Sunday, 21 June 2009

Freedom To Be Yourself is a Precious Jewel

Do you own your life or does the state own it?

Libertarian think tanks

There are a number of think tanks that are explicitly libertarian or espouse libertarian views. The Libertarian Alliance works to promote libertarianism generally, and holds no corporate view beyond that, allying together classical liberals, minarchists, anarcho-capitalists and even social anarchists. The Society for Individual Freedom, from which the Libertarian Alliance originally split, works as a broader alliance, incorporating both libertarians less radical free-market conservatives.
The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) is the oldest free-market think tank in the United Kingdom, and a progenitor of a large network of libertarian think tanks around the world, as well as greatly shaping the Thatcher government's economic policies. The Centre for Policy Studies was set up by Thatcher and Keith Joseph for the purpose of advancing classical liberalism. The Adam Smith Institute promotes the work of Adam Smith in explaining the working of the free market from a libertarian viewpoint.
There are a few libertarian student societies at British universities, including St Andrews, Cambridge, Imperial College London, London School of Economics (the Hayek Society), Oxford, University College London, and Warwick.

Prominent British libertarians have included:

Richard Branson (born 1950), businessman
Peter Thomas Bauer (1915 - 2002), Developmental economist and 2002 winner of the Cato Institute's Milton Friedman Prize.
Alan Duncan (born 1957), Conservative politician
Daniel Hannan (born 1971), Conservative politician
Friedrich Hayek (1899 – 1992), economist and author
Lembit Öpik (born 1965), Liberal Democrat politician
Herbert Spencer (1820 – 1903), philosopher
Tom Stoppard (born 1937), playwright
Chris Tame (1949 – 2006), leader of the Libertarian Alliance
Lemmy (born Ian Fraser Kilmister, 1945), an English singer and bass guitarist. Founding member of the heavy metal band Motörhead, considers himself to be a libertarian or anarchist, saying that "government causes more problems than it solves".

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