Attribute to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

This is a shameless commercial. Many, many years ago (I don’t remember exactly how many) I wrote and delivered a longish speech called “I Dreamed I Was A Libertarian In My Maidenform Bra”. The reference, for all of you under 50, was to a series of TV and radio commercials that concerned young ladies dreaming they had various unlikely adventures in their Maidenform bras, and was once funny. Now it has to be explained, which is, of course, the death of funny.

Radio? That’s TV for blind people.

The speech was intended to marinate the listener in the historic promise of libertarianism, and all of the splendid and unexpected things that would be possible—to you—if you were truly free. No one had ever written about that in precisely the way I did, and no one has written about it since. When I gave that speech, at various meetings and convention dinners, it often made grown men laugh and weep within the space of five minutes.

I have always contended—and I still do, today—that, if the Libertarian Party had made that speech, and the revolutionary ideas it contains, the centerpiece of its national outreach, the very core of its platform, the party would not have remained, as it richly deserved, the insignificant and infinitessimal speck that it is today. Anybody listening?

In their own way, the socialist congress-creatures like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have unintentionally proven me right. They have enjoyed spectacular success—far more than the Libertarian Party has ever achieved, and mostly in a far shorter time—employing a method that, if it is not the same as mine, is at least its evil mirror image.

Socialists typically promise voters to steal money from other people at implied or literal gunpoint to buy a finite list of free goodies—free medicine and college education, for example—for their criminal accessories … I mean constituents. What I propose is to stop all the stealing and encourage people to buy anything they want from an infinite list. My friend Libertarian Party founder David F. Nolan, said I was “bribing people with their own money”, and he was right. Another friend, Robert Anton Wilson, said things about the speech that I will treasure forever.

In the speech, I advocate eliminating all taxation and all economic regulation, and I demonstrate how that would increase every individual’s real wealth and standard of living at least eightfold—and put an end to socialism’s coercive false promises—stimulating unprecedented peace, freedom, and prosperity, just as the American Revolution did in its time. I go on to describe the kind of wonderful world that would create. The speech, in time, went on to form the basis for my first novel—still in print after 40 years—The Probability Broach, a snapshot of that better world the speech describes. If you haven’t read it, you should.

Now here’s the problem. The speech, which you may still read online, has become somewhat aged and more than a little stale (you can read the current version at https://lneilsmith.org/utopian.html). It’s been used for several different purposes (most recently promoting the Covenant Of Unanimous Consent) and it badly needs updating and rewriting.

The trouble is that I am busily writing two novels at the moment, Rosalie’s World, and The Frozen Stars, and at least one weekly column for L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise. I could neglect those undertakings for a little while and restore the speech to its former glory, if I were decently paid. I won’t do it otherwise; I’ve written far too much over the past 40 years, virtually without reward. I plan to spend the money frivolously, on groceries.

So … if you agree that the freedom movement could benefit by my repairing this great and unique ideological weapon, if you’d like to stop sticky-fingered socialism dead in its tracks, if you believe that those who ponder and write about the individual liberty you desire should be decently compensated, and especially if you feel that your group or organization could help, now’s the time to get together with your friends and pony up. I want at least a thousand dollars and if I don’t get it, well, there’s still the two novels and my weekly column.

That isn’t all bad.