By now, you may have noticed the distinctive black and white posters decorating the many walls and passages across campus carrying our logo. Perhaps you overheard a fellow student or professor mention Trent Liberty’s PintsNPolitics in lecture or at the caf. Or, maybe you are unfamiliar with Trent Liberty entirely. In any case, you may wonder: What is Trent Liberty?
Trent Liberty is a libertarian student group on campus, dedicated to promoting and discussing the ideas of personal liberty and free-markets. What is libertarianism? Broadly speaking, libertarianism is the radical idea that the initiation of aggression or force in inter-personal interaction is wrong. In other words, “keep your mitts to yourself.” If you generally believe that no one has the right to go around threatening or initiating violence against peaceful people or their property, then you may be a libertarian.
Libertarianism is an ideology completely alien to the traditional Left, Right, or Center. While mainstream left- and right-wingers claim to offer radically different approaches, in reality both support fundamentally authoritarian social arrangements. While the Right claims to support “free markets,” they truly support pro-business, State-controlled capitalism. It is libertarians who truly advocate for an economy based on voluntary exchange and contract free from the intrusion of central planners, and the elimination of all government-secured privilege, anti-competitive legislation, and bailouts. While the Left claims to promote social and economic equality, they truly seek to create the very opposite: a hierarchal society in which agents of the government have enormous social and economic power, and the common citizen is forced to navigate the government’s complex array of rules, regulations, and red-tape before he or she can do anything. The Left also fails to recognize the crippling and paradoxically damaging effects that their well-intentioned policies can have on the most vulnerable in society. It is libertarians who promote true legal equality, where no one (even the government) has special permission to threaten or use violence to impose their “utopia” on anyone else.
That being said, there is no “one” libertarianism. There are left-libertarians (like Noam Chomsky), small-government libertarians (like Milton Friedman), anarchist-libertarians (like Murray Rothbard), libertarian socialists (like Benjamin Tucker), and more. It is our goal to promote the ideas of libertarianism in all its forms, and to insert this often neglected position into political and economic conversation at Trent.
You will hear misinformed and confused statements in class at Trent, from friends, and in the media. You will hear that “free-markets” caused the financial crisis. Others will say that free markets mean unlimited power for corporations. You will be told that the solution to poverty or despair is always just one government program away. But we would ask: was the economy even close to “free” before the crash? Is it consumers, or governments that give corporations their special legal privileges and protections from liability? And have massive government programs ever fixed anything?
Instead of naively looking to stale and ineffective “choices” within the status quo, we aim to provide the foundation for real, effective change. We seek to end the destructive government wars, end the debt that enslaves future generations, end the state-granted privileges, end the anti-competitive legislation that protects established interests, end the welfare cycle that traps the vulnerable around the world in perpetual dependency, end the economic imperialism carried out by the UN, IMF and World Bank, end the joblessness and anemic economic “recovery,” and end the social authoritarianism and intrusions in our personal lives. In effect, libertarianism is the change that the world needs; freedom must be the legacy of the 21st century.
Throughout the year, we will offer talks, seminars, debates, and more to discuss these types of issues in more detail. We also host the popular PintsNPolitics fortnightly, normally at McThirsty’s Pint. PintsNPolitics is a great way to get out, meet new people, and have friendly conversation with people from across the political spectrum. All stripes are welcome!
Want to learn more? Would you like to ask a question, or get involved? If so, we invite you to like us on Facebook (and join our discussion board!), follow us on Twitter, check out our YouTube channel, and most importantly: come out to our events!