19, 2011 at 12:53 PM

By Tim Bertram

Not too long ago my sisters got me hooked on a show called Mad Men. The show is about a man named Don Draper, who is the creative director at an ad agency in the 60's -- a job which entails a lot of drinking, smoking, and quick thinking. Mad Men also focuses on the ad agency's need to make a profit, which is where the show's token libertarian is revealed:

Not only is it a great shout out to a very famous libertarian thinker Ayn Rand, but the libertarian character's name is Bertram which makes this blogger very happy. Bertram is a funny, very odd, and sadly minor character in the show. However, I am convinced that getting our message into pop culture such as TV, music, film, etc. is absolutely necessary for the liberty movement. The left has shown us how succesful this can be.